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

CSS-NYS endorses:
Gore/Lieberman for President/Vice President
Hillary Clinton for U.S. Senate
Dan Lynch for N.Y. Assembly
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Des Moines Register, November 4, 2000
Box 957, Des Moines, Ia.,50304
(Fax 515-286-2511 ) (E-MAIL: letters@news.dmreg.com )

REKHA BASU

TEACH SENSITIVITY, NOT SEXUALITY

In fourth grade at a Des Moines elementary school, James got called "sissy" so much that he ended up in counseling. But instead of building his self-esteem, the counselor kept trying to "fix" him, by telling him things about himself he'd have to change if he wanted the bullying to stop.

It didn't work, perhaps because you can't "fix" who you fundamentally are, even if you can put on a mask and pretend to be someone else. The bullying continued through high school. No teacher ever stood up for James. Not until college did an institution take a stand on his behalf, and tell other students their behavior was what needed changing.

The story of James, related by Des Moines art teacher Elaine Imlau, was among a multitude about Iowa children shared Thursday night at a forum organized by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and called "Gay issues in K-12 Schools. Why Us? Why now?"

By the end of it, you knew why: because some children's emotional well-being - and even their lives - are at stake.

There was the 15-year-old at a small school district in central Iowa who finally worked up the courage, with Shawn Beirman's intervention, to tell her mother about her attraction to other girls. Beirman runs Youth Alliance in Des Moines, which works with marginalized teens. But in the end, her help wasn't enough to get the girl through, and she killed herself.

There's no shortage of such stories in Iowa because Iowa is no different than anywhere else. Kids who act, look or feel different get labeled or stigmatized. They don't even have to be gay. It's enough that they don't match people's expectations of feminine or masculine. A recent GLSEN survey found that 91 percent of gay students had heard the words "faggot" and "dyke" at school, and more than 87 percent said no one intervened when they were said.

Sometimes those kids simply need to know they're not alone - that others like them made it through successfully.

That's what Jessica Bracket, winner of the first Matthew Shepard scholarship for a gay Iowa high school senior, wanted desperately while going to school in Dubuque. Her scholarship was named after the Wyoming college freshman lured to his death because of his sexual orientation. Now a freshman at the University of Iowa, Bracket talked about having to educate her high school teachers, who would freeze at the mention of anything gay said in a positive context.

Just ask any elementary school kid about remarks like "That's so gay!" or "He gayed me!" which are passed regularly in school. I asked my 10-year-old son. He said "gay" is used as an all-purpose insult, even if kids don't know what it means.

When you hear such stories, what the schools need to be doing is obvious. They need to help all children feel good about themselves and value differences (real or perceived). And they need to enforce a learning environment where all harassment and slurs are punished.

But think back to the furor kicked up a few years ago by a proposal to incorporate such issues into the Des Moines public school curricula. Angry parents swarmed school-board meetings denouncing the administration and saying it was their exclusive right to teach their kids about sexuality.

This is not so much about teaching sexuality as teaching sensitivity.

The proposal got pulled off the table in Des Moines, but the underlying issues didn't go away. Nor will the controversy die a quiet death elsewhere. In Oregon Tuesday, voters will decide a ballot initiative to prevent public schools from discussing homosexuality and bisexuality "in a manner which encourages, promotes or sanctions such behaviors."

"If it passes in Oregon, you'll see it in Iowa," Kevin Jennings, co-founder of the national GLSEN, said Thursday.

What if Iowa, already an education leader, could instead be in the forefront of teaching tolerance and appreciation? We have models like Imlau, who co-chairs the Central Iowa GLSEN chapter and is a good example of someone who isn't gay sticking her neck out on behalf of those who are. Now at Windsor Elementary School, Imlau is proactive even if it isn't part of the approved curricula. Last year, after hearing enough slurs and reading of yet another hate crime resulting in a gay man's death, she talked to her fourth and fifth-graders about offensive labels of all kinds.

Calling it "preventive medicine... so that an 8-year-old who's doing the 'you gayed me,' doesn't grow up to be the slaughterer or the victim," Imlau said she's heard no more slurs from those particular students since.

So evidently it works.

· Register Columnist Rekha Basu can be reached at basur@news.dmreg.com or (515) 284-8208.
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This message has been distributed as a free informational service for the expressed interest of non-profit research and educational purposes only.

PRIMER WEBSITES

LIGALY Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth
http://www.ligaly.com/
GLSEN --- Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network
www.glsen.org
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
www.lambdalegal.org
Safe Schools Coalition of Washington
www.safeschools-wa.org
The P.E.R.S.O.N. Project Home Page
www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
www.pflag.org
Empire State (NY) Pride Agenda
www.prideagenda.org
GLAAD
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
www.glaad.org

"The Real or Perceived Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgendered Student Protection Project"
("Being safe at school should not be a radical concept".. Jamie Nabozny)

A project of:
Coalition for Safer Schools of New York State

John Myers
Director of Operations and Programs
PO Box 2345
Malta, NY 12020
(518) 587-0176
Email: saratogany@aol.com

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