The Gay/Straight Alliance at Hoover High School struggles with this question. Kids (gay and straight) meet once a week at lunch and talk about things that don't get talked about anywhere else.
"How do we combat stereotypes?"
"Were some of us born gay or was it something we learned?"
"Why do so many of the boys at our school want to kick our ___?"
"Why won't people accept us the way we are?"
I realize that the mere mention of the existence of such a club raises strong objections in many quarters, the primary one being that it has no place on a public school campus. Some would further argue that the presence of such a club legitimizes a deviant lifestyle and may cause students who are "leaning in that direction" to go over to the other side.
Others of you are perhaps more open to the idea of expanding your definition of humanity to incorporate homosexuality as one expression of it. Still others, I am sure, hover in the middle of that divide and have not made up their minds about the predominance of nature or nurture in the question of sexual orientation.
Having been a teacher of adolescents for 30 years, I still have some questions; but I'm fairly certain that a 17-year-old would not consciously choose to be homosexual. What I do know is that there is a segment of our student population that is gay. Most of those kids are struggling with that reality. I also know that the rate of teen suicide is highest among gay teens. Their world is surrounded by peers who regard them as freaks of nature and families that often will not accept them as they are. They see themselves as unlovable, a feeling no human being should have to endure.
