Many teachers who address issues of race and gender may feel uneasy about raising issues of sexuality either because of their own fears or because they fear students' reactions. Many who do incorporate these issues into their diversity classes frame their discussions around the issue of homophobia. Homophobia as a framing intellectual device seems inappropriate to me in the current climate. Homophobia describes the fear of homosexuality and the resulting denigration of gay and lesbian people. But most of us and many students do not really engage in homophobia so much as we and our students are heterosexist.
Benign neglect is the actual practice in most classrooms.
If we truly want students to confront issues of identity and discrimination in all their complexity, we should not ignore an important element of identity that conditions other factors like racism and sexism. To address both heterosexism and homophobia within curriculum transformation, we must begin with clear understandings about the ways these terms are used. Homophobia refers to the actual fear and active resistance to individuals who are presumed to be homosexual and to the idea of homosexuality. I began discussing these issues in my classrooms in 1991. In fact, they were simply essential to teaching my literature courses.