When I read about the “Don’t Say Gay” bill making its way through the Florida Legislature, I thought about Ryan Camacho.
Camacho was a freshman at Chesterton High School last April when three teachers were told by administrators to remove the pride and Black Lives Matter flags they hung in their classrooms, arguing they were unrelated to curriculum.
Students at the Indiana school staged a walkout when the flags came down. A group of parents, students and alumni started a Facebook group called More Inclusive Chesterton. Two hundred or so people held a rally outside the school before the monthly school board meeting, and after the school board completed its regular agenda, parents and students took turns defending the flags and calling for their return.
That’s how I met Camacho.
“If I didn’t have this one teacher to go to after everything that happened to me in middle school, I really would have ended my life a while ago,” he told me after the meeting. “I hate saying that because it means I let insignificant people get in my head 24/7. I regret ever coming up with the idea. But it’s true.”
He said he contemplated suicide in eighth grade to escape the homophobic harassment and bullying at school until a friend, a seventh grader, introduced him to a math teacher he didn’t know.
She had a pride flag hanging in her classroom.
“I immediately felt welcome,” Camacho said. “I didn’t even have to say a word to her and I knew she was there for me.”
Under the bill that just cleared a Florida Senate committee, after passing a Florida House committee in January, Florida school districts "may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students."
“Age-appropriate” and “developmentally appropriate” aren’t defined. Parents can sue if they believe a school has violated any portion of the law, which critics are calling the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the bill at an unrelated event on Monday.
“We've seen instances of students being told by different folks in school, ‘Oh, don't worry, don't pick your gender yet. Do all this other stuff,’” DeSantis said. “They won't tell the parents about these discussions that are happening. That is entirely inappropriate."
“Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” he said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique.”
As though the two — academics and humanity — can’t coexist. As though they’re unrelated. As though our humanity isn’t the entire point.
Our humanity is the entire point.
Equality Florida, a group that advocates for LGBTQ civil rights, called the bill “dangerous.”
“This legislation is meant to stigmatize LGBTQ people, isolate LGBTQ kids, and make teachers fearful of providing a safe, inclusive classroom,” the group said in a statement. “The existence of LGBTQ students and parents is not a taboo topic that has to be regulated by the Florida Legislature.”
I posed a question on Facebook Wednesday night asking if anyone wanted to comment about a time when an adult affirmed their humanity at school. I wanted a sense of the role that school plays in shaping a kid’s sense of safety, worth, belonging, mattering.
Immediately I started to receive direct messages, emails and comments about the power of even one safe, trusted ally at school.
A mom who cherished her son’s teacher sending him home with two Mother’s Day projects — one for her; one for her wife. The dad of a nonbinary high schooler who breathed a sigh of relief when teachers used his child’s proper pronouns during teacher conferences. An English teacher who wears a rainbow “Love to all” sweatshirt on Fridays and has had multiple students come out to her. Her colleagues who place rainbow flag stickers on their laptops or iPads. “Nonverbal cues,” she called them.
“A lot of students don’t have that love and acceptance at home,” Ava Madigan, a Chesterton Middle School student who helped organize last year’s walkout, told me at the time. “A lot of students like to escape from that harsh reality at school.”
Melissa Arkin teaches middle school Spanish in Skokie, Illinois. She wrote to tell me she and her colleagues work to make their classrooms safe and affirming for all kids. I asked her why.
“My son came out to me when he was 8,” she replied. “Two things are striking about that: 1. He could self-identify and 2. He felt safe letting me know. Kids go through so much, especially with this pandemic on top of everything. I need all kids to know they're important and valued and worthy. It's what they deserve.
“We brought them into this world and have a responsibility to help them be as great as they can be, which would be impossible if they feel less than or worse,” Arkin continued. “I've had students that have killed themselves and it's beyond devastating. If only one child can be saved, it's totally worth it.”
I hope Florida lawmakers will come to their senses and vote down this hateful bill.
We’re asking enough of educators right now without also threatening to sue them if they acknowledge the existence and humanity of all their students. We’re asking enough of kids right now without also asking them to hide their full identity all day, every day, inside one the most formative spaces of their lives.
We’re capable of making room for kids to value themselves and each other, to acknowledge and celebrate and honor diversity, to lead with love — even as they learn all the stuff they get graded on. If we fail at that, we really are missing the point.
