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More School Districts Consider Hiring Advocates for Homosexual Students
By Joanne M. Haas
CNS Correspondent
April 05, 2001


Madison, Wis. (CNSNews.com) - As the national debate intensifies over whether public schools should encourage tolerance of homosexuality, the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin is taking applications for a newly-created full-time advocate for students of alternative lifestyles.

Similar counselors are already in place in eight other public school districts around the country, and they report receiving frequent requests for information about how they set up their programs.

Seattle is one of the school districts with programs devoted to homosexual students. "This is a serious issue," said Lisa Love of the Seattle Public School's health education office, the district's go-to department on sexuality issues. "It is the (school's) legal responsibility to protect students from liability. I think the legal threat is very real."

Whether real or perceived, the threat of lawsuits resulting from the harassment of students because of their sexual orientation has some school districts thinking such counselors and programs are needed, not just in high schools, but in elementary schools as well.

"Historically, it has only been a high school issue," Love said. "We've had a few phone calls at the elementary level saying, 'We think some kids are asking questions about sexuality.' This is ground-breaking for us," Love said. "We're trying to figure out appropriate kinds of conversations. And the staff is not used to dealing with it."

Alan Horowitz, the sole full-time specialist at the "Out for Equity" program in Saint Paul, Minnesota Public Schools, said his program offers high school support groups, gay/straight alliances, and guest speakers among its services. And Horowitz said he is not surprised that younger students are now asking questions about their sexuality.

"Times have changed so quickly," Horowitz said. "If you just look at the last six years and how many gay characters there are on TV (shows). Over 30 have gay characters. This is a reflection on how society has changed."

Programs similar to those in Seattle and St. Paul are now likely to be established in Madison, where school board members voted 7-0 in February to hire the advocate for GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning) students before the end of the 2000-2001 school year. Plans call for the new staffer to be a teacher or guidance counselor who will be expected to "improve the academic achievement, emotional security, and personal acceptance," of students, while being a source of information about homosexuality for staff as well. The job has been posted internally, school officials said, and will be posted externally if necessary.

The Madison school board's action triggered a lot of debate within the city. Those who supported the hiring said the frequent harassment of homosexual students made it necessary. Opponents, however, such as Terrell Smith of Madison, criticized the plan to hire a homosexual advocate because of the precedent it would create.

"The board wishes to protect students who are harassed. Should there be an advocate for Christian students that are discriminated against because they pray at lunch or bring a Bible to school? An advocate for the Muslim students who wish to pray on Fridays?" Smith wrote in a published newspaper public forum on the hiring.

Smith, who has a lesbian sister and a close friend dying of AIDS, also worried that the advocate will fail to speak with the students about what he calls the "destructiveness of the homosexual lifestyle."

Debra Lehmann of the greater Madison area said in the same newspaper forum that the hiring seems to satisfy a special interest agenda. A better use of tax dollars, Lehmann said, would be to hire an advocate for all persecuted children.

"Fill it with someone who would promote programs that teach children the seemingly lost art of respect and consideration for all people who may be different but not any less valuable," she wrote.

The Seattle school district offers mostly two types of programs for students. There are the gay-straight alliances that are more political in nature. And there are the discussion groups where the topics are wide-ranging and determined by whoever attends. "The majority of them meet weekly at lunch and it is just an optional thing. The doors are open and you come if you like," Love said. "All the high schools have support groups, and those support groups are confidential."

In St. Paul, Horowitz said he helps teachers respond to the harassment of students, even those who are not homosexual.

"Slurs get hurled at students that aren't gay. Words run rampant. And there is a direct correlation between any type of slurs and the school violence that we see happen," said Horowitz, who worked as a elementary school teacher for 11 years in suburban New York City before accepting his current job in the Midwest about 18 months ago.

Love and Horowitz acknowledge that such programs have created concerns about counselors allegedly encouraging homosexuality. But Horowitz said science doesn't support that. "Sexual orientation is determined by age six. It's not possible scientifically," he said.

Love points to some of the responses in the district's student survey as an endorsement of the program. "I'm so glad there's a group," Love quoted one student's response. "I can't imagine (not) having some place for us to go."

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