Changing the Game: The GLSEN Sports Project’s mission is to assist K-12 schools in creating and maintaining an athletic and physical education climate that is based on the core principles of respect, safety and equal access for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. The GLSEN Sports Project fills a critical gap and adds a vital new dimension to GLSEN’s work to create a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. http://sports.glsen.org/
ThinkB4YouSpeak is a web site launched in conjunction with the Ad Council campaign to fight anti-LGBT language by raising awareness among straight teens about the prevalence and consequences of anti-LGBT bias and behavior in America’s schools. The website, www.ThinkB4YouSpeak.com, provides tips on how to support LGBT issues and the opportunity for visitors to take a stand against anti-LGBT language through an interactive pledge form that will allow teens to "say something original," by sharing alternatives to "that’s so gay." The site also includes a dictionary-type tool that illustrates a word’s meaning and the notion of understanding one’s choice of words. Additional features include an e-card and a video library that calls for user submissions. Go to the site: www.ThinkB4YouSpeak.com
Boys Will Be Boys? Not in These FamiliesBy JAN HOFFMAN FASHION & STYLE in the NY Times on June 12, 2011 When a son wants a tutu or a daughter wants to wear a tie, some parents try to support that gender-bending decision while also protecting their children from taunts.
First Friday excerpt from Neil Nicoll, CEO of the YMCA of the USA
ONLINE RESOURCES
How many LGBT people are there in the U.S.?
Gray Gates, William Distinguished scholar at The Williams Institute at UCLA, discusses his new study estimating LGBT population in the United States. Drawing on information from four recent national and two state-level population-based surveys, the analyses suggest that there are more than 8 million adults in the US who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, comprising 3.5% of the adult population. Series: "Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law,
From time to time YMCAGLBT.org receives emails from individuals citing selected passages from Scripture in relation to the YMCA GLBT Affinity Group. Given that faith communities advance different interpretations of the Bible in matters related to the inherent rights of all people, this is not unexpected. To help with your personal and workplace conversations, here are a selection of online resources related to faith, fairness and sexual identity:
OUT IN SCRIPTURE: an honest encounter between LGBT lives and the Bible (representing 11 different denominations and 100 diverse scholars and pastors)
THE GAY CHRISTIAN NETWORK - GCN (“a nonprofit ministry serving Christians who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, and those who care about them’)
Newsweek recently featured author Rachel Simmons in an insightful article entitled “The Nine Most Common Myths about Bullying.” Ms. Simmons is the author of “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls” and co-founder of the Girls Leadership Institute. She is one of the few adult commentators on this subject who is willing to be brutally honest about her own personal experiences with bullying and aggression (both the bullied and the bully rarely are willing to tell others the depths of their feelings and reality of their experiences). This article is excellent supplemental reading for this important topic covered in our October 2010 Action Alert. To read the article, visit www.newsweek.com and search on “Rachel Simmons” YMCA GLBT Fall 2010 edition is now on newstands!
Scout’s Honor
An account of the conflict between the antigay policies of the Boy Scouts of America and the broad-based movement by many of its members to overturn them. The result is a blemish that will undoubtedly stain this venerable organization for years to come. We learn of individuals whose choice to speak out against their expulsion drew national attention to this issue.
A wake up call for all ages, this best-selling program teaches about prejudices using a dramatic framework. It provides an examination of the realities of discrimination as experienced by actual students in the classroom of third grade teacher, Jane Elliott, whose demonstration shows how quickly children can succumb to discriminatory behavior. The video shows how easily prejudicial attitudes can lead to frustration, broken friendships and vicious behavior. This video chronicles her, now famous, exercise where she divides her class based upon the color of their eyes and bestows upon one group privileges and on the other group impediments. Needless to say, her eye color exercise created quite a storm at the time. But her work endures to this day and this ABC video, nearly 35 years later, still has a great deal to teach us.
To purchase the video from Jane Elliott's Web site, go to: http://janeelliott.com/index.htm
Take the Stranger by the Hand
Gustav-Wrathall, J. (1998). Take the young stranger by the hand: Same-sex relations and the YMCA. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
TOOLS
'