Sexual Orientation

Four years ago, we held our first Day of Silence, an annual event where students at schools across the country take a vow of silence in support of LGBT students who are harassed and bullied.

That first Day of Silence was an anxious experiment for our suburban private school. We followed resources offered by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Our diversity club faculty sponsors and student leaders planned a series of announcements, acquired administrative approval and fielded concerned questions from faculty members who didn’t embrace the event and felt it would disrupt their classrooms.

Last spring, our high school performed The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials (also an allegory of the witch hunts of McCarthyism). It’s one of my favorite plays. Watching the performance, I was struck by the character of Reverend Hale.

If you are the kind of educator who builds a safe and open classroom culture and teaches with a compassionate heart, students will come to you. They will share their secrets.

The culture you create in the classroom can often serve as an invitation for students to seek solace and advice outside of class. We have all faced the blessings (and burdens) of our students’ trust. A new study out of Northwestern University (where I teach) reminds us that we must be prepared for our students’ stories to come tumbling out.

On Monday, LGBT students’ rights were vindicated in a comprehensive settlement with Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District over its policies that hindered teachers from effectively responding to anti-gay bullying—policies that may have contributed to some of the district’s recent suicides. Then on Tuesday, in the afterglow of this historic victory, the Utah Senate passed its own discriminatory bill (HB 363) prohibiting educators from teaching about, or even talking about, homosexuality.

Trey loved to challenge whatever rule he could in class. He was the student who would question every nuance of the dress code, just to see if the faculty could come up with a worthy reason.

During a discussion of homophobia in The Catcher in the Rye, he, blurted, “Holden’s just so gay.”

The class groaned as they awaited my response.

Twenty-eight teachers in my master’s level class silently moved en masse to the right side of the room to signify that they would teach the civil rights movement to their elementary students.

In fact, most considered it negligent to ignore this historic movement that brought about the end of segregation in our country.

In 1967 the Supreme Court ruling on Loving v. Virginia went a long way toward making marriage a right that more Americans could exercise. In Loving, the court decided that laws prohibiting African Americans and white Americans from marrying violated the Constitution. The Loving ruling said, among other things, “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Can you imagine buying groceries if boxes of sugar were labeled "peanut butter" and ice cream cartons read "chicken noodle soup"? You may laugh, but our daily lives are often adventures in just such misinformation.

I didn’t say a word.

I never saw myself as a person to let a homophobic comment slide. Even from another adult. Even from someone with more power than me in the hierarchy of the school structure. But that day, in that conversation, I just let it go.