The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian
Rights have filed a lawsuit on behalf of five students, alleging the
school district's policies on gays are not only discriminatory, but also
foster an environment of unchecked anti-gay bullying. The Department of
Justice has begun a civil rights investigation as well. The
Anoka-Hennepin school district declined to comment on any specific
incidences but denies any discrimination, maintaining that its broad
anti-bullying policy is meant to protect all students. "We are not a
homophobic district, and to be vilified for this is very frustrating,"
says superintendent Dennis Carlson, who blames right-wingers and gay
activists for choosing the area as a battleground, describing the
district as the victim in this fracas. "People are using kids as pawns
in this political debate," he says. "I find that abhorrent."
Ironically, that's exactly the charge that students, teachers and
grieving parents are hurling at the school district. "Samantha got
caught up in a political battle that I didn't know about," says Sam
Johnson's mother, Michele. "And you know whose fault it is? The people
who make their living off of saying they're going to take care of our
kids."
Located a half-hour north of Minneapolis, the 13 sprawling towns that
make up the Anoka-Hennepin school district – Minnesota's largest, with
39,000 kids – seems an unlikely place for such a battle. It's a
soothingly flat, 172-square-mile expanse sliced by the Mississippi
River, where woodlands abruptly give way to strip malls and then fall
back to placid woodlands again, and the landscape is dotted with
churches. The district, which spans two counties, is so geographically
huge as to be a sort of cross section of America itself, with its small
minority population clustered at its southern tip, white suburban sprawl
in its center and sparsely populated farmland in the north. It also
offers a snapshot of America in economic crisis: In an area where just
20 percent of adults have college educations, the recession hit hard,
and foreclosures and unemployment have become the norm.
For years, the area has also bred a deep strain of religious
conservatism. At churches like First Baptist Church of Anoka,
parishioners believe that homosexuality is a form of mental illness
caused by family dysfunction, childhood trauma and exposure to
pornography – a perversion curable through intensive therapy. It's a
point of view shared by their congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who has
called homosexuality a form of "sexual dysfunction" that amounts to
"personal enslavement." In 1993, Bachmann, a proponent of school prayer
and creationism, co-founded the New Heights charter school in the town
of Stillwater, only to flee the board amid an outcry that the school was
promoting a religious curriculum. Bachmann also is affiliated with the
ultraright Minnesota Family Council, headlining a fundraiser for them
last spring alongside Newt Gingrich.
Though Bachmann doesn't live within Anoka-Hennepin's boundaries
anymore, she has a dowdier doppelgänger there in the form of anti-gay
crusader Barb Anderson. A bespectacled grandmother with lemony-blond
hair she curls in severely toward her face, Anderson is a former
district Spanish teacher and a longtime researcher for the MFC who's
been fighting gay influence in local schools for two decades, ever since
she discovered that her nephew's health class was teaching
homosexuality as normal. "That really got me on a journey," she said in a
radio interview. When the Anoka-Hennepin district's sex-ed curriculum
came up for re-evaluation in 1994, Anderson and four like-minded parents
managed to get on the review committee. They argued that any form of
gay tolerance in school is actually an insidious means of promoting
homosexuality – that openly discussing the matter would encourage kids
to try it, turning straight kids gay.
"Open your eyes, people," Anderson recently wrote to the local
newspaper. "What if a 15-year-old is seduced into homosexual behavior
and then contracts AIDS?" Her agenda mimics that of Focus on the Family,
the national evangelical Christian organization founded by James
Dobson; Family Councils, though technically independent of Focus on the
Family, work on the state level to accomplish Focus' core goals,
including promoting prayer in public spaces, "defending marriage" by
lobbying for anti-gay legislation, and fighting gay tolerance in public
schools under the guise of preserving parental authority – reasoning
that government-mandated acceptance of gays undermines the traditional
values taught in Christian homes.
At the close of the seven-month-long sex-ed review, Anderson and her
colleagues wrote a memo to the Anoka-Hennepin school board, concluding,
"The majority of parents do not wish to have there [sic] children taught
that the gay lifestyle is a normal acceptable alternative."
Surprisingly, the six-member board voted to adopt the measure by a
four-to-two majority, even borrowing the memo's language to fashion the
resulting districtwide policy, which pronounced that within the health
curriculum, "homosexuality not be taught/addressed as a normal, valid
lifestyle."
The policy became unofficially known as "No Homo Promo" and passed
unannounced to parents and unpublished in the policy handbooks; most
teachers were told about it by their principals. Teachers say it had a
chilling effect and they became concerned about mentioning gays in any
context. Discussion of homosexuality gradually disappeared from classes.
"If you can't talk about it in any context, which is how teachers
interpret district policies, kids internalize that to mean that being
gay must be so shameful and wrong," says Anoka High School teacher Mary
Jo Merrick-Lockett. "And that has created a climate of fear and
repression and harassment."
Suicide is a complex phenomenon; there's never any one pat reason to
explain why anyone kills themselves. Michele Johnson acknowledges that
her daughter, Sam, likely had many issues that combined to push her over
the edge, but feels strongly that bullying was one of those factors.
"I'm sure that Samantha's decision to take her life had a lot to do with
what was going on in school," Johnson says tearfully. "I'm sure things
weren't perfect in other areas, but nothing was as bad as what was going
on in that school."
The summer before Justin Aaberg started at Anoka High School, his mother asked, "So, are you sure you're gay?"
Justin, a slim, shy 14-year-old who carefully swept his blond bangs
to the side like his namesake, Bieber, studied his mom's face. "I'm
pretty sure I'm gay," he answered softly, then abruptly changed his
mind. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!" he shouted – out of character for the quiet boy – "I'm positive. I am gay," Justin proclaimed.
"OK." Tammy Aaberg nodded. "So. Just because you can't get him
pregnant doesn't mean you don't use protection." She proceeded to
lecture her son about safe sex while Justin turned bright red and
beamed. Embarrassing as it was to get a sex talk from his mom, her easy
affirmation of Justin's orientation seemed like a promising sign as he
stood on the brink of high school. Justin was more than ready to turn
the corner on the horrors of middle school – especially on his
just-finished eighth-grade year, when Justin had come out as gay to a
few friends, yet word had instantly spread, making him a pariah. In the
hall one day, a popular jock had grabbed Justin by the balls and
squeezed, sneering, "You like that, don't you?" That assault had so
humiliated and frightened Justin that he'd burst out crying, but he
never reported any of his harassment. The last thing he wanted to do was
draw more attention to his sexuality. Plus, he didn't want his parents
worrying. Justin's folks were already overwhelmed with stresses of their
own: Swamped with debt, they'd declared bankruptcy and lost their home
to foreclosure. So Justin had kept his problems to himself; he felt
hopeful things would get better in high school, where kids were bound to
be more mature.
No comments:
Post a Comment