Beyond Tolerance: Moving Ahead Together
A Community-wide Conference Organized by the Santa Barbara School Districts
June 28, 1997
Lauren Wyeth, Clinical Coordinator; Youth Projects Coordinator, Gay and Lesbian Resource Center
Creating Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students
It is important for me to say that while most of the students that I work with are gay and lesbian and bisexual, I also want to mention that some of the other students who are affected by homophobia in our schools are students who have gay and lesbian parents or other relatives. They are as diverse a group as any youth in Santa Barbara; they’re male and female, they represent equally every racial and ethnic group and they are from every religious background. They’re precious like all young people are and they’re vulnerable and they want to be loved and they want to fit in. Some of them are loved and some of them do fit in, but unfortunately far too many of them feel hated or excluded in their families and all too often on their school campuses.
We’re here because we agree that every young person has the right to a public education. We sometimes take it for granted but it is a lofty goal that we all agree to,that every young person has that right. We take it so seriously that we require our young people to be in school, and if we’re going to ask them to show up, to be at school, we need to make sure that it’s a safe, affirming place for them to be, where they’re included. We need to make sure that their basic human rights are protected and respected.
We start teaching them about what is needed for the school community to work very early. We teach our kindergartners not to hit one another, not to call one another names, to treat each other respectfully and if they can’t get along with each other, at the very least just to leave one another alone. Well, unfortunately, sometimes this goes awry. It goes awry when a sophomore high school student walks back to his locker and finds the word "queer" spray painted across it. It goes awry when a young woman who is perceived to be lesbian is walking through the halls and is being pushed and spat upon by people because of her perceived sexual orientation. It goes awry when a PE teacher tells his students not to play football like they were "fags." These kind of things should not happen in the places where we send these precious, vulnerable people to learn. And when these actions and these words are not responded to clearly and quickly and consistently we send a message to them that they are not welcome in our schools, that they can’t be safe there and that there’s no way that they’re going to be able to learn in that environment.
This message that we send these young people is killing them. Gay and lesbian students, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report in 1988 during the Bush administration, attempt suicide two to three times more often than their heterosexual counterparts and they account for up to 30% of all completed youth suicides. That same report says that 28% of gay and lesbian students drop out of high school because it is such an unwelcoming environment for them. This is not acceptable. This is not the kind of place that we want to send our children every day. Numerous students and school staff in our community will tell you that "fag" and other words that are used against gay and lesbian students or students perceived to be gay and lesbian are the most common epitaphs used in our schools and that they’re the least often responded to by school staff.
Imagine what these experiences do to gay and lesbian students, students with gay parents, or even students who are rumored to be gay. One student came to me in tears on three separate occasions because her history teacher was weaving into his lectures his belief that gay people were leading to the destruction of America. What am I to say to a 16 year old girl who is being told that her existence is going to lead to the destruction of our country? Another young man I know was being harassed so much in the halls that he was afraid to walk from class to class and I encouraged him to go to the administrators whose most serious suggestion to him was that perhaps he ought act "less gay" when walking through the halls. I can’t believe that we’re living in a time when blaming the victim is our response to hate crimes. What are schools teaching children when the only mention of lesbian and gay people is derogatory? It is not that lesbian and gay issues are not talked about in our schools, they’re just talked about in a derogatory way on a daily basis.
Every student sitting in a classroom where "fag" jokes and "dyke" comments go uncorrected learns a lesson that hateful words are sometimes okay. And every student who watches another student who is rumored to be queer get beaten up in the hall without any response learns that sometimes it is okay to be violent. These aren’t messages that we want to teach our children.
We need to make room for all students on our campuses – to teach about the diversity of human history and experience. We’re mandated by law to provide equally for all the students within the educational system. Gay and lesbian youth are entitled to the same things heterosexual students receive in school, including the right to have accurate information about themselves, to have positive role models in person and in the curriculum and to have their needs reflected in support programs that exist to help teenagers get through the difficult time called adolescence. Every student on a school campus is equally entitled to an education which includes and affirms him or her regardless of the personal, political or social beliefs of any other person on that campus.
As a community, as a nation, and as a state, we’ve agreed to the idea that all young people deserve an education and therefore we’re obligated to create schools in which every student is valued. We can’t leave gay and lesbian students out of this when we’re talking about students who are marginalized in other ways. We must, every single time, include gay and lesbian students and students from gay and lesbian families. Any exclusion is unacceptable.