#8 (aka: As if I haven't made it clear enough...)

Ignorance of any kind really pisses me off. But today I was pretty blown away by it. There is a boy in my school's Gay Straight Alliance who decided to take a tally collection of how many times he heard a phrase like "that's so gay" in school. He began it last Friday and has carried it on to today. The results were appalling to me, though not all that surprising, considering the community in which our school is surrounded. He reported that he had heard some version of the above-printed homophobic remark 35 times. So we decided almost immediately that our GSA's topic for the workshop we're leading at the Annual Community Coalition for Teens Conference in early April is going to be about teaching ways to combat (or at least try to deal with non-violently) homophobic remarks in school. We think it will be interesting, and I hope it makes a difference to some of the youth who will be attending our workshop, because all of this cruelty really needs to stop. And soon, for the sake of the GLBTQQI-identifying people who are either already trying to make it through the year at our school or who will be coming in the coming years. We need to create a better environment for them, and for "out" (and not yet "out") Queer individuals everywhere.