A safe place for the youth
About the Author
who is she?
Her.
Hello, Theybies, Gaybies, and babies! My name is Jewel Booker. I am a high school senior at New Haven Academy. I like to call myself a baby activist for the LGBTQ community. I've had an internship at the New Haven Arts Paper where I covered and wrote articles on events around the LGBTQ community. I am also a member of the E-board.
Why I care
Honestly, I think my fear of the violence against this community pushed me to try and make a change. people are being beaten, killed, and kicked out for being exactly who they know they are. it's scary how violent people could be and how strong hatred can be when it comes to people who are seen as different. I have strongly always agreed with the idea of Hate is taught, not something you are born with. I believe this because I have once come out to my 8-year-old sister and she told me how wrong I was. Told me I was going to hell. All for just being who I was. and I asked her, How do you know this? and her response was simple. "my mom and my grandma told me and they're never wrong." At the moment I knew there are many kids as young as her, whose minds are being corrupted even before they get the chance to think for themselves. I knew that if they simply implicated teaching kids about this topic would help society.
Quick Facts
Upon doing some research, I wanted to know what states made it mandatory for the curriculum to include classes on the LGBTQ community. To my disappointment, out of 50 states, only 4 require it. Which is crazy to think that in the year of 2020, the history surrounding the community is still deemed not important enough to be taught at schools everywhere. According to www.edweek.org “ Six states have anti-LGBT curriculum laws that apply to sexual health education. Advocates say that the way these laws are written leaves room for them to be misapplied to other parts of school life, including curriculum in other classes or extracurricular activities, like a Gay-Straight Alliance.” It is imposed that it is completely okay to have anti-LGBTQ laws in schools. If a student from the community has no one around them to help educate them or they cannot ask anybody they know because it is dangerous to them, it should be able to be taught in a sexual health class. Not teaching it causes more danger than if they were to teach it. You cannot prevent having memebers of the LGBTQ community in the schools, the best thing you can do is educate and care for the students.
These are not even an issue just within high schools. Kids as young as being in elementary school are becoming more aware of who they are and what gender they are. In 2017, Donald Trump decided to remove the idea of issuing non- conforming bathrooms within high schools and middle schools. Anne Hughes took it and ran with the idea of change. She began going to schools asking them what issues they had within their schools that they wished to see change. She was shocked when safe bathrooms for non-conforming students were brought up. “They know there are people that have attempted suicide that are struggling with safety and struggling with acceptance,” she said. Later, she got a similar response from students at Redding’s Joel Barlow High School.” ( www.ctpost.com ) middle school and high school is hard. It's a new level of education and a whole bunch of kids who are just trying to understand themselves. But the LGBTQ community has it ten times harder. Most students don't feel accepted. Especially when they are forced to use bathrooms with the genders they were assigned at birth, although they know they’re not that gender.