When a child commits suicide because of something that happens in school - bullying or harassment - it’s past time to do something about it. And we’ve had not just one or two, but many across the country that we know about.

Before the New York State Senate this week was a bill called the Dignity for All Students Act and its aim was to stop the kind of soul-killing fear that too many children experience every day because of aspects of their personalities, including sexual orientation and gender identification, that other students lock onto and use as the basis of relentless harassment of the child who has become just an object to the crowd.

According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, New York is one of eight states that don’t have such protection for school children and, the group says, the bill would be “an essential first step to stopping bullying and building a culture of respect and understanding in our schools.”

S. 1987 would have provided training and tools for educators and students and it would have mandated the reporting of bias incidents and would have held schools accountable for the behavior of children who harass and intimidate others.

The Assembly had passed a similar bill - and had passed it for three years - and had been awaiting the Senate’s action on its bill. For now, vulnerable children will have to wait for action by that house at some future time.

There is little excuse for such inaction, considering the Assembly’s wide margin of approval for such a fundamental protection. Also, the Assembly passed the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which would ensure that transgender men and women are protected under the Human Rights Law, by prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, as when their identity, appearance, behavior, or expression differ from their genetic sex at birth. They are particularly vulnerable to hate crimes.

Again this year, the Senate failed to pass protection for gender expression and leaves New Yorkers open to discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodation, and credit.

“The experience of transgender individuals, and the discrimination they face, are unique, and should be specifically identified and unambiguously rejected in our State's civil rights laws, just like discrimination based on age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, race, disability, or ethnicity," said Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, who sponsored the bill. And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, agreed, saying that the bill would be a “crucial step” in supporting civil rights in New York.

The two pointed out that many New Yorkers believed a recent bill that protected sexual orientation covered transgender persons, but they noted that transgender is not the same as homosexuality, the former describing the actual physical change of the sex of a person. For that, there needs to be a separate bill.

New Yorkers seem to be confused about such legislation, and even the need to provide protection above and beyond what already exists. But, if what already exists were sufficient, the problems of bullying and harassment and discrimination in schools and in everyday life would not exist, or they would be dealt with under the current law.

Current laws obviously do not suffice and the pain and suffering of those who are objects of discrimination and hate are not alleviated or even diminished.

Why should the general public care, especially if they see themselves as straight, not gay or lesbian? Because, simply, such discrimination affects everyone - however one perceives oneself, as gay, straight, lesbian, transgender. The old trade union slogan applies: An injury to one is an injury to all.

For example, when the Washington, D.C., Catholic Charities ended spousal benefits - because the city had determined that employers in the district would provide such benefits - so the agency would not have to provide benefits to homosexual partners for its workers, the result was that heterosexual workers were denied those benefits.

Discriminatory behavior by society also makes it difficult to address HIV as a public health issue, because research, services, and treatment of HIV are hampered by a lack of openness about the treatable condition. It is not a “gay” disease, but one that affects everyone and gay and straight people suffer equally from discriminatory practices involving HIV and AIDS.

Two children of a lesbian couple were asked to leave a Catholic school in the Denver diocese because of the sexual orientation of the parents and the bishop backed up the pastor who initiated the action.

Next year, when students return to that school, it will be with the knowledge that their classmates are absent because their parents are lesbians. It will appear to them that it is alright to discriminate - no matter that officials in explaining their actions said that the teachings on sexuality and family relationships would be “confusing” if the children of lesbians are in attendance.

It did not matter that the parents were very much involved in the life of the school and never made an issues of their sexual orientation. The school is the lesser for the action and the children - those who remain - will be deprived of a valuable life lesson and, even more important, they will have lost two friends.

In a Central New York school district, the school board postponed debate and discussion on the request that a Gay-Straight Alliance club be sanctioned in the school district. The goal, which is the same as similar clubs in other school districts, is to discuss the issues and learn from one another. Probably, the most important function of such a club is to allow all students to see that they are all human beings; that they have the same feelings and aspirations; that they are struggling with the same problems of growing up and taking responsibility for their lives and their world.

What the Civil Rights Act of 1964 said to the American people was: we are all human, we should be allowed to develop our potential to the fullest, regardless of race, color, or creed, and that we should have equal opportunity to succeed, without the fetters of bias.

We Americans left a few things out of the rights law at that time and, for the past 46 years, we have been trying to make the rights of all the bedrock of our philosophy and our law. We’re moving very slowly, but we’re moving. But the protection of some of our most vulnerable, the children, cannot wait. The excuses heard for not providing basic rights to gay and lesbian and transgender children and adults are basically nonsense and will harm all of us in the long run.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

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