Michael Bronski
Quick.
What is the worst threat to high school students across the United States today?
Interpersonal violence among students? Guns in the hallways? Rampart drug and
alcohol use? Shabbily low teaching standards that allow students to graduate
beneath minimally acceptable academic standards? Disintegrating school
buildings? Proposed voucher plans that threaten to undermine the very existence
of a public education system? No, apparently for many school districts the worst
threat to the welfare of its students is the formation of gay-straight alliances
– groups that lend support to gay and lesbian students, foster tolerance,
advocate against discrimination.
The
threat of Gay Straight Alliances (GSA) is experienced by conservative school
boards, principals, parents and some students to be so great that they will go
to almost any length to ban them from high schools. Right now, the school board
of El Modena High School, in Orange County California, is about to ban all 38
extracurricular clubs – including the Black Student Union and the Chess Club
– simply to stop several students from forming a GSA at the school. This is a
last-ditch effort to circumvent a Federal judge’s preliminary injunction that
the school must let the newly formed GSA be recognized as an official group and
meet until a full hearing could be arranged. The judge’s injunction was in
response to a lawsuit brought by two gay students who argued that the school
board’s policy was an infringement on their freedom of speech. In his finding
the judge claimed that the board had to "give plaintiffs all the same
rights and privileges it gives to other student groups." He went even
further and claimed that the school board was negligent in protecting gay
students from harassment and potential violence, noting that some gay students
were so fearful of physical attacks that they were afraid to use the school’s
rest rooms.
The
Orange Unified School District’s actions are a repeat of what other boards have
done in the past. Three years ago Utah attempted the same ploy which
successfully kept, up until earlier this year, gay students from forming groups,
or even having a forum within the classroom, to talk about gay and lesbian
issues as well as banning all non-curricula based clubs.
The
arguments against the El Modena GSA are not surprising and are consistent with
the attacks on the groups nationwide. Opponents claim that a GSA would advocate
homosexuality, foster gay sex (which, depending upon the state, may be illegal),
lead to unsafe sex and HIV infection, break down traditional religious and moral
standards, infringe upon the rights of parents, and would promote
"recruitment" into "the homosexual lifestyle." Ironically
– since almost all opponents of GSA are conservative – the strongest defense
GSA’s have is the Equal Access Act of 1984. This law was supported and promoted
by Orin Hatch and other conservatives because it would allow religious meetings
in schools – including a Bible Club, one of the groups that would be banned in
the Orange Unified School District has its way. The 1984 law was later ruled
constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1990. Because California is one of three
states that specifically includes sexual orientation in their in the Students
Rights law, the school board claims that their opposition to the GSA is based
upon the district’s strict regulations on sex education – and the student run
discussions about sex or sexual activity violated those regulations.
Discussions
and fights about GSAs have been going on since 1990 when the first group was
organized at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts. Some groups have been
formed and have flourished without tension –Cambridge Rindge and Latin High
School in Cambridge, MA has had almost no problems in its ten year existence.
Because the Massachusetts has a specific commission, functioning under its Board
of Education, that deals with gay student issues – the Safe School Project –
there are over 100 GSA throughout the state, and about 600 GSAs nation wide.
It
is a measure of how threatening GSAs are that some school boards would rather do
away with dozens of other clubs than to grant official recognition to gay and
lesbian students and their needs. (Would that states would offer to scuttle all
marriages in an attempt to avoid the scary specter of same-sex marriages.) Not
that there isn’t a clear and urgent need for support for gay and lesbian
students in high schools. According to the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education
Network (www.glsen.org) 97 percent of students in public high schools in
Massachusetts reported regularly hearing homophobic remarks from their peers in
a 1993 report of the Massachusetts Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian
Youth. 53 percent of the students reported hearing anti-gay remarks made by
school staff. 46 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual students reported in a
1997 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Study they attempted suicide in the past
year compared to 9 percent of their peers; 22 percent skipped school in the past
month because they felt unsafe compared to 4 percent of their peers; 24 percent
were in a fight that resulted in receiving medical attention compared to 3
percent of their peers. Gay students are three times as likely to have been
threatened with a weapon at school than their peers during the previous 12
months, according to Youth Risk Behavior surveys done in Massachusetts and
Vermont. It is no wonder that one of the mandates of the Safe School Program –
and one that is carried out through their support of GSAs – is suicide and
violence prevention.
So
what is the problem with GSAs? Unlike sex education classes they are strictly
voluntarily – no student who is offended by them, or finds them in violations
of their religious beliefs has to attend. They may be a place for gay and
lesbian students to meet one another but – at least no more than any other
student group – fosters sexual activity or relationships. And you would think
that any program or group whose aim was to reduce tension and possible violence
would be welcomed in schools.
At
heart the resistance to Gay-Straight Alliances is that they are seen – and
here we go back to 1978 and Anita Bryant’s "Save Our Children" crusade
– as a form of recruitment of young, innocent children into homosexuality.
And, in a sense, this is correct. To the conservative mind homosexuality is such
a danger to morality and the social order that it must be constantly and
decisively discouraged, condemned, even punished. Any attempt to present
homosexuality as a neutral – or even morally acceptable – expression of
sexuality and love is "recruitment." Any attempt to secure basic civil
rights – in this case the right of free speech and assembly to students – is
"recruitment." Any attempt to give support by telling gay and lesbian
students that what they are feeling is perfectly natural and good is
"recruitment." If this is the operative definition of
"recruitment" then, yes, Gay Straight Alliances do recruit – and
need all the support they can get.