Britain to get a school for gay/bi/transgender students

ghost dog wrote: or people could just stop being hateful to whatever they do not identify as the "us." people out in the world, just to be clear.

Yes
just to be clear
i belive that on the broader scale such a measure will reinforce the differences between glbt and "straight" or hetero or ..i dont know what you guys say over there. which leads me to my next inquirey

is tea really that big of a deal? or is that just something yanks joke about

i tell people i lived in texas and sometimes they think i wear a pistol and rode a horse to school.
i tell them i wasnt really in that part of texas

anyway

i hope everyone who hasnt already, someday gets to have the experience of looking at and listening to someone that youve never met and who looks very different from you, but in the course of understanding what that person was saying- the idea or feeling they were trying to express- and realising thats ME... that me in there. I look different... i certainly wouldnt wear those sandals with that tie.. but thats ME

existentially its an akward moment because the next question begging to be asked is "are they really me or am i really them?"

And i mean this as an experience
as a realisation
not just a neato idea to be read about
once a person has had such a moment
the idea that we will make our worlds better
by increasing the psychological feeling of seperation between us
becomes absurd

ghost dog wrote: or people could just stop being hateful to whatever they do not identify as the "us." people out in the world, just to be clear.

but this, of course, is not going to happen. unless aliens intervene that is.

Jamie Stick wrote: I'm torn by this because LGBT students need safe places to go when their peers are being little buttholes, but cisgender and straight students aren't going to be able to learn from their LGBT friends without hearing what life is like for them and realizing that LGBT students are still human and very much like them...

I agree. This is not a clean and easy solution. But the problem is so ugly.

The state of Virginia just passed a law allowing business owners, which would include private hospital emergency rooms, to deny service to people believed to have "non-traditional sexualities." Imagine growing up in a place where the majority of voters put the legislators that passed that law in office. Then ask yourself if you might see the value of a safe place.

It isn't a long term solution. Of course we integration. Speaking on a personal level, I have driven a few kids to the hospital or had to patch them up myself because they were lgbtq or someone accused them of it, as though that were a crime. They took those beatings at school. I had no real option but to send them back. We can do better.

I am not, I admit, 100% objective on the issue. I'm trying.

My first reaction is to think that segregation is a bad idea, but I'm a relatively privileged middle class straight white male in the mostly liberal environment of Southern California, so I don't think I have any real understanding of what it must be like for a young LGBT individual in the real world. For me to pretend that I understand what these kids are going through would be absurd.

What I do know is that the vast majority of teenagers will spend at least some part of their teen years being angry little snots toward each other, and everyone else, for that matter. It would not surprise me to learn that there would be bullying in this new school as well. It would likely be for different reasons, but kids have a way of finding any perceived difference and exploiting it.

I think educating everyone about how much we are the SAME would go a lot further than pointing out how we are different and then segregating based on those differences. How about we start by teaching kids to stop being a-holes in general, regardless of their sexuality?

This is really tough. Like Senan I can't claim to have any idea what they're going through. I have a few lgbt friends but I met them all after high school. My gut reaction is that segregation is the opposite of what we want, but I also see Cabur's point. We can't sacrifice these kids on the hopes that future kids won't have to deal with it. That kind of choice should really be up to them.

I wonder if they took a poll of highschool kids in that area first to determine if it was something that they wanted.

LGBT college -maybe-....No, nope- doesn't even work then.

So many problems with this. What age do you start this at? I knew plenty of people that being LGBT was a phase (plenty that it wasn't, but enough to warrant this question): How would you determine when someone was officially LGBT? Would it be open to straight children that have LGBT parents? What if someone starts to unidentify as LGBT? Will they get booted, or will they be allowed to stay until they decide they want to go to their own local school? To which, doesn't that negate the whole concept? Is it ONLY open to LGBT?

As for teachers that can't handle the bullying- is that to say that the LGBT students will be forced to go to this school if they are within reasonable distance? Does it get government funding? If no on the questions in this paragraph, then what is the difference? You're not resolving the issue, you're just giving an option- but the teachers will need to be trained to deal with "homophobic bullying" none-the-less.

This is a dumb idea.

Alethea Thompson wrote: LGBT college -maybe-....No, nope- doesn't even work then.

