New York's Gay School

[Doctor.Bob]

I've just seen on BBC News 24 that a publicly funded school for gay/lesbian/transgender pupils has just opened.

It currently has 80 pupils all of whom have suffered bullying, etc. at their old schools because of their open homosexuality.

The school was previously privately funded but the State of New York has now taken over funding.

Is this gay rights gone mad?

Or is it sweeping the prejudice these teenagers have received under the carpet?

Or is it a phenomenon we ought to expect and encourage in a democratic society?

[nichomach]

Or maybe it's protecting children from what is likely to be a vicious catalogue of abuse from pupils and indifference from staff - lets face it, attempting to interest teachers in bullying is like attempting to interest Becks in quantum electrodynamics.

[Doctor.Bob]

But the US is much more advanced than the UK when dealing with bullying. Clearly any action has failed for these children though.

[spikegifted]

I think we should organize some celerations during the year to let the whole country/world know that apart from gay people, straight people have their special needs also.

First, we'd start with a march to Hyde Park! Then we partition the PM to create laws to safeguard the rights of straight people and then we need to get all the charities on board to increase 'straightness awareness' in the community, business, and politics.

[garath]

Another march ! Another reason not to goto work, hurrah

[Doctor.Bob]

The Evening Standard had a similar idea a few yeras ago. The gay Times had suggested that if you were gay shopping in certain shops was 'hetero-hell' & that these shops should be boycotted.

The Standard pointed out that if you were straight walking down Old Compton St. in Soho was 'Homo-Hell' & that streaight people should take their business elsewhere.

[Ravens Nest]

The Evening Standard had a similar idea a few yeras ago. The gay Times had suggested that if you were gay shopping in certain shops was 'hetero-hell' & that these shops should be boycotted. The Standard pointed out that if you were straight walking down Old Compton St. in Soho was 'Homo-Hell' & that streaight people should take their business elsewhere.

It seems to me (as a white hetrosexual man in the UK) that that minority & alternative lifestyle groups think that we should accept them and what they have to say without question if we try to voice our opinions we are seen as rascist, homophobic or both.

Every time we try to be ourselves i.e. talk about how we'd like to get hold of a member of the opposite sex or say we have a blackboard at school and sing 'bah bah black sheep', it's frowned upon as sexist or rascist.

It's like you cannot be honest anymore, you have to be careful who you upset, it's like walking through a minefield..

[Punky]

i think its a good idea to have the gay school, but then again, it is a way of not dealing with the problem of homophobia in schools. i'm not gay, but i have gay friends and they do get mocked for being gay, and its wrong. oh yeh, in amerikkka, you are not allowed in the boy scouts if you admit to being gay, which disgusts me. i had a great time in beavers, cubs and scouts when i was younger, and i know its contributed to who i am now, and to deprive young people of this just because their sexual orientation is not 'socially acceptable' by the vast majority is awful.

[Slick]

I think it's a good idea to seperate schools to stop bullying. Children are often the cruelest people you'll ever meet, I'm not gay but I was bullied. They pick on people's weakness's and no matter how many lectures they get about Gay people being ok they won't take any notice and make that person's life hell.

Most people after leaving school have grown up and so after school there shouldn't be seperated. I think this should only be used if the gay person is being bullied. We don't want to start colonising them by automatically sending a gay person to a certain school as this would further some people's opinions that they are different.

[Ravens Nest]

Originally posted by not_your_punk
i think its a good idea to have the gay school, but then again, it is a way of not dealing with the problem of homophobia in schools. i'm not gay, but i have gay friends and they do get mocked for being gay, and its wrong. oh yeh, in amerikkka, you are not allowed in the boy scouts if you admit to being gay, which disgusts me. i had a great time in beavers, cubs and scouts when i was younger, and i know its contributed to who i am now, and to deprive young people of this just because their sexual orientation is not 'socially acceptable' by the vast majority is awful.

