It gets better…

I have to give a shout out to Dan Savage who, besides being my favorite sex columnist, started the "It Gets Better" series of videos on YouTube. Here is a video of Dan explaining his intentions and his dead on view of the religious right. For those of you who haven't heard of Mr. Savage, he is a blunt sex columnist who writes for Slog, a blog which is part of Seattle's The Stranger website. The column Savage Love is NSFW and may make some of you "vanilla" people out there queasy. Just a warning.

Dan Savage is great at pointing repeatedly to the systematic campaign of hatred that so-called religious leaders have pointed at gay people. He has said, point blank that religious leaders have "blood on their hands" because it has been the perpetuation of hatred against gays that allows for bullying of gay kids in school. Mr. Savage does not mince words:

"Being told that they're[gay children] sinful and that their love offends God, and being told that their relationships are unworthy of the civil right that is marriage (not the religious rite that some people use to solemnize their civil marriages), can eat away at the souls of gay kids. It makes them feel like they're not valued, that their lives are not worth living. And if one of your children is unlucky enough to be gay, the anti-gay bigotry you espouse makes them doubt that their parents truly love them—to say nothing of the gentle "savior" they've heard so much about, a gentle and loving father who will condemn them to hell for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person." http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/10/01/sl-letter-of-the-day-sorry-nothing-fun

What have we done by not speaking out against this kind of behavior before? Have we allowed an environment where kids think that death is better than one more day in high school or junior high? How are we teachers missing this? How are we tolerating it?

We have to make a stand right now. We have to stand up to those insidious, sneaky little bullies. We have to stop every kid when we hear "that's gay" or "faggot" . We have to stop every gay joke just like we would stop a racist one. We have to be serious about this.

I let a kid "act gay", in other words act stereotypically effeminate, today while in a school setting. I should not have done so. I usually point out when kids do dangle their wrists and using a high voice that they are acting out a cartoonish stereotype which doesn't represent the majority of gay people but looks more like a boy trying to act like my grandma in drag. (It really looked like the kid is trying to be Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies! ) But because I was tired or distracted or something, I didn't stand up to this kid and I should have. Would I have allowed a white kid to act "black" or "Mexican"? No way. So I can't allow kids to "act gay" either. Because if I do let this happen, I may also have blood on my hands.