I had a dream one night while I was in high school. In the dream, my dear friend died in a motorcycle accident. I woke up in the morning and I was still crying. My pillow was soaked with tears. The dream was so real I sat in bed that morning trying to figure out if he was really dead or not. It wasn’t until I was at school later in the day and I saw him in the flesh that I could relax and let go of the dream.
The dream made me painfully conscious that I was in love with him. He was a fabulous young man, intelligent and athletic and funny. But he liked girls. I had listened to him for hours while he mooned over girls in our class. I could never tell him the true nature of my affection. So I loved him in silence, and dreamed my tragedy in private.
As I reflected on this private, personal memory, I thought about all the high school students today who are secretly in love with someone of the same gender. One of the most important tasks of adolescence is learning to fall in love. And yet for gay and lesbian youth, there are very few safe places to talk about it. Should they go to a teacher or parent? And what if at 16 years of age, this young person gets rejected, ridiculed or kicked out of their home? Could any of us have survived that?
There’s been a lot of media attention to bullying in high school. I believe it is time for parents and teachers to do the hard work of creating safe places for coming out. That means teachers and administrators saying publicly ‘our gay and lesbian students have a right to fair and kind treatment by everyone’. What a world of difference that would have made for me and the tender sprigs of love that I was learning to nurture.
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