(Page 7 of 73) - Sexual Diversity and Public Schools in Canada and the United States authored by Rayside, David.

(15-19) found that 89 percent of them considered the idea of homosexual activity disgusting.

In such a context, openly lesbian or gay students often report considerable acceptance from peers.
This will sometime include active support form close friends, but a form of passive tolerance
from others. One Chicago high school student has commented that acceptance is often not deep:
“you’re not being shoved, pushed and beaten. You’re just kind of that elephant in the living
room that no one wants to talk about.”

Another student, in Oakland California, has observed

that while the concept of homosexuality is accepted at his school, there are no openly gay couples
– “you can’t do anything in public and be accepted.”

Where there is actively negative reaction, it will often be most evident in sports circles. It is
there that deviation from heterosexuality is policed most aggressively, intensified by anxieties
about same-sex physical contact, change rooms, and showers. Lesbian and gay students will
often report avoiding areas where jocks – particularly male jocks – hang out. Far outside such
environments, however, the words “fag,” “lesbian,” “dyke,” and especially “gay” are routinely
flung about as insults. Every study of school climate ever undertaken in either country has found
pervasive anti-gay language at all age levels.

ACTIVISM ON MANY BOTH SIDES

There is a decades-long history of sexual diversity activism on schools issues, but much
quickened in the 1990s and early 2000s. In the 1970s, there were only isolated challenges to the
prevailing patterns of inattention, silence, and punishment. The earliest activism was often in the
form of students and teachers simply being out when few were out, and when the risks of
punishment or job loss were substantial. In other cases, teachers took it on themselves to
incorporate sexual diversity into their lessons and counsellors into their day-to-day work. A few
teachers who were fired fought back, and their cause became a rallying point for fledgling gay
and lesbian organizations. But such groups often had many fronts to mobilize for, so their
engagement with schooling was episodic.

In the 1980s, educators and students in a widely scattered centres across the continent began to
organize networks to press for change. A few teacher unions in Canada and the U.S. were
persuaded to defend members who were punished or fired for being gay or for speaking out on
sexual diversity issues, though it would not be until the 1990s when the educational sector of the
labour movements of Canada and the U.S. became more systematically outspoken on sexual
diversity. Students – of all sexual orientations – became prominent critics of school inattention
to these issues, and by their personal testimonies about school climate shook the complacency of
many school officials. It was also in the 1990s that progressive activist groups outside the
educational realm began taking on schools issues.

Canada

There was little sustained activism on schooling anywhere in Canada before the late 1980s,
though two earlier cases of discrimination against gay teachers before then – one in