Last month I attended the "Welcoming Schools and Communities Summit 2014" hosted by the Inclusive Schools Coalition of Central and East Contra Costa County, Rainbow Community Center and the Mt. Diablo Unified School District. I attended the workshops intended for Middle and High School Teachers. They discussed the difficulties with being a LGBTQIQ2S* youth today. These workshops would be perfect for Scout Leaders, Coaches, and other adult volunteers who work with youth.
Adolescence is a time of wanting to fit in. Being different can make this difficult. How do we communicate to our children that being different is actually OK?
I learned that the little things matter. Like a math problem that starts out "Clara and her two dads drove 10 miles...
My son is a Junior in High School
His History text book - "The Americans, Reconstruction to the 21st Century" (the California Edition) has over 1000 pages (and weighs a ton). I decided to look for references to gays. There is a paragraph with a picture about the gay rights movement. There is a paragraph, and 40 pages later two additional sentences about the AIDS epidemic, and "homosexuals" are included in the list of those persecuted in the Holocaust. That's all I could find.
I know California passed a law so the next textbook is going to do a lot better. But what about now? Shouldn't we make sure our kids know that there were contributions made by LGBT people?
Shortly before the conference Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple) came out
I couldn't resist, so I posted this on our chapter's Facebook page:
Next was a post about Alan Turing. I knew the story, but my son didn't. "You mean that test guy was gay?" So I got to share the sad story of Alan Turing. A little research on the internet and more stories followed. So far my favorite is this weeks post:
Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated "Where the Wild Things Are" in 1963. He passed away in 2012, but if he were still alive today he wouldn't be allowed to read his book to a den of Cub Scouts. He wouldn't be allowed to show Boy Scouts how to draw. According to the Boy Scouts of America he wouldn't be suitable as an adult leader, just because he was gay.
Who knew?
I read that story to my children probably a 100 times. We never had this discussion afterwards, but we should have.
Me: "Did you know the person who wrote that book was gay."
Kid: "What does gay mean?"
Me: "Someone who falls in love with someone else who is the same gender. In this case it was a guy falling in love with another guy. They weren't allowed to get to married, although they would be if they were alive today. They were together for 50 years."
Kid: "You mean like Bert and Ernie?"
Me: "Yeah, like Bert and Ernie."
The little things matter
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Yours in Scouting,
Wendell Baker
SFE- Golden Gate
*OK, I got this: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Questioning, and Two Spirit.
