SC Equality publishes monumental study of state's lgbt community, gets bizarre flack for it

South Carolina Equality, a group dealing with lgbt education and advocacy in SC, has come out with a monumental survey of over 1,000 of the state's lgbt community.

According to Q-Notes:

The survey exposes several needs and challenges currently facing the state’s estimated 117,000 LGBT citizens, advocates say, particularly among LGBT youth in the state’s public schools.

Nearly half (48 percent) of respondents indicated they’d experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in South Carolina’s public education.

Christine Johnson, head of SC Equality said that she has already begun conversations with state lawmakers in order to get the ball rolling on anti-bullying legislation.

However, according to South Carolina Republican strategist Wesley Donehue, this may be a difficult fight. Donehue said the following in a piece at ProcessStory.com:

There are many Republicans in the General Assembly who will flat out try to kill any bill providing more gay rights. They aren’t the problem for the SC (Equality). Their problem will be the many forward-thinking Republicans who are sympathetic to their cause, but won’t go for putting more laws on the books and creating a special protected class.

Donehue's comments no doubt leaves many (myself included) bewildered, particularly in light of a legislative battle which took place last year over a bill regarding teen dating violence.

In 2009, a bill was pushed through the SC House of Representatives that required schools to create teen dating violence prevention policies.

The bill was a good idea, but it got tainted when a state representative, Greg Delleney, pushed an amendment through requiring the bill to pertain to only heterosexual relationships, ergo excluding lgbt relationships

Delleney said he did this because he was afraid that without this requirement, schools would have to teach children about same-sex relationships.

The bill was killed early last year.

So while Donehue may have been accurate in claiming that SC Equality will have a difficult fight ahead in getting proper legislative responses to its survey, his reasoning seems to be a bit off.

Being considered as a constituency worthy of protection is not the same thing as being put on a pedestal above other constituencies.

The spooky thing will be to see which members of the SC Legislature actually share Donehue's warped point of view.