“During a political activism program that I’ve been doing for the past two weeks, I had a chance to speak to a legislative assistant – the first openly transgender person hired on capitol hill – from Barney Frank’s office. I lobbied on gay rights issues – ENDA, and repealing DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He told me that to help push these through congress, they needed to convince as many Representatives as possible to agree to a fully inclusive version of ENDA, and to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, people need to convince their senators to vote for it. I think this is a great project that we could collaborate on.”

Steps we can take to act on Sara’s idea:

• Any individual can write to their state representatives and/or state senators to advocate for ENDA and to encourage Congress to repeal DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
• You can organize your school to effect political change together by writing a petition and having many students in your school sign it. This petition can then be sent to a state senator or state representatives. To find out who your state senator or state representative is, you can go to https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml.

**Terminology**

ENDA: A proposed bill in the U.S. Congress that would prohibit employer’s from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

DOMA: The Defense of Marriage Act is, a 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and declares that states can refuse to recognize a same sex marriage, even if it is recognized in another state.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: The term for the United States military’s policy  that bars LGBT troops from service, but forbids officers from initiating an investigation of a recruit’s sexual orientation.

Judaism can serve as both challenge and inspiration to the LGBT community.
What do other Jewish teens think about this? We would love to hear responses!

It was the tweet chat that really inspired me. There were so many words of support and encouragement that it just changed my whole outlook. I vowed to myself right then and there that I would do all I could to make sure that kids were safe and looked after in their own schools. When I looked into GLSEN and saw the statistics, it astounded me, but it only increased my drive. This year I took to it and started my GSA, joined a group, organized a great Ally Week and No Name-Calling Week and got a newspaper article written about me in the school newspaper.

Day of Silence was the big one for me. It started out only being me and one other person. But as we organized and got going, more and more people joined us; it was so hopeful. A couple of weeks ago, I heard some anti-gay slander going on in one of my hallways, and it started to make my hopes go down and I was discouraged that people wouldn’t live up to their word because of peer pressure. But a couple of words of encouragement from the people at GLSEN brought me back and before I knew it I was on an organizing craze.

When I walked into school this morning, everyone was supportive. They knew who I was and for this one day, it seemed like they didn’t care. It was mind-boggling. This gives me immense hope that we can make this happen. We can stop anti-LGBT bullying and we can prevent suicides like the tragic one of Carl Walker-Hoover. Sometimes the loudest sound is no sound at all.

Happy Day of Silence,

Emmy

GSA Threads is a web-based community of teens and young adults across the United States from different schools and communities. These teens and young adults–both straight and LGBT– have committed to combatting homophobia in many different ways and raising awareness about the importance of creating accepting and open communities.

Many Thread teens are part of Gay Straight Alliances– or hope to start Gay Straight Alliances– and have become a part of the GSA across the USA alliance– a community of GSA’s who connect to share ideas and advice to make our Gay Straight Alliances more effective.