As you may have read, a hullaballoo is brewing in the LA Unified School District offices because three teachers reportedly encouraged their elementary school students to carry posters of OJ Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul alongside Dr. Martin Luther King and President Obama in the school's Black History Month parade. Everyone, including the Mayor, is in a tizzy. For the most part, it makes sense: OJ Simpson was an awful choice, in my opinion, and Rodman was questionable, if fairly harmless.
But why on Earth is drag superstar RuPaul held up alongside a convicted murderer and a "hard partying" eccentric sports star as an example of why parents and officials should be horrified? LA's own Mayor Villaraigosa used words like "cynical" and "a terrible disservice to the students, their families and all of the teachers" to describe the choice of the three public figures, including RuPaul.
As I wrote about on my personal blog and for Psychology Today before, I've personally experienced the offensive and ridiculous tendency of hetero parents to "other" LGBT people. "We" come from "you". When you recoil from gay, lesbian or transgender people and ask, "But what about the children!?" you have to realize that some of your precious snowflakes are little proto-gay, proto-lesbian, proto-trans entities. We don't coalesce out of glitter and unicorn tears. The majority of times, we're born into regular straight families and raised as such until we can express ourselves freely.
Considering the sexuality and gender identity issues of children can be scary for some parents, but all the LGBT people I've known were aware of their feelings at very early ages. I certainly was. LGBT or pre-LGBT kids need role models, people to whom they can look when they need to understand that success and strength can come to even a little boy who feels like "a little black girl in the Brewster Projects". And beyond the LGBT children, the heterosexual children who make up the huge majority of the world need to see that they word "gay" means a strong, gorgeous, smart, talented person like RuPaul and not a frightened weakling relegated to the shadows because they have no inspirations or supporters.
Including people like RuPaul and other minority LGBT success stories in celebrations like Black History Month could provide that crucial element. Instead, children in LA are seeing RuPaul's image tossed into the bin alongside OJ Simpson with great wringing-of-hands by parents and authority figures. What a terrible, insulting shame. So how dare you, LA Unified School District, Mayor Villaraigosa and everyone else who can include RuPaul alongside the other two without even understanding the difference! GLBT community, I hope you speak out about this.
