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Boston Globe, December 26, 1999
Box 2378, Boston, MA, 02107
(Fax 617-929-2098 ) (E-MAIL:letter@globe.com )
( http://www.boston.com/globe )

Commentary: Who benefits from an anti-homophobia education

By Arthur Lipkin

Recent controversies in California and Utah regarding the establishment of gay/straight student alliances remind us how fortunate Massachusetts students are to have more than 140 such groups in our high schools. Our state has responded prudently and generously to meet the needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, who, according to Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior surveys (1995 and 1997), are often victims of harassment, violence, and self-destructive behaviors. Since 1993, hundreds of Massachusetts teachers and counselors have attended state-sponsored workshops conducted by GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network; state grants have supported youth activities, parent participation (through PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), books, and materials.

The intentions and accomplishments of our officials and school personnel have set the standard for other states; yet their vision of the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students is still limited. Indeed, progressive reformers nationwide appear not to understand the true import of such an anti-homophobia project.

A historical analogy helps underscore this lapse. The Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education focused on the consequences of discrimination for blacks. In addition to decrying the impact of segregation on funding for black schools, Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that black children's segregation ''generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.'' Yet separation hurt white children, too. It crippled their understanding of the human experience by limiting intellectual discourse with their black neighbors.

The court appeared as unaware of the white students' deficiency as the young people were themselves, missing the fact that integration could stimulate dialogue that would enrich all children.

A similar narrowness of vision prevails today in the public view of anti-homophobia education: that is the idea that homosexual youth will be its only beneficiaries. Gay/straight alliances and gay-inclusive curricula offer more than security, self-esteem, and role models for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students. They benefit other youth as well.

Lessening the fear and hatred of bigotry helps not only its targets but also the bigots themselves. Prejudice is a debilitating burden and letting it go allows a stunted mind to grow. All multicultural education should be undertaken both to protect the oppressed and to free students from what educator J. A. Banks calls ''their own cultural boundaries.''

Acknowledging the presence of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, faculty, and families, talking with them, and studying homosexuality enhances the minority group's humanity and makes both homosexuals and heterosexuals wiser.

This outcome appears underappreciated even by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, whose 1990 resolution urging ''policies, curriculum materials, and teaching strategies that do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation,'' seems directed more at gay, lesbian, and bisexual students at risk than to their heterosexual peers disadvantaged by ignorance.

Addressing only the needs of the struggling minority implies that they must learn to adjust to the homophobia that is surely a part of their struggle.

Another benefit for non-gay students concerns their own sexual development. One of the penalties of socialization is that many heterosexuals lose their spontaneous relational voice as they reach adolescence. Young boys are taught to banish emotion and empathy and to deny pain in their quest for masculinity. Young men's sexuality becomes suspect if they express their true feelings to other men, communicate honestly with women, or heed the uncensored voices of their female partners. Many become obsessed with ridding themselves of any emotions or behaviors that appear feminine. They are a source of shame that James Gilligan of Harvard Medical School has called ''the primary or ultimate cause of all violence, whether toward others or toward the self.'' Adolescent boys' aversion to affective and effective communication even seems to make their verbal test scores go down. (''Boys found to trail girls considerably in English,'' Boston Globe, Nov. 12.)

Adolescent girls, too, are led to abandon authentic same-gender relations. They often cut off ties with female confidantes to vie with them in pursuit of men who may even abuse them for speaking their true feelings. Sexism and heterosexism enforce these regulations. Likewise, young women's sexuality may be questioned if they are strong in self-expression and honest in their assessment of gender injustice.

Young men and women should not be forced by cultural oppression to abandon same-gender closeness and honest relationality. Teachers and counselors must recognize how a heterosexist curriculum contributes to this problem. Although many educators understand the importance of stopping gay and lesbian suicide and bashing, few see how anti-homophobia education might lessen other kinds of self-destruction and violence. Studying the range of human sexual feeling and gender expression can help relieve straight-identified students from the pressures of a narrow, inflexible heterosexuality. Some might also come to see the arbitrariness of sexuality labels.

One heterosexual Cambridge public high school senior expressed the value of such perspectives after studying a unit on gay and lesbian US history:

''The more we talk about homosexuality in class, the more comfortable I am with the idea, with gay people, with my own sexuality, and with my own male identity. Is/was this curriculum and these discussions important? About as important as the desegregation of schools in the '50s and the abolition of slavery in the 1800s. We are in the middle of a huge societal movement, a tremendous change, one more step to a better society.''

Who then benefits from school programs to eliminate homophobia? Not only the homosexual minority who may be helped to live their lives safely and with dignity, but also heterosexual people whose intellectual, ethical, and psycho-sexual development can be enhanced.

Because, in any honest analysis, the world is not ''straight'' (i.e., sexually monolithic), teaching about this kind of diversity ought to be a key objective for all our schools and colleges. Massachusetts has begun well, but still has much to do. Recognizing the full significance of our task would be the best next step.

- Arthur Lipkin is the author of '' Understanding Homosexuality, Changing Schools:A Text for Teachers, Counselors, and Administrators, '' Westview Press, 1999. He is a research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and directs the Safe Colleges Program of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.

[Arthur is online at Arthur_Lipkin@harvard.edu ]

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