Government studies have weight and power.
After defining a problem, documenting the causes of it, its effects on the citizenry, and recommending solutions to address it, the study can be called on to get those in positions able to act on the contents of the study to do so. There is a certain degree of pressure and little room for refusing to do what is right. These studies also become the basis of laws and policies.
Those things not included in such studies, no matter how much of a problem they are, what solutions are promoted, and how strong the advocacy for them may be, lack the power they could have if they were in such a study.
That is why when President George HW Bush decided for political expediency to withhold the chapter that dealt with Gay students when the 1989 Health and Human Service study “Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide” was released because he did not want the Reagonite conservative base to be offended, he in effect endangered the lives of those students who would have benefited from the contents.
When school districts began to institute policies and teacher training to reduce bullying in schools as a result of that report, they went to their default modes and dealt only with those groups specifically listed in the existing federal nondiscrimination language that addressed, race, sex, creed, color, national origin, religion, marital status and disability and saw no reason to expand that list, an expansion that would hve been supported if the whole report had been released.
Although the missing chapter had shown Gay teens attempted and completed suicides at a rate three times higher than any other group to which students belonged; that unlike others whose rejection was based on their race, sex, creed, color, national origin, religion, or disability, teens who were Gay faced bullying on multiple fronts; that the reason for the majority of suicide attempts was not that the students realized they were Gay, but because of the treatment Gay students were subjected to based on prejudice, misinformation, and, sadly, Biblical interpretations; and recommended clear and practical ways to reduce the bullying, not having been included in the report’s release, those recommendations and any actions that could be taken could be ignored and resisted.
They were and still are.
I have the documentation that shows this.
While school districts came up with policies, and cities and states came up with laws to reduce bullying directed toward the majority community because of the report as released, doing the same for Gay teens relied on individuals and local groups advocating on a location by location basis with varying success, and was seen more as an option than a concern equal to the other groups to which teens belonged.
In the Oklahoma City Public School system, advocacy to address the existence of and the treatment to which Gay students were subjected, and to have them openly included in student policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination was countered for years by claiming sexual orientation and gender identity did not have to be addressed because they did not appear on the government’s list of protected classes, and the facts from the removed chapter, having not been in the study as released, were considered the opinions of people with a political agenda.
Reducing bullying and harassment for racial minorities was related to their being heterosexual and, because of the report as released, was the right thing to do.
To add protections for teens bullied for their sexual orientation and gender identity was seen as a political issue, part of that imaginary “Gay Agenda”.
And while all the other groups could refer to the report to bolster their claim for the need for policies and staff and student awareness, the Gay teens had nothing to refer to other than what an individual or local group presented to school districts with the hope that after being supplied with the studies, statistics, and the missing chapter which was finally and reluctantly released due to a Freedom of Information filing, those in charge would be educated enough and open-minded enough to do what they would have been compelled to do had HW not have done what he did.
In my own experience, I have often wondered how many lives were lost through suicides in the twenty years between the release of the abridged report in 1989 and the Oklahoma City school district’s finally adding those students in 2009 after 12 years of advocacy for that, and how many lives were and are still being lost in school districts and states that cling to the idea that had it been important and desirable, that information would have been included in the released report.
To the majority, this was not an issue. It was not on the majority’s radar.
But, for those whose lives were affected by this, it was not a minor action.
If things do not affect us directly, we can easily dismiss and overlook them, and we are too quick to tell people, from our perspective, it is no big thing.
I know what it was like to advocate for actions that would save Gay teens’ lives.
I know the lame excuses used to avoid doing the right thing. I have hundreds of letters, emails, and other documentation in a large leather satchel in my bedroom closet.
And I know how, had this chapter not been hidden for political expediency, more Gay teens would have survived, fewer would not have seen only one way to escape the harassment and bullying they faced at the schools they had to attend every day of what became their whole lives by law.
So while we mourn the passing of a president who is being called a family man, a patriot, a gentle man, and one who respected his fellow man, itwill only ring true to me if there is an asterisk after his name.