Call for Special Rights
In a story by Sara Faiwell ("How coming out opens doors") from The Daily Herald [Chicago, IL], this chilling anectdote:
It wasn't until last year that being an openly gay high school student really set in for Andrew Kennedy.
"I was in the locker room and I heard a group of kids plotting out my death," said Kennedy, a senior at Warren Township High School in Gurnee. "They said that they were going to grab me after school and take me behind the field house and then beat me to death with a bag of bricks."
Kennedy said he just shrugged it off after no one followed through on the threat.
Later on, another personal story:
Wauconda High School senior Matthew Hutchinson said he has been the victim of several hate crimes at his school and his Island Lake home after coming out to friends last year.
"People have egged our house and threatened to burn it down," said Hutchinson, who said one group of students still follows him around and tries to intimidate him.
Some observations:
More than 82 percent of gay students said faculty or staff never or only sometimes intervened when they were present while remarks about sexuality were made…
[…]
Jenne Dehmlow, a teacher at Wheaton Warrenville South High School who sponsors the Gay-Straight Alliance organization there, said some staff members are just uncomfortable dealing with homosexuality.
After doing an anonymous survey of staff members at her school, Dehmlow said, she found about a quarter of them didn't see gay slurs to be as offensive as racial slurs.
Pause for a moment and reflect silently on these stories.
Think about all the homophobic energy that goes into lip-service about "hating the sin but loving the sinner", and how "just because I don't support special rights for gays, it doesn't make me a homophobe", or how "I'm not promoting violence against gays, I just don't believe in tolerance". Do you really believe these forked-tongue platitudes? Can you truly believe that these attitudes are honest, objective, and don't promote intolerance and violence?
At this point, I'm more than happy to suggest that these gay youth even deserve special rights in the face of such antipathy and its physical manifestation in violence against them.
Is there hope?
A Gay-Straight Alliance group at Libertyville High School had its first meeting in December, and 35 students and seven faculty members showed up.
"I actually cried when I saw how many students were here and how many of them were straight students in support of their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender peers," said teacher Dyan Flood, an adviser to the group.