Is That All There Is? GLBTQ Adolescent Support in the Best of Circumstances

Case Narrative

Our most immediate concern for our son was, is, and will always be his physical and emotional safety in a world where many hate him for who he is, without knowing his talents, wit, sense of humor, ingenuity, and love of life. This concern led us to move into the city from the suburbs and to the private high school he now attends.

City Day School was established in 1945 as a racially integrated school at a time when the city was segregated. The school continues to place a primary importance on diversity and encouraging respect for all students. Known for its academic rigor and tolerance of diversity of all kinds, the school seemed to us and our son a place where he could make friends, develop comfortably into a responsible adult, and thrive academically. He officially “came out” to us within 3 months of enrolling in the school, and the school environment helped him to be able to take this important step.

There were a variety of supports in the school that welcomed our son and helped him to accept and identify publicly with who he was. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) issues were integrated into the curriculum. The day he visited the school, he sat in on an English class. During class, the assignment was to write a short story about two lovers kept apart, like Romeo and Juliet. One student asked, “Like two men?” and the teacher responded, “Yes, good idea.” During his freshman year, the school participated in National Coming Out Day, PRIDE Week, and Transgender Awareness Day. These activities reinforced the culture that it is an open environment. There were a number of physical signs in the school such as the “safe space” sign of an upside-down pink triangle on teachers’ doors. On Coming Out Day, the school was brightly decorated with rainbows, and teachers and students wore pins in support of the day. All the teachers made a point of saying in class, “Happy Coming Out Day.” It was a big event for the school. In summarizing his 1st year at City Day School, my son reported, “No one used homophobic slurs anymore, like ‘Oh, that’s so gay.’ The whole terminology that went along with a guy’s locker room atmosphere was gone.”

During our son’s freshman year, his first at the school, the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), Rainbow Connections, was led by a very strong student leader/advocate. A senior, praised by faculty and students alike, the GSA leader was described by my son: “She whipped the head of the diversity office into shape. She won the school’s diversity medal as a freshman! She was a very, very strong advocate. It was wonderful while she was there.” As we have come to learn, the supporting atmosphere he walked into as a freshman was largely influenced by the advocacy of this one student.

Now in his 2nd year, our son is not as enthusiastic about the safe space he entered last year.

It was wonderful while she was there, but now that she is gone [graduated] it seems like [we] haven’t taken quite as an aggressive stand as she had. We will be sitting in a [GSA] meeting and we will be talking and someone will say, OK, maybe we should do this, and then someone else will say, “Maybe that’s a bit too strong, maybe they will think we are shoving this down their throat.” I find myself saying, yeah, I think maybe we should [shove things down their throats].

Although the GSA is more diverse (straight, bisexual, homosexual), it is much smaller this year, and not as strong a voice in the school. The GSA meets less frequently and the group is not advertised as widely. Overall, the emphasis on GLBTQ advocacy has diminished. The Coming Out Day celebration this year was described by my son as “next to nothing.” The GSA is planning for PRIDE Week with four and five students, hardly enough to mount a multifaceted, schoolwide event. As our son noted, “We did not even have enough people to hold a bake sale.” In addition, the school scheduled a community service day in the middle of PRIDE Week, breaking the momentum of the week of advocacy. My son was recently disappointed to discover the literature elective based on GLBTQ authors and poets will not be offered next year, when he would have been eligible to take the course.

These developments are disconcerting to my son. “Students need to see that there is an open community here and they don’t have to wait for college to come out. Faculty should make more of a push when they see the students are not able.” He noted that the faculty heads of the biracial student club and the Black culture club are strong components of the club. As for the GSA, last year, several teachers rotated attendance at the meetings, so our son didn’t even know which one was the faculty advisor. This year, teachers don’t show up because the meetings are erratic, so he still does not know who is the faculty advisor. It is disappointing. “When we get the meetings straight, sometimes there are long silent moments and a faculty member will say, ‘Ok this needs to happen,’ but the GSA is not out there.” As my son notes, “It takes a lot for an adolescent to keep all this scheduling straight” and there is no faculty advisor prompting them. Faculty involvement fosters continuity for the clubs, particularly because the student institutional memory can be completely lost over the course of 4 years.

Although faculty and staff support have proven critical to the continuity of other groups, advocacy and support for GLBTQ students seem to have fallen primarily to the students themselves. School officials responded well to a constant, strong push from the prior student leader. Yet, this year, without constant reminder from the student leaders that events are upcoming, few activities have been sustained at the same level as in previous years.

As our son reflected,

The school might feel we are giving the same message; that the message might seem repetitive over 3 or 4 years, but the GSA and the school need to realize that every time a new freshman class comes in, it’s a new start. It is a new group of kids. The kids are coming from different schools, we don’t know what kinds of diversity they are experiencing or if they feel safe. Kids were saying the school was shoving diversity down our throats last year. So we backed off this year. But last year we didn’t hear homophobic remarks and heterosexist remarks that are taken as homophobic remarks. This year, we have had a huge increase in homophobic comments. It is not blatant, like let’s go beat up a gay kid, but more like “Oh, what a poof.”

