Courage, tolerance and kids

North County Times | Friday, January 15, 2010

The same folks who claimed California schools would teach kids to turn gay if Proposition 8 failed at the polls wanted to stop a time-delayed Webcast of the federal court challenge to the new law. It seems some opponents of gay marriage would rather remain in the closet than be outed on YouTube.

The battle over gay marriage continues to rage in this newspaper's opinion pages. In letters to the editor you can find disagreements over Biblical quotations, gay penguins and the proper connections of nuts, bolts and screws.

Some misguided pundits see a conspiracy of secular humanists, liberals and gays advancing a hidden "agenda" to corrupt the young.

As adults wrangle over who should be allowed to hook up with whom, what's been going on in our schools?

Conservative syndicated columnist George Will opines that gay marriage won't be an issue in this country's future because today's school children find being gay about as interesting as being left-handed. But even though children are more open-minded than their parents about such things, left-handers do not face the same threat of being bullied by their peers that gay students do.

According to a 2004 report by the California Safe Schools Coalition and 4H Center for Youth Development at UC Davis, more than 200,000 California students are harassed each year based on either perceived or actual sexual orientation.

Compared with those who are not harassed, gay students who are bullied are three times more likely to bring a weapon to school and twice as likely to seriously consider committing suicide.

Ninety-one percent of students reported they had overheard other students making negative comments about sexual orientation. Forty-four percent overheard teachers making similar comments.

Last year the Alameda school board planned to institute a program called Lesson 9 to address the problem of anti-gay school bullying. But, bowing to pressure brought by parents with religious views that do not condone homosexuality, the school district voted to change the program to general lessons against bias.

Here in North County, students themselves are leading the fight against anti-gay bullying. California's Gay-Straight Alliance Network lists affiliated clubs at seven North County high schools: Carlsbad, La Costa Canyon, Poway, Rancho Buena Vista, San Dieguito Academy, Torrey Pines and Vista. Founded in 1998, the GSA Network is a youth leadership organization that connects school-based GSA clubs that fight discrimination, harassment and violence in schools.

Maybe the adults who fear the Webcast of federal court testimony on the constitutionality of Prop. 8 could learn something about courage and tolerance from the kids they say they want to protect from going gay.

Richard J. Riehl writes from Carlsbad, CA.