a home forLEARNING
Principal Mike Wilson looks over the construction site of the future school.
Magic City Acceptance Academy Opens its Affirming Doors By: Meg Van Dyk
“Don’t say gay.” “Homosexuality is a choice.” These phrases are commonplace slang in the LGBTQ+ community, used to reference states which have laws prohibiting positive affirming representation of LGBTQ+ identities in K-12 schools. Alabama is one of them. Today there are only five states remaining that have yet to repeal such laws, despite numerous attempts to do so. Alabama State Code § 16-40A-2(c)(8) stipulates teacher “must emphasize, in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.” But it is not state code, or the acknowledgment of the state being “don’t say gay,” that encouraged the founders of Magic Center Acceptance Academy, the state’s first LGBTQ+ affirming school, to open its doors. Seven years ago Birmingham AIDS Outreach, Alabama’s first AIDS service organization, began seeing an uptick in student-aged youth seeking counsel in a safe, affirming environment which led to the creation of the Magic City Acceptance Center. The center provides LGBTQ+ youth a space to gather with alike students.
It also provides necessary resources such as counselors, medical services, social workers and most importantly, adults who could be seen as allies. In the past five years the center has aided more than 1,500 children and teenagers and is now seeing more than 200 kids a month, engaging students from across the state. But despite their best efforts the center could only do so much and its students were still facing the reality of what it’s like to be different in schools that are often not equipped to help. “Through the center we began to see students with high levels of anxiety,” future principal of Magic City Acceptance Academy Michael Wilson said. “In discussions we were repeatedly hearing students share how they felt school was not a safe space for them, we listened to stories of bullying in the classroom and the fear that comes with the absence of an adult ally.” More than 70% of students reported receiving some form of verbal harassment, 78% reported their schools for having discriminatory policies or practices at their school, and only 4% attended a school with a comprehensive anti-bullying/harassment policy that included specific protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression In 2019 GLSEN, formerly known as the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, released their findings from a state-wide survey detailing the school Spring ‘21 | 57
