Originally appeared May 9, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.
Most of us can recall anti-gay taunts during childhood, whether or not they were directed toward us. I remember the first time I heard someone taunt someone else with "homo"--I didn't know what it meant, but it sounded bad.
In the back of my elementary school bus, large sixth graders would make vicious chants using faggot and fag and homo and 'mo. I heard these slurs bounced around the hallways almost playfully, and spit out by boys who were about to fight. I heard them in quiet corners of the playground, during social events in front of parents and in the middle of the classroom with teachers present.
I never heard any adult insist that the slurs stop.
Bullying playground insults are sometimes dismissed as a harmless rite of passage, but words have power. I knew being gay was bad before I knew what being gay was. Cathy Renna, GLAAD's news media director, explained the power of taunting in The Gay & Lesbian Review: "We learn the emotional content of a word before we learn its definition. As the meaning becomes better understood by us, we often get another surge of emotion--one of power. By using this word or that in the presence of someone else, we can assume the mantle of privilege, for example, or the power to put someone else down. Now if just using a word can be an easy ticket to status and power, the seduction of its use can be irresistible."
Renna was talking about Eminem's use of faggot - but the same can be said of the pervasive use of homophobic slurs on the playground and in the classroom.
Up until now, childhood homophobia may have seemed like it was only a gay issue. But late last month, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that 30 percent of children in sixth through 10th grades reported either bullying other children, being bullied or both.
Let's say that again. Thirty percent of American children have been affected by bullying. Yet an editorial in the same issue of JAMA points out, "These issues have not been as prominent a part of the last two decades of public health efforts to prevent violence as they should."
Bullying, the JAMA study makes clear, has deleterious effects on all involved. Bullies have higher rates of alcohol and tobacco use and are four times more likely to be convicted of criminal behavior by their 20s than those who don't bully. The majority of bullies had at least one conviction--more than a third had more. As for the victims of bullies, they have higher rates of anxiety disorders, depression and low self-esteem. They report troubled relationships with classmates and a high degree of loneliness. Both bullies and victims were more likely than other children to get into fights.
Interestingly, anti-bullying networks in the United Kingdom (where the problem of bullying has been taken much more seriously much earlier than in the U.S.) note that homophobic bullying is the hardest type of bullying to stop. Not because it's more venomous than other types of bullying, but because teachers feel like their hands are tied.
Education and intervention turn out to be the keys to stopping childhood bullying - schools with intervention programs report up to a 50 percent decrease in bullying. But because many teachers are forbidden to "promote" homosexuality, they are afraid to educate students about the realities of gay and lesbian life in order to stop homophobic bullying - in case their actions are seen as being too pro-gay.
Even after the bullying study was released, teachers and activists in the United States continue to fight that same battle. Just last week in Olympia, Wash., state legislators blocked an anti-bullying bill because Christian right constituents protested that it could lead to homosexual sensitivity training in schools.
This is ridiculous, because the children who are targeted, the children who are hurt, aren't necessarily gay children - they are all children. They are children who are being labeled as faggots before they reach puberty; before they even know that their sexual orientation is; in fact, before many of them know what sexual orientation means.
So bullying will be permitted to continue, simply because school districts are afraid of gays and lesbians. Thirty percent of American children will continue to suffer now, simply because school districts are worried that positive images of gays and lesbian might be harmful sometime in the future.
This would be food for satire if it weren't so disastrous. Though the authors of the study didn't link bullies or victims to violence, it seems clear there must be some effect. Gay bashers, after all, are nothing more than bullies with bats. And some of the school shootings, such as the one at Columbine, seem to have bullies' victims - especially victims of homophobic bullying - at their tragic hearts.
Homophobic bullying is more than just a gay and lesbian issue. It is a national public health issue that leads to dangerous social consequences. We know how to stop it. It is irresponsible and inhumane that we do not.