Teacher Lyndsey Schlax of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts is teaching the nation’s first on-site high school LGBT course, according to district officials. In this column, students from her class will be anonymously sharing with the San Francisco Bay Times their thoughts about related matters, and what they are learning in the groundbreaking course, “LGBTQ Studies.”
Student- 12th Grade
What I Missed In Class
Visibility is a concept that most tenth graders can comprehend in the beginning of sophomore year, but are they being told the whole story? We learned in our LGBTQ class that history is a multi-factored topic, revolving around different sides of opinions, facts, and missing information. High school social studies teachers have the difficult task of picking and choosing what information will most benefit the class, but when this happens, we lose vital pieces of information. My question to these history teachers is: Is the information we are not learning not being taught because it is not available, or is it because no one is brave enough to teach it?
In the first weeks of September, my liberal art high school’s LGBTQ class gave us a do-now. The prompt was, “Why might some LGBTQ people have been happy to have homosexuality acknowledged as a psychological disorder?” My first response, pen to paper, was, “I have absolutely no idea.” We talked about the answer in class and came to the conclusion that just mentioning the topic of LGBTQ in any context gave the idea of visibility to the gay and lesbian community. Even if homosexuality was being discussed as a disease, it was still being talked about and other gay/lesbian people could find community through these “medical discoveries,” which came to a head during the World Wars.
During WWI and WWII, homosexuality was first being introduced as a medical condition that could possibly be cured. Left and right, soldiers in in the U.S. military were being dishonorably charged for being “emotionally unstable” and “easily succumbed to spy influences.” Although today we recognize this information as unconstitutional, this topic brings up the importance of community. With nowhere to go after leaving the military, enclaves for the LGBTQ community were being formed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Those soldiers who were able to stay in the military found hidden gay communities that helped other gay soldiers to be able to explore their sexuality.
In class, we read a deeply coded love letter from one soldier to his partner in a different platoon whom he had fallen in love with. By viewing the more personal side of war, we were able to see the true emotions of those involved in the gay and lesbian communities during WWII, whether they were feelings of being scared or being in love. Through acceptance in these distinct areas, gay and lesbian hubs attracted members of the LGBTQ community who have not been able to experience a life of openness and personal freedom. These enclaves created safe houses where young and old gay/lesbian people could come to be safe, feel accepted, and even find love.
As a seventeen year old who has lived in San Francisco my entire life, my little SF bubble has finally caught up to me these past years. I wonder if it is better for us to keep innovating socially as the “gay capital of America,” or if this excessive love and affection has hindered us from trying to explore why the rest of America isn’t like this at all. I hope that through the visibility of these rapidly growing LGBTQ communities, more people can be open minded about gay and lesbian people.
Student- 12th Grade
WWII Dishonorable Discharges
I rarely heard about LGBTQ experiences in my 12 years of history classes. I guess it was never really considered important enough to include in our textbooks. Combine that with the fact that six years ago, I would have felt awfully uncomfortable learning about people whose experiences explicitly highlight flaws in various societies, and our human tendency to misunderstand each other’s stories.
One of the many cases we looked over in LGBTQ Studies were the gay and lesbian experiences in the military during WWII. They weren’t exactly…mmm…positive, to say the least. In class, Ms. Schlax shared a series of primary documents from WWII. They included a form discharging a South Carolinian private. Section VIII, Article 615-360, disqualified gay men and women from re-enlisting, or receiving veteran benefits once they were sent home.
Multiple newspapers stood against discharging servicemen based on their sexuality. They argued that the law provided draft dodgers an easy way out, while keeping loyal citizens from serving their country. The dominant culture unfairly and unjustly feared homosexual existence as a sort of threat to societal order. In 1966, the SF Examiner reported that Reverend Charles Lewis, a North Beach Mission Pastor, had challenged the perspective that “homosexuals [were] security risks.” That same year, the Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces (CFEHAF) reported that thousands of veterans were discharged simply for being gay.
Gay and lesbian allies wanted service members to at least be given honorable discharges. The “dishonorable” labeled their desires (not actions) as “equivalent to treason, murder, larceny, and rape” (CFEHAF). Such a disproportionate punishment was unarguably discriminatory, and an insult to our nation’s promise to provide liberty and justice for all.
Other arguments fighting to end violation against their rights included that no man who wanted to serve in the army would sanely answer “yes” to the mandatory question: “Are you attracted sexually to men?” Therefore, some gay men were able to defend our nation without being discovered. Serviceman Brian Keith recounted his undiscovered relationship in an unsent letter to Dave. He described the heartbreak he experienced when they were separated on “a secluded beach beneath the star-studded velvet of an African night, and the tears that would not be stopped as…[he] watched [Dave’s] convoy disappear.” Having kept their feelings invisible clearly undermined the assumption that homosexuality threatened our safety.
In addition to the gay population number being entirely inaccurate, disqualification was entirely irrelevant to their ability to fight. The CFEHAF took this legislation as an “insult to the moral character of [the USA’s] fighting men,” and explicit “mistrust of a person’s willingness and capacity to defend his country.”
Although studying unfamiliar perspectives can easily make me feel uncomfortable, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge them. The newly introduced narrative provides a lot of insight on why the early LGBTQ community flourished and continues to prosper in the cities where many veterans were discharged to. I think I understand much more about why finding their tribe can be so important to some gay and lesbian people. Those who grew up enduring a level of isolation were able to find people who shared not only the same feelings, but also underwent similar stories of misunderstanding and rejection.
Student- 12th Grade
Creating Enclaves
In history classes, students learn about many awful things that happen in wars, particularly the first and second world wars, (or so they think). Little do many students know, much of the important history of the LGBTQ community is not even mentioned. Students aren’t told that during WWII, homosexuality was categorized as a mental illness and anyone found to have this “mental illness” was dishonorably discharged.
Once these veterans were released, they often did not go home, for fear that everyone in their community would no longer respect or accept them because of their sexuality. So where did they go? New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco turned into destinations for homosexual people, who worked to create large, accepting enclaves within these port cities. Many thought they were alone, that they were never going to be able to live a happy life because of their sexual orientation. What they found out once they got to these enclaves was that there were, in fact, many people like them who were fighting for the same cause and had had very similar experiences. Once it was known that there were places where gay and gender non-conforming people were accepted, more people began to move to these cities. These cities became a place of refuge for people who identified as LGBTQ.
If we dismiss this history, we are denying visibility for people who have struggled. The history of LGBTQ people should be taught so that people who identify as LGBTQ do not feel alone. They should know that there have been people like them as long as humans have recorded history, and that there still are. People who identify under the LGBTQ umbrella may feel less alone and less like they aren’t “normal” if they knew that they aren’t the only one who feels the way they do. We know black history; we know white history. Why not learn gay history, too?
For more information about the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, please visit http://www.sfsota.org/
Student Voices
Lyndsey Schlax has been a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District since 2008. She is uniquely qualified to address multiple areas of LGBT studies, having also specialized in subjects such as Modern World History, Government, Economics and U.S. Politics. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, and earned her M.A. in Teaching at the University of San Francisco.
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