Gayness, Multicultural Education and Community

Context/Premise:
Homosexuality, gays, gayness, lesbians, straight, invisible, speaking out, community, education, right vs. wrong, sin, stereotypes, the norm, conformity, recognition, silence, representations, sexual identity, challenge, power, abnormal, marginalization, identity, homogenous, purity, isolation, teachers, students, public schools, confidence, conflict and respect.

Argument:
Dennis Carlson argues that keeping “gayness in its place” within the public school community is something which is becoming increasingly “harder to sustain”.

Evidence:
“Gay people for the most part have been made absent, invisible, and silent within this community.”

“Public schools in particular have often promoted such “normalizing” conceptualization of community that are based on defining a cultural center or “norm” and positioning class, gender, race, and sexual others at the margins.”

“Since all normalizing communities maintain a center and margin in the face of opposition and resistance from those being marginalized, analysis needs to proceed through an account of the specific techniques and apparatuses of power that have been employed in the school to keep gayness “in its place” as an invisible presence.”

“Erasure of gayness in the curriculum, the closeting and witch hunting of gay teachers, and verbal and physical intimidation of gay teachers and students.”
These are the three techniques which Carlson uses to describe the process of normalizing or in other words keeping “gayness in its place”. Unfortunately these things are very true and gayness is not present enough in the school curriculum. Carlson talks of how “major textbook publishers avoid gayness like the plague.” He also talks of how gayness is evident within health textbooks only when being associated with the disease, the evidence which supports this is found below.

“One of the most popular health texts on the high school market is Health: A Guide to Wellness, which mentions homosexuals or homosexuality once in acknowledging that “the first group in the United States diagnosed with AIDS were male homosexuals.”

“One of the primary means of ensuring that gayness was an invisible presence in the school was through the dismissal of teachers who were found out to be homosexual.”
After reading this document I just do not understand why people cannot be excepting of other people who may have a difference in opinion or sexuality. If it does not affect you then why do you care? I also found myself gasping when I read about the student who outright humiliated the male substitute teacher while also making a fool of herself. I understand that everyone has a right to their opinion, but, to be cruel is something else. After reading this document it is clear that gayness is an issue with many conflicts, especially when in the context of public schools.