Talking point # 3

Before reading this article I thought that talking to children at the elementary school age about gayness was too young, but now when I think about it, it is better to introduce them at a young age.  If you wait until a child is older to discuss something like this it is going to result in them not knowing how to feel about the topic.  If you discuss it with them when they are younger they will more than likely be more accepting and less judgemental about it because it was introduced to them earlier in life.  Just like children that I taught a second language at a younger age, when they are older they are more accepting of other cultures, because it was introduced to them earlier in life.

1) "To the extent that gayness is recognized in the curriculum, it is likely to be in the health curriculum, which it is associated with disease."

This is not right at all.  Especially because they only associate gayness with disease.  But, they do not assocaite heterosexual sex/ realtionships with disease even though there are several sexually transmitted disease transmitted from males to females and the other way around.  It is crazy that this is the only way that they talk about gayness with kids, no wonder why people grow up to be so against gayness, the only thing that they learn about is that it can result in disease.  They are not taught that people are in love with each other (even though they are the same gender) they still love each other, it is something that they can not control that is the way they are and they should be accepted and respected for that.

2) "Dismissed as adolescent behavior screams of Faggot echo down the hall terrifying, stigmatizing, isolating"

This just makes you think...can you imagine being treated this way because you are different than the majority of people around you?  This most likely would not happen as often if children were taught about gayness earlier in life.  BEcause they are not taught about it when they are first introduced to it at the middle school age they automatically ar unaccepting of it because people disagree with what they are unfamiliar with, especially at the middle school age because of the raging hormones and changes that they are going through, they do not like what they are not familiar with and they follow what the people around think and do.  But, if this topic was brought up to them when they were younger once they reached the middle school age more people would be accepting of gayness ( not all because lets face it not all people are accepting of everything) but it definatley will help a majority of people to be less judgemental

3) "Silence = Death"

I thought this was interesting because I had never heard this before.  I believe it means that if you are gay and do not care that keeping it to yourself (being silent) will be the death of you.  Which makes sense how can you deny who you really are to everyone around you, that would eat you apart.  People should feel confident about who they are and what they like, they should not be petrified to open up about it.  I can not imagine what it would be like to not feel comfortable opening up at all.  I mean I have insecurities about myself, everyone does  but not like that.  If the world were more accepting than people would be more accepting of themselves.  Well that is how I feel