Yet, our son is hopeful for the future.

It’s not all lost. I remember being so proud last year when we went to the [regional GSA] conference and being known as the school that is so advanced in diversity policy. Other schools were asking us what to do, how can we do what you do? Now we are resting on our laurels. The other schools are still looking up to us, but we aren’t looking at ourselves to see what needs to be done. I hate to say we will start again next year, because that just pushes it back a year, I think we need to turn things around now.

Recognizing that our son has been pressed to become an advocate for his self, we have worked to become more involved in building a supportive environment for him at the school. However, even in an environment that expects and welcomes parent advocacy, navigating the complexity and issues involved is challenging.

I joined the Parent Gay-Straight Alliance (PGSA). Meant for parents from across schools on the campus—upper and lower—we have realized that, while our concerns may be shared, our issues are very different. Led by a gay couple, the current focus of the PGSA seems to be on supporting the children of families headed by sexual minorities. I felt like an outsider, first, as an upper school parent, and, at times, as a heterosexual. It appears as if the PGSA has become an important convening space and support group for GLBT families. I offered to host a GSA student gift exchange at our house at the beginning of winter break. Without a strong GSA identity and a way to convene this group through the school, only one student came. We drove students to the regional GSA meeting but were unclear how to field questions from parents when it was clear they did not know exactly what kind of teen development conference our children were attending.

We are still left wondering, “How do we best support our son?” In an environment with such an explicit commitment to diversity, it has felt difficult to convince the school community to entertain the question, “Is that all there is?” Are we doing enough to provide the safe and supportive environment which we promised our child, the one that promised him it would be safe to “come out?”

Case Analysis

Homophobia is harmful to young people—and is often encouraged or ignored by the adults who raise and educate children (Wright, 2007). In a national survey (GLSEN, 2001), 90.8% of students reported hearing “that’s so gay” frequently in school, 84.3% reported hearing other homophobic words, like faggot or dyke, frequently or often, and almost one fourth (23.6%) reported hearing homophobic remarks from teachers or school staff at least some of the time. Almost half of young people reported that faculty or staff never intervene when homophobic incidents occur and indicated that less than one fourth of faculty or staff intervene always or most of the time. As a result, 68.6% of GLBTQ students report feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation. Many GLBT students report that not being able to concentrate on assignments when at school and excessive absences have contributed to their achieving lowered levels of academic success (Reis, 1999).

Homophobia is not just the problem of sexual minority young people. In a place where difference or suspicions of being gay are interpreted as negative, all children must edit their actions and conform to the heterosexual ideals of peers and adults to avoid the teasing, verbal abuse, and physical assaults of classmates. In this negotiation, children may lose certain types of connection with each other, mask certain types of emotions, risk engagement in risky sexual behaviors, and become perpetrators of violence and abuse themselves to avoid the critical and homophobic gaze of their peers (Kimmel & Messner, 2001; Wright, 2007). As argued by Cicchetti and Rogosch (2002), “contexts need to optimize adolescents’ striving for psychological autonomy (15).” In environments where young people are not free to become their authentic selves, psychological wellness and future potential are threatened (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2002). Given that homophobia and homophobic-motivated actions place young people at risk of participation in and perpetration of a multitude of negative behaviors, and that these attitudes affect they way young people feel about themselves and others, it is not enough to address homophobia once it has manifested itself as action. Homophobia must never be allowed to take hold in the minds and hearts of young people.

GLBTQ-Straight Student Alliances (GSAs) are cocurricular organizations where students can seek the support of peers and faculty advisors and plan programming about sexual orientation and gender-identity issues (Reis, 1999). GSA’s have proven effective in improving the climate for GLBTQ students and reducing homophobia in many schools. Thirty-five percent of students in schools with GSAs said that GLBTQ students could be open about their identity in school compared with 12% in schools without GSAs (Reis, 1999). Students involved in GSAs overwhelmingly agree that GSAs make a positive difference in their lives (Reis, 1999). As one students said, “The GSA like saved my life!” (Sadowski, 2001).

Yet, as this family’s story demonstrates, if GSAs are to be a helpful source of support, they must be thoughtfully structured, respectfully supported, and intentionally integrated into the fabric of the school community. Responsibility for such organizations should not fall solely to students. Research on GSAs indicates that faculty and staff support, education and training for members of the school community, appropriate mental health services, and integrating supports for GLBT students into the school curriculum are important elements of meeting the needs of GLBT young people (Sadowski, 2001).

Findings from this case indicate several specific actions for schools. First, faculty need to step into the breach when the GSA needs support. GLBTQ young people are not generally raised by homosexual parents. Unlike members of racial, religious, or ethnic subcultures, gay or lesbian adolescents are likely to feel isolated in their families. Although the family profiled in this case went to extraordinary means to support their child, it is not uncommon for a GLBTQ individual to be rejected by one or both parents (Raymond, 1994). Given that positive role models, support structures, and adequate information are necessary for GLBTQ adolescents to move through the coming out process with a positive sense of self, affinity groups, like GSAs, are an essential tool to foster positive identity formation.

