A parent group in the Anoka-Hennepin school district is protesting the district’s implementation of LGBT awareness measures, including the continued support of a student-led GSA, as part of a plan to decrease bullying and suicide among LGBT students.
According to this news article, the plan actually caused outrage.
Outrage?
Why?
And then I realized.
Celebrating freedom, and looking forward to celebrating another freedom, a freedom that is yet to come.
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The world is my oyster. Or so I am told when I am young.
I can grow up to be whatever I want to be, for I am free to follow the path of my heart.
But that isn’t necessarily true.
Many of us spend our adolescent years, and some of us even much, if not all, of our lives, struggling to change who we are in order to fit in and be accepted.
How freeing would it be if we didn’t have to be afraid to be exactly who we are?
Think of what we could do, with all that extra time and emotional energy we’d have, if we didn’t waste it hating others and hating ourselves.
Last week, I read a fascinating report, Gay-straight alliances in schools reduce suicide risk for all students, on the findings of a new study.
Two of the study’s key findings were that, in schools with gay-straight alliances implemented three or more years ago:
Wow! How awesome is that!
I don’ t know about you, but I’d do anything to reduce by half the number of young people who were so miserable that they wanted to kill themselves.
What I think is profoundly important about these findings, though not at all surprising, is the reduction in suicide rates for all children, and not just those who identified as LGBT.
Of course, that makes perfect sense.
Because the cool thing about GSA clubs is that they are safe places for all students, not just LGBT students, to find support and feel free to express themselves. As in, they are places for students who are struggling with an identity that is perceived by others as being “uncomfortably-unlike-me”.
Adolescence is tough. Heck, life is tough.
If the presence of a GSA club has been linked to a decrease in suicide and suicidal ideation amongst young people, why isn’t every single school in the country encouraging its students to form one?
And more importantly, why is the Lake County School Board fighting a court battle against one?
This LGBT Youth Allies article is one of many about the Lake County School Board’s continued “battle to block the formation of a gay-straight alliance (GSA) as an officially recognized student club at a local middle school.”
Why are we scared to teach our children that it’s okay for me to be me and you to be you?
How on Earth do we expect to grow as a species, if we teach our children to fear their identities, instead of encouraging them to embrace the rich diversity of our humanity?
Kids aren’t stupid. They get it. Better than we do, in fact.
As long as we are still fighting court battles, such as the one in Lake County, we are teaching our children that:
GSA clubs are about supporting young people, not just LGBT students, but all students – so that they can feel free to be exactly who they are.
We have an opportunity to provide something precious to our children – permission to spend their adolescent years embracing and reveling in their identities as they discover their own journeys as human beings, instead of wasting those years hating themselves and others.
It’s not about being gay or straight.
It’s not about who we love.
It’s about having the safety and freedom to be who we are, and to love who we love.
I remember my first love. I was eight. His name was Michael.
He held my hand and opened doors for me. People thought we were cute together.
It never occurred to me that it was okay for some kids to have first loves, but not others. And that people only thought it was cute because I was a girl, and he was a boy.
When I read things like this: Student cites bullying, seeks school OK for gay-straight club my heart aches.
So, a student approaches school directors and asks to start a Gay Straight Alliance Network club at her high school in order to, amongst other things, ease the transition to high school for gay middle schoolers.
The directors knew she would be speaking at the meeting. Four of nine members were absent.
Last month, the board removed the term “sexual orientation” from their anti-harassment policy because they did not believe the law required “sexual-orientation” to be included.
According to the article, parents have expressed concerns that the “‘sexual orientation’ term in harassment and bullying policies in schools have been used by radical gay activists to keep their opponents silent,” and may be a “gateway to homosexually-based programs coming into the school district, and potential predators targeting innocent students confused about their sexuality.”
Wow!
It seems we are simply unable to get over this irrational belief that people of non-heterosexual orientation are more likely to be child sex predators than their heterosexual counterparts are.
We, as a society, claim that we are becoming more accepting of people with diverse sexual orientations. (i.e. we are making slow, tedious strides towards not being such judgmental pricks about whom another person loves.)
But apparently, this only applies when the people in question are adults.
Not when they’re children.
That a young person could fall in love with someone of their own gender is still a concept many cannot accept.
Kids, unfortunately, aren’t stupid.
We are sending them a very loud message, and they are hearing it:
Transitioning from childhood to adulthood is a challenging and confusing time for all young people.
How much more challenging must it be for young people with a non-heterosexual identity?
Why would we not want to support these young people during their transition from childhood to adulthood just as much as we do their heterosexual counterparts?
And, more importantly, why would any group of educational directors resist having a student organization on campus that would not only provide support for LGBT students but also encourage us all to be more accepting of each other?
What could possibly go wrong? I mean, other than, perhaps, young people starting to realize that it is normal for one person to fall in love with another person, and that people who fall in love with people are, well, just people.
Adolescence is a confusing time. But it should also be an exhilarating time, a time of crushes and first loves, and recognizing ourselves as sexual beings. And not a time to be too scared to fall in love!
Valentine ’s Day is coming up.
Imagine this:
You are in the park. It just happens to be a sunny, and not freezing cold, Valentine’s Day. (Use your imagination!)
A twelve-year-old boy sits on a bench with his arm around a twelve-year-old girl. He gives her a box of chocolates. She kisses him. They both blush.
Passersby probably think to themselves, “Ah, young love, how sweet!”
I doubt anyone would speculate that either the boy or the girl was sexually confused.
But what if, instead, the boy had his arm around another boy? When the second boy kissed the first boy, would the reaction of passersby be the same?
Sadly, I don’t think so.
I look forward to the day (I have to believe it will come) when a boy can fall in love with another boy (and a girl with another girl), hold hands in the park and share a first kiss and it will never occur to anyone to think anything other than, “Ah, young love, how sweet!”
Casey Clubb 