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March 26, 2009

School Will Make You Gay

Here's something crazy. Our local school district is working on a curriculum addition about gay families. Kind of a no-brainer around here, where kids have to deal with other kids from all kinds of family situations.

A group of "concerned parents"* is objecting to teaching children to be tolerant of others because "It appears to be advocacy for homosexual causes that goes beyond the mission of providing safe schools"

If you're straight, what would it take to convince you to go gay? And if somebody simply telling you to be polite to your classmates who are gay or have gay parents would do it, what on earth made you think you were straight in the first place? I keep seeing this objection, and it never makes any sense. The idea that advertising might convince somebody who was otherwise biologically oriented to the opposite sex that they might want to try being gay (and that they would like it!) is baffling to me. And if the only thing keeping you from switching teams is not knowing the definition of "lesbian" or that gay families exist, you might as well just break out the hot pants and rainbow flag right now.

Even weirder, the group suggests that the only reason to protect gay children from harassment at school is if they are the only ones who ever get bullied: "There are no statistics indicating that only children with issues related to homosexuality in their lives are at risk of bullying in elementary school." As if it's OK for them to be bullied and harassed because at least kids who are geeky or handicapped get bullied along with them, right?

Now, I'm not sure how much of a difference a curriculum like this will make in bullying. But I can tell you that every kid growing up in the US right now needs to learn to be nice to kids who aren't like them and not use rude words. This is not about safety, it's about job skills. If you can't play nicely with others, and you rely on a series of uninformed stereotypes about other people, you will find it harder and harder to get far in this world unless you have very wealthy and powerful parents (which you do not have if you are going to the public schools in Alameda).

Also, it would be a kindness to explain terms to any kid who got to fourth grade without knowing what "dyke" and "fag" mean. Are there any kids that age who don't know? All the kids that age on my block know what they mean and that they are derogatory, and this curriculum hasn't been implemented yet.

* I find it hard to actually credit this as coming from real concerned parents because the member list is suspiciously empty, and the only name given is "Concerned Parent." What are they afraid of? There's no evidence that only anti-gay activists are at risk of harassment when they air their views.

Posted by ayse on 03/26/09 at 5:55 PM