My son is ten years old, in fourth grade. We live in a smallish city in rural Missouri, but the school system is generally not as conservative as that might sound. I know from having substituted in the school district for several years that most of the teachers are liberal, and we are in a college town which voted solidly (though not overwhelmingly) for Obama.
His class is doing a project where they each represent a famous Missourian, and he was assigned to play Langston Hughes. In helping him research the part, we discovered that Hughes was almost certainly a closeted gay man. My son being the cool little progressive kid that he is,* he was all for bringing this into his presentation.
BUT...[see below fold for the rest]
His teacher made two objections: that it is not proven that Hughes was gay, and that parents who come to see the presentation might feel uncomfortable. The first objection, it seems to me, is simply an artifact of the repressive time period Hughes lived in, and thus it strikes me as unfair to continue to leave him in the closet. The second puts me to mind of the old trope "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good [people] to do nothing". I doubt his teacher is actively homophobic, but in her reluctance to stir up controversy, she allows homophobes to win, and perpetuates the current state of affairs in the mushy middle, where there is a halfhearted consensus not to actively discriminate against gays, but still to treat them as a group that is doing something deviant, "dirty", from which children should be shielded.
My wife and I are fuming over this. What should we do--any suggestions? While I rarely if ever shrink from a fight, I don't want to drag my son into some situation where he becomes a pariah.
*He was the first kindergartener anyone in the district had ever heard of who objected to saying the Pledge of Allegiance, which he called a "prayer" due to the "Under God" part (and I did not coach him in this, I swear). He makes me really proud.