In the United States, a majority of citizens support same-sex marriage. Americans between the age of eighteen to twenty-nine, both Democrat and Republican alike, support same-sex in greater numbers than those older than thirty, according to Gallup and Pew Research.
However, this doesn’t mean that LGBT students across the U.S. are free from discriminating policies and social stigma in their schools.
Taylor Ellis, a seventeen-year-old openly gay student at Sheridan High School in Arkansas, had his, and six other student’s, yearbook profiles removed from the yearbook by school administrators because his profile told his coming out story.
In Arkansas, according to a poll conducted by Talk Business Research and Hendrix College, only 21.5 percent of the population thinks gay couples should be allowed to marry and 24 percent think that gays could should be allowed to form civil unions or domestic partnerships.
Arkansas isn’t the only state where higher-ups have contributed to LGBT discrimination.
In Tennessee, a bill called The Religious Viewpoints Anti-Discrimination Act is being created. The bill has already been passed by the House and Senate and now awaits Tennessee governor’s Bill Haslam’s signature.
If passed, the bill will allow students to openly express their religious beliefs at school in things like homework assignments, projects, and essays. It would also allow the school board to choose student speakers to speak about religion at school events, such as graduation.
LGBT activists, includingDavid Badash, the founder of the gay rights journal, The New Civil Rights Movement, speculate that if this bill is passed, it will allow kids to bully LGBT students on a religious premise, which would become legal under this legislation.
“Attacks on LGBT people and same-sex marriage are automatically protected under this bill, offering anti-gay students a state-sponsored license to bully,” said David Badash on The New Civil Rights Movement.
This blatantly contradicts the state’s anti-bullying laws, whose newest addition is an anti-cyber-bullying law that has been in place since 2012.
It is not only the students that are discriminated against.
In England, where same-sex marriage became officially legal on March 29th, 2014, 48 percent of LGBT teachers polled by the UK’s Teacher Support Network have been personally discriminated against because of their sexual orientation; 47 percent by colleagues and 68 percent by students.
However, things aren’t always bad for LGBT students. In California, the School Success and Opportunity Act allows transgender students to do the same things others of the gender they identify as are able to do, such as using the bathroom, changing in the locker room and playing on sports team that match their gender identity.
This bill alleviates one of the major stresses that comes with changing gender and creates a more comfortable and welcoming school environment for them. Students feel more accepted in a world where they face day-to-day struggles; it gives them the opportunity to enjoy school just like any other kid.
California’s success is an example that years of activism have not been in vain.
“The consistent political engagement by LGBT advocates over many years on a range of issues, coupled with our growing cultural visibility, has gradually revealed anti-gay stereotypes and fear-mongering to be preposterous,” said Richard Rosendall, a gay rights activist in Washington D.C. and the previous president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington D.C.
