During the time that I was dealing with both the administration at the high school’s almost comic overreaction to a simple list of names of GLBT people who contributed to society that I had posted on my classroom bulletin board during “Gay History Month” which, who knew, was going to become a bigger thing than anticipated, I never forgot that the main and original objective of my advocacy was to make the inclusion of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender students in the policies on discrimination, harassment and bullying in School District policies a reality, and to have the district hold in-services for teachers on the existence and needs of Gay students in our schools just as it did for all the other groups to which our students belonged.
I had been informed by the Office on Civil Rights in Dallas, Texas that wherever the word “Student” appeared in any policy or statement of the District, it automatically included the Gay students. The problem was that this inclusion was left up to the individual feelings of individual teachers without a district wide statement. So, if I were “liberal”, inclusion was automatic, however, if I were less than liberal and thought, perhaps, that there was a moral objection to homosexuality and discounted the existence of Gay students, I might be less than willing to be inclusive unless, in spite of my personal bias, I was told that while dealing with students I must be.
It was at this time that I “discovered” the internet as a way to keep a record of events and to keep people informed of them. I felt that, if the discourse became public and the terms defined not by others, but by Gay people, the “issue” would be clear and people would become educated as to facts and less adhering to stereotypes and old wives‘ tales.
My being polite and keeping most of the district administration’s reluctance to do the moral and legal thing in-house, this, rather than its being seen as my being polite and professional, was being used to either not do anything since no one knew something needed to be done, or they used their advantage as a public school district with all its political, religious, and, media outlets kept on spreading negative tropes about Gay people and I saw that they were seeding the ground so they could rely on their propaganda having prepared people to give them support for their defending the good people against people making unreasonable demands that threaten children.
It was about this time that GAYOKC.COM popped up on the internet and having seen how video use had evolved from home movies over the years to what we have today, maybe, this internet thing would evolve the same way and here was a person starting a Gay web news site, just at the right time.
Rob Abiera came out of nowhere, organically. There was no training, no assignment to duty, no business model under the control of a media mogul. There was just a guy with an interest in computers when it was all new and becoming a major instrument of change, and, as the details of events became known to the Community because of his publication, he exposed what should have been kept in the school district’s backroom being done by unknown people in the shadows that was supposed to protect the identities of those with the big public Gay smiles, but had the knives at the ready to plunge into the Community’s back in hopes of reward.
He was active with the Oklahoma Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus and in October of 1998 his news site came live hoping to get OKC’s GLBT Community to take advantage of the resources available to them on the web. He focused on current and breaking local, state, national and world news, and provided access to online human rights resources and local businesses, groups and services. He did all the work, webmaster, designer, publisher, editor, and head writer.
His publication would no longer give those who were obstinate in their erroneous assumptions a comfortable space in which they could hide from realities and pretend they were making quiet progress when in actuality they were inert. Because the district seemed reluctant to do the right thing for the right reasons, it became important to have it done for whatever reason appealed to the District‘s self-interest. The Board might see that in-services would be preventative, and that clearly inclusive policy language would help avoid future litigation.
The district lost deniability and could not claim they were not aware there was an issue if people with internet access were reading all about it.
Although there were many times the Board or its agents could have spoken clearly to the events transpiring at my school, the District seemed content to let things unfold with very little interference. I took the opportunity through the website to make it obvious to anyone who read the posts that there was a mindset within the District and a passivity that let a hostile atmosphere exist. People needed to see what the problem was. If my Principal was willing to supply proof of the problem and I to supply examples of the incidences of hostility toward things beneficial to Gay Students, I had no problem airing them for total removal of deniability.
What the district read, the public did, and either the District would respond, or people would begin becoming concerned and address the issue and the District’s reluctance to do the right thing.
In order to control the discourse and not hand it over to others, those of us who were working to get movement from the District needed to become visible and speak openly. Otherwise, we would spend all our time defending ourselves from those who, although claiming to know no one who was Gay, felt perfectly free to tell people what we thought, who we were, and what we meant. Not being from Oklahoma City originally; having total support from my family and friends; and, because of this, having no one who could be embarrassed by the revelation of my being Gay, I had nothing to lose, and, therefore, had the moral obligation to at least try to accomplish the changes necessary. To not do it would have been immoral.
Whenever I had a meeting, received some document, or anything happened relating to the school, with the district, and reactions to any progress, I would send copies of the documents and a write up of events so people could follow things in real time with some days having more than one update.
It was such an effective approach that when I arrived at school one day, I found a letter-sized piece of paper hanging on my mailbox in the teacher’s room with a computer printed picture of the opening page of the website on it and a note accusing me of duplicity because while claiming my motivation was pure, I had a website. I wasn’t sure what the connection between my motivation and having a website might be, but it did show the website was having an effect and that people were reading it and were either the good or the bad guys.
Ownership of the site had to be clarified. Beethoven may have written the piano sonatas, but what good is it unless he went to the piano. Over time, the principal would refer to the website in such a way that he knew it was not mine and because of that, perhaps, the concerns I expressed might have actually gone further than me, and was referred to by the principal a few times in meetings.
Whenever he referred to the anagram for the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network instead of pronouncing it “glisten”, its regular pronunciation, the principal would just insist on ” gilson”. With “Abiera” it always came out as some more complicated Portuguese sounding name, unless he slipped and said it correctly. I assumed his pettiness made him feel better and, perhaps, more in control.
National Gay advocacy groups have fancy offices, budgets based on donations, and slick media presentations that give the impression that they are the reason for progress in the GLBT Community as if they patrol society to weed out the oppression and apply rights to places they find do not have them. However, in reality, change comes about because some individual saw an injustice, spoke up, maybe had to act up, and may at some point either come to the attention of the nationals or find they would be more effective with back-up and sought them out. In both cases there is the 50/50 chance that the discovery won’t happen or the National has no interest to help but a 100% guarantee that if the individual produces good, they will try to find a way to have it appear they had been there all along.
In 1999 two major national organizations refused to help in Oklahoma City because they claimed they needed to be mindful of their fiscal responsibility to donors and, as Oklahoma city was not a big name town yet and a victory there would most likely go unnoticed, chose, instead, to back a similar case in a big name city which they lost because the OKC case favored the teacher while the other clearly the administration. Rather than a win in the Bible Belt which would have been huge, they lost in a big city.
Although lodged by a Gay teacher, the OKC win would have had national application about every teacher’s control of their classroom space, but the loss increased administrative control over what had been traditionally the fiefdom of the teacher.
What was done in Oklahoma City had to be done by locals and I have the receipts to show it was.
Rob’s website was local and relentless in its covering and exposing of the machinations employed by those who through bigotry, willful ignorance, or a desire to throw the kids under the bus so they could have the jobs and keep making the administrative salaries and perks.
He is a fine example of an effective keyboard warrior, he produced, and is proof that change comes about because of the little people.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.