Despite significant shifts in American politics and society, LGBTQ students remain a vulnerable population. Teacher allies are essential to LGBTQ students' support and success. However, little research explores the contradictions that teachers experience in and the complexities inherent in forging ally identities. This four-year longitudinal…

The authors conducted an ethnography of a university queer cultural center's role on campus and in the surrounding community. The dataset included participant observation, in-depth interviews, and artifacts. The authors present a review of LGBTQA [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, ally, and questioning] issues in higher education, heterosexual…

A study of investigated perceptions of gay/lesbian undergraduates regarding their sense of marginalization or alienation in the college classroom. Two research questions were posed: (1) What, according to gay/lesbian students, are the characteristics of classroom environments that create feelings of marginalization? and (2) What, according to…

In an episode of MASH in which Radar O'Reiley takes a correspondence course in writing, Col. Potter advises him, "The first rule if you want to be a writer is to be yourself." But what if O'Reiley wrote a series of stories about a corporal's negotiating his place in a system which urges, "don't ask, don't tell?" The colonel's…

Homophobia is accepted and encouraged by society, particularly in the sterile world of academia which allows, promotes, and creates homophobia by not providing lesbian/gay specific texts, examples, assignments, and role models. Composition teachers can make the classroom a safer place for lesbian/gay students, teachers, texts, and issues by: (1)…

The information in this report is based on the experiences of Cornell University and the University of South Carolina in responding to the needs of gay students in their residence halls. A starter kit on developing gay issue programming for other campuses is presented which includes a Gay Programming Checklist and a description of a sample…

Eleven percent of teenage girls and 14 percent of teenage boys in a recent survey acknowledged having had a same sex sexual encounter. It may be assumed that the number of adolescents with concerns related to sexual orientation exceeds the number with actual same sex experiences. If, as self-identified homosexual adults have reported, their sexual…

Three students in an autobiography class--an African-American, a woman, and a gay man struggling to come out--used their writing to both affirm their places in the world and envision another place. Having reviewed her early educational experiences as an African-American, Holly focused her essay back to her present college days and her attempts to…

North Americans' fear and preoccupation with safety and security as a result of the September 11 attacks is similar to that felt by gays and lesbians in daily life. Queer persons are not part of the Christian family, according to Jerry Falwell and other rightist Christian fundamentalists, including those involved in transformative ministry and…