So many problems with this. What age do you start this at? I knew plenty of people that being LGBT was a phase (plenty that it wasn't, but enough to warrant this question): How would you determine when someone was officially LGBT? Would it be open to straight children that have LGBT parents? What if someone starts to unidentify as LGBT? Will they get booted, or will they be allowed to stay until they decide they want to go to their own local school? To which, doesn't that negate the whole concept? Is it ONLY open to LGBT?

As for teachers that can't handle the bullying- is that to say that the LGBT students will be forced to go to this school if they are within reasonable distance? Does it get government funding? If no on the questions in this paragraph, then what is the difference? You're not resolving the issue, you're just giving an option- but the teachers will need to be trained to deal with "homophobic bullying" none-the-less.

This is a dumb idea.

Most of your questions are ones I had too.. regarding funding the college would get government funding assuming it was run like any other school.

I'm with Senan, that kids find differences between them so there would probably be bullying of some kind even at that school.. regardless of school policies, there are always stories here about bullying.

I can't speak from experience here, I've been bullied but not because of my sexuality (in fact I've had opposite experiences in that regard).. but I still think perhaps education is a better way of reducing bullying, than removing potential victims entirely.

My experience coming out as gay in high school wasn't exactly awesome, but I imagine things have changed somewhat since the 90s. Some kids were just cruel and teachers/staff weren't always much better.

I recall, for a while, thinking how great it would be to go to a school where everyone was LGBT. Like an oasis away from all the fear, hurt, and misunderstanding. But then, as I started talking with friends about being gay, what it was like and how I was different (or more significantly, how I was the same), they eventually came around. All except one student, if I remember correctly... and the one guy that did continue to make fun of me (most frequently in the showers, no less) turned out to be gay himself.

So I don't know that a separate school is really the answer. My high school years were tough, but because I chose to be honest and straightforward about who I was, those around me changed - and I changed. During that time is when I began to learn that I was an okay human being and that there was hope and the possibility for a world without as much prejudice toward LGBT people.

In the area where I live, there are plenty of resources for LGBT youth and places where they can go to hang out, learn about themselves, and spend time with others who face similar issues. Fortunately, the environment of the city in which I live is very accepting and tolerant, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if things have changed dramatically (in a positive way) since I was in school.

Back when I was in high school, people were still stuck in the 1980s, panicking about things like D&D , Satanism, and children being randomly abducted - and thought every gay person had AIDS. When I told people I was gay they would sometimes look at me like I was ill, but what was somehow worse was when they would tell me that they were sad for me because my life was going to be hard.

The world is changing, and I think that's in large part because kids are being exposed to a greater variety of people in their learning environments.

I think the answer here is as simple as it appears
this is not the way

The only demonstrable good i see in this is that in 20 years the glbt community will have unity and personality that makes today lobby look like kids writing letters to santa

But the hostility between the "sides" of this issue with be even greater

because the lesson that this instills is that there are two opposing sides to this issue

the lesson that people who belive in equality want to focus on

is that equality and unity are one sided issues

Unity works
thats the issue

unity works, try it

cause thats what u have to do for it to work, you have to try it.

Actually u have to commit to it you have to stick to it

yes kids will get beat up
Some will kill themselves
some will be murdered
thats happening now

the more seperation we teach
the more of these kid will die unneccessarily

We instill the idea that we are all so different that we need different schools and where does this end?

When they get out of high school should they now have differe t colleges? Then what?
Can we all still have the same car insurance?

The difference between feeling unique and feeling alone is that a unique person has a part to play in the bigger world
and the alone person feels that the larger world would prefer they didnt exist

And i dont see this as a glbt issue but as another variant of the issue of whether people ought to be judged by their vision and not by their image

My belif is that every person has the desire to hold a vision of excellence
and that the responsibility of everyone who understands that is to be supportive of each others visions without building any more walls of di-vision than absolutely neccessary

we are in this world together
it is in every instance an issue whether we support and accept that understanding or we try to deny it or work around it.

It is not enough to say "the rest of the world wont get it" and then act like our fears and our isolations protect us from something that we cannot face

I understand that everyone has the right to feel safe and that alot of the time members of the LGBT community dont feel safe in public schools. But i think this is addressing a symptom and not the sickness. If we taught more tolerance and understanding we wouldnt need to have separate schools. Separation like that could even breed more intolerance by making LGBT people less and less of a part of our lives. I'm not an expert or even overly knowledgeable on the subject but history shows that segregation never does anything to stop or lessen prejudice or intolerance.