Gay History Class to Launch at San Francisco High School

In San Francisco, of all places, a high school will offer a college preparatory class approved by the UC system that revolves around the importance of being gay.

San Francisco board member Sandra Fewer, who has a gay child, pontificated to the San Francisco Chronicle, “As the mother of a gay child, I’m very sensitive to the issues of our LGBT youth,” adding that the class offers “a deeper understanding. It separates fact from fiction.” Fewer pointed out that the class will not focus on the homosexual act itself, saying reassuringly that the gay rights movement and the history of the LGBT community did not revolve around sex. She lectured, “People always think it’s about the sex. It’s not about sex. What drove those movements was making the world a better place, a more peaceful place.” She is determined to foist the class on every school in the district.

The LGBT social studies course will be offered at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and will be eligible to count for classes required to qualify for admission to the UC system. Lyndsey Schlax, who recently finalized the curriculum for the one-semester course, said, “This is history. This is an experience that happened. How can we not teach history? That’s what we do.”

Newsweek reported that Schlax stated the class would offer “things like the establishment of enclaves, the experience in the military and the end of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, the overturning of [the Defense of Marriage Act] and the [Proposition 8] case.” It will also include “what’s happening right now with the spread of marriage equality and how that’s moving through the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The board had approved the creation of such a course in 2010, but budget cuts derailed the effort. A total of 28% of Ruth Asawa students say they are gay.

Schlax received a grant to obtain 40 audio and video players for the class. In her history of the gay movement, she is intent on showing how the culture of the past treated gays badly, noting Disney villains with speech patterns associated with gay men.

The San Francisco Examiner reported twenty-five students had enrolled in the class as of mid-June.