Children of Gay Parents Starting to Find Support System at School

By Nancy Amdur, Special to the Tribune

When 14-year-old Natalie hears her classmates at Kenwood Academy on Chicago's South Side use words like "gay" or "queer" in a negative way, she suggests that they choose some other word.

"Some people say outright, `You're gay,' or `That's gay,' and that means basically it's stupid," she said. Her usual response is: "It's not nice to say that because a gay lifestyle is not necessarily something stupid."

Natalie, who didn't want to give her last name, is one of a growing number of children of gay parents. Since the mid-1980s, more and more gay and lesbian couples have been choosing to have children after coming out.

The so-called Gayby Boom is believed to have brought the number of children in gay and lesbian households to between 6 million and 14 million nationwide, according to a 1990 Harvard Law Review study.

In the Chicago area, there are at least 300 openly gay and lesbian households, and schools in the area are just beginning to recognize and support the children living in them.

School districts in West Chicago and the northwest suburbs recently asked the San Diego-based Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International to help them write anti-discrimination policies, said Aimee Gelnaw, a member of the coalition's educational advocacy committee who lives in Oak Park. The coalition provides advocacy and support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents.

Other Chicago-area schools have become more open to gay students. Whitney Young Magnet High School on the South Side has a social club for gay students. PRIDE was started two years ago by a Whitney Young student. It has 25 members, and since it was formed, Marshall High School on the West Side and Bogan High School on the Southwest Side have asked Whitney Young faculty for advice on how to start similar clubs, said Sylvia Parks, a Whitney Young social worker and a club sponsor.

At Latin School on Chicago's North Side, a lesbian student started a group in January called Gay, Straight Alliance, which will meet about every three weeks.

Ed Knoll, an upper-school counselor at Latin, said the junior-kindergarten-through-12th-grade private school has "no formal programming" for children of gay parents or gay students, but there is "a core of faculty equipped to work with kids who are dealing with that." Each faculty member serves as an adviser for 6 to 12 students, and students can choose to be paired with a gay or lesbian teacher, he said.

Francis Parker School, a private school that is also on the North Side, focuses on teaching tolerance. "At Parker, we have several families of gay couples," Principal Don Monroe said. "The climate at school is one of respect for diversity in all its forms, so we treat gay students and gay parents as a natural part of our inclusive community."

Programs at Parker include class discussions about diversity and tolerance, he said.

But "the national picture of kids with gay parents is that there are no resources in schools," said Felicia Park-Rogers, director of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), a San Francisco-based international group with a membership of 1,500 children of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents. The group was started and is run by its members, most of whom are ages 12 to 18.

"There's no curriculum inclusiveness and no understanding (by) administrators of being supportive of our needs," she said.

"A lot of kids receive the brunt of the homophobia they experience in schools, and there's no recourse," added Park-Rogers, 27, whose parents both came out when she was 3 years old.

If teachers don't stop children's name-calling, a child can feel isolated, Park-Rogers said.

In 4th grade, Natalie told only her two best friends about her two mothers. "I didn't refer to my stepmom at all because I didn't like the attention it brought to myself," she said. Later, Natalie decided "telling it outright was better than living a lie," even though some people have stopped talking to her after finding out. "If they're going to stop talking to me over that, they're not worth it," she said.

Addressing family and sexual diversity in schools is a new movement. "There are people taking baby steps in this movement, and it needs nurturing," Gelnaw said.

The parents coalition's educational advocacy committee is writing a brochure and compiling materials to distribute to school districts with information such as what terminology to use when talking about gay men and lesbians. The information should help schools create a comfortable environment for children of gay parents, Gelnaw said.

"They don't have the language," she said. "People are silenced by the fear of offending, like, should (they) say `gay' or `homosexual?' We need to create and encourage a dialogue."

Gelnaw's son agrees. An 8th grader at Emerson Junior High School in Oak Park, he said teachers should reprimand students who misuse gay terms.

"A lot of homophobic terminology is being used every day," said Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin, 13. "If people see something they don't like, they'll call it `gay,' or they'll call someone `faggot.' It's normal.

"Teachers hear it a lot in class, but they don't really know what to do."

