Opinions
Elementary schools must teach about LGBT families
Teachers can’t prevent bullying if they’re not aware of our issues
Ellen Kahn with her two daughters. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Only two out of 10 elementary school students have learned about same-sex-headed families, according to a new study commissioned by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Combine this with the fact that same-sex families with children live in 96 percent of counties in the United States, and we clearly have a failure to teach children about the world and people around them.
In its study, “Playgrounds and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States,” GLSEN found that during classroom discussions of families, nearly 90 percent of elementary school teachers said they taught students about different types of families—but less than a quarter included representations of LGB parents, and less than 10 percent included transgender parents.
Only a quarter reported “having personally engaged in efforts to create a safe and supportive classroom environment for families with LGBT parents.”
That might be because less than one quarter of teachers received training on families with LGBT parents, and just over a third on gender issues—even though 85 percent said they received training on other diversity or multicultural matters.
The study was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of GLSEN, using online surveys of 1,065 U.S. school students in 3rd to 6th grade and 1,099 U.S. teachers of kindergarten to 6th grade.
On the positive side, eight in 10 teachers said they would feel comfortable addressing name-calling, bullying or harassment of students who were perceived to be LGB or gender nonconforming. That is a vital step. But less than half of the teachers said they felt comfortable responding to questions from students about LGB people, and even less to questions about transgender people.
If teachers don’t have the ability to answer questions about LGBT people, however, their ability to “address” anti-LGBT bullying will never rise much above “Stop because I said so”—and while that is sometimes a necessary approach (as every parent knows), it only goes so far. Unless schools also promote a better understanding of diverse people and communities, they will never address one of the root causes of bullying.
One resource that may help is GLSEN’s new Ready, Set, Respect! GLSEN’s Elementary School Toolkit. But that is not the first LGBT-inclusive educational resource aimed at elementary schools.
The HRC Foundation’s Welcoming Schools initiative piloted in 2007, has offered its materials online for several years, including, most recently, “What Do You Know? Six to twelve year olds talk about gays and lesbians,” a short professional development film for school staff and parents. And educational film company Groundspark has produced numerous LGBT-inclusive diversity education films since 1996, when “It’s Elementary” showed elementary school teachers and their experiences talking about LGB families. The company’s award-winning 2005 film, “That’s a Family!” features elementary school children who are being raised by parents of different races or religions, adoptive parents, single parents, divorced parents, gay or lesbian parents and grandparents serving as guardians.
The problem has not been a lack of resources — although more are always welcome. It would seem, rather, to be a lack of desire, or the misperception that we don’t need to use them with children so young.
We do need to use them, however. GLSEN’s survey found that homophobic slurs start early. Almost half of the elementary school teachers and students surveyed reported regularly hearing comments like use of the word “gay” in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”), “spaz,” or “retard.” About one quarter reported regularly hearing students use homophobic slurs, such as “fag” or “lesbo,” as well as negative comments about race or ethnicity.
Three-fourths of the students reported that, “students at their school are called names, made fun of or bullied with at least some regularity.” Twenty-one percent said this was because the targeted students were thought to be gay, and 23 percent said it was because the students didn’t conform to traditional gender norms/roles.
To those who say elementary students are too young to learn about LGBT people, I say: They already know about them—but many know only based on slurs and misconceptions.
Teachers might seem to bear the brunt of blame for this, but that is a misleading and simplistic explanation. Schools are dynamic and interconnected systems. Administrators, district officials, and even state officials are also responsible for setting curricula, choosing materials and creating an inclusive environment.
The main drivers of change, however, must be parents. We can inform teachers and school administrators about the above resources, and recommend they be included in teacher training and student diversity programs. We can talk with school board officials and let them know such inclusion matters to us—and impacts our voting.
More critically, we parents can educate ourselves and make sure our own children know that families come in many different forms, and that people express gender in different ways.
LGBT parents can also help our neighbors and friends understand the importance of LGBT inclusion—and help them find the language to discuss it with their families.
Life may “get better” as teens get older, as the well-known awareness project says. But there’s no reason we can’t try to make it good right from the start.
Renee Good. Alex Pretti.
During this last year, I wondered who would be the first U.S. citizen to be shot by our government. It was not a matter of if, but when. Always.
And now we know.
I thought it would be soldiers. But the masked men got there first. Because when you mix guns and protests, guns inevitably go off. The powers that be always knew it, hoped for it, and wanted it to happen.
Why? Because masked men and guns instill fear. And that’s the point. Ask yourself when’s the last time you saw masked men and guns in our cities, or anywhere for that matter. I always thought that men masked men with guns robbed banks. I was wrong.
Masked men want to rob us of our dignity as human beings. Of our assurance in the calmness and contentment of our communities. They want to rob us of our trust in our institutions, and our faith in each other. And truly they want to rob us of the happiness and joy that we all constantly yearn to find in our lives.
