First of two parts
Some years ago, when my daughter was in middle school, she came home and began telling a long story with a cast of characters that included a boy I apparently was supposed to know.
Who? I interrupted.
"You know," Eleanor replied with exasperation, "that gay kid."
Mom did not know, but she seized the opportunity to snap out an opinion just the same. Kids in middle school, Mom declared, don't know enough about their own sexuality to draw lasting conclusions about their sexual orientation.
Eyes may have rolled at this point.
Mom was wrong, and that has become increasingly obvious in the seven short years since Eleanor left middle school.
Certainly, teens can be confused about which sex they find attractive. Any psychologist will confirm it happens all the time.
But some kids know. They just do. They were born attracted to others of their own sex, and it is as obvious to them as the big yellow bus that drops them every day at school.
This isn't something they choose. It simply is a fact of their life. And God bless these children as they struggle to learn how best to live with it. Even in their generation of acceptance, they're going to be reviled by some and ridiculed by others.
That's why an after-school club including both gay and straight kids could be so beneficial to both communities. It could send a real message that the school district loves to mouth but seldom backs up: Bullying won't be tolerated. It could ease fears and help instill confidence in a group of kids who will need both during their lives.
However, the district for two school years running has ignored a request by students at Carver Middle School in Leesburg to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, even though they have a teacher willing to sponsor and oversee the club's activities and discussions. Talk about an opportunity to teach youngsters how to live in the world with people who are different and who perhaps run up against your own deeply held beliefs.
The American Civil Liberties Union has had to step in and remind the School Board that it can't discriminate when it comes to clubs. Leave it to the board to dilly-dally until a non-issue becomes an expense to taxpayers.
So now, the School Board is poised to address this "problem" with a "solution" so spectacularly backward that it undoubtedly will make the national news — again. It's hard to imagine that even misguided board members could manage that feat twice in a single month. (The first time came when a board member proposed arming teachers to make schools safer.)
The "solution" is to eliminate clubs that aren't tied to academic studies in middle schools or in both middle and high schools. However, this probably won't fly under a federal law that says if a school has clubs at all, it can't pick and choose which it wants.
School Board member Tod Howard says he welcomes the Gay-Straight Alliance. However, he also says that he supports a proposal to eliminate non-academic clubs in the middle schools. That would keep the Gay-Straight Alliance out.
Clever, Tod. That's like saying the Civil War was fought for states' rights. Naw. We all know it was over slavery. Howard must stop the two-step and support the right of gay students to meet or oppose it. Same goes for Superintendent Susan Moxley, who with a straight face told a reporter the School Board's current dilemma is about settling a policy, not about the Gay-Straight Alliance. Sorry. These two must stop hiding behind polite fiction. This isn't about policy.
There are other things that this issue is not about.
It is not about religion. Everyone is perfectly free to believe that homosexuality is right or wrong. What they're not free to do is impose their beliefs on a school system that shouldn't be kowtowing to any religion at all. The folks who want to impose their own specific religious beliefs on others are the biggest hypocrites. One can only image how they'd react if required to bow to Mecca five times a day.
This isn't about sex. These kids are into issues of how their sexuality meshes with power and politics. And whether this Gay-Straight Alliance forms is going to be one big political lesson for them.
This also isn't about protecting kids who might not understand their own best interest.
When they were in the eighth grade most of the folks who fall into the demographic that reads a newspaper column didn't talk with their friends about whether they were gay.
Today, teens know this previously intimate fact about one another as casually as they know whether the student in the next desk prefers Nikes or Skechers. Sexual orientation is just a sliver — usually not the biggest part — of teens' identity.
They're not worried about what their friends at school know. The uncomfortable part is when the older generation, which cared so much more about who was gay, finds out. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles — we're the ones who make a big deal of it. They don't.
So who are these gay young teens, anyway? On Wednesday, we'll put a face on them and see what it's like to be gay in Lake schools.
Lritchie@tribune.com. Her blog is online at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/laurenonlake. Lauren invites you to join her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/laurenonlake.
