[NEWS] strictly fyi: press releases, blogs & opinion columns

Dear Safe Schools Coalition Members and Friends:

PRESS RELEASES, BLOGS & OPINION COLUMNS

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(1). Paul Perry, COLAGE Board Member tells his story of being adopting into a same sex family.

(2). TransActive Helps Trans Youth Avoid Pubertal Changes: An Interview with Jenn Burleton

(3). David Valdes Greenwood, Columnist, dad, author of 'Homo Domesticus' writes about his experience with a “Mean Girl”

(4). School official says Utah district outed gay student to parents over fears of bullying

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1). Paul Perry joined COLAGE’s board of directors in 2010 and is pursuing his doctorate in Educational Leadership at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. In honor of National Adoption Month, he shares his story as an adopted child. “I took home a word. ‘Faggot.’” More here.

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2). In all the political and social battles over sex and gender, one thing is clear: Transgender kids have it rough. Over 80 percent of teens who think their gender doesn’t match up with their genitals contemplate suicide. But very few queer-friendly groups focus on transgender kids, in part because working with children is political controversial and can lead to the always-popular accusation of recruiting children. Portland-based TransActive is the only transgender youth nonprofit in the country with actual office space. I talked with TransActive Executive Director Jenn Burleton last week about how preventing transgender teen suicide means working with kids long before they hit puberty. See more of this story.

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3). Our daughter startled us at the table one recent night by saying that she and a friend were playing a trick on two of their other friends. When we questioned what this meant, she brightly replied that they were going to make the other girls think they didn't like them for 10 days. We pointed out that being mean to the others would not actually be a trick on the shunned girls, but on our daughter herself, as she would soon discover that she had lost two friends and was left with only the girl who had come up with this scheme. She was baffled by this prediction -- after all, her partner in crime had assured her this would be funny. More.

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4). Administrators at a Utah middle school outed a gay teenage boy to his parents because they feared he would be bullied, but the move has outraged civil rights groups that claim the student’s privacy was violated. Alpine School District took the unusual step after the 14-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, created an advertisement about himself and his sexual orientation during a class project. See more.

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