British gay magazine Attitude recently teamed up with non-profit Stonewall to fight homophobic bullying in schools.

In honor of the occasion, Attitude EIC Matthew Todd spoke to Pink News about the need for such activism. And, not surprisingly, it's not the most uplifting exchange:

I don’t think you can not feel moved and furious when you read accounts of the deaths of kids like Jonathan Reynolds, who was 15 and died by lying on a track in front of a train after he was bullied for being gay.
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If you are being bullied for being overweight or because of your ethnicity then you can go to a teacher or your parents, who will hopefully condemn the bullying and try and give you some affirmation.

If you are gay it’s often hard to tell anyone and at worst, you will hear teachers themselves being homophobic. It enrages me.

And so it should.

Lil' gay boys have it rough.

A survey out of England indicates that young men face more homophobic bullying than their female peers. This should come as no surprise. As musician Quentin Harris suggested this morning, there's more pressure on men not to seem weak.

Yes, he was talking about the hip-hop scene, but we say that's a pretty universal rule: men are meant to act like men, and those who don't will face the consequences. Lawrence King's widely covered murder perfectly highlighted the perpetual assault on feminine men.

What a perfect time, then, for homo hip-hop artist, Q-Boy, to come out against bullying. And, on an even bigger scale, the uproar against Jay Leno.

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There's always some new report out about anti-gay bullying, but a new UK Stonewall report may provide the most startling numbers yet:

Sixty-five per cent of lesbian and gay school pupils have been bullied because of their sexuality, a survey has found.

Half of teachers ignore homophobic language when they hear it and the 30 per cent of the kids say adults at their school are responsible for the bullying.

Stonewall, which wrote the survey, says this means that of current secondary school pupils, 143,000 children have suffered from anti-gay name-calling, 64,000 have been physically attacked and 26,000 have had death-threats.

Those astonishingly high - and equally unbelievable - numbers are estimates based on a tally of 1,145 students.

Regardless of their accuracy, the news that 30% of the guppies claim teachers bully makes one reconsider home schooling.

Approximately 41% of Britain's gay teens have been physically attacked for being gay, says a new survey.

Britain's Schools Health Education Unit also found that out of 150,000 students, 17% claim they've received death threats. One fearful 16-year old reported,

I was once threatened by a friend’s brother over an instant message that he would beat me to death on the streets if he saw me or torch my house whilst I’m sleeping in it.

Another student, meanwhile, says he can't tell teachers about the abuse because he doesn't want to come out.

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