CAPE ELIZABETH – At the end of next month, high schools across the state, indeed across America, will reconvene for another school year. Kids and teachers will reconnect and, quickly, school clubs and activities will start anew.

Notices will go out, usually from a teacher adviser, to alert kids it’s time to sign up. One group, however, does it a bit differently. In RSU 5 (Freeport, Pownal and Durham), the Gay-Straight Alliance exists only because the kids want it to happen.

My co-advisers, two unpaid teacher volunteers, and I simply wait for the first group to get to us. “Hey, Mr. Robinson, are we going to have a GSA this year?”

A form of this question has initiated another year of GSA since before I started at the high school some 10 years ago.

Membership is open to everyone, including teachers, and the understanding is that “the question” is not to be asked of any participant. Indeed, some students may choose to reveal their homosexuality to the others and, as you might expect, straight allies in the club feel free to speak of their heterosexuality.

The marvelous mix of the GSA comes from the sincere blend of gay and straight kids who simply want to support or be supported by their peers.

I am fascinated as I listen to their very real “kid issues” surrounding school, friends, teachers, parents, their futures, you name it.

I am equally touched by how little they seem aware of the scorn and derision that is directed at them by groups and individuals from outside their school community in ways they could never fathom and, in some cases, is far worse than any bullying they might see.

Their concerns are real, they are universal and they apply to everyone, gay or straight.

And when they discuss the future, like all of us who came before, they, too, dream the American Dream: a good job because they work hard, respect from friends and the community because they volunteer and show compassion and, perhaps, if they are blessed, a loving life-partner and a family.

And in those discussions there is a beautiful innocence that has, as yet, not been overly tainted by a host of virulent antagonists who spout a litany of bombast suggesting that gay kids will lead to the fall of civilization.

Most recently, our own Maine Legislature, due to a last minute email alert from the Christian Civic League of Maine, chose to abandon its support of an anti-bullying bill that seemed sure to pass.

What happened? The answer is pretty simple, albeit a classic ploy of some Christian fundamentalists: turn the argument into a battle between the “gay agenda” and everyone else.

Tim Russell, in a Maine Voices column on July 13, provides a stark and frightening example of this very plan when he states: “The Republican legislators … showed far more courage than those legislators who succumbed to the hidden gay agenda.”

The column attempts to cement its premise by noting that Mary Bonauto, a gay rights lawyer, helped to draft the legislation, as if her inherent interest in protecting some of the very kids this bill was meant to protect should be grounds for recusal.

The column goes on to say: “The definition of bullying is imprecise, ill-defined and vague … open to subjective interpretation (and) classifies acts or words based on the perception of the victim and how the victim feels.”

Well, as the kids would say: Duh! What is so imprecise about “pervert,” “fatso” and others too vile to print? When has it ever been difficult to determine who is the victim and who is the bully?

Now to the most frightening part of the column’s argument: “The most serious flaw with this bill is that it incorporates no protections for First Amendment rights of students … Speech, otherwise protected under the First Amendment, may be punishable under L.D. 1237.”

In other words, the writer would have you believe that all students should have a First Amendment right to call all others who are different in any respect any name they want.

The column gives lip-service to the issue of bullying: “All Maine residents can agree that bullying should not be tolerated …” and then, big surprise, “… but the solution is not to give preferential rights to or promote a particular agenda of some students at the expense of the rest.”

The only “agenda” I know of that the kids in GSA seem to support is that all kids in schools should be free from attack by bullies who use words as weapons. And free from having to consider suicide as a viable option to escape the pain.

Their “agenda” is by no means hidden, and their courage is something some may never understand.

 

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