Does your school have one?

Lance Helms sent a message to the members of Safe Schools for All, a Facebook group, and I am pasting it in here.

Subject: Summer reading: GSA 101

Friends,

Whether you're a student, parent or concerned community member, one of the ways you can support safe schools for all is to support the formation of GSA's, or gay-straight alliances, when school is back in session next fall.

Not limited to gay students by any means, GSA's are commonly inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning students and their allies.

Supporting GSA youth is as simple as asking any student you know whether their school has a GSA. If not, maybe they'd like to consider starting one next fall, when most student clubs get formed.

For any student who'd like to know more about how to start a GSA in their school, Lambda Legal has an excellent GSA resource that's part of their "Out, Safe & Respected" toolkit for LGBTQ students. Here's an excerpt:

"A gay-straight alliance, or GSA, is a club for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning students and straight allies.

"There are lots of different kinds of GSA's. GSA's can be social clubs (some GSA's host dances and movie nights), support groups (some GSA's provide a safe place for LGBTQ students and their allies to talk about problems), educational outposts (some GSA's organize guest speakers or create displays for National Coming Out Day) or advocacy groups (some GSA's participate in GLSEN’s National Day of Silence or push for sexual orientation and gender identity to be added to their school’s nondiscrimination policy).

"Talk with your friends, reach out to other students and decide what you’d like your GSA to focus on. There are more than 3,000 GSA's in schools nationwide, and there is lots of information available about forming a GSA. No matter what its focus is, your GSA can play an important role in addressing homophobia and anti-transgender discrimination and can help create a safe space for LGBTQ students."

So start the conversation today! Chances are, whoever you start the conversation with will be glad you did.

Lambda Legal's "So You Wanna Start A GSA":
http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://tinyurl.com/qbxbma

Lambda Legal's "Out, Safe & Respected":
http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://www.lambdalegal.org/publications/out-safe-respected/

PFLAG's Safe Schools / Cultivating Respect homepage:
http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://community.pflag.org/Page.aspx?pid=1011

Yours in community,

Lance Helms
PFLAG Gulf Regional Director
Atlanta

Anonymity and other matters

I was going to tell "Anonymous" that he can't have it both ways--either I'm an stereotypical histrionic female or I'm dogmatically scientific. (In fact, I am neither.) But then I looked at the writing style(s) a bit more closely and concluded that I may have not one but two Anonymouses (Anonymice?).

It's hard to tell without a numbering system (Anonymous 1, Anonymous 2, . . .).

Be that as it may, one or both of them wants some research citations on affirmative therapies.

Watch this space: I'll get a biblio up soon.

On Fairness and Respect

Sister blogger Lesboprof is out protesting California's Proposition 8 this weekend. She explains in today's post that the nationwide protests are about a lot more than "gay marriage":

It is about calling out people's rejection of LGBT people... the idea that you can say you love us individually and vote against us as a group. We are your family members, your teachers, your students, your friends, your neighbors, your partners in faith, your elected officials, and your compatriots. We deserve fairness and respect.

She's right. That vote was an awfully painful slap in the face to LGBT people everywhere, not just in California. The message is that however much it may feel like you are accepted and respected by society, you really aren't. It's all lip service. And when your students, your friends, your neighbors, your family, and your fellow congregants can vote in secret, the truth comes out. A vote like California's serves only to demonstrate straights' hate and disgust and fear. And that is what it is. During the Civil Rights era, you used to always hear "Some of my best friends are Negroes, but..." and then would follow some right or list of rights that Blacks should be denied. Despite what people say about not being racist or homophobic or sexist or whatever, their behaviors say otherwise.

Maybe we ought to reserve the term "marriage" for the religious ceremony that takes place in churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship. Maybe we ought legally to refer to it as "partnership" (with some adjective to distinguish it from a business license) and make it accessible to everybody (adult), everywhere. The official status of what we currently call "marriage" confers not only numerous legal and financial benefits--which there's really no logical reason to deny LGBT people--but also a certain social standing and psychological meaning. When your coupleship is official, it gets much more "glue": Other couples support it, singles respect it (by which I mean it cuts down considerably on "poaching"). A state license grants a personal sense of permanence, stability, and trust in the relationship--that it really means something, that it will be there for you. All of which there's also really no logical reason to deny LGBT people.

When I was growing up, it was illegal for people of different races to pair off, never mind marry each other. It was called "miscegenation," and it was a crime. There were laws against it. (I know I just said the same thing three times, but I'm betting there's young people out there reading this who won't believe me the first time.) That looks so quaint, backwards, racist, and downright silly to us now. Why are we holding on to the same ugliness with regard to LGBT people? It does not become us as a nation. What it says about "the content of our character" is not pretty.

It's time we grew up.