D R A M A++Q U E E N

What's the worst thing your mother ever did to you? Send your submission to theDrama Queen for a Day contest

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T A B L E++T A L K

Culture wars: How do you shelter your kids from the negative influences of popular culture? Join the discussion in Table Talk's Mothers area

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R E C E N T L Y

Infant Revolution
By Dawn Mackeen
The children who are giving Nike a dressing down
(05/29/98)

No turning back
By Sallie Tisdale
At what point do you need to tell your child he can't come home again?
(05/28/98)

My son, the cross-dresser
By Lisen Stromberg
Why are tomboys cute but "janegirls" weird?
(05/27/98)

Back to my future
By Lori Leibovich
Dancing cheek to cheek with your high school self
(05/26/98)

Coming clean about her trashy life
By Lori Leibovich
In "Other People's Dirt," a housekeeper dishes about her dirty work
(05/22/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINKARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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the showdown __________
A T_.S A N_.L E A N D R O_.H I G H

SAN LEANDRO, Calif. --It was shortly after 3 p.m. on a balmy afternoon in early September 1997, and school had just let out at San Leandro High, a suburban public school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Teacher Bob Volpa was in his second-floor computer lab when he heard a commotion outside. "I looked out the window to see what was going on," he recalled, "and there were these two girls -- both students here -- making out with one another right in front of the school. I mean, they were really going at it hot and heavy." According to Volpa, the girls were "groping each other's breasts and crotches," and had attracted a crowd "of maybe 50 other students," some of whom "were heckling and jeering." The business education teacher said he watched in stunned disbelief as the girls "increased their sexual exhibition in response to the crowd," then went downstairs to break up the demonstration. Volpa escorted the girls to the school's administrative offices, intending to turn them over to one of the assistant principals in charge of discipline, but none were in. So he took their names and told them they'd be referred for disciplinary action.

But instead of punishing the two 10th graders, Assistant Principal Robert Williams reprimanded the teacher. In a memo to be placed in Volpa's employment file, Williams lectured Volpa about his duty to "assist in creating a climate which recognizes the worth and dignity of each individual," and criticized him for failing to stop the "heckling, jeering, and name-calling directed toward" the amorous couple. Williams also characterized Volpa's disapproval of the girls' conduct as "improper" and "negligent," and concluded it "may possibly have contributed to an unsafe learning environment."

The censure of Volpa outraged many of his tenured faculty peers. In furtive conversations in the teachers' lunch room they recalled the swift suspensions meted out to a boy and girl caught engaging in oral sex behind one of the school buildings the previous year. Teachers wondered if Leigh Akins, their new principal, was signaling a hands-off policy toward gay kids who similarly misbehave.

Thus began a controversy over gay rights that has plunged San Leandro's only high school -- already troubled by racial tensions and low achievement scores -- into a state approaching chaos, and threatens to divide this racially mixed, culturally pluralistic blue-collar community into warring camps.

I've spent considerable time at San Leandro High as a substitute teacher the past two years, which has allowed me to observe the evolution of this conflict at close range and get to know the protagonists. I chose to write about it (a decision that cost me my job at the high school) for a complex number of reasons.

As a lifelong liberal I sympathize with homosexuals who aspire to liberate themselves from ancient prejudices. But as an educational insider I have seen how politicizing the personal can polarize a campus and disrupt the learning process.

As a small "d" democrat who holds civil discourse and the willingness to compromise to be sacred, I found the tactics of gay rights advocates at the high school not only offensive but dangerously counterproductive. They have presumed the right to reshape the values of the nation's school children, and their sneering contempt toward parents who object risks a backlash that could set the cause of gay liberation back for decades.

Finally, as a veteran journalist, I was frankly appalled by the local media's failure to report this story fairly and accurately, or perceive its larger significance. The trouble at San Leandro High is not, as most have portrayed it, a simple case of knuckle-headed homophobes attacking enlightened educators for attempting to "teach tolerance." It is a complex collision between the legitimate interests of gays and lesbians yearning to be free, and those of parents anxious about their kids' futures and concerned about what they are learning -- and failing to learn -- in the classroom.

Nor is San Leandro the only community being convulsed by a gay rights controversy. Strikingly similar conflicts have erupted elsewhere this year, most notably in Nevada, Michigan and Utah. The driving force behind all of them has been the Gay/Lesbian/Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a New York-based activist organization formed five years ago to advocate on behalf of homosexual teachers and students.

Today GLSEN claims more than 7,500 members in some 82 chapters nationwide, and is fielding a strategy to revolutionize America's attitudes and policies toward homosexuality by making public schools -- because they transmit the common values that bind us together as a society -- ground zero in the struggle for gay rights.

"Gays are tired of riding in the back of the bus," declares Kate Frankfurt, GLSEN's director of advocacy and public policy. "The issue (of gay rights) is now being joined, and the schools are a very important battleground." When future generations of schoolchildren stand to recite the "Pledge of Allegiance," GLSEN is determined that homosexuals and bisexuals will henceforth be included in America's promise of "liberty and justice for all."

N E X T+P A G E: "Enough is enough!"