Part of the problem is that many schools are reluctant to define gay or lesbian for fear of talking about sex, gay advocates say.

Educators "think that if they teach (about) homosexuality it's talking about sex," Gelnaw said. "But that's not what it's about. It's about relationships and belonging and connections and pride and identity."

In San Francisco, where there is a large, outspoken gay population, the public school district in 1990 set up an entire department to support children of gay parents or students dealing with their own sexual identity.

There is teacher training and curriculum starting in kindergarten regarding name-calling, respecting differences and family diversity.

"We educate them with the appropriate terminology and vocabulary that students can use," said Kevin Gogin, director of Support Services for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth for the San Francisco Unified School District.

A policy also is in place that deems slurs on the basis of sexual orientation as "unacceptable behavior."

"The first step is just making sure the staff understands they have a responsibility to nurture all children," said Kathe Flood, a Naperville resident who is a member of Rainbow Families, a Chicago-area social group with 135 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents and their families. The group is a program of the parents coalition.

Schools can start helping children of gay parents by doing something as basic as changing the blanks labeled "mother" "father" on school registration and other forms to "parent" or "guardian," advocates say. They also can add children's books about same-sex parents and their families to the library.

Baker Demonstration School, a laboratory school at National-Louis University in Evanston that serves prekindergarten through 8th grade, recently changed its forms, said Principal Daniel Ryan, who is a gay parent.

Ryan is sensitive to the issue because he is a member of the educational advocacy committee of the parents coalition and is writing a dissertation on the relationship between gay parents and schools.

"All of the different kinds of families need to be validated in school to create an environment that's conducive to talking about it," Gelnaw said.

Gay and lesbian parents and advocates say that students are sometimes reluctant to talk to adults, even counselors. "Many times if you work up the courage to tell somebody about your parents, even if they don't think you're going to hell, they still don't know what to say," said Park-Rogers of COLAGE.

"That's where school comes in. If there was an inclusive curriculum in talking about alternative families of all kinds, it would be a lot easier for kids of gay parents," she said. "It would be more normalized."

The parents coalition has produced a 10-minute video, "Both of My Moms' Names are Judy: Children of Lesbians and Gays Speak Out." It features students of gay parents talking about their families and what they would like to see changed in schools.

"Teachers should talk about it," Zachary said. "A lot of kids don't know there are regular households that have homosexuals as parental units. They think the gay people are the people you see in the parade with feathers, who are the stereotypical people who are gay."

Children of gay parents often are faced with questions from their peers such as "Are you gay too?" or "Do your parents sleep in the same bed?"

Zachary said pupils have tried to pick fights with him by saying, "Your mom's a lesbian." He always replies, "Your mom's straight."

"You've got to let them know you don't care, because if they think you care, they'll keep doing it," he said.

Children can draw strength from parents who are open with schools about their family, Gelnaw said. "Parents need to become partners in this process. They should visit the school and let them know who their family members are."

In the San Francisco district, pupils in kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades learn that some people have romantic feelings for people of the same sex; in grades 3-12, students learn that gay describes men and lesbian describes women who are attracted to the same sex. In middle and high schools, there are teachers who serve as gay-lesbian sensitive adults.

"We have the most comprehensive program in the United States," Gogin said. "We approach it in terms that we are making schools safer for all students."

Not all parents are pleased with the program, he added. "They think that as soon as you mention gay, you're talking about sex. We're not. Nothing in the definition says anything about (having sex). We want parents to be part of the educational process.

"There was some concern that we were promoting something. But we're teaching respect and what we're promoting is school safety. And we can't promote it by just pretending this population doesn't exist.

"We have children with one parent, two parents, seven parents, parents of the same gender," he said. "This is the reality. The controversy was a way to begin the dialogue, and part of our role is to educate parents."

Children of gay parents warn against obvious efforts to protect or include them, though.

"I wouldn't like an assembly (about diversity) because it makes it look different," Natalie said. "I like when it's spoken of as if it's totally normal. If it's treated naturally by teachers, it will be treated naturally by everyone."

"We all want the same thing--for kids to feel comfortable and protected in school," Gelnaw said.

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