But our only collective ability as a nation to push back is our protests. Peaceful protests. As Renee and Alex did.
But peaceful protests? Because they are the perfect power to shame the cowardice of those that believe guns and force are the only true authority. Fortunately, our last hope and fiercest ally is our Constitution, which gives us the power — and the right — to protest.
How much more peaceful can you get when you hear Renee Good’s last words, “I’m not mad at you, Dude.” I may be mad at the system, the government, the powers of unknown people pulling the strings but not you personally. “Dude.” Peaceful to the last word.
Yet, what becomes lost in the frantic pace of hair-trigger news cycles, of officials declaring impetuous damnations alongside johnny-on-the spot podcasters spouting their split-second opinions are the two human beings who have lost their lives.
How habituated we’ve become as we instantly devour their instant obituaries. The sum of their lives declared in less than 10 seconds of cellphone video. They haven’t just lost their lives. They’ve lost all of their lives. And now we watch over and over again as their death is re-revealed, re-churned, re-evaluated, and re-consumed. In that endless repetition, we forget the meaning of life itself.
We must remember that Renee and Alex believed in their communities, in the purpose of their work, in the happiness of their loves and lives, and in the dignity and curiosity of life itself. They were singular individuals who did not deserve to die at the end of a gun barrel for any reason, ever.
How fitting that Renee was a poet. Sometimes in confronting the massiveness of loss in our lives, we look to our poetry and our psalms, our hymns and our lullabies, to find a moment of solace in our communal grief, and to remember Renee and Alex, for what they gave us in life.
Yet, at this moment, I cannot escape the reality of what was taken from them so soon, so violently and so forever. They were exceptionally courageous and normal people, and for that reason, I must remember them through a poem to explain to me, and others, the unexplainable.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real.
And none of this is right.
I dream of these sons and daughters
who now will not go home,
and dream of their mothers and fathers,
who now must stand alone.
I dream of all the flowers that they will never hold —
the kisses never shared again, the secrets to not be told.
I dream of all the sunsets that for them will never set,
I dream of all the love they gave and now they must forget.
I dream of all their dinners
with wine to never spill,
or books to read, or bread to break
or babies to be held.
I dream of each one still reaching
in the middle of the night,
for a hand that needs another
to stop a nightmare’s flight.
I dream of them not dreaming,
which I could never do,
for how can you not dream a dream
that never will come true.
I dream of this not happening.
I dream this day and night.
For none of this is real
And none of this is right.
Carew Papritz is the award-winning author of “The Legacy Letters,” who inspires kids to read through his “I Love to Read” and the “First-Ever Book Signing” YouTube series.
Opinions
Gay Treasury Secretary’s silence on LGBTQ issues shows he is scum
Scott Bessent is a betrayal to the community
We all know the felon in the White House is basically a POS. He is an evil, deranged, excuse for a man, out only for himself. But what is just as sad for me is the members of the LGBTQ community serving in his administration who are willing to stand by silently, while he screws the community in so many ways. The leader, with his silence on these issues, is the highest ranking “out” gay ever appointed to the Cabinet; the current secretary of the treasury, the scum who goes by the name, Scott Bessent.
Bessent has an interesting background based on his Wikipedia page. He is from South Carolina and is what I would call obscenely wealthy. According to his financial assets disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Bessent’s net worth was at least $521 million as of Dec. 28, 2024; his actual net worth is speculated to be around $600 million. He married John Freeman, a former New York City prosecutor, in 2011. They have two children, born through surrogacy. I often wonder why guys like Bessent conveniently forget how much they owe to the activists in the LGBTQ community who fought for the right for them to marry and have those children. Two additional interesting points in the Wikipedia post are Bessent reportedly has a close friendship with Donald Trump’s brother Robert, whose ex-wife, Blaine Trump, is the godmother of his daughter. The other is disgraced member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Jenrette, is his uncle.
Bessent has stood silent during all the administrations attacks on the LGBTQ community. What does he fear? This administration has kicked members of the trans community out of the military. Those who bravely risked their lives for our country. The administration’s policies attacking them has literally put their lives in danger. This administration supports removing books about the LGBTQ community from libraries, and at one point even removed information from the Pentagon website on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, thinking it might refer to a gay person. It was actually named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets. That is how dumb they are. Bessent stood silent during WorldPride while countries around the world told their LGBTQ citizens to avoid coming to the United States, as it wouldn’t be safe for them, because of the felon’s policies.
