Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [103]
The right wing’s strategy involves exploiting misplaced fears among parents that programs designed to aid gay youngsters are in fact subtle efforts by homosexuals to recruit impressionable children. Indeed, according to this belief, “normal” youngsters fall prey to homosexuality if it is presented as an acceptable way of life. The corrosive attack that killed the Rainbow Curriculum in New York City—which would have mandated instruction about homosexuality in city schools—was based on that premise.
The case against such a premise need not be repeated here. But such arguments can be and have been countered effectively when evidence of the pain and injury to gay adolescents is presented in dramatic human terms. People who recoil at implications of indoctrination respond to demonstrable arguments for justice and fairness.
Massachusetts, a liberal state with pockets of deep conservatism, is the prime example of a place where gay youth advocates have accomplished major social change with a canny mix of politics and emotional appeal.
The groundwork was laid by an advocacy group, the Massachusetts Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, which in 1990 endorsed a liberal Republican, William Weld, for governor. The endorsement gave the group access to Weld, and it used that access to educate Weld about the dilemma of gay and lesbian adolescents. Among those influential in this effort were gay Republicans organized as the Log Cabin Club, a national group attempting to blunt right-wing influence within the party, and David LaFontaine, the coalition’s lobbying director.
They designed their approach to emphasize legal and constitutional protections guaranteed to all but gay youth, who were subject to harassment and violence in public schools. They presented evidence, from the HHS study and elsewhere, that discrimination in schools—by faculty and counselors as well as students—contributed to dropouts, drug use, depression, and suicide attempts by lesbian and gay youngsters. Presented as a fairness and safety issue, it won Weld over.
Almost immediately after Weld’s election (with support of gay voters) the coalition filed legislation to create a state Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. Conservative reaction paralyzed the bill, but Weld established the commission by executive order in February 1992, urging statewide public hearings to assess the needs of gay and lesbian youth.
The commission orchestrated the hearings, drawing on several constituencies, including the strong regional chapter of P-FLAG and gay and lesbian teachers’ groups. But students were the primary focus: a network of young people from around the state were ready to go public at the prospect of their government recognizing their right to be protected in their schools. More than one hundred of those young people, as well as parents, teachers, social-service workers, and others, testified at five well-publicized hearings, building a body of evidence that would lay the foundation for profound advances later on. Most impressive was the testimony of gay and lesbian youth, whose chilling accounts of harassment, suicide attempts, and literal terror made the case that the state indeed had a serious public-safety issue on its hands.
The commission produced five recommendations in a report titled Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth, with sixteen thousand copies distributed around the state and the rest of the country. Despite a growing clamor from the right, Weld endorsed the findings. Within three months, the governor-appointed state board of education approved four of the recommendations:
the creation of policies to ban harassment, violence, or discrimination against gay and lesbian students;
the training of teachers, counselors, and staff in crisis intervention and violence prevention;
the creation of school-based support groups for gay and straight