Chapter 3

Tolerating sextual oriantaion in schools

Sexual orientation tolerance in schools is very important. There are approximately two point nine million homosexual adolescents in American. Due to harassment from peers, about one third of them will attempt suicide before graduating and another third will just drop out all together. There was a study done on schools around the country to see how tolerable their schools and school policies were for different sexual orientations and where given grades on how tolerable they were. The grades came from six different categories: the existence of statewide safe schools laws, statewide non-discrimination laws, support for education on sexual health and sexuality, local safe schools policies, general education issues (e.g. student/teacher ratios, graduation rates) and existence of laws that stigmatize LGBTQ(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, & Questioning) people. Out of all the states fourty- two of them received an “F” and only two received an “A”. New Jersery was the highest with a ninty- five percent and Mississippi was the lowest with a negative three percent, the only state scoring lover then zero. California was ranked number five. I think sexual orinetaion tolerance is crutial for schools to encourage. I’ve had many gay friends and I belive that they should be treated like any other student by teachers, and treated like any other friend by peers. I have witness much harrasment to some of my friend for being homosexual and I think that it is not right to treat someone differently just because they have interests in the same sex as they are. Sexual orientation tolerance should be taught stating in elementry school. No student should ever be discriminated for being different, whether it’s their gender, race, or sexual orientation.

http://www.tolerance.org/activity/anti-gay-discrimination-schools

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/1687.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/356923/teaching_tolerance_nontraditional_sex.html