It’s Getting Tougher to Teach LGBTQ History, Even Where It’s Required by Law

Elizabeth Bergman, a humanities teacher in Los Angeles, has been teaching LGBTQ history for nearly a decade. Photo: Barbara Davidson.

Olive Garrison has been teaching high school history in Bakersfield for the past eight years. Born and raised in the Central Valley city, Garrison has incorporated LGBTQ history into lessons, from the Lavender Scare, a moral panic in which thousands of gay workers in the 1940s and ’50s were driven out of government service jobs, to the struggles of queer Americans during the Great Depression.