Talking Points #3: Carlson

1. "English literature anthologies still go out of their way to avoid acknowledging that certain famous writers were gay, such as Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, or James Baldwin. This cleansing of gayness from the literary canon is often defended as an effort to maintain the reputation or "good name" of authors by not "outing" them. Yet such concern is, of course, another way of affirming that being gay is cause for a loss of respect"

As I read this particular quote I felt torn on how I feel about this issue. While I think it is very important to make young people (and all people for that matter) aware that some of the greatest literary geniuses were gay in order to provide gay youth with strong and talented role models as well as to provide an example to all people that sexuality does not affect what one can achieve at the same time I feel like it should be irrelevant. It is not as if an English text book would explicitly state if an author was straight (not in an English text book I've read in school that is). What matters is that the author is/was a PERSON that is/was a talented writer. This quote reminded me of how African American authors/ any black author is always described as a 'black author' but never do you ever hear of someone being referred to as a 'white author'. In the same way that race should not be regarded as a factor that effects a person's talent as a writer, neither should sexuality. As I said before though, I am torn on this issue. By not making people aware of the fact that such great writers were gay and being silent on the topic it reinforces the idea that the topic of homosexuality is taboo to talk about and wrong.

2. "To the extent that gaynes is recognized in the curriculum, it is likely to be in the health curriculum, where it is associated with disease. For example, one of the most popular health text on the high school market is Health: A Guide to Wellness, which mentions homosexuals or homosexuality once in acknowledging that "the first ground in the United states diagnosed with AIDS we male homosexuals."

Until I read this quote I never really realized this, but as I began to think about it, it is so true. Although I feel my high school was/is extremely accepting of homosexuality compared to the stories I've heard about how gay people are treated in other schools, the only time homosexuality was really ever talked about formally in school was in health class when we learned about AIDS. My health teachers made sure however that we were always made aware that while AIDS is more prevalent in the gay community it is not a 'gay person's' disease, that we all must take the necessary precautions to protect ourselves from contracting HIV and that just because a person it gay, it of course does not mean that they have AIDS and that you could catch it by simply being in their presence. As I began to think about this quote I thought about how if a student did not have teachers like I had, and was only taught what their health book said. That student would only view homosexuals as the first group in the United States to be diagnosed with AIDS. If another group was only refered to in this way, for example if white Americans were only referred to in a history book as being the first people to own African slaves (for lack of a better example), there would be outrage but yet homosexuality is only taught in schools in one negative way and nothing is being done about it.

3. "...homosexual teachers were presumed to be lecherous and develop "ridiculous crushes" on students"

I was nothing short of outraged when I read this quote, along with all of the other points that Carlson includes from Waller. This quote could be nothing further from the truth; just think about any time you have heard about a student-teacher affair happening on the news. Every account I can remember was of a straight teacher having an affair with their student. Though this is the case you don't have people fearful that every straight teacher will develop a crush on their student and while it is generally straight teachers who are the offenders of this crime I highly doubt that any administrator would be wary about hiring a straight teacher.

Though the beginning of the article was a bit more challenging to read than some of the other authors we've read, I found Carlson's article to be extremely interesting, and was by far my favorite piece we've read so far. I wrote a paper last semester for my Writing 100 class about the representation of homosexuals/homosexuality in the media, on the show Will & Grace in particular, and this article would have been a very valuable resource to use for my research. While reading Carlson's article I was constantly being filled with a variety of different emotions, I found myself shocked and angered while reading the negative beliefs of Waller, and enlightened when Carlson would bring up a point that I had never really gave any thought to before.

Carlson's article really brought together many of the points that all of the other author's we've read have made, especially Johnson. Carlson, just like Johnson, believes that we need to talk about homosexuality and the problems that exist rather than silence and ignore them. Throughout the last century we have made great strides in securing rights for gay people, but in order to guarantee equality for the members of the gay community we must first start by properly educating our nation's youth in the classroom about homosexuality.
How do we begin to educate elementary school children about accepting homosexuality when they do not yet understand sexuality?