Re: Homosexuality, School Children, and the "At Risk" Concept
This is not my territory <gg>, but let me put a toe into the water with a few considerations.
1) It seems to be true that in hot-house same-sex environments, basically heterosexual children, as well as adults, will experiment with homosexual behaviors. For adults, cases in point: prisons; the merchant marine (yes, everybody). For children: Spartan training camps; English public schools (i.e., private boarding schools). In the case of the English public schools, this "homosexual behavior" was not all overt, but there was a lot of "falling in love". And it did not generally endure when the boys emerged into the normal adult world.
The conclusion that suggests itself: if you segregate adolescent males from what would be the normal objects of their awakened sex drive -- that is, females; and if you insist on herding them all together in a pressurized, round-the-clock environment, they are likely to turn to one another for "love". (Heck, some adolescent boys would turn to a tree, if there was nothing else available...) No "propaganda" is necessary here.
2) In American schools, boys who "seem" gay (and maybe are) are often unmercifully teased as "faggots", etc. Their lives are made absolutely miserable by their classmates. "Masculine-seeming" girls have an easier time of it, but they do not escape this kind of harassment altogether.
It seems to me that teachers have an absolute obligation to stop this vicious teasing (as they would stop teasing based on race, religion, or anything else). They cannot do that without teaching the children to "accept" homosexuality, in the sense of tolerating it in their classmates. No way is that the same thing as teaching them to adopt it. Besides, a normal heterosexual adolescent will not generally look to a member of the same sex for sexual satisfaction, if a member of the opposite sex is available.
3) Homosexual teachers as pedophiles. Again, I would suggest this is a danger only in same-sex environments. In general, there seem to be more heterosexual pedophiles than homosexual ones. And it is my understanding that outright child molesters will molest any child, regardless of sex.
jbe |