Sad to hear about your friends getting bullied, it shouldnt matter if they are gay but children can be very cruel (especially in a group), i used to have a deformity where i could not put the heels of my feet on the ground as my achilles tendons where not long enough so i was called gay, fairy and moonwalker! i used to get beaten every day at school until i was 12 when i had them operated on which correct it nearly 90% and the bullying stopped.

But it took an operation to stop the bullying, you cant do anything about being gay you have to live with it, perhaps children and adults need to be educated about this then they might understand..

A gay school will not help matters in the long run it comes down to understanding, which will not happen if they hide them away in another school

Gay children not being allowed in the boy scouts.. only in america

[Slick]

Originally posted by Ravens Nest
A gay school will not help matters in the long run it comes down to understanding, which will not happen if they hide them away in another school

With adults maybe, but kids aren't understanding when it comes to things like this. You wouldn't have been beaten up by adults because of your deformity but do you honestly think it would have made a difference if a teacher had given them a talk saying "there's nothing wrong with it etc."?

[Ravens Nest]

Originally posted by Slick
With adults maybe, but kids aren't understanding when it comes to things like this. You wouldn't have been beaten up by adults because of your deformity but do you honestly think it would have made a difference if a teacher had given them a talk saying "there's nothing wrong with it etc."?

I think if a teacher got involved it would depend on the way the teacher handled the situation i.e. 'showed a film or diagrams of why i walked on my tiptoes' perhaps that might have made some of the kids understand that i could not help the way i walked.

It must be a lot harder for gay children to fit in with other children but wouldnt it make them a more rounded individual to have different types of people and sexual orientations around them than going to a school where they interact with children who are different from the norm and have been bullied, how can we get used to each other if we are all separate, how can we understand there pain if we have never met children like them when we were at school, because they were separated from us?

[spikegifted]

What is 'the norm'?

Can you imagine watching a nature program on the BBC or Discovery and see the commentator commenting on two adult lions are walking around each other, checking each other out as part of their mating dance?

That is not the norm! If gays and lesbians can be considered the norm, then the human race is on a fast track to extinction!!

How can you have kids, who are highly impressionable to be in an environment where people are all either gay or lesbian? They'd think that, in deed, is the norm. Can you imagine the psychological influence on kids who are constantly bombarded with ideas that being gay and lesbian is part of 'the norm'?

The teachers' job is to educate children. He/She needs to identify what is 'the norm' to the kids but also point out that some men find that they're attracted to men and some women are attracted to women - but that is not 'the norm'. If the kids want to experiement with their sexuality, that's their business, but they have to have a reference point. If they're surrounded by gays and lesbian, then a man with a woman in a relationship is considered 'abnormal'!! What kind of a society would we have then??

[Ravens Nest]

If they're surrounded by gays and lesbian, then a man with a woman in a relationship is considered 'abnormal'!! What kind of a society would we have then??
Exactly what i was saying spikegifted, except you have worded it much better .

I suppose there is no such thing as the norm or normal as everyone is different, i suppose it would be better calling children or people who are similiar, "alike" or "the average".

But in a school full of gay children, a child would see the average as the children and teachers around them, and this will not help them when they leave and go into society it would be a artificial environment like living in a bubble, who knows what problems it would cause for them later in life? a hard question to answer i think.

[laura]

I undersatnd the whole wrapping them in cotton wool aspect of this - when they finally leave school they will ultimately be putting them selves back out in the "real" world which may end upbeing a complete shock. BUt Kids can be really cruel, by the time that people leave school, they should have finally managed to reach a maturity where they can either accept that some people are different - or learnt how to sit on those nasty feelings thus, the previously cotton wool clad schoolies may be able to integrate into society as a person to be accepted rather than as a child bullied for who they are.

[Anders]

I think that segregating a group of people from everyone else only serves to reinforce narrow-minded views. Oooh, average and normal is a setting on the washing machine and not a good way describe people.

What age are we considering as “children”, because I don’t think I developed a real interest in women until I’d also developed a mature view on a lot of things in life.