Alameda parents debate lessons addressing gay slurs, bullying
Hundreds of people showed up at City Hall on Tuesday night to express their support — or concerns — about the Alameda Unified School District’s proposed lessons to address slurs and bullying against gays.
So many people showed up to speak that police and fire officials had to clear much of the crowd out of City Council chambers, where the public hearing to discuss the lessons was held. A second hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 18 at a location to be announced.
School Board President Mike McMahon said he had 200 speaker slips from people who wanted to be heard on the issue. The school board — minus Trustee Neal Tam, who was absent — heard three and a half hours of testimony on the curriculum on Tuesday.
Supporters of the curriculum said it’s a tool desperately needed by teachers to combat anti-gay slurs and bullying that starts as early as kindergarten. It’s not about sex, they said, but about offering positive images of gays and their families who are members of the community but invisible inside school walls.
The consequences of not addressing the bullying or offering such positive reinforcement is dire, they said: Statistically, gay youth are much more likely to skip school, abuse alcohol and drugs and commit suicide than their straight peers.
Alameda parents debate lessons addressing gay slurs, bullying
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/alameda-paren…
Smoking prevention groups go after tobacco ads targeting gays
The cigarette pitch demands a second look.
Two ripped, rakish men and one lean, pristine hound pause, inexplicably, in the cool shallows of a calm green sea.
“How gay is this ad?” R.E. Szego, a Portland tobacco-prevention specialist, asks when she sees such an image.
It’s a sincere question, not a slam.
Wooed for years by tobacco companies — who lavish free merchandise on their bars and clubs, sponsor their events and advertise heavily in their publications — gays, lesbians and bisexuals remain hooked on cigarettes, even as the general population smokes less.
But public health specialists are optimistic that a new ban on smoking in Oregon bars will cause a decline in the smoking rates of gays and lesbians, who tend to pick up the habit as teens coming to terms with stigma surrounding their sexual identity.
“If you were coming up gay, it used to be the only place you got to meet was in a bar,” says Michael Kaplan, executive director of Cascade AIDS Project and a former pack-a-day smoker. “If you wanted to fit in, you’d smoke.”
About one in three gay, lesbian and bisexual Oregonians smoke, compared to about one in five smokers in the state’s overall population, according to the public health division of the Oregon Department of Human Services. The disparity is worse among gay, lesbian and bisexual teens, who are 2 1/2 times more likely to smoke than their straight peers. What’s more, half of all gay Oregon smokers say they don’t want to quit.
Nationally, tobacco-related illnesses such as cancer and heart disease kill about 30,000 gays, lesbians and bisexuals each year, reports the American Cancer Society. AIDS kills about half as many, straight people included, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See Smoking prevention groups go after tobacco ads targeting gays
The Oregonian – OregonLive.com -* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/smoking-preve…
