During the years I was advocating for GLBT students being listed among the protected classes of students in school district policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination because it was important to include the words “sexual orientation” so as to remove all doubt that policies covered them, and not leave the application of policies toward them up to the interpretation of individual district staff from janitor to superintendent based on their personal religious and political beliefs, one of the major objections was expressed in the form of the question, “If we add them, we will have to add others. How long is this list going to get?”
The answer was, obviously, as long as needed to protect all students.
Now, granted, my concern was for the GLBT kids so I was intent on their inclusion, but in further attempts to have an excuse to avoid doing the right thing, I was asked why not the fat kid, the left handed kid, or the kid with two different color eyes.
Advocacy has its cost. There is a lot of energy, emotion and time involved in what is done for no pay. There is the toll of dealing with uninformed reactions both public and private, such as the use of derogatory stereotypes on the internet, letters that appeared in my mailboxes at school and at home, and the newspapers, anonymous phone messages, print and broadcast media, and public displays of ignorance like the parent who removed her daughter from my class to prevent me from molesting her and the parent in the grocery store who pulled her child away from me and closer to herself while informing me I would not touch her child, both clearly weak on the concept that a Gay man had no interest in their daughters, or their sons for that matter. So, although I may have chosen to put my time, energy, reputation, and possibly my career on the line for the students with whom I identified and whose school experience I could understand, I pointed out that those who identified with the fat kid, the left handed kid, or the kid with two different color eyes.should step forward as they are most likely more familiar with their experiences than I, while I also proposed the addition of the words “or for any other reason” to include everyone.
If they claimed the school district protected all students from bullying, harassment, and discrimination, why the reluctance to make it clear that that included one group of students that was historically mistreated in the buckle of the Bible Belt.
And why ask how long the list of protected students would have to be? It would have to be as long as necessary to protect students from the personal, religious, or political beliefs of those who worked in the school system that students by law had no choice but to attend everyday.
Although he failed to list which ones, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said that he considers certain human rights unnecessary and superfluous, yet claimed that this did not mean he wants to curtail any U.S. civil rights.
So which rights with which we are self-evidently endowed by our creator, did he mean, and what is the criteria upon which that choice is based?
As he explained at the Kansas State University’s Landon Lecture Series, politicians
“From time to time have framed pet causes as fights for rights to bypass the normal process by which political ends are achieved. This is an imperfect analogy, but the thirteenth ice cream cone isn’t as good as the first one was. And with respect to unalienable rights, more, per se, is not always better.”
Who decides which are rights and which are pet causes, and does the recognition of a right somehow reduce the value of previously recognized ones?
Rather than seeing the recognition of rights being applied to people who have been denied those rights by those who already enjoy them whether through purposeful action or through not realizing what one group takes for granted another may not be recognized as having, Pompeo believes that recognition dilutes the rights the others already have.
Pompeo opposed the repeal of the anti-gay military ban, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, called marriage equality “a shocking abuse of power” that “flies in the face of centuries of shared understanding of our Constitution,” opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act because the law would cover GLBT people, and introduced legislation to give religious people a license to discriminate.
Meanwhile the administration of the president who claimed,
“As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology”,
has decided that America will no longer pressure African nations to repeal their anti-GLBT laws which imprison and kill GLBT people, because such laws are an example of “religious freedom.”
We seem to have returned to the opinion that people having their rights recognized reduces those of the people who already enjoy them, and like the school district in which I worked there is the fear that the list of rights will be longer than it is now.
In 1843, the state of Massachusetts, recognizing that the White male was the benchmark for many things, eliminated the need for a long list by supplying a simpler requirement.
“General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section 102. All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens, to make and enforce contracts, to inherit, purchase, to lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property.”
Perhaps, that should become the law of the land.
And, perhaps the school district should have followed suit and simply stated that all students have the same rights that cannot be denied and are entitled to equal treatment in all policies without exception by stating,
“All students within the school district shall have the same rights enjoyed by the heterosexual white male students”.