KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: LGBT HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS –WHAT TO DO IF YOU FACE HARASSMENT AT SCHOOL Lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) stunts face discrimatn and harassment at school all too often. Unfortunately, many school officials know very ltle about how the law requir them to protect LGBT stunts. And sometim they do know that they're breakg the law, but
Contents:
AS FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' LAW TAK EFFECT, SCHOOLS ROLL OUT LGBTQ RTRICTNS
The Edutn Department on Wednday issued guidance that Tle IX prohibs discrimatn based on sexual orientatn and genr inty, a reversal of the Tmp admistratn’s stance that gay and transgenr stunts are not protected by the law. * gay rights school *
“Don’t Say Gay” or “No Promo Homo” Laws Are Invalid. If your school’s drs allows stunts to wear T-shirts wh slogans, is unlawful for your school to ask you to take off your shirt jt bee endors gay pri. You Have the Right To Form Gay-Straight Allianc (GSAs) or Genr & Sexualy Allianc.
The anizatns are stunt-led groups that provi a safe, supportive environment for lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, queer, and qutng youth and their alli. You have the right to be ee om nversn therapy or church servic that say negative thgs about lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr people.
(Nati Harnik / AP)Edor’s Note: This article is part of a seri about the gay-rights movement and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall groups have always been about a simple, key objective: Stop all the groups are GSAs—Genr-Sexualy Allianc, though they were origally known as Gay-Straight Allianc—and that was their missn when they first rose to promence the late 1980s.
A Southern California school board has bee the latt proxy for culture wars brewg across the untry after a nservative bloc voted to formally reject state-endorsed curriculum that would have mentned gay rights figure Harvey Milk. * gay rights school *
Perhaps, the theory was, jt by existg, the groups uld make gay kids feel ls alone, and that self uld rce suici risk, which was mon among gay teens at the Lipk, a former high-school history teacher, an thor, and a proment LGBTQ-rights advote, was one of the GSA movement’s earlit pneers. (Lipk, now his early 70s, drew spiratn om another queer-advocy school group, the Los Angel–based Project 10, the name a reference to Aled Ksey’s theory that about 10 percent of men are gay.
The Florida Don't Say Gay law shows the opposg velopments ncerng LGBTQ tn U.S. schools. While some stat have been tablishg legal foundatns for LGBTQ curriculums recently, Florida is gog the oppose directn and more stat are expected to follow s example. * gay rights school *
”Before long, siar mp clubs were croppg up— the Boston area and beyond—“simultaneoly” and “spontaneoly, ” says Sharon Tentarelli, who as a high-school junr 1989 found the GSA at the prtig boardg school Phillips Amy A iendship fed through the gay-rights movementGSAs sprang up anilly bee of the prence of lears who felt a need for them, not a natnal learship stcture that swooped and set them up. Though they varied size and strategy om group to group, they tend to share the same basic visn, one articulated by Kev Jenngs, now 56, then a young high-school history teacher at a Boston-area boardg school lled Conrd Amy: Make gay stunts feel ls alone.
In 1988 he found the first club to bear the “GSA” and raised the South a fundamentalist Christian fay whose relativ clud members of the KKK, Jenngs grew up surround by racial tolerance and homophobia, he says. By the time he me out, he was already his send teachg job; he’d been “forced out” of his first one, Jenngs told me, bee he was gay. At the send school, he grew close to a stunt of his who, upon figurg out his teacher was gay, nfid that he, too, liked men.
”Kev Jenngs (purple shirt) alongsi members of the Conrd Amy Gay-Straight Alliance at the 1993 March on Washgton for Gay, Lbian, and Bi Equal Rights (Courty of Kev Jenngs)It was a pivotal moment for Jenngs, who went on to -found the LGBTQ-youth advocy anizatn today known as GLSEN (formerly the Gay, Lbian, and Straight Edutn Network), wre var books on LGBTQ jtice schools, and serve as an assistant secretary the Department of Edutn unr Print Barack Obama. ”People like Jenngs are “the children of the Stonewall Revolutn, ” says Stephen Lane, a public high-school teacher and the thor of the 2018 book No Sanctuary: Teachers and the School Reform That Brought Gay Rights to the Mass. All this ma their prence, and their rejectn of the closet, transformative, Lane says, bee they beme natural alli for gay gay stunts need them.