Nigel Shelby was a 15-year-old a high school student in Huntsville, Alabama. A freshman at Huntsville High School, Shelby had faced homophobic bullying from classmates – bullying that let to Shelby taking his own life.

“We were saddened to learn this morning of the death of Nigel Shelby, one of our 9th grade students,” read a statement from Aaron King, the principal of Huntsville High School. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time.”

The school has provided teachers and grief counselors for students and has asked parents to also assist their children deal with the loss.

Shelby was not alone. According to the Center for Social Equity, 74% of LGBTQ youth report not feeling safe in their schools.

My name is Sam Culwell. I’m a straight A student, I play baseball for Rondout Valley’s varsity team, and as a matter of fact I’m the captain. I’ve played baseball since I was 4, and I’ve loved it ever since. Training year round is fun to me, and there’s nothing like going up to the field with my teammates after school for a game or practice. 13 years of playing baseball and I was fortunate enough to find a great college program that I feel comfortable playing at.

Last year I came out as bisexual, and in a small school like mine, it came with it’s struggles. Luckily enough, I have helped to change my friend’s and my school’s views on sexuality and sports.... that is to say there’s no reason to discriminate against an athlete for this reason, and I want to be judged based on my abilities, sportsmanship, and effort. I’m better than I’ve ever been because of hard work both on the field and in learning to accept myself. Today my team played Marlboro, which is our biggest rival. I came in to relieve our pitcher after he threw 4 1/3 great innings. We were losing 4-1 and as expected, I was pitching well and got out of the inning.

Next inning rolls around and my coach came out to the mound to just give me a breather. At this point I had already struck out one batter and as my coach comes up to talk to me all I hear from the opposing dugout is “tell him he’s a failure and a faggot” it took all of my composure to not break down on the spot.

A Colorado high school freshman who committed suicide in February was bullied by his schoolmates, including one who urged him to kill himself, his grief-stricken mother said this week.

Jeanine Padilla told the Denver Post that her 15-year-old son, Jack, was regularly tormented by at least five students at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, where cops are now investigating the teen’s death.

“It’s just devastating to know he was probably so scared,” Padilla told the newspaper. “But still trying to stand up for himself.”

Jack Padilla died on Feb. 14, but relatives didn’t find out about the alleged bullying until after his death, according to his mother. She’s now calling on district officials to “expel the bullies” who contributed to her son’s suffering.

Often overlooked in both straight and gay circles, bisexual-identified people nevertheless make up a significant part of the population. The 2015-2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 7% of youth identify as bisexual, compared to 4% being unsure or questioning, and just 2% identifying as gay or lesbian.

For Bisexual Health Awareness Month, the Trevor Project has released a new look at the YRBS data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), highlighting the suicide risks prevalent amongst bisexual youth.

Their findings are alarming: almost half of bisexual youth considered suicide as an option within the past 12 months, with 40% making an actual plan to take their life. 27% attempted suicide.

A 10-year-old Texas boy tragically took his own life after he was bullied at school by other boys, who beat him up and wrote 'Kill yourself' on his tablet.

Crystal Smith, of Katy, said her son Kevin Reese Jr had been a goofy child who loved to draw and paint.

But at school, he was being tormented.

'I never thought he would go this far, never,' she told KTRK. 'I'm still in disbelief. It's taking me awhile to actually accept the fact that this happened.'

A Detroit man is planning to sue three white women who repeatedly called the cops on him and fabricated stories of stalking, threatening and even being a pedophile, all because he was working on constructing a community garden at a vacant playground in his community.

Marc Peeples, who is Black, and his attorney Robert Burton-Harris are accusing the women of making up increasingly alarming stories about him throughout 2017 and early 2018 as part of their ploy to “take control” of Hunt Park and have Peeples removed from the park where he was trying to build out an urban garden, the Detroit Metro Times reports.

The three women – Deborah Nash, Martha Callahan, and Jennifer Morris – all live near the park. The first began calling the police about Peeples, accusing him of “illegal gardening,” but when police declined to respond, they escalated their behavior.

At one point, they accused Peeples of threatening Nash with a gun in the park. In another incident, they accused him of being a part of a drive-by shooting. In one of the more horrifying cases, the women waited until Peeples was with children – who were working with him in the garden – and accused him of being a pedophile.

I have yet to attend a drag show or a gay party (that is, a party heavily attended by gays) in the year 2019, where I haven’t heard a Grande song, which I always assume (probably because I am an old millennial) is a new Mariah Carey song.

Grande is a diva, one whose stature doesn’t even begin to rival those that came before her: Britney, Cher, Madonna, Donna, Whitney, and so on.

But she is a diva nonetheless.

