Confusion Over Comments at the Town Hall Meeting

Man, this is almost making me wish I'd gone to that County Council town hall meeting the other night. I was told that a woman had spoken about her daughter being bullied in school and about the new transgender law. She seemed to confuse people, because at first she seemed to be arguing against bullying at school, but then she was against discrimination against transgender people and also opposed to the new gender identity nondiscrimination law. I wasn't there, I don't know how she put it.

Looking back at my email, the woman, Valerie Ricardo, was described to me as "beautiful, well dressed, articulate" and she was respectful and polite. It sounds like her presentation to the Council mainly confused people. She told about her daughter, and then regarding the new law she said that we are all failing the homosexual community and the transgender community by not including the appropriate language and exclusions in this bill so that everyone will be clear as to its meaning as regards the use of facilities (I am told). OK, that's an interesting way to put it, pretty smart to argue against it as if it doesn't go far enough. Ms. Ricardo then told a story about being harassed and threatened by a possible transgender person at her friend Dolores' house. She was vague about the incident, but something had happened that frightened her. The email to me said that Ms Ricardo strongly approves of being non-discriminatory, but that she had expressed a great deal of concern for herself and her daughter as regards this kind of "confrontation", and ended by saying that "the threat is real".

I know there is video of this meeting, and it may be necessary at some point to go back to the tape.

Several Council members responded to Ms. Ricardo's comments, including Council member George Leventhal; here it is almost impossible to pick out the contextual relevance of what he said.

Leventhal's comments included the notion that gay and transgender students get bullied in school. This is true, and it is a nontrivial issue, but it should be noted that Ms. Ricardo believed her daughter had been bullied because she was small, and had said nothing about her being gay. So maybe Leventhal conflated two topics, and maybe there was something else going on that made his comment sensible.

Anyway, first of all Fox 5 got hold of it, in their Foxish way:

A mother in Montgomery County made a desperate plea for help after her daughter was bullied and teased at school, but was left confused and outraged by the answer she received from a county councilman.

Valerie Ricardo brought up her concerns about bullying during the town hall-style meeting after reportedly four months of harassment.

The response County Councilman George Leventhal gave: "The issue of bullying in schools is extremely serious, but I would like to acknowledge one very important fact, and that is that the victims of bullying in so many cases are young people, who, over the course of their lives, are gay."

"It was a strange comment he interjected sexual orientation which had nothing to do with the core issue," Ricardo told Fox 5. "It undermines what my daughter went through and it undermines what a lot of children are going through."

Ricardo says her daughter has been kicked, poked, and called names for almost a year at school. She thinks it's because she's too small to defend herself.

Council member Leventhal did not want to be interviewed on camera but says he's comfortable with what he said and stands by his comments. Councilman's Comments Tie Bullying to Sexuality

Not everybody was real happy with Fox 5's coverage of this story, you might say. For one thing, they left out the fact that the woman herself had been discussing discrimination against gay and transgender people.

Yesterday's Gazette goes into the issue more thoroughly.

A county councilman has drawn fire over a comment concerning gays and bullying, but an area gay rights advocate has come to his defense.

At a town hall meeting in Clarksburg last week, Councilman George L. Leventhal said many victims of bullying are gay after a resident commented about that her daughter was being bullied at school.
‘‘It was totally inappropriate,” said Kathie Hulley, president of the Clarksburg Civic Association. ‘‘If the County Council is going to come out to a town meeting and somebody in distress asks a question, to go off on a tangent, which has no bearing to what she was asking, is really bad.”

Councilman Marc Elrich, who also attended the meeting, said ‘‘I don’t know why [Leventhal] went there.”

But Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, said Leventhal’s comments were being misconstrued.

‘‘Within the context of a discussion in which people were criticizing the county’s [anti-discrimination law regarding transgender individuals], which is up for referendum, Councilman Leventhal was simply trying to point out that gender non-conforming and [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] students face a higher rate of bullying,” Furmansky said. Councilman’s remark defended by gay rights advocate

That is the question: were Leventhal's comments misconstrued? He was speaking to a more or less hostile upcounty audience, they aren't all that happy with the gay thing, the transgender thing, in the first place, and a lot of them were there to oppose the new nondiscrimination law. So they were primed to react negatively when somebody spoke out against bullying of gay and transgender students. The Council members had to know they were walking into a minefield here before the meeting even started.

Leventhal’s statement came during a standing-room-only town hall meeting Wednesday at Little Bennett Elementary School. During a question-and-answer segment, Derwood resident Valerie Ricardo described how her daughter was being bullied at an area middle school. Ricardo went on to discuss the county’s anti-discrimination law covering transgendered individuals, and also discussed her fears of being approached by ‘‘a man with an exaggerated walk, a female walk” and ‘‘evil intent in his eye.”

‘‘So I want to say that the risk is real and I think that we need to take these situations of violence and bullying and crazy situations for what they are and begin to do something about it,” Ricardo ended her statement.

Three other council members responded to Ricardo’s statement, then Leventhal said the issue of bullying in schools is extremely serious. He then said, according to a transcript of the session provided by his office: ‘‘The victims of bullying in so many cases are young people, who, over the course of their lives, are gay.”

Okay, this is sounding more to me like something that has been blown out of proportion. Of course gay students are bullied, duh, it is a problem. And Leventhal was even careful not to describe a schoolchild as gay, but to note that "over the course of their lives" they are gay.

The interaction was first reported last Thursday night by WTTG-Fox 5 News. The station’s story drew criticism from Furmansky and Leventhal.

‘‘Fox 5 badly distorted my remarks and took them out of context,” said Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park. ‘‘Bullying is a serious issue for all victims. My expression was the hope that we would view all of our neighbors with love and tolerance.”

Elrich was still scratching his head a week later.

‘‘The only thing I can think he was going for was that gays get bullied more than other kids, but that was totally irrelevant to her concern,” said Elrich (D-At large) of Takoma Park. ‘‘I felt the appropriate answer was the way we could try to help kids not bully each other.”

Elrich is a good guy, he's on our side, and he was there, I take it, and he's confused. Well, I wouldn't want to be one of those guys. Every time they open their mouth somebody puts it in the paper or on TV. It sounds like Leventhal's response missed answering the lady's question, and tried to put her two points together, and ... it sounds like that didn't exactly work very well.

Before Ricardo’s comments, several speakers in the audience questioned council members about the county’s new transgender law. The law expands the county’s existing law to prohibit discrimination against transgendered people in housing, employment, cable television and taxi service. Opponents of the law collected enough signatures to have the law put on the ballot in November as a referendum.

‘‘The way I took Leventhal’s comment was that a majority of gay kids are bullied which is the case,” said Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, who was also at the meeting.

Trachtenberg (D-At large) of North Bethesda would not comment on whether Leventhal’s comments were out of order.

‘‘Apparently there are people who thought they heard something else and I really can’t comment on what they thought they heard,” she said. ‘‘Also, I think the mom who asked the question did combine different levels of issues because at the end she did get into commentary about the transgender bill and that wasn’t involved in the issue about her daughter directly.”

At some point I'm going to have to watch the video of this. It appears to be a pure matter of interpretation. Leventhal's comments, it does sound like, missed the point, because the lady's daughter is not bullied for her sexual orientation or gender identity but for another reason. On the other hand, the lady herself had brought up the question of discrimination against gay and transgender people, and it sounds like she was on both sides of the fence there, saying she was opposed to discrimination but also opposed to the nondiscrimination law and also threatened by a man who walked like a woman. You can hardly blame Leventhal for being confused there.