There are millions of kids who are not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender who are picked on, bullied and beat up who grow up with emotional scars from this experience. This bill does nothing to educate or sensitize kids who have picked on other kids. What about the hetrosexual kid who is beat up everyday for reasons outside of the gay adgenda? What does this bill do for him/her? This bill’s intent is to bring attention to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children. Doesn’t anyone on this board remember what it was like in school? You don’t have to be gay to be emotionally scarred from being picked on. Someone with a funny last name, a cheap haircut, or hand-me-down clothes will get beat and bullied just the same as a pubescent homosexual/transgender.
Parents should not have to send their kids to school to be forced to participate in something that annihalates all the other victims of bullying. There is no substance behind it.

The only difference is it wouldn’t be a “hate crime.”

This bill makes a mountain out of a mole hill.

There are too many kids being bullied for too many reasons. This bill goes a long way toward raising awareness of one of the main areas of bullying – sexual orientation – and would help get more people thinking about and working on new ways to reduce the amount of bullying and violence in schools. It needs public support.

Change.org makes it easy to send your Representative a letter in support of this legislation:
http://gayrights.change.org/actions/view/ask_congress_to_support_the_national_day_of_silence_bill_hconres_92

It would be simple if all kids were picked on with equal force. However, students of a different sexual orientation are targeted both more frequently and with more force—more anger behind it, if you will. There are more cases every year of children being beaten, hospitalized, or killed because of their sexuality. Last year, one case involved a fourteen-year-old boy being shot in the back of the head at school because he asked another boy to be his valentine. No one is forced to participate in the Day of Silence.

It may be a hollow bill, but these kids need all the support they can get.