Nearly a third of students in the sixth to 10th grades said in 2008 that they had either bullied students or been bullied, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and after physical appearance, homosexuality is considered the prime factor in bullying.

Focus on the Family recently launched True Tolerance, which aims to give Christians resources for responding to “homosexual advocacy” in schools. See a report on True Tolerance.

In August 2010, the federal government held what was billed as the first-ever bullying prevention summit. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called bullying a moral issue as well as a threat to students’ education and safety. Read Duncan’s comments posted at Ed.gov.

A campaign called Claim Your Rights was launched in September 2010 by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, commonly called PFLAG, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN (pronounced glisten). The campaign encourages LGBT students and allies to report incidents of bullying or harassment to the civil rights office of the U.S. Department […]

Minnesota Public Radio reported that seven teenagers in one of Minnesota’s largest school districts killed themselves during the previous year and that bullying or cyberbullying may have played a part in the deaths.

The death of the Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, in 2010 was one of several suicides in the space of a month chalked up to anti-gay bullying. Read a Sept. 30, 2010, about the suicides, posted on OpposingViews.com

Elizabeth A. Segal is a professor of social work at Arizona State University in Phoenix. She is a co-founding editor of Journal of Poverty and co-edited The Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in the Twenty-First Century (Haworth Press, 2006).

Ellen K. Scott teaches in the sociology department of the University of Oregon in Eugene and has written extensively about welfare reform and its effect on family well-being.

Art Farnsley  directed the research of the Project on Religion and Urban Culture at the Polis Center of Indiana University. He has extensively studied congregations and social services and is one of the authors of Sacred Circles, Public Squares: The Multicentering of American Religion (Indiana University Press, 2004). His most recent work is “Flea Market Jesus,” on […]