The Illinois Senate recently approved a bill to require LGBTQ history be taught in public schools throughout the state. The bill would mandate that high schools and elementary schools be taught “the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State.” Last year, California became the first state to use history textbooks with LGBTQ history within them.
This move to embrace the past and movement toward acceptance and understanding has both angered and overjoyed different people. I first found out about this on Facebook, where an old high school classmate shared an article on the Senate’s vote and stated “I find this pointless. What is there to teach?” All I could think was, and there lies the problem that is trying to be solved. Most people do not know about the 1969 Stonewall Riot, combating discrimination and anti-gay laws after an incident with police at the Stonewall Inn. They don’t know that the first Gay Liberation Day March was held in New York in 1970. The LGBTQ community has been fighting, relentlessly, for decades to gain ground and equal treatment within our society. To say that that history is pointless, that the pain and experience of those people and the people apart of the community today is unnecessary to teach, is wrong and cruel.
Thousands of people celebrate Pride every June, singing, and dancing; many of whom are not apart of the LGBTQ community. On TV and in everyday life, it is becoming and more “cool” to embrace the LGBTQ community. To state your support of the community is to state your stance as a liberal American. But if we are really going to progress as a society, and truly accept the community, we need to accept every part of the community. Including the history, the turmoil, the pain and the triumph. We need to recognize that a rich history exists, and allow our future generations to learn about it. We need to allow LGBTQ students to feel safe in schools, to feel accepted by their communities, to feel liberated in knowing that generations before them felt their pain, and fought for their rights.
Teaching LGBTQ history in public schools will not “teach homosexuality.” It will teach humanity, empathy, understanding. It will teach joy and acceptance. The world could use so much more of that. That is a world I want to live in.