Posted August 1st, 2003 by Michelle

One year ago yesterday I was on the border of the United States and Canada, in Glacier National Park. I’d been away from home for three weeks training in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the days before had driven north to the starting point of my trek. I’ve been thinking about the influence of last summer, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually has changed my life. Since then, I’ve no fear of the outdoors, of heat, of lack of sleep, of not showering for weeks. I also got a good taste of what it’s like to think you are doing something great and to be reduced to doing not much more than cooking dinner. But within weeks I could also pitch a tent in under two minutes and make dinner out of the dregs of vegetables and canned soup at the bottom of a cooler. I also have only approached my hair dryer, and any serious makeup for that matter, once since returing last October. And that was for a Christmas party.

I also feel as though it has made me lust for the Peace Corps. Wherever I go, I will be essentially on my own, and whatever happens will be a result of my work. I’m scared I won’t be able to go for some random health reason. I’m trying to remain open and ready for whatever decision comes from Washington but I’m also… unsure. It’s a terrific lesson in patience.

Yesterday I at work I rushed upstairs during my shift in hopes of an available bathroom and a co-worked was sitting at a desk reading the paper. The headlines screamed “GAY HIGHSCHOOL TO OPEN IN NEW YORK”. My first instinct was to say to my co-worker, “Hey, cool, I can’t believe they are doing that”. Ten minutes later, as my station downstairs was undoubtedly going up in flames, I was still sitting at the desk talking about this high school. The person reading the paper was a twenty-year-old gay man, and as we talked I was given pause.

My initial thoughts when debating this idea were simply this: enough money and recognition is going towards the gay community that they can open a school. Gay kids won’t get harassed and beaten anymore. Gay kids can be open as early as Freshman year of high school without fear of repercussion.

But then… gay kids will always have it harder than non-gays. In my lifetime there will not be full tolerance, and hate crimes will not cease to exist. So do we raise our gay kids in an environment where they will never have to deal with hate, with fear, with violence against their kind, and then send them off into the work force where no such illusion exists? Do we let them form themselves during those hugely important years without learning to tell homophobes to f**k off? Do we let them believe that they will never be harassed for being gay, and by doing this, not allow them the defense mechanisms that they will need for the rest of their lives? Can we really create this false sense of security that could ultimately, and let’s be specific and historic on this issue, get them killed?

I’m not saying that just because every kid in the school is gay that they will not have a hard time. High school is hard no matter what. And maybe if it is a multi-racial school they will learn what it is like to be different from one another. But if you put 100 white gay kids in one school, I have to believe that they will not learn to deal with the real world.

But even more than that, I worry about the kids in the regular high schools who were the abusers. If we take all of the gays out of the non-gay high school, that will create even more ignorance and fear among the kids that were raised to hate gay people. The best thing to happen to a homophobe, in a situation like this, is to find out that one of their friends is gay. The fearful person then learns first-hand that their friend is both their friend, and worthy of that, but also gay. What if the grade and high schools had remained segregated? How do you suppose I grew up not believing what I was told but what I experienced first hand? My first crush was on a black boy at Taylor Elementary. I was in the 4th grade, and his name was Stephen. The year was 1981. Not too many years before, we would have been in separate schools, and I would not have been able to concieve of having a crush on a black person.

I don’t want hate-filled people growing up in schools that enforce that hate because of seclusion and segregation. And I don’t want gay kids growing up without learning to defend and believe in themselves when their very nature is attacked. I cannot believe that this is a good idea.