http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-37-spring-2010/homo-highSoon after the Center on Halsted opened in 2007, Rick Garcia, whose office overlooks Halsted Street, began to notice something troubling.
The Center, near downtown Chicago, is perhaps the Midwest’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center. “All of sudden,” says Garcia, political director for the LGBT advocacy group Equality Illinois, “the street was inundated with kids — kids who’d been abandoned by their families, who had nowhere else to go. All I could think was, ‘Why aren’t these babies in school?’”
Chicago’s public school system had a problem. LGBT students were three times more likely than straight peers to miss school because of threats to their safety, according to a 2003 districtwide survey; and students who faced regular harassment were more likely to drop out. For these kids, schools were failing.
In fall 2008, Chicago officials took a drastic step. They proposed a “gay-friendly” high school where students of all sexual orientations could learn in bully-free classrooms where a safe and welcoming environment was the norm.
Some gay-rights advocates — including Garcia — publicly questioned whether the district’s plan to protect LGBT students only worked, in reality, to segregate them.
“If we create ‘Homo High,’ we don’t have to prohibit this behavior in other schools,” Garcia said recently, recounting his opposition. “The reality is, we have to live as neighbors. We have to learn to tolerate one another, if not accept one another. All our kids should be safe in all our schools; segregation is not the answer.”
Officials eventually withdrew the proposal. If it had passed, the new campus would have opened this September, becoming one of only a handful of LGBT-friendly public high schools in the United States.
Anti-gay backlash played a large role in the opposition to Chicago’s proposed Pride Campus. Two other LGBT-friendly schools — New York City’s Harvey Milk High School and The Alliance School in Milwaukee — have also sparked ire from social conservatives.
end of quote (mods this is a very large article with very small paragraphs so I am quoting a few more than 5)
I don't know what I feel about this. I know from my experience that I would have loved to have had this option when I was a kid, but I also know that if we build one school for the gay students then we might well let the rest be even worse for gay students. It really can be a tough situation. Some gay students, even in 2010, get tortured in their schools. I think that all students, even anti gay ones, are better off for the presence of gay students in their schools. I don't have all the answers here, I am not sure who does, but the article is an interesting, and necessary read.
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