Strides at the federal and state levels are being made to improve the overall climate for gay rights and relationships across the country. However, despite greater acceptance, legislative victories and visibility of gay rights and relationships, homophobia is still widespread in American society (Fone, 2000; Jenkins, Lambert, & Baker, 2009;…

Acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) adolescents in high schools is growing. Yet, the experience of this family suggests that creating and maintaining a safe environment for GLBTQ students requires constant vigilance, even in the best of environments. As school administrators face competing pressures from…

This article makes a connection between youth work spaces, emotions and some elements of memory, exploring the construction of spaces dangerous for social justice in both meanings of the term "dangerous for". It investigates the contribution to social justice of lesbian and gay youth work and other non-heteronormative youth work in a…

The purpose of this study was to measure music teachers' attitudes toward transgender individuals and toward school practices that support transgender students. Participants (N = 612) included men and women who teach a variety of music subjects in elementary, middle, and high schools, in urban, suburban, and rural areas. An online questionnaire…

It is not easy to "come out" as a teacher, particularly at the middle school level. The overwhelming reason to come out is to make school a safer place for youth who know, think, or fear they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Adolescence is hard enough without positive role models for every aspect of who one is or is striving to become.…

This article scrutinizes the efforts of a media advocacy group to redress the stigma of youth homosexuality among United States youth: a report published in 2003 by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation called, "How Youth Media Can Help Combat Homophobia Among American Teenagers." The report, authored by Rodger Streitmatter, concluded…

This qualitative multiple case study examines the experiences of one middle and two high school English teachers who incorporate literature with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) content and queer issues in their classes. The teachers' intentions, methods, and experiences are examined through the lenses of queer…

There is no question that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) students are routinely verbally, emotionally, and physically bullied by their classmates in school contexts. Human Rights Watch (2001) concluded that as many as two million U.S. students have been harassed by peers at school due to their sexual orientation, while the Gay…

Joe Bruns is currently a student in the Post-Baccalaureate Teacher Certification Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The series of work featured in this interview centers on the idea of relationships. Joe explores collective and implicated relationship to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres through the reuse of paper taken from…

Depending on the area of academic concentration, formal education beyond the secondary school level may present Catholic-educated individuals with a steady stream of perspectives, theories, and worldviews on a variety of sociocultural issues, including sexuality, that are different from those of the Catholic Church. Increasingly, liberal attitudes…

This article begins with a broad historical overview detailing how school-based sexuality education has been taught from a specific kind of heterosexual perspective that has excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) students as well as heterosexual students who do not fall along culturally dominant heterosexual…

Critical pedagogy, combined with partnerships with adults at school, enabled the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) advisor to create the foundation for reflective, activist-oriented learning at one Midwestern high school. Underreported in current literature, the use of critical pedagogy in school clubs and/or organizations has broad implications for…

In order to accommodate the education needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, American schools need to do more than add LGBT information to the curriculum in sex education class. If we believe, as Erikson (1968) suggested--that adolescence is the time when young people try to make sense of who they are--and if we believe that…

Internalized heterosexism (IH) is a strong predictor of the psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB), or other same-sex attracted individuals. To respond to the call for interventions to address IH, the current study developed and tested an online intervention to reduce IH among gay, bisexual, and other same-sex attracted men. A…

The tenure track in higher education represents a path shrouded in a fair degree of mystery. This essay provides the perspective of a middle-aged, second-career tenure track faculty member on the vagaries of progressing down the track as an out lesbian. Three dialectics that build tension into the process--covering-creating, evaluation-liberation,…