The Difference Of A Year ...
8/5/2010 - Equality NC is proud to celebrate the anniversary of the passage of the School Violence Prevention Act (SVPA). Thanks to all of our grassroots activists, supporters, and allies who struggled so hard in previous years to protect all of North Carolina's students, including its LGBT ones.
Looking at GLSEN’s map of safe schools laws, North Carolina stands out as the only state in the South that legally protects students from bullying and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Last June, the NC House of Representatives passed the SVPA by just one vote, with Speaker Joe Hackney breaking the deadlock. After Governor Bev Perdue signed the bill into law, North Carolina became the first state in the South to pass any sort of protection for people based on their gender identity and gender expression, as well as the first to have anti-bullying protections on the basis of sexual orientation.
(This was also the first time that sexual orientation was mentioned in a North Carolina statute.)
This achievement did not come easily. Equality NC joined a broad coalition of organizations to make sure the SVPA became law. Our contract lobbyist, Alex Miller, made a huge difference from the legislature, as did the thousands of LGBT rights activists across the state who made sure their legislators were aware that people in their district care about this issue.
Supporters called their representatives, visited the legislative offices multiple times, and sent in thousands of postcards.
We at Equality NC haven’t been resting on our laurels since the law was passed. We worked to increase awareness of the law and its effects within the LGBT community, as well as the public at large.
Even more importantly, we've worked to ensure that all school districts create and follow a comprehensive anti-bullying policy as proscribed by the legislation. To that end, we produced the SVPA Implementation Toolkit, which provides information to students, parents, advocates, and educators to make sure that the new law is correctly put into practice at schools.
Additionally, last year we also supported the successful passage of the Healthy Youth Act to provide young people with life-saving information about disease prevention as part of a comprehensive sex education program in grades 7-9. While there are still significant issues with sex education policy in our state, particularly for LGBT youth, this bill marks a huge step forward.
It’s been a year since the SVPA and Healthy Youth Act made history in North Carolina, and with your help we'll continue to create an atmosphere of freedom and fairness for all LGBT North Carolinans and their families.
You can support the efforts of Equality NC by making a donation today.
