A Teacher Gives A Class In How To Be A Bully

Bullying is fun. It’s fun to taunt and harass people for their, real or perceived, differences. I mean, c’mon, call out the fat kid; trip the freckled girl. Drive the gay kid to suicide. It’s all in good fun, right? It’s all part of growing up, isn’t it? Don’t we, or haven’t we, all, at one time or another been both the bully and the bullied and then we’ve grown tired of it, and out of it, and moved on and grown up?

Not so much for a school teacher in Moss Point, Mississippi. She was giving a lesson in math class one day when she divided the class into two teams, boys and girls. Destin Holmes, a 16-year-old lesbian, however, was made t sit in the middle of the class alone.

You know, because she’s a lesbian, and therefore not a girl or a boy, or, apparently worthy of respect.

"She told me since she didn't know what I was, I should be on a team of my own."—Destin Holmes

The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] has gotten involved—as should every single parent, teacher, student, school board member, and every single person in the state—asking that this kind of bullying, from an educator, be stopped at once.

Sadly, though, the epidemic of bullying doesn’t end.  Students and staff have regularly LGBTQ youth, says SPLC attorney Sam Wolfe: "Students face enough obstacles in school without also enduring violence and abuse for simply being different. They are entitled by law to attend school in an environment where they are not singled out and tormented because of their sexual orientation or gender nonconformity." He warned that the district immediately develop a plan to stop this nonsense, or face a federal lawsuit.

And that has me wondering? As an adult, as an educator, do you really need to be threatened with a lawsuit to make you stop bullying LGBTQ students? Is that what it takes? Is there no common sense?

Clifton Magee, Moss Point School District school board President, said a statement would be released, and then district spokesperson Stephanie Packer sent an email out which read: "The Moss Point School District has no comment at this time. This is currently an ongoing investigation."

Destin Holmes, who attended the junior high for 1 semester during the 2011-2012 school year, said she was forced to leave after being tormented by peers and faculty members. And, when she went to the principal to voice her complaints, he said, "I don't want a dyke in this school."

Holmes says that for the first 3 days of school, she was repeatedly referred to as "he" by teachers even though she told them she was a "she." She says teachers and students called her "it," "queer," "freak," "alien," "dyke" and "he-she," and teachers denied her access to the girls' restroom.

"They don't even know me."—Destin Holmes

We have an epidemic in this country of people, and groups, and schools, that think the taunting and harassing and bullying, even the physical violence, of LGBTQ students is just fine. We have an entire generation being tormented by the generation that came before them and has yet to catch up to the rest of the world.

And if we continue to just let this kind of thing happen, without real repercussions to the students who bully, such as removing them from the schools, and the teachers who bully, such as immediate termination, this will only get worse.

Since when is this okay? While we can sometimes, sometimes, forgive a child for bullying because maybe they don’t know any better, there is no excuse for a teacher to behave this way.

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