Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann’s failure to address a disturbing trend of teen suicides within her own congressional district does not reflect well on her White House ambitions, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told The Advocate Thursday.
Over the past two years, nine teens have committed suicide in Minnesota’s largest school district, resulting in federal investigations, lawsuits from advocacy groups, and the morbid designation of a “suicide contagion area” by state public health officials. At least four suicide victims, as Mother Jones noted in a feature published Monday, had been reported victims of bullying because they were LGBT or perceived to be LGBT.
But Bachmann has yet to speak out on the suicides within the state's 6th congressional district and appears to have chided anti-bullying legislative efforts in the past.
Pelosi told The Advocate of Bachmann’s silence on the issue, “I would think that if she wanted to be the President of the United States, she would understand that this is a larger issue than whether someone is gay or not, but as to whether someone is harassed and bullied to the point of seeing no way out.”
“Obviously it’s an issue bigger than Michele Bachmann’s district, so maybe we should all be speaking out about it, and not just leaving it to her,” Pelosi added.
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