Now the administration has desecrated the one national monument saluting the LGBTQ community, Stonewall, in New York City, by ordering the removal of the rainbow flag. The monument honors the people who get credit for beginning the fight for equality that now allows Bessent, and his husband and children, to live their lives to the fullest. That was before this administration he serves came into office. I hope his children will grow up understanding how disgusting their father’s lack of action was. That they learn the history of the LGBTQ community and understand the guts it took for a college student Zach Wahls, now running for the U.S. Senate from Iowa, to speak out for his “two moms” in the Iowa State Legislature in 2011, defending their right to marry.
Bessent is sadly representative of the slew of gays in the administration, all remaining silent on the attacks on the community. They are mostly members of the Log Cabin Republicans who have given up on their principles, if they ever had any, to be subservient to the felon, and the fascists around him, all for a job.
There are so many like them who supported the felon in the last election. Some who believed in Project 2025, others who didn’t bother to read it. Many continue to stand with him, with the sycophants in the Congress, and the incompetents and fascists in the administration, as they work to destroy our country and end the democracy that has served us so well for 250 years. To keep out all immigrants from a nation of immigrants. They all seem to forget it was immigrants who built our country, who fought against a king, and won. These sycophants now support the man who wants to be king. Who openly says, “I am president I can do anything only based on my own morality,” which history clearly shows us he has none.
I believe we will survive these horrendous times in American history. We have fought a king before and won. We have kept our country alive and thriving through a civil war. We the people will defeat the felon and his minions, along with the likes of those who stood by silently like Scott Bessent. They seem to forget “Silence = Death.”
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Unconventional love: Or, fuck it, let’s choose each other again
On Valentine’s Day, the kind of connection worth celebrating
There’s a moment at the end of “Love Jones” — the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century — when Darius stands in the rain, stripped of bravado, stripped of pride, stripped of all the cleverness that once protected him.
“I want us to be together again,” he says. “For as long as we can be.”
Not forever. Not happily ever after. Just again. And for as long as we can. That line alone dismantles the fairy tale.
“Love Jones” earns its place in the canon not because it is flawless, but because it is honest. It gave us Black love without sanitizing it. Black intellect without pretension. Black romance without guarantees. It told the truth: that love between two whole people is often clumsy, ego-driven, tender, frustrating, intoxicating—and still worth choosing.
That same emotional truth lives at the end of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” my favorite movie of all time. Joel and Clementine, having erased each other, accidentally fall back into love. When they finally listen to the tapes that reveal exactly how badly they hurt one another, Clementine does something radical: she tells the truth.
“I’m not perfect,” she says. “I’ll get bored. I’ll feel trapped. That’s what happens with me.”
She doesn’t ask Joel to deny reality. She invites him into it. Joel’s response isn’t poetic. It isn’t eloquent. It’s not even particularly brave. He shrugs.
“Ok.”
That “OK” is one of the most honest declarations of love ever written. Because it says: I hear you. I see the ending. I know the risk. And I’m choosing you anyway.
Both films are saying the same thing in different languages. Nina and Darius. Clementine and Joel. Artists and thinkers. Romantics who hurt each other not because they don’t care — but because they do. Deeply. Imperfectly. Humanly.
They argue. They retreat. They miscommunicate. They choose pride over vulnerability and distance over repair. Love doesn’t fail because they’re careless — it fails because love is not clean.
What makes “Love Jones” the greatest Black love movie of the 21st century is that it refuses to lie about this. It doesn’t sell permanence. It sells presence. It doesn’t promise destiny. It offers choice.
And at the end — just like “Eternal Sunshine” — the choice is made again, this time with eyes wide open.
When Nina asks, “How do we do this?” Darius doesn’t pretend to know.
“I don’t know.”
That’s the point.
Love isn’t a blueprint. It’s an agreement to walk forward without one.
I recently asked my partner if he believed in soul mates. He said no—without hesitation. When he asked me, I told him I believe you can have more than one soul mate, romantic or platonic. That a soul mate isn’t someone who saves you — it’s someone whose soul recognizes yours at a particular moment in time.
He paused. Then said, “OK. With those caveats, I believe.”
That felt like a Joel shrug. A grown one.
We’ve been sold a version of love that collapses under scrutiny. Fairy tales promised permanence without effort. Celebrity marriages promised aspiration without truth. And then reality — messy, public, human—stepped in. Will and Jada didn’t kill love for me. They clarified it.
No relationship is perfect. No love is untouched by disappointment. No bond survives without negotiation, humility, and repair. What matters isn’t whether love lasts forever. What matters is whether, when confronted with truth, you still say yes.
“Love Jones” ends in the rain. “Eternal Sunshine” ends in a hallway. No swelling orchestras. No guarantees. Just two people standing at the edge of uncertainty saying: Fuck it. I love you. Let’s do it again.
That’s not naïve love. That’s courageous love.
And on Valentine’s Day — of all days — that’s the kind worth celebrating.
Randal C. Smith is a Chicago-based attorney and writer focusing on labor and employment law, civil rights, and administrative governance.
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