Sorry this is so long. Feel free to skip on! (This is why I took a vacation over to MPSIMS.)
I did not “come out” (by which I mean fall in love with/have sexual feelings for a woman, not announce my sexuality) until I was 29. And yes, campers, even at that advanced age, I freaked! Obviously, I did know what homosexuality was, but it was so foreign to my experience and so uniformly reviled that I couldn’t deal with it at all. I felt like I was being ripped away from all I knew and exiled to some kind of fringe leper colony. (And this was what it felt like to be in love at the age of 29! Having grown up miserable in school due to the stigma of being a “brain” and a fat girl, I cannot even begin to imagine having to grow up gay.)
A more open and accepting atmosphere regarding sexuality back in elementary and high school would, indeed have made it easier for me to understand and accept what was going on, and it would have made life a lot easier for my poor wife, who I put through the wringer during my initial panic.
Do I necessarily advocate a dedicated class for “Gay Ed,” as it is being called here? No. The way I see it, waiting until a particular grade and throwing in a unit on gays and lesbians would be about as useful as all those anti-drug films were to us back in the late 60s/early 70s. By that point, it would be too late, and the whole program would be treated by the kids as a big joke.
Basically, I advocate the following:
An atmosphere where it is safe for teachers to be open about their orientation without risking their jobs. No, I do not want gay teachers casually talking about their sexual practices any more than I want straight ones to do so. I do not want the randier ones talking about their latest visit to the Meat Rack or the Park and Ride. But having Monica the Math Teacher and Fred the Social Studies Teacher refer to their significant others in passing just as the straight teachers do would set the stage for an understanding of the fact that there are plenty of plain old vanilla suburban whitebread (or black bread!) gay families out there doing their thing just like everybody else! And don’t kid yourselves, folks – there are a lot of gay teachers out there. I won’t tell you which specialties I have found most of them to be in, but it’s not just gym anymore!
I would like to see a situation where children and high school students are as strongly reprimanded for using the words “faggot,” “queer,” and “dyke” as they are for using “The N Word,” and for using the word “gay” in a perjorative sense, as in "You’re so gay. Yes, I mean in the hallways, too. Not easy, but not impossible. Kids who wouldn’t dream of saying (pardon me) “nigger” feel quite comfortable dropping anti-gay epithets openly and in public, including in school. And while a black child might feel comfortable retaliating or complaining to a teacher, how many kids are going to be comfortable saying “yes, I’m gay and I’m going to knock your block off,” or going to a teacher? Not too many. My own nephew, age 11, (who does not know I am a lesbian because we were afraid his homophobic mother would use it as ammo in a very ugly custody battle awhile back,) used the word “faggot” in a conversation with me the other day. When I pointed out that using the word “faggot” around people, a significant percentage of whom were probably gay, was no better than using the “N word,” and would surely hurt someone’s feelings, he was genuinely taken aback by the idea that there are gay people all around him. He was shocked to learn that most of the women at a pool party I once took him to were lesbians. He wanted to know how he could reliably spot gay people. Not exactly a perfect outcome, but a step in the right direction. (Of course, telling him that if I ever heard him call someone that, I would cave his head in with a shovel didn’t heart, either!) I am sorry that I did not come out to my nephew at that moment, but I assure you I will be doing so the next time I see him.
As an example of how desperately needed the “normalization” of homosexuality in schools is, my nephew asked me if he could really spot gays by looking for men in dresses, as he had seen on the Springer Show. Never having seen any, he was sure that there were none around him. God help any group of people whose most visible manifestation is on the Springer Show.
I agree with those who would like a simple acknowledgement of gay and lesbian historical figures as gay. Walt Whitman’s house is located about 20 miles away from me, right across from the Walt Whitman Mall, in a school district which includes Walt Whitman High School. But is Walt acknowledged as gay anywhere in the educational center located in his own home? Is he taught in school as a great gay talent? Nope! (Not unless they’ve changed things lately!)
Being gay is not analogous to being into bondge or bestiality, as it is not an isolated sexual quirk. Nor is being gay the same as a religion, or being part of a racial or ethnic group. Like being disabled, being gay cuts across all racial and ethnic lines. Kids’ families are generally in the same racial, ethnic (and religious) groups that they are. Although they may be minorities, they at least have support at home. Gay kids are often raised in straight families where no such support is available. Disbled kids are frequently raised by non-disabled parents, but they don’t have to decide whether to tell their parents they are disabled! Gay kids are afraid to make their existence known lest they be rejected. They frequently have no gay adult or peer role models to turn to. Acknowledging the existence of gay people is not an example of splintering the culture into tiny groups. Gay people are in all groups, all ages, all education levels, all nationalities, all schools, everywhere. Nothing short of wholesale slaughter will change that, and it would be a slaughter which would have to be repeated in every generation.
Tolerance is not effectively taught in isolated classes. It must be an accepted and acknowledged part of everyday life. And saying that it is up to parents to decide whether to teach their kids that gay people exist and that they deserve to be treated with respect is not enough. We do not allow kids in school to use the “N word” even if their parents say they can! If some poor kid is being raised by parents who think all gay people are abominations and will burn in hell, the kid need not decide that homosexuality is woderful. He or she only needs to learn how to act around people who might be gay.