On a drizzly Wednesday evening in a cavernous, 1930s-vintage school lunchroom, people stand in small clusters and chat. An eerie whistle comes from a tall coffee percolator, and the cookies and Pepsi are neatly laid out. To a casual observer, this looks like just another PTA meeting.
Except this is the nation’s first gay and lesbian PTA. Calling the group to order is Susan Carmel, president of the Gay and Lesbian Parent Teacher Student Association of Greater Puget Sound, and mother of an 18-year-old gay son.
Carmel reports the group has completed a food drive at one school and will assist with playground cleanups and carnivals at others. In return, posters are put up in the schools to publicize GLPTSA, which leaders say they formed to combat intolerance, insensitivity and related barriers to fuller participation by gay and lesbian students and parents in the region’s K-12 public schools.
The group, founded last fall, has 249 members, Carmel says. Dues are only $7 because members are encouraged to ante up for their local, school-based PTAs too.
At this meeting, before the group watches a video on gay and lesbian figures in American history, Carmel reports on a homophobic harassment incident in the suburban Kent school district that “has not had a good history” of fostering tolerance, she says. “We’re kind of pressuring them to find out what they’re doing in terms of staff training.”
Eleanor Durham, the mother of a 7-year-old son, says she objects to harassment based on sexual orientation. But you’re not likely to find her at any GLPTSA meetings.
The group, she says, “defeats the whole purpose of a PTA. This emphasizes our differences and pits us against one another. You simply need to have rules in place against harassing behavior. That’s not enforced.”
Durham heads Parents and Teachers for Responsible Schools, a group urging that a message for tolerance in public schools be accompanied by additional perspectives. Durham, an attorney, has three arguments: Some people object to homosexuality on religious or moral grounds. Some believe that such behavior is not innate, despite what medical associations say. Finally, she says, conversion therapy is an option.
This angers Mike Balasa of Seattle. A retired school administrator and the father of a lesbian daughter, 30, he says, “In this case, there is no other side of the issue that’s not bigoted. To say some people don’t approve of a sexual orientation is like publicizing that some people feel blacks should still be slaves, or some think what Hitler did to the Jews was good or didn’t really happen.”
Hewing to the middle is president of the Chicago-based National PTA, Ginny Markell of Clackamas, Ore. Markell says the national organization supports GLPTSA, as does Seattle Schools Supt. Joseph Olshefske and the Washington State PTA, which issued the group’s charter.
“Most people were comfortable because it [GLPTSA] didn’t impose values in the schools,” said Markell. “It created a forum to address some specific and legitimate concerns. It’s not unlike the special education PTAs that have formed.”
Markell admits there has been controversy and concern among some local PTAs that “we’ll begin to splinter away from the overall mission of the traditional, school-based PTAs. … But we’re … encouraging whatever is necessary to improve the education, health, welfare and safety of students and improve parent involvement for all.”
School and public health officials are looking at bias issues. Soon, Seattle Public Schools officials will release results of a 1999 survey of high school students on harassment related to sexual orientation, gender and race.
In a 1995 survey of most of the district’s 8,000 secondary students, half the females reported offensive comments or attacks based on their gender, versus fewer than one-fifth of the males. One-third of students identifying themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual reported harassment, versus 6 percent of heterosexuals, though researchers caution some gay students may be reluctant to so classify themselves in a survey.
In accordance with some recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education, current prescriptions for boosting tolerance in Seattle-area schools include increased teacher and staff training, in-school initiatives and special programs, plus publicizing resource agencies, havens and advocacy groups.
