From: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com (Rod Williams)
Subject: "Fear of the Rainbow"
Originator: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:44:06 GMT


From the Op-Ed page of today's (12/30/92) New York Times,
reprinted without permission...

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Fear of the Rainbow
by Sasha Alyson (founder and editor of Alyson Wonderland,
which publishes children's books about families with
lesbian and gay parents)

Boston -- Two books published by my company, "Daddy's
Roommate" and "Heather Has Two Mommies," are in the middle
of the controversy surrounding the "Children of the Rainbow"
first-grade curriculum.

The controversy, of course, is coming from adults.  Many New
York school boards, led by Queens District 24, have rebelled
against Chancellor Joseph Fernandez's call for a curriculum
that includes references to lesbians and gay men -- and that
includes our books on a suggested reading list.

These books were written for children, and any discussion of
them should begin by looking at the needs of a few children.
Let's start with Nicholas, a 5-year-old with two gay fathers.
For a week after he got the book, Nicholas carried "Daddy's
Roommate" everywhere.  The book apparently made him feel
included in a way the families he had seen on TV and in other
books had not.

And what about the thousands of gay teenagers who kill
themselves?  Government studies suggest that teenagers
struggling with their sexual orientation are three times more
likely than other teenagers to commit suicide.  How many would
still be alive if we had shown them that gayness and happiness
were fully compatible?

Then there is gay-bashing.  Neither the victims nor their
attackers were well served by a system that failed to confront
prejudice in childhood.

These are complex problems.  A few books won't solve them.
But books and curriculums that introduce gay issues to
elementary students will take us in the right direction.
Sadly, opponents of the Rainbow curriculum argue that the
needs of these children are outweighed by the right of parents
to control what their children read.

Is this so?  Haven't we learned that the interests of a child
may diverge from the wishes of the parents?  Schools allow
children to experience a more diverse world than they could at
home.  The parents who protest the Rainbow curriculum grew up
at a time when gay people were invisible.  But their children
will live in a different world.  One child will have a lesbian
supervisor at her first job.  Another will serve in the Navy
alongside an openly gay man.  Others will realize that they
are gay or lesbian.  Schools must prepare them for that world.

And what about parents who think homosexuality is wrong?  Does
this deny them the right to impart their moral values to their
children?

Certainly not.  Children hear competing ideas from numerous
sources: home, school, church, TV and friends.  Each child
must evaluate these conflicting ideas, then form a personal
philosophy that explains the world.  Parents should contribute
to that process.  But schools have an obligation too.  A
curriculum that ignores homosexuality will no more prepare a
child for the year 2010 than a flat-earth curriculum would
have prepared a child to become an astronaut.

Parents who attack the Rainbow curriculum aren't merely
demanding the right to teach their own moral beliefs.  They
already have that right.  They're demanding that competing
ideas be silenced.  They even want to banish facts -- for
example, that gay people lead happy, productive and satisfying
lives.  What kind of moral system is threatened by competing
ideas and real-life facts?

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rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san ramon, ca -=- rjwill6@pacbell.com
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