Wednesday, Aug 27, 2008
I'm the gay kid the Christian Coalition wants your kid to be able to harass at school.
May 17, 2001 | I'm one of about a dozen students at a Catholic boys school who get together on Wednesday afternoons to sift through poetry submissions and hope something good shows up for the school literary magazine. Each meeting is more discouraging than the next. Most of the garbage I have to read was assigned by an English teacher who apparently isn't much of a muse. Some works are anti-liberal in theme, many are sports related, many are void of creativity altogether and almost all are miserably written. The writers are mostly the guys with the stellar GPAs, bound for the Ivy League, unless their family tradition dictates LSU or something worse.
These are the guys who get National Merit recognition, score 30+ on their ACTs, graduate summa cum laude. And on Wednesdays after school I get to remind myself that these are the guys turning in poetry like "Al Gore/Is a bore/He's a pot user/And a sore loser." Or how about "Ode to Mike Ditka"? Poem after poem about the love of golf, a passion for football, the fulfillment of the baseball dream and the strain of the swimmer who must sleep in class because he practices so much. (The last example was one by the student council president. I think he's headed to Notre Dame.)
These are also the guys who, with their less poetic friends, have tortured me at school since the fourth grade. These are guys who would have been very bummed if an anti-harassment law like the one being proposed in the state of Washington had been enacted during our school careers.
Fortunately for these guys, and guys like them across the nation, the Christian Coalition chapter in Washington managed to help stall the harassment bill (also known as the bullying bill), which would have required each school district in the state to adopt a policy against harassment, bullying and intimidation, as well as train school employees and volunteers to be aware of bullying and try to prevent it. The legislation originally included a reference to a state hate-crimes law that protects gays and lesbians, but that was removed as soon as the Christian Coalition got involved, arguing that the bill "jeopardizes First Amendment free speech rights and conscience protections."
I am the guy that the Christian Coalition, and probably a healthy portion of my classmates, believe would be unfairly protected by a bullying law. I am the guy whom their consciences demand that they belittle and deride. Fortunately for me, however, I don't need the law anymore. I'm a high school senior about to get out of Dodge.
But Mr. S., a man who has taught at my school for nearly 15 years, is not so lucky. This is Louisiana, not Washington, and this guy is as gay as a tree full of parrots.
The whole school knows about it, basically. He's unmarried, liberal and, worst of all, effeminate. He can be one flaming queen, and his inability to hide certain mannerisms means he has to protect himself. If I had to hide my sexuality at this place for that long, I'd go insane. There are times when he opens up a little bit, lets himself chat with the liberal students. Otherwise, he's often crabby, defensive and constantly worried about how to hide what's painfully obvious.
Once I managed to reveal to Mr. S. that I knew his nickname among those in the know -- it's Florence. He gave me a look of doom. I thought that was the end of it, but the next day he called me into his office, closed the door, lowered his voice and pointed his finger in my face.
"All this talk with you calling me she ... a girl ... Florence -- it has to stop."
He was angry -- stuttering and whispering. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? If you keep doing it, I'm going to have to stop associating with you.
"You're playing with fire and I'm not gonna get burned."
He wasn't hurt; he was scared. He made it clear to me that it wasn't personal -- he just didn't want to lose his job. I was stunned. It scared me to think that an obviously gay teacher couldn't be the least bit open after working at the school for almost 15 years, that he had no chance to bring his partner to school functions, no way to defend homosexuality in class without setting off alarms with the administration. I hated seeing how bitterly militaristic he has had to become to defend the sound of his voice. The preppies are all out to get him, to take him down, and he reacts with this attempt at discipline, which really amounts to a sort of cute, prissy feistiness.
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