The Neutrality in Queerphobia
As part of the backlash against more inclusive books in schools and libraries, exemplified by the moral panic around a fictitious critical race theory, we have seen a broad anti-LGBTQ backlash recently. Some states, like Tennessee, have adopted a newer form of “no promo homo” laws that make it more difficult to teach or even mention queer people existing. As our younger population is more comfortable identifying as LGBTQ more educators, queer and straight alike, have pushed to be welcoming to them. This has generated the new expression of queerphobia in schools through the lens of political neutrality. Queer folks, you see, are “political” in nature and thus any mention of us and expression of support must be avoided to ensure that the school is not engaged in teaching “divisive” or “contentious” topics. As neutrality is a myth, this is just a call for erasure of queer material and people within schools.
One example is just to the south of me. The Davis County, Utah, Schools have prohibited all “political flags” - thought the political U.S. national flag is exempt - from classrooms. In real world terms this applies only to the Pride and BLM flags. In addition, there have been reports that teachers were instructed to remove any symbols of support from their rooms and persons, including pins or stickers and the like. (Students are luckily protected by stronger free speech rules so they can still display Pride materials). Teachers in multiple Utah districts have reported being instructed to not ask students for pronouns or to use any name that is not listed on the roll sheet; there is no reason for this policy other than to ostracize and marginalize trans and gender nonconforming students. Like most states, Utah has a contingent of people, led here by state education board member Natalie Cline, who’s primary goal is to cause as many trans deaths as possible. Davis’s policy is a reaction to that. Supporting trans kids is “political” but refusing to support them is “neutral” and thus acceptable.
The same argument has recently been expressed in Irving, Texas, Independent School District. The school has banned Pride flags and safe space stickers. The District defense, seen above, is that it is a safe space for everyone and teachers are not allowed to be political. This call for neutrality apparently included removing, for still unexplained reasons, the one out teacher at the high school from the classroom and interrogating all of the members of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA). Sounds like one hell of a safe space to me.
Neutrality is a myth, always has been, always will be. Schools were never neutral. They have always been a space to replicate straight citizens. Since the early 20th Century this was a fairly explicit element of education and its focus was on driving away queer teachers - for a couple of good histories check out are Jackie Blount’s Fit to Teach and Karen Graves’s And They Were Wonderful Teachers. Until the 1990s, when queer educators, other adults, and students began to fight back, schools were structured as an exclusively heteronormative space where only straight identity was allowed. This is where no promo homo laws came from but even in systems without such laws mentions of queer people, stories, or history were never broached because teachers were taught to ignore such subjects or fear for their jobs. So when Davis instructs teachers to never mention their political or religious views in class, it only really applies in this situation to queer people. After all, straight teachers regularly make comments about their spouses and have pictures on their desks of their families but when queer teachers do so it becomes unacceptably political. A queer teacher who shows a funny photo with her fiancé was indoctrinating students and this required suspension and transfer.
And this is not only about teachers but teachers are key because having supportive teachers is one element of improving the school environment. GLSEN has surveyed students for two decades and found that while things have certainly improved, queer students are still treated differently by schools and their peers. Signs of support, such as a flag or sticker, signal to queer students that they can be less guarded than they might be in other places, that there are adults in the straight school space they may speak to more openly. I can’t speak for Irving, but as a queer professor, who happily displays symbols of that queerness all the time, teaching queer politics and history in Utah, I have had more than a few students, and some teachers, share their personal experiences with Utah schools in general and Davis schools specifically. I sadly have to be vague but to say the least it confirms much of the GLSEN findings. The Davis District noted that all of its high schools have GSAs and thus they are super supportive but they have them only because federal law requires it, see the Equal Access Act, and the Utah legislature makes membership even harder by requiring parental consent for all student clubs. This was explicitly designed to scare students away from GSAs if parents were unsupportive. Teachers that work around this run the risk of discipline if caught.
So the call for neutrality is just another form of marginalization. There is no neutrality between inclusion and exclusion but we can dress schools up as neutral by ignoring the ways in which they are straight spaces. As straight teachers can be themselves, straight couples can hold hands and kiss openly, and stories of straight people are never described as “indoctrination” into heterosexuality, the space is always coded as straight. Only queer people trying to exist then are “political” in nature and signs of them must be purged. Contrary to Irving ISD’s memo above, rather than a safe space for all students, this reinforces the marginalization of queer students to mollify Christian Right activists. Their goal is to exclude and marginalize because no one should be queer. It is only thanks to the effort of queer students and activists, with help from straight allies, that this exclusion can be combatted. Sadly it is a difficult battle but one that is essential.
