Time for Justice in Anoka-Hennepin

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The Anoka-Hennepin school district, Minnesota’s largest, has been in the national spotlight since last year. That’s when several students who were gay or perceived to be gay committed suicide. According to friends and family, the students had one thing in common: They had been bullied at school.

The school district has made some halting efforts to forbid anti-LGBT bullying, but has done little to address the prejudices that fuel it. Worse, district officials refuse to lift their official sexual orientation curriculum policy—in effect, a “gag order”—that prevents teachers from discussing LGBT issues with students. Pleas to do so have come from within the community, most visibly from Tammy Aaberg, mother of one of the victims. The policy effectively keeps staff members from acknowledging that LGBT people exist.

Superintendent Dennis Carlson told CNN this week that the policy is a reasonable way to handle the situation. It seems that “the situation,” for Carlson, is less about protecting children and more about appeasing local anti-LGBT forces. “It’s a diverse community,” he said in the interview, “and what I try to do is walk down the middle of the road.”

But there is no middle of the road when it comes to protecting rights. Likewise, there’s no middle of the road when it comes to creating a safe environment at school. And there is no middle of the road when, standing on one side are students and on the other are homophobic people spewing hate. There is only the right thing to do, and Anoka-Hennepin has refused to do it.

What’s it like to be an LGBT student in Anoka-Hennepin? Here’s an account from one 14-year-old student, who is now suing the district: 

“It got so bad that every day when my bus got to school I thought about hiding under one of the seats so I wouldn’t have to go in to school—so I wouldn’t be called names or pushed around and so I wouldn’t have to hear the rumors other kids were making up about me.” 

This kind of anecdote, one of dozens, explains why the district is now facing legal a challenge.

Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (Teaching Tolerance’s parent organization) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights sued the district, demanding that it confront the pervasive anti-gay harassment in its schools and end the gag policy.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five students who have faced severe anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in school. It comes just one day after news reports placed Anoka-Hennepin at the center of an investigation into anti-gay bullying by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Many in Anoka-Hennepin realize the need to support LGBT students and are speaking out. Teacher Jeri Schultz was quoted on CNN as saying, “There is so much we can’t do and say [because of the gag policy] to help create a more accepting and affirming and welcoming environment that would eliminate that bullying in the first place.”

That is exactly right. We applaud everyone in the Anoka-Hennepin schools who is taking a personal risk to keep LGBT students safe. It’s all too clear that the school district has taken an unhealthy, dangerous situation and frozen it in place with “middle of the road” policies.

Price is managing editor of Teaching Tolerance.