Message from:
The Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS, PO Box 2345, Malta, NY 12020
Email to:SARATOGANY@aol.com
The Real or Perceived Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Student Protection Project

FYI
BULLARD HIGH SCHOOL
5445 N Palm Ave
Fresno, California 93704
Office:(209) 441-3666
Fax:(209) 265-2216

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Fresno Bee, July 5, 2001
1626 E Street, Fresno, CA, 93789
(Fax:209-441-6499 ) (E-Mail:letters@fresnobee.com )
( http://www.fresnobee.com/ )
http://www.fresnobee.com/voicescol1/story/0,1870,279851,00.html

Tolerance should be the lesson

By Erin Kennedy, The Fresno Bee

California law now requires schools to protect students from harassment or discrimination if they are gay or even thought to be gay.

Most of us can agree that all kids deserve an education free from taunting and bullying. But a state education committee's recent suggestions on how to carry out the 19-month-old Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act are already making some people squirm.

Among the 12 recommendations on training staff, framing rules and setting discipline are also suggestions to develop new teaching materials and change curriculum -- GASP -- to actually tell kids it's OK to be gay (or lesbian, bisexual or transgender).

The recommendations, endorsed by state schools Superintendent Delaine Eastin, aim to create an atmosphere of tolerance. (Not necessarily promotion, as those preaching against it insist.)

How enlightening -- and how needed.

Just ask Bullard High School seniors Jordan Schmidt and Melissa Warden, both 17.

Jordan started a Gay Straight Alliance in January after a classmate who was perceived to be gay committed suicide. Jordan didn't know the boy well, but was particularly appalled by the derisive comments he heard from other students when a teacher announced the death.

Jordan still remembers the sting he felt two years ago when a student yelled "Faggot!" at him in the middle of a biology class and the teacher did nothing about it -- even after Jordan, who is straight, asked for a remedy.

"After awhile, you get used to it," Melissa says of the persistent harassment she gets as a fairly open lesbian. "It's streaming words of vulgarness. ... It's usually between class when teachers aren't around."

This law gives her ammunition to complain and to ask teachers to help stop the jeering.

But to really secure the spirit of the law, the state committee suggests adding more books and films on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people to school libraries and changing curriculum when appropriate so that these people will be "perceived in a broad, positive cultural and historical perspective, rather than as an isolated group subject to derision and scorn." It also suggests creating "positive, grade-appropriate visual images that include all sexual orientations ... for use in common areas."

I can understand why people would read this as promotion. I imagine there was similar outrage when schools tried to add black history curriculum or do away with prohibitions on interracial dating during a time many felt blacks were inferior and much different from whites.

You may insist skin color is a different issue. And it is, if you believe sexual orientation is a choice rather than the way one is born.

Whatever your beliefs or your faith, we should all be able to agree how important it is for students like Melissa to attend school free of harassment. This law is not a magic wand that will turn prejudice into tolerance. Only persistent exposure and education can do that.

While few schools will go as far as to hang posters of same-sex couples or add lessons on gay leaders, schools should embrace the spirit of the state recommendations and turn a deaf ear to those who would fan the flames of fear and intolerance.

· The columnist can be reached at ekennedy@fresnobee.com or 441-6197.

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