Who’s saving Minnesota’s gay teens?

Rolling Stone describes the human cost of political gay-bashing: nine student suicides in two years in Michelle Bachmann’s home district. The article attributes this to the local School Board’s embrace of a fervent anti-gay agenda. The suicides feed a climate of severe gay bullying in the schools, making life hell for some – while administrators did nothing to protect them. Gay kids in the district are caught in the crossfire of a culture war being waged by local evangelicals inspired by their high-profile congressional representative Michele Bachmann, who graduated from Anoka High School and a member of one of the most conservative churches in the area. When Christian activists who considered gays an abomination forced a measure through the school board forbidding the discussion of homosexuality in the district’s public schools, GLBTQ kids were unknowingly thrust into the heart of the clash.

[via Rolling Stone]