And divas, sexual orientation be damned, belong at Gay Pride.

That’s my opinion anyway.

A Texas man faces charges after he allegedly slapped his stepdaughter’s middle school bully in the face, officials said.

James Olander Peace, who is from Deer Park, is accused of hitting the 12-year-old because the boy teased his stepdaughter and threw ice cream at her, news station WTVD reported.

Peace’s wife, who didn’t want to be named, said her daughter asked to be picked up Feb. 14 because the boy was picking on her as she walked home.

She said the bully called her daughter “ugly” and told her she looked like a “transvestite."

An 11-year-old student was arrested after refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and allegedly telling a teacher that “the flag is racist and the national anthem is offensive to black people,” according to reports.

The boy, a student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Fla., was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without violence for the Feb. 4 outburst, according to Bay News 9.

He was also issued a three-day suspension.

His mother, Dhakira Talbot, said officials took things too far by arresting her son, who she said is in gifted classes and has been bullied in the past.

Two women who were detained by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent for speaking Spanish at a grocery store in Montana are suing the agency.

Mimi Hernandez and Ana Suda filed the lawsuit on Thursday with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after May’s incident, which was recorded and went viral.

In the footage, CBP agent Paul O’Neal can be heard telling the women — both American citizens — “I saw that you guys are speaking Spanish, which is very unheard of up here.”

O’Neal also says the women are being detained because of “speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking.”

A Florida woman was recorded going on a racist and violent rant against a black officer after he arrested her for drunk driving.

Julie Edwards, 53, told Volusia County Sheriff's Office deputy Brandon King that her "KKK friends would burn his family" and that "niggers should've never been let out of slavery," according to a police report provided to BuzzFeed News.

An 11-year-old girl in New Mexico has faced severe and violent bullying since she came out at school. This past Friday, she was beaten up at school and other students recorded it.

Savannah Tirre came out last October, and her parents say that they instantly accepted her.

“We said, ‘We don’t care, we just want you happy.’ It’s never been an issue in this family,” her mother, Chelsea Tirre, said.

The bigger problem was school. Savannah faced immediate bullying at her middle school near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

America is, quite famously, a nation founded on the principle of freedom of religion. As a result it is easy to understand why many people would be uncomfortable with certain kinds of religious practices (mostly notably prayer) and education in public schools. A little over a week ago President Trump tweeted his support for the introduction of Biblical literacy classes in schools, drawing attention to efforts by a variety of Christian groups to put the Bible back on the high school agenda.

Following Trump’s statement there was a flurry of media coverage of the issue. Fox News reported that “at least six states, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia have introduced legislation this year pushing for public schools to offer Bible literacy classes,” noting that these classes would be electives. (The Indiana bill is not actually a Bible course bill at all. It demands that the previously existing world religions electives class has to include a conversation about the Bible).

There is a strategy here: Project Blitz, an initiative sponsored by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation and the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislative Network, has been orchestrating the push to create these bills.

As prominent SMU religious studies professor Mark Chancey has written, it’s actually already legal to teach the Bible in schools, so in some sense these bills are unnecessary. Courses like the one Trump is tweeting have been around for a century. Chancey told The Daily Beast that “it is important to recognize that Bible course bills and their sponsors may have different motivations…sometimes a bill is clearly about more than just biblical literacy, and that's definitely the case with Project Blitz bills.” Other measures that Project Blitz has called for includes the promotion of the motto “In God We Trust,” the introduction of a “year of the Bible” and the limiting of the rights of same-sex couples and transgender people. Chancey told me, “Project Blitz is weaponizing Biblical Literacy for the cultural wars.”

Students at Immaculata Catholic School in Durham, North Carolina, won’t be attending classes today after extremist right wing groups threatened protests over the school’s planned Black History Month celebration.

The event would have focused on African-American women and one of the planned speakers was lesbian city councilor Vernetta Alston.

“As a pastor, I cannot place our Imaculata students into this contentious environment,” school administrator Christopher VanHaight wrote in a letter to parents.

“It was one of those things where you keep reading and it just keeps getting worse. And that’s what kinda put everything in motion,” Fairhaven Police Detective Scott Gordon tells NBC News’ Andrea Canning in an upcoming episode of Dateline: Reckless, which airs Friday at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT on NBC. (A clip from the interview is shown above.)

Roy died in his pickup truck from carbon monoxide poisoning on July 13, 2014 — an act Carter had supported and encouraged in text and phone conversations.

Carter was sentenced to 15 months in jail after she was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in 2017 but had been free pending her appeal. Her defense argued her statements and texts urging Roy forward as he contemplated suicide were covered by First Amendment free-speech protections. But on Monday, a Massachusetts court rejected the appeal.