Making history: Teaching Of LGBT+ Rights Gains Momentum In United States
MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Growing up as a young, gay Latino in rural Colorado, Daniel Ramos never heard any stories about people like him in the classroom.
“I came out the year after Matthew Shepard was killed,” said Ramos, recalling the disturbing fate of a gay man who was brutally beaten and left to die tied to a fence in Wyoming in 1998, a murder that made world headlines.
“To see folks represented in my curriculum who looked like me … that would have been an incredible opportunity,” said Ramos, 32, who is now executive director of LGBT+ rights group One Colorado.
But some 20 years later, students across Colorado will finally have the opportunity to hear the kinds of life stories that Ramos never did.
In May the state’s first openly gay governor, Jared Polis, signed into law a bill mandating teaching about LGBT+ people and other minority communities in public schools.
California has approved similar legislation, while Oregon, New Jersey and Illinois all passed bills earlier this year requiring the inclusion of LGBT+ history in the public school curriculum. Other states could soon follow suit.
“It’s kind of like a snowball, a domino,” said Mark Eckstein from the Washington D.C. chapter of PFLAG, formerly known as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, of the campaign to see the gay rights movement taught as part of U.S. history.
“Once you start, you can’t go back … And I think the window is open for a lot more,” Eckstein said.
In June Eckstein and two other parents raised the idea of an LGBT+ curriculum with Eric Luedtke, a former history teacher and state representative in the Maryland House of Delegates, whose district includes parts of the D.C. metro area.
Luedtke then organized a letter signed by 47 other local legislators asking Maryland’s department of education to include LGBT+ and disability rights history in its curriculum.
But some 20 years later, students across Colorado will finally have the opportunity to hear the kinds of life stories that Ramos never did.
In May the state’s first openly gay governor, Jared Polis, signed into law a bill mandating teaching about LGBT+ people and other minority communities in public schools.
California has approved similar legislation, while Oregon, New Jersey and Illinois all passed bills earlier this year requiring the inclusion of LGBT+ history in the public school curriculum. Other states could soon follow suit.
“It’s kind of like a snowball, a domino,” said Mark Eckstein from the Washington D.C. chapter of PFLAG, formerly known as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, of the campaign to see the gay rights movement taught as part of U.S. history.
“Once you start, you can’t go back … And I think the window is open for a lot more,” Eckstein said.
In June Eckstein and two other parents raised the idea of an LGBT+ curriculum with Eric Luedtke, a former history teacher and state representative in the Maryland House of Delegates, whose district includes parts of the D.C. metro area.
Luedtke then organized a letter signed by 47 other local legislators asking Maryland’s department of education to include LGBT+ and disability rights history in its curriculum.
Earlier this month the education department agreed to do just that, making the state the country’s sixth set to teach LGBT+ history in schools.
“We’re telling kids that we’re teaching them the story of America,” Luedtke told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We should include the entire history of America.”
“When I was a teacher, I had students who were LGBT,” he recalled. “I always thought that it was important that those students see themselves as fully part of the American story.”
Given increasing evidence of LGBT+ students facing serious mental health hurdles in school, advocates say that having gay and trans rights recognized in classrooms is vital.
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