Living together,learning apart

I suppose this'll make Eric Rasmusen shiver in his combat boots.\nHarvey Milk High School, our nation's first state-accredited and tax-payer funded school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, wants to ball up. According to the New York Daily News Monday, the school is petitioning to field teams in the Public Schools Athletic League as soon as September 2004 ... begging us to think.\nAside from figuring out which team a transgendered student will suit-up with, it seems this is just the latest news from the school that presses the bigger issues. Are we indeed seeing "separate but equal" at work? The logic is almost scary.\n"There could and must be more efforts to ensure the safety and security of all children within the community, but while we are working on that, there have to be solutions for those kids who are being victimized today," said David Mensah, executive director of the Hetrick-Martin Institute, the advocacy group that founded the program on which the school is based (Washington Post, Sept. 9).\nFlash back to the 1950s. \nIn the 1952 oral arguments for Brown v. Board of Education, Virginia's attorney Justin Moore quoted Dr. Henry E. Garrett, head of the Department of Psychology of Columbia University at the time, regarding the reasons why segregation might be a preferred institution with regards to race. \n"If a Negro child goes to a school as well-equipped as that of his white neighbor," Garrett said, " ... If he had teachers of his own race and friends of his own race, it seems to me he is much less likely to develop tensions, animosities and hostilities, than if you put him into a mixed school .. "\nEerily familiar?\nOf course, the most immediate differentiating factor here is choice. The ability to decide whether or not to enter into an environment where one stands as a minority, it seems, dissolves the evils associated with the racial segregation of our past.\nBut is it the best answer?\nWe've long been committed to the notion that all minority groups have a deep desire to "fit in" that we haven't really given much thought to the idea that maybe they can't.\nDoug Bauder, coordinator of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Services, feels that, unfortunately, this might be the case.\n"We're not at a point yet where we'd like to be," he said. "Ultimately, (Harvey Milk) is not the answer, it's kind of a stop cap. Life is just too hard for too many gay kids."\nWhen America simply cannot claim that the only colors it sees are red, white and blue, what then happens to diversity education?\nWell, we're confronted with the same thing that students of Harvey Milk faced when deciding to attend the school: choice.\nIt seems that we can force diversity only so far. At some point, we have to be ready for it. This is something Bauder noted that simply hasn't been accomplished yet.\n"I don't like going this route, but I think it's important," he said. "It's a reminder that we need to work harder within our communities to create that safety."\nWhen school started Sept. 8 at Harvey Milk, protesters waved signs that read: "Sodomy, It's to Die for" and "Death Penalty for Fags," sadly proving Bauder's point. \nTo this troubling news, we can't abandon our desires for a more inclusive society, but more importantly, we can't fool ourselves into thinking we already are one.