Equality Magazine Winter 2011

early intervention HRC’s ‘Welcoming Schools’ Gets at the Root of Bullying

By Aimee Gelnaw

Every day, children in schools across the United States are ridiculed and humiliated because they have lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents.

Ellen Kahn hears the stories all too often. “They’re the daily news of the job,” says Kahn, the director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Family Project.

She’ll never forget hearing about one boy, a second grader in Lafayette, La. The 7-year-old was made to come to school early and write over and over, “I will not say ‘bad words’ in school again.”

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Why? While waiting for recess one day, a classmate asked about his mother and father. He responded that his mother is gay. “Gay is when a girl likes another girl,” he said. A teacher overheard the remark, scolded him, told him “gay” was a bad word and sent him to the principal’s office.

“What must it be like for a child to be told that a word that accurately describes the person closest to them is bad and forbidden in school?” said Kahn.

It is stories like these, in fact, that fuel the work of a unique HRC initiative for children and the elementary schools that serve them.