CKNW Editorial
for March 22, 2000

I do not intend to get hot, bothered and emotional about the so-called gay clubs in schools but I do think that there has been much more heat than light shed on this subject. Having listened to the arguments, both on the show yesterday, and elsewhere I think that the parents ought to be honest about this issue. It's not a question of teachers over stepping the bounds and encouraging clubs - that's been done by teachers since time immemorial.

In fact when kids do form clubs, most parents wanted to be sure that there was teacher supervision. Most schools have a newspaper which invariably involves the staff .. similarly with arts clubs ... radio societies and the list goes on. Good Principals and good staffs try to maintain some connection with student organizations both to help and to supervise. In fact as I said yesterday morning, if parents are worried about homosexual kids having the opportunity to seduce straight kids they ought to seek the abolition of drama clubs.

There are a number of undertones to this. There is the religious conviction amongst many parents that homosexuality is a sin and that their kids ought to be kept away from sinners. We are dealing here, however, with secular organizations. If the religious argument were to prevail one would ban minorities from schools and certainly ban any associations that tried to being kids of different religions together. In my own life experience I belonged to the Hi-Y in school where the teacher concerned brought us together with our Jewish counterparts. Parents, disguising as best they could, their own anti Semitism, complained that we Protestants and Catholics were at risk of being converted. In fact, it did a great deal to erase from our growing minds the virulent anti Semitism that prevailed in the adult community.

The other major undertone is that somehow clubs which bring homosexual and heterosexual kids together will encourage straight kids to convert to a homosexual life style. There is, many parents allege, a gay agenda. If this truly were a concern of parents you would think that they would want all sports banned so that gay kids and straight kids wouldn't mingle in shower and changing rooms. The fact is that you are not going to have straight kids converted. To say that some kids with a tendency to homosexuality might switch really doesn't accord with common sense. These kids, however many there are, and I would think they're very few in number, are hardly going to want to place themselves in the position of derision gay kids find themselves in. They are far more likely to do what a close friend of mine in High School and Law School did - hide the fact of his homosexuality even unto a tragically unhappy marriage.

We are not dealing here with stupid blobs of protoplasm. We're dealing with wide awake minds who have known about homosexuality for a very long time by the time they get to High School. Parents might like to pretend that this isn't so but trust me, it is. And we're dealing with kids who in many ways will reflect the attitudes of their parents toward many things - racial tolerance, religious tolerance and sexual tolerance. These kids, unlike their parents, are growing up in times where the differences in school are very marked - just as differences in the overall community are marked. Kids can be cruel. The need to associate with the majority is so strong that the desire to dissociate from minorities is even stronger. Kids have to learn hard lessons from things like the Reena Virk case. To say that they should learn them at home isn't very helpful because by no means do all the homes preach the sort of tolerance kids must learn.

To those parents who truly think that their kids will be seduced by gays in any sort of a club I say relax. If your kids are straight, they'll not be seduced. If they are gay or bisexual, that will be the case in any event and school is the last place they will want that fact demonstrated.

If, on the other hand, you believe that homosexuality is a sin and that your kids ought not be exposed in any way to gays, you have a big problem. Short of moving your family to a desert island I really don't know how you will cope. Homosexuality has always been with us and always will. If you think about it a bit, it might solve your problem if you faced up to this fact, told your kids that the common sense rule of "Live and let live" is the law of the land, then relaxed and let them make their ways through the perils of life with confidence that with the good upbringing you have given them they will be able to handle whatever comes their way.