LGBTQ activisits call for end to bullying

HARTFORD » In response to at least three recent teen suicides in Connecticut, including one in Greenwich, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal Wednesday joined LGBTQ activists to call for increased public opposition to what they say are growing incidents of hate against young people based on their gender identification or sexual orientation.

“Leadership is what’s lacking today in Washington on so many fronts,” said Blumenthal, who is sponsoring legislation aimed at funding socalled no-hate hotlines. “‘If you hear mean, intervene,’ should be part of our culture, part of our mind set, and what we’re seeing from the Trump administration is exactly the opposite: the condoning, even the encouraging of hatred, bias and bigotry, which are truly un-American. They violate our basic American values and they betray our trust in all that’s good in America. It isn’t OK to talk that way with children, or to tolerate it in federal policy where it may be implicit.”

Robin P. McHaelen, executive director of True Colors Inc., a Hartford-based advocacy group for the young LGBTQ community, said 10 percent of bullying complaints to local school officials are about adults targeting children. Since the election of Donald Trump last fall, the bullying has gotten worse.

“This is a problem where so-called adults spend so much of their time making so many other people ‘other’: refugees, undocumented immigrants, Muslims, people with disabilities, unarmed men and women and people who are transgender,” McHaelen said. “Words fly, kids die and Trump tweets on. This isn’t new, but it’s been generations since people have felt so free to act on their biases so publicly. Biases are passed from generation to generation.”

On Tuesday night, a gay True Colors employee was assaulted on the street in New Haven, she said.

Following an afternoon news conference in the State Capitol complex, McHaelan said that the year’s first suicides, of transgender children, occurred in Glastonbury in March, and Waterbury in May.

The third suicide, in the early hours of June 18, occurred when Nicolas Del Priore, a gay 17-year-old at Greenwich High School, was struck by a train at the Cos Cob train station.

Steven Hernandez, executive director of the state Commission on Women, Children and Seniors, said Connecticut has been a national leader, enacting laws to protect vulnerable children in the state, including an antibullying law in 2011, citing a recent report indicating that 75 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth have been harassed or intimidated.

State Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said adults need to step up to show leadership on the issue of tolerance and civil rights.

“It’s our job as adults to teach that, model it, express it, to remember that words matter and that actions matter,” she said. “Your words become who you are. Kids are so vulnerable. They’re not mini-adults. We know that kids who are lesbian or gay or questioning, or transgender, who know that they are that much more likely to be ridiculed, to be harassed, to be assaulted, to be bullied.”

Eagan said a recent report on adolescent risks submitted to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one-third of state school students reported being sad or hopeless for two weeks or more during the year prior to the survey. “About half of those students said they seriously considered attempting suicide during that time period,” she said. “The age that children feel that way is getting younger.”