This article is a response to "The Shaky Legal Foundations of the Global Human Rights Education Project," an article written by Barend Vlaardingerbroek, in which Vlaardingerbroek characterizes current practices of human rights education (HRE) as having an overriding agenda of activism, one that can draw on an ideologically-driven…

Essays within this forum grapple with the multilevel ways that anti-LGBT bullying manifests within educational spaces. The essays for this forum provide a clear articulation of the wicked problem of LGBT bullying while also offering clear pedagogical advice for how instructors can change themselves, their institutions, and society to be more…

La Casa de los Colores (the House of Colors) is a feminist organization dedicated to defending human rights, particularly those of the LGBTQ+ community in León, Nicaragua. In 2016 Helen Alfaro, Yova Briones, Ani Guerrero, and Tannia Rizo Lazo, four members of La Casa's leadership team, "Las Coloras," were invited to speak about…

In other work I have argued that decisions about what to teach directively and what non-directively should be governed by an epistemic criterion. Trevor Cooling has recently advanced some objections to my defence and application of the epistemic criterion and proposed an alternative to it. Here I reply to his objections and comment on his proposed…

In this essay, I develop a pedagogical stance called the "free exercise of rhetoric" as a way to approach teaching and student writing at the intersection of LGBT and religious discourses. Through this stance, I work with students' personal commitments and build their rhetorical competence using a process that involves encountering uncommon…

This article is a commentary on the seven papers in this special issue of "Sex Education." A compelling theme interwoven throughout all the articles in subtle and explicit ways is the role that adults play in the lives of students, particularly in the ways in which adults impact how students enact and respond to the multiple…

Scholars have sought to identify the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon of sexual identity formation since the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 (Bayer, 1981). This article addresses the manner in which the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ]…

There is ample reason to be discouraged about the prevalence of sexual prejudice. As Herek (2000) notes, the majority of adult respondents in the United States report that homosexual behavior is wrong or "unnatural." The author readily acknowledges, then, that it is overly optimistic to believe that sexual prejudice is a thing of the past or that…

During the 1979 Victorian state election, fundamentalist Christian groups such as the Citizens Against Social Evil launched a public campaign against the inclusion of homosexual content in secondary school education. And, on March 19, 1979, the Minister of Education's office sent out an order to all secondary school principals directing them…

The FAIR Education Act (SB 48) was signed into law in California in July of 2011, amending the Education Code by requiring representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons in the social sciences. In this article, the author uses James Banks' model of the Four Levels of Integration of Multicultural Content to suggest ways in which…

While whiteness studies at most institutions aims to expose the persistence of white supremacy to a disbelieving audience, whiteness studies within the College of Ethnic Studies (COES) at San Francisco State University (SFSU) begins with the assumption that racism still exists. The course then traces how whiteness is constructed and fortified to…

Social work strives to be inclusive of all cultural groups and religious identities. However, a tension exists in the profession between freedom of religious expression and full acceptance of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. David Hodge and others claim social work is oppressive to evangelical Christians. This article critiques primarily Hodge's…

In this article, the author discusses that there is an abundance of quality LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) literature for young adults, filled with complexly rendered and experiences that mirror the often difficult and often exciting lives that young LGBT people live today. English language arts teachers work in a genuinely new and…

English in schools is a productive curriculum space for young people to learn about sexuality, to develop a sense of their identity as sexual beings, and to understand the importance of equality and social justice. Drawing on John Dixon's theory of "personal growth," the author (a British educator) explains how teachers' attitudes about learning…

Contemporary reflection on queer-radical and queer-deconstructionist curricula has only marginally included a radical deconstruction of the principle of curricula itself. This article explores this "hidden discourse" by referencing the idea of curricular subjectivity and proposes a contextualizing perspective on the politicized interplay between…