From: Randall Parker 

Steve,

Here's an excerpt:

<>

Are these figures realistic? Think back everyone to your own time in high
school and see if this sounds typical or unusual.

This is way different than what I saw growing up. There were two kids in my
grade school that were thought to be gay. But while a few kids made
comments about them on rare occasions it really was rare. In high school we
had two teachers who were openly gay. I had one as an English teacher. I
don't recall anyone giving him a hard time about it and in fact he was
fairly well liked.

At UC Santa Barbara I never heard of gay or lesbian students getting picked
on. Maybe its just that U. I mean, you are supposed to be mellow as all get
out if you go there.

By contrast, racial beatings were not unheard of where I went to high
school. Mostly it was blacks beating up on whites even though the whites
were the majority. That to me was the scariest part of high school until
about my mid Junior year when I got to know the kinds of people whose
friendships automatically afforded a person a considerable degree of
protection.

In news:, sdurrett{at}pacbell.net says...
> An interesting tale from today's SF Chronicle: "Emerging From a Secret:
> Taunts and internal conflict pushed student to the brink".
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/12/
MN79880.DTL
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5