'Governor's Commission for Gay Youth' Retreats to 'Safety' and 'Suicide'

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'Governor's Commission for Gay
Youth' Retreats to 'Safety' and 'Suicide'

December 2000

The Governor's "Commission for Gay and Lesbian Youth" is receiving headlines by once again expressing their concerns about the "safety" and "suicide" of homosexual students. When they requested the Massachusetts Board of Education in September to force more school districts to establish homosexual clubs, their ally, the Boston Globe, used this headline: "Safety of gays in schools is urged."

However, the Executive Director of GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, revealed in a speech in 1995 how he used "safety" to delude Gov. Weld and the state legislature into adopting the homosexual agenda for the schools of Massachusetts. The speech, "Winning the Culture War," was given at a homosexual conference on March 5, 1995.

"If the Radical Right can succeed in portraying us as preying on children, we will lose. Their language - 'promoting homosexuality' is one example - is laced with subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo that we are 'after their kids.' We must learn from the abortion struggle, where the clever claiming of the term 'pro-life' allowed those who opposed abortion on demand to frame the issue to their advantage, to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be painted into a corner before the debate even begins.

"In Massachusetts the effective reframing of this issue was the key to the success of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. We immediately seized upon the opponent's calling card - safety - and explained how homophobia represents a threat to students' safety by creating a climate where violence, name-calling, health problems, and suicide are common. Titling our report 'Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth,' we automatically threw our opponents onto the defensive and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling from day one.

"Finding the effective frame for your community is the key to victory. It must be linked to universal values that everyone in the community has in common. In Massachusetts, no one could speak up against our frame and say, 'Why, yes, I do think students should kill themselves': this allowed us to set the terms for the debate.

"In Massachusetts, we made creating an environment where youth could speak out our number one priority. We know that, confronted with real-live stories of youth who had suffered from homophobia, our opponents would have to attack people who had been victimized once, which put them in a bully position from which it would be hard to emerge looking good. More importantly, we made sure these youth met with elected officials so that, the next time these officials had to vote on something, there would be a specific face and story attached to the issue. We wanted them to have an actual kid in mind when they had to cast their votes. We won the vote in the Senate 33-7 as a result."

For a discussion of the false issues of "suicide" and "safety," see the October 2000 issue or search our archives for those words.