Gay identity should not be ignored in the classroom

For the sake of analogy, imagine you have a housemate with too much money and zero impulse control. One day, he brings home his new pet elephant.

Sadly, Indiana apartments are not designed to be elephant-friendly, but not wanting to seem confrontational, you figure you’ll wait and give the situation time to improve.

However, the longer you wait, the worse the situation becomes. The elephant stands in the way of the television, chases the mailman and destroys your security deposit by trying to eat peanuts out of the carpet.

To fix the situation, you, sooner or later, just have to address the subject of the rug-munching elephant in the room.

Speaking of people ignoring big issues, Minnesota finally repealed its “Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy,” which ordered teachers to remain “neutral” about matters of homosexuality. Lacking unambiguous instructions, teachers “avoided any mention of homosexuality, even when it meant ignoring anti-gay bullying,” according to an article in Rolling Stone.

The rampant, unchecked bullying fostered by this policy led to a flux of LGBT suicides in the course of two years. It’s usually at the point when bills start amassing a body count that people begin to realize something is seriously wrong.

So, why aren’t we entirely satisfied with the repeal of “Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy?”

Because it is being replaced by the “Respectful Learning Environment Curriculum Policy,” an innocuously named policy that orders teachers to “uphold the dignity of all students ... but also refrain from persuading students to adopt any particular viewpoint.” They are left, awkwardly, somewhere in between.

We were laboring with the assumption that teachers were already expected to treat individual students with respect and dignity.

Perhaps what is needed is a policy that states bigotry and homophobia are discrimination, not alternative points of view.

Maybe, but what we really need are fewer policies.

These bills are ostensibly passed to protect LGBT students from bullying by obfuscating and downplaying what homosexuality is. If you don’t find this offensive, you should.

The idea that people of an “alternative” sexuality should be forced to hide their identities to protect themselves from bullying is abhorrent.

That these bills prevent teachers from intervening is even worse. All these bills do is depict homosexuality as taboo, forcing children to learn about homosexuality from peers, parents and the Internet instead of responsible educators.

Can we really ever hope for tolerance and understanding if we refuse to so much as acknowledge the issue? It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room.