| Introduction |
Then he dropped a bombshell: "You know what the first thing I did when I finished school last year? I went home and 'came out' to my family. I'm gay, and I could never 'come out' at school, so I had to wait until my final exams were finished."
"Why?" I asked, somewhat naively.
He replied that he had never felt safe at school. Then he explained in detail:
"Calling something or someone 'gay' at school was a general insult that was implicitly understood as a negative thing by all the kids. They all did it, and no teacher ever challenged it. It was a kind of bullying that was tolerated...
"And worse, I thought that I was the only gay person in my school...
"After all, no gay or lesbian teacher was 'out'...
"None of my English teachers ever mentioned that Oscar Wilde was gay, or Patrick White, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein or Sappho. No-one told me that Shakespeare was possibly bisexual. No teacher ever discussed the sexuality of these people and how this might have shaped their creativity or influenced their lives.
"No Maths or Science teacher ever commented that many ancient Greek mathematicians and scientists were bisexual or gay...and that we owe so much of our science and democratic culture to these people...
"No Art teacher ever mentioned the sexuality of Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci or Keith Haring...
"No Music teacher ever discussed the personal lives of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Liberace, Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, Benjamin Britten, Freddie Mercury or K D Lang...
"No IT teacher told us that Alan Turing, inventor of the 'Artificial Intelligence' test for computers, was gay...
"No sports teacher ever talked about Ian Roberts, Martina Navratilova, Greg Louganis, or Bill Tilden being gay or lesbian...
"No history teacher ever mentioned that King James I, who commissioned the King James Bible, was gay. They never discussed Lawrence of Arabia, Hadrian, Alexander the Great, various kings and queens, popes or religious figures, one or two Presidents of the USA, a variety of famous military people, or even common people who were gay or bisexual...
"No one ever told me that Hitler included gay men in the Holocaust, and that unknown thousands of these men died in the concentration camps. This fact was conveniently omitted from our studies, thereby perpetuating the ethnic cleansing of my role models from history...
"It's like the 'Stolen Generations', where generations of queer young people have been separated from their forebears and denied their culture and history. But there's no-one saying 'Sorry' or attempting any reconciliation...
"I just wish that one teacher had talked about the existence of my people. I wish one teacher had not only admitted our existence, but had admitted the contribution we have made to history and civilisation...
"Just one teacher could have broken the silence and invisibility; could have challenged the homophobia that was so unhealthy for me and for my heterosexual classmates...
"Just one teacher could have given validity to my existence and my humanity..."
He knew he was challenging me, and I felt ashamed. As a teacher, I like to think that I help to educate and prepare the next generation for their life journey. I suddenly realised that, like all my workmates and peers, I had failed this young man and his generation.
I never forgot his words.
In the intervening years, I have been proud to be involved in some work at my school that has confronted homophobia in our anti-bullying policy and in our classrooms. We continue to seek ways to implement further anti-heterosexist material in our subjects...
My students know that homophobia is not allowed in my class, just as racism and sexism are forbidden.
Perhaps for me, though, a significant moment in more recent years was when the first student 'came out' in my class, apparently feeling safe from harassment and homophobia.
I felt proud.
In my many years of teaching, I have been actively interested in social justice and Equal Opportunity. I recall EO materials which were written many years ago to confront institutionalized disadvantages faced by girls or particular racial and cultural groups, and to encourage the development of inclusive curricula to assist these young people.
These same arguments could still be used today in support of young people who might be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex or who, in some other way, might not conform to societal expectations of traditional heterosexuality.
This website is one such attempt to address this ongoing failure by many teachers, schools and educational authorities to openly support these students.
However, I do see that education is changing and that recognition and protection for these students is starting to be reflected in policies and practices and I am proud to be a part of this trend.
It is the next step in my own journey. Perhaps it is also yours.
Please feel free to contribute.
- 21 July 2005.