In your legislative summary May 11, you summarized the dialogue over the School Violence Prevention Act thusly: "The battle will likely be over the House's intention to identify students who show homosexual or transgender characteristics as likely targets for bullies."

What could possibly be more counterproductive, if we're trying to provide solutions to school bullying, than to first identify those students we imagine are likely to be suspected homosexuals? Wouldn't such a stigma just isolate bullied students and point them out as easy targets?

Already, groups like North Carolina's Christian Action League are joining the fray, with the following (from its Web site): "A bill that supporters claim would help stop bullying in North Carolina schools is more likely a way for pro-gay groups to bully the state into granting special legal status to alternative sexual behaviors." This kind of thing just turns the issue into a badly misdirected political football. Bullying behaviors are about aggressive kids beating up nonaggressive kids, for whatever reason.

A reasonable person would assume that the trait most characteristic of bullied children is a low level of assertiveness -- not gender orientation. Marking such children to their classmates as being gay serves no useful purpose whatever.

Michael and Marilyn Elvin

Fuquay-Varina

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