Education nation - on the difficulties of being gay at school

I should probably say at the outset here that I am not gay, have never been gay and definitely didn't have to grow up gay. That's not something said in an "it's OK ladies, there's still plenty of Luke to be had" way, or a "Phew, close one" way, as it is an admission that I am by necessity talking from the outside here. I don't know what it's like to be pilloried first hand for my sexual preferences or to feel necessarily excluded from the social economy of my adolescence because of who demands my erotic attentions (although, given that my adolescent predilections tended towards video game characters, Elvish princesses and armour clad warrior witches, perhaps I'm not entirely on the outer here).

But, despite this, there's something about that New South Wales law that allows students at private (read: religious) schools to be expelled merely for the fact of being gay - not openly, not provocatively, just for being gay - that makes me desperately sad. Both for being a general affront to the idea that schools are engaged in the development of future members of an enlightened society, but also because the law, being over thirty years old and hailing from the days where homosexuality was still illegal, is being endorsed by a sitting Attorney General of the Labor party solely due to electoral math. Because in an era of splintered democratic proclivities, one of the few things you can rely on to properly galvanise a voting base away from you is to piss off the religious set. See also: euthanasia, gay marriage, abortion. Unless you are equipped with an electoral majority the size of Saturn - or rule your nation with a benevolent iron fist - grand gestures of social progressivism tend to be quietly swept under the rug.

But these are our children, people. I mean, it was bad enough that Victoria is bringing in legalised discrimination for religiously affiliated groups (Gays? Out you go! Single mothers? Don't make me laugh! Living in sin? Spread your filth somewhere else!), but you tend to think of such laws as applying primarily to the adult population of Australia, not one of our most vulnerable subsets of the population. And this is expulsion we're talking about. Going myself to a Catholic school, I saw what it took to get expelled from such an institution - you could be one sexual assault and two drug possession charges down and you'd still scarper off with a good behaviour bond.

Yet, we have Stephen O'Doherty of Christian Schools Australia saying that many of the 130 schools included under that banner find gay people "disruptive to the religious teaching of the school," and that "What we seek to do is to be able to take appropriate action which may include expulsion." Of course, they maintain it would be done in a "loving" way (their phrasing), but it's hard to see the love in an act of sending a child into exile. When you are an adolescent, there is no such thing as a broader society - school is your society. Saying that a child is not fit to be there, is unworthy of that social order merely because of who they themselves feel compelled to love is a distressing idea. If Jesus were around today the prospect would surely make him vomit in rage. And then seek retribution against the offenders with his thermal lasers and fire breath and rocket boots and... I probably should have paid more attention during RE.

There's always going to be accusations in cases like this that those of us offended by the law are exaggerating the potential impact of its continued effect. And sure, many religiously minded schools have said they would never take advantage of such a law, and even for those schools that don't necessarily oppose it, the prospect of facing up to the effort, trauma and media outrage associated with expelling a gay student is generally minimal. But it's a symbol, and symbols are deeply important, especially in the hermetically sealed social systems of our high school existence. Because it's a symbol that we still see alternate sexualities as generally aberrant. That, at least in schools, gayness is a definitive marker of otherness to be hidden or eliminated. That the mere fact that we have to have this conversation suggests that gayness is an "issue", a state of abnormality.

We can count ourselves lucky that in Australia we're largely free of the moral panics that grip Americans and Britons when it comes to the question of how we teach our children about sex. The former can't even try and eliminate anti-gay bullying - in the wake of a rash of gay teen suicides - without election shaping outrage bursting forth from all corners, whilst the latter has to deal with open, media sanctioned debates about the homosexual set's supposed plan to brainwash the children of the country into adopting their "lifestyle". And there are gestures being made toward the issue here with better education policies and groups such as the Safe Schools Coalition coming to the fore. But we still live in a society where perhaps 30% of young gay people attempt suicide due to uncertainties associated with their sexuality, while 79% report being verbally or physically abused due to their sexual preferences, 80% of which happens in schools. No matter how "loving" your intentions, crafting a school system that allows authority figures to actively persecute and ostracise someone simply because of their gayness contributes to the social backdrop that makes these figures a grim reality. And that should have no place, no matter how personally justified, in a modern education system.