By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK, April 19 (Reuters) – Parents on New York’s Long
Island who are starting the nation’s only gay PTA say they want
to confront gay bullying and ease isolation by including gay
historic figures in classroom lessons.
When it receives its charter on Thursday, Long Island Gay
PTA will become the only parent-teacher association in the
country to focus on the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender students and their families, said the National
Parent Teacher Association.
Part of the National PTA, which has about 5 million members,
it also one of a growing number of PTAs linked not to individual
schools but to special-interest groups, such as students with
learning disabilities.
“GLBT youth issues were never something that PTAs were
interested in tackling,” David Kilmnick, a founding member of
the gay PTA.
“So many parents have come to us over the years and felt
that they really didn’t have a voice in their school’s PTA,”
Kilmnick said.
He said the gay PTA wants to help schools better understand
how to support students who are being bullied because of their
sexual orientation. It also hopes to ensure the curriculum
includes the historic contributions of gay men and women in an
effort to ease the sense of isolation felt by students
struggling with their identity, Kilmnick said.
Prominent gay figures from Long Island include the 19th
Century poet Walt Whitman, considered the father of free verse,
and slain politician Harvey Milk, who became the first openly
gay man to win public office in California when he was elected
to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
While the Long Island group will be the only PTA in the
country dedicated to representing gay students, a similar
association was founded in Seattle in 1999 but has since been
disbanded, said James Martinez, a spokesman for the National
PTA.
The Long Island Gay PTA will be open to everyone, Kilmnick
said.
“You don’t have to be gay, you don’t have to have a child,”
he said, adding that he hoped the PTA would benefit all students
by making schools safer and more welcoming of diversity.
Laurie Scheinman, a PTA organizer who has a teenage daughter
who is gay, said she hoped students and teachers from a wide
range of schools across Long Island would become involved.
“My more optimistic side believes that many schools will
welcome this,” she said, “but my fear and worry is that there
will be some resistance.”
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg)
