Gay Studies

I don't think about it much -- that my 10-year-son may be gay. If he is, it doesn't matter. My heart will not miss one beat of love for him. I wouldn't consider it some sort of divine test, any more so than if his hair were light brown instead of glowing red. But I would worry about his being attacked. America's penchant for violence reaches out in many directions, including toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.

Last year, 1,965 people nationwide reported being the victims of anti-LGBT incidents, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Though that number represents a 3 percent decrease from the year before, the percentage of serious assaults was higher. Whether it's something as hideous as the roadside crucifixion of Matthew Shepard or as deadly as the recent shooting at a gay bar in Roanoke, Virginia, this hate begins somewhere. Usually it starts in the home, sometimes it comes from the pulpit, and likely it is allowed to fester in schools.

Though most schools have a zero-tolerance policy on racist comments, few address homophobic remarks. Many teachers consider the words "faggot," "queer," and "dyke" part of the usual banter kids lay on one another with no real harm done. Even the phrase "That's so gay," which has spread to elementary-school playgrounds without much of a reaction from educators, reinterprets the word in a negative way. I've heard it used among boys on my son's fifth-grade soccer team. When I asked one boy what it meant, he explained in a kid's rambling way, it's like when someone does something "dumb."

At one time Sharon Sanita also would have considered the phrase just "words of the day." As a teacher, she did not realize that some of the kids in her classroom might know they were gay. "My impression was probably that people found out or decided or whatever that they were gay when they got in their 20s," Sanita says.

That assumption disappeared when a close friend came out. "My first question was, 'When did you decide this?' And she goes, 'It wasn't a decision, Sharon, I've just known all my life.'"

Sanita remembered certain children in her classes who were different. At the time she couldn't quite figure out why. Then it began to make sense. "I realized that yes, there are kids who are 8, 10, 12, 14 who know they are different, and when other kids say (those words), it offends them." The awareness eventually led Sanita, who teaches at Fairfax Learning Center, an alternative high school in Kansas City, Kansas, to become a board member of GLSEN-KC, the local chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network.

GLSEN was founded in Boston in 1990, its goal being to end the "cycle of bigotry in K-12 schools." Success in getting Massachusetts to ban antigay discrimination in schools in 1993 led GLSEN to go national a year later. The nonprofit organization has 85 chapters in 35 states; the KC chapter was founded in March 1999 and formed its 10-member board last October.

Much of the impetus came from activists in the gay and lesbian community, some working in teen-suicide prevention, says Sanita. According to GLSEN materials, 9 percent of the young people in schools say they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, yet they account for 30 percent of teen suicides. But most public-school teachers and administrators don't know about the research concerning suicide, harassment, and violence directed at LGBT youth. "In so many cases, it simply has never been addressed, in (teacher) training or in the administration," says GLSEN-KC cochair Ross Freese, a computer systems administrator at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "An administrator, when asked by a teacher how his district was addressing the needs of LGBT youth, very honestly said they had none in their school district." Freese would not name the school administrator or district.

Educators in the Kansas City, Missouri, Shawnee Mission, and Blue Valley school districts told Pitch Weekly that either their nondiscrimination or student conduct and discipline policies or human rights statements adequately dealt with harassment and intimidation of LGBT students. Those policies "would apply from our perspective," says Dr. Steve McIlvain, deputy superintendent at Blue Valley. But none of the districts' nondiscrimination policies contain specific language covering "sexual orientation."

The result is LGBT kids aren't really protected from harassment and potential violence, and teachers are ignorant of their students' situations. Sometimes, the really courageous kids take their estrangement to its risk-heavy yet self-freeing conclusion: They come out.

Eighteen-year-old college student and GLSEN board member Devin Richmond came out at 15 while she was a student at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. She says the reaction from fellow students wasn't that bad. "I was called 'dyke' every once in a while. Some people stopped talking to me. I got little religious comments like, 'God is going to save you.'" She thinks boys have a harder time. "If you walk down a regular high school hallway, you hear 'faggot.'"

Richmond remembers one supportive teacher but also recalls an incident in her junior year. Students were talking about two men having sex, when a teacher intervened and said, "Homosexuality is wrong." Richmond reacted strongly: "I asked him what it was like to be a homophobic prick."