Second, the GSA cannot be the only support structure in the school. Integrating GLBTQ themes into the course curriculum, hiring GLBTQ faculty who are comfortably “out of the closet,” having a schoolwide policy/response to homophobic language, and connecting students with additional community resources are examples of additional ways that administrators might foster a more affirming culture for GLBTQ students.

Third, consciousness-raising for GLBTQ issues is not a one-shot effort. Ongoing dialogue and activities are necessary to sustain climate change. The efforts must become integrated into the structure of the school—the school culture, in the curriculum, and in extracurricular activities.

Fourth, noting the need to educate parents, the student profiled here suggests:

If there was something like a parent diversity night, like the sophomore parent college night, I think that would be good. Just like we have freshman diversity, we should have parent diversity night that is obligatory.

Short of an obligatory session, the boy in this case suggested including a discussion of GLBTQ issues during the fall parent potluck dinners at the school. The student further suggested that just as the school periodically sends home letters related to alcohol and substance abuse, they should be sending home letters related to sexual identity and GLBTQ issues to ensure parents consider safe home and community environments. Summarizing the experiences of his family, the student profiled here offered the following perspective, “There will always be calm before the storm. We can’t assume that it will always come from the school and push to the home, now we have to come from the home and push at the school.”

In conclusion, a stated commitment to diversity cannot satisfy the requirements of an ongoing conversation about whether schools are meeting the needs of students. Although in many ways this case may represent the best possible scenario—a dream for many administrators, students, and parents—it also serves to instruct in the structures necessary to sustain such an ideal. Although this may be a safer place than most, it is not an entirely safe space for the student profiled here. There is still much work to be done.

In some ways, students in an environment such as this may be more vulnerable than students in a more overtly homophobic environment, where the responsibility to guard one’s self is more explicit. Assured of support, this student has assumed the benefits and challenges of being “out.” Such public visibility could allow him to become a more direct target of homophobic actions.

Teaching Notes

This case describes how one family chose a “safe” school and struggles to keep it so. The case challenges education administration students to experience school through the eyes of a young man who is gay, and his family, and to determine what is adequate student support. Although acceptance of GLBTQ adolescents in high schools is growing, the experience of this family suggests that creating and maintaining a safe environment for GLBTQ students requires constant vigilance, even in the best of environments. As school administrators face competing pressures from stakeholders, GLBTQ advocacy is often left to the students, unlike other types of diversity advocacy based on race, culture, or gender. This case prompts students to not only discuss potential administrative strategies but also to clarify their own values and feelings related to GLBTQ issues.

Following, we present a framework for discussing/analyzing this case with students. Focus questions are used throughout to support student learning and critical engagement of main concepts. We conclude with suggested activities to further extend student learning and engagement.

A Primary Prevention Framework (Albee & Gullotta, 1997; Bloom, 1996) is helpful in conceptualizing school-based prevention and support strategies. Primary prevention is defined as “coordinated actions seeking to prevent predictable outcomes . . . and to promote desired potentialities in individuals and groups in their physical and sociocultural settings over time” (p. 2; Bloom, 1996). At the core of such efforts are four principles/assumptions (Albee & Gullotta, 1997): (a) Efforts should be proactive and seek to foster strength not reduce manifest deficits, (b) efforts will be focused on total populations and not the provision of services on a case-by-case basis, (c) education and social engineering (not therapy and rehabilitation) are the main tools and models of the initiative, and (d) equipping people with personal and environmental resources for resilience is the best of all ways to prevent/buffer maladaptive problems not trying to deal with problems that have already manifested themselves.

Bloom (1996) argues that primary prevention must increase individual strengths, social supports, and physical environmental resources while decreasing individual limitations, social stresses, and physical environmental pressures to effectively prevent the proliferation of maladaptive behaviors and understandings. By working with schools, students, and their families to shift their understandings of homophobia and providing supports and strategies that they may use to make changes in their homes and social environments, GSAs and other school-based interventions may increase individual and environmental capacities to respond to homophobia while decreasing the presence and impact of homophobia in these same environments.

The Preventative Problem-Solving Process (PPSP) is a helpful guide for moving school-based efforts from theory into practice (Bloom, 1996). In Phase 1, GLBTQ advocates must build support from stakeholders and assess the social and political landscape for their work and identify potential problems and potentials (Bloom, 1996).

In Phase 2, advocates should develop programs and strategies aimed at individualizing abstract theories (Bloom, 1996). For example, it is important to have individuals discuss their personal experiences of homophobia or alternative family structures.

In Phase 3, advocates should implement, monitor, correct, and evaluate the program (Bloom, 1996).

In Phase 4, advocates should refine and expand their efforts.

Suggested Activities

For additional information and resources on supporting GLBT young people in schools and fostering a safe, antihomophobic environment, please see the GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators’ Network) website: www.glsen.org.