Locker Room Fantasies by Matt

Locker Room Fantasies by Matt

Gay View:

A commenter at Ed Cone’s blog has asked if gay boys should be kept out of the boys’ locker room at school.

Another commenter, in reply to my comments about how unsafe locker rooms (and, just school in general) can be for gay boys, said that maybe giving gay boys their own locker rooms would help solve the problem. He says straight boys have the right to not have the possibility of gay guys “oogling” over them.

As I said on Ed Cone’s blog: What about all the “straight” boys still in the “closet?” Do we need to have a witch hunt for gay high schoolers and segregate them from the good, straight folk of the school?

No. No. No. No. No.

Maybe we should just start teaching kids that all people deserve respect. That means not harassing people. That means not violating someone’s privacy. That means not “oogling” over someone who is most definitely not interested in you. That means not being the fag-hating, homo-loathing gay basher.

Segregation won’t solve a damned thing. I thought we learned that some thirty years before I was even born, but I guess some people have just yet to catch up to 2006 and prefer to live in 1956.

It’s called teach your children how to live in the world and live with other people. Teach them kindness and respect. Teach them civility and honor. Teach them that people are people, no matter who they are. Maybe if we do that, then this kind of silly, ignorant, high school level debate just won’t be needed.

Ha! Segregate the gay boys for their own safety? Kind of sounds like, “I don’t want those fags near my children.” That’s a great way to protect the vulnerable, huh? Just let the perpetrators keep doing what they are doing. I guess “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” works with some people.

Let me ask… What happens when these high school boys grow up and the school is no longer there to keep them separated? Or are we just going to segregate all of society? Straight men to my right! Gay men to my left!

Jesus help us. Are people really this stupid, cruel and hateful?

It is exactly this kind of thinking, this kind of logic and this kind of bigotry-laden teaching (however conscious or un-conscious) that has enabled the possibility of the KKK and their lynchings, the Holocaust of the Jews (and, yup, the homosexuals, too), Matthew Shepard, Gwen Araujo, Thomas Stockwell, and the helpless, bigotry-spoon-fed high school boys who shoved me into lockers, attacked me when I got off the school bus and carved “fag” into the side of my truck (twice!).

The answer isn’t segregation. The answer is education.