Mandatory LGBTQ Outing Helps Nobody

I don't know why they're cheering.

Okay, I know why. But the parents of Chino, California are kidding themselves if they think the new mandatory outing rule will help anyone, least of all them.

The rule says that once a child asks to be identified by anything other than “a name or pronoun other than those listed on the student’s birth certificate”, the school has 72 hours to notify home. The meeting was so contentious that it included throwing out the state superintendent.

This is a stupid policy.

Like many such policies, it is based on the LGBTQ panic notion that what happens is that the school convinces the child that they are trans, and then tells the child not to tell anyone at home. 

I'm not going to say this never, ever happens; there are a lot of schools in this country, and on any given day, somebody in one of them is doing something stupid. So it may well be true that the above scenario is playing out somewhere with vanishingly small frequency. And wherever it happens, to be clear, the school is in the wrong.

But in most cases, if the parents aren't being told, that is 100% the decision of the child. If your child thinks he might be gay, and he's not telling you about it, it is because he doesn't trust you. If your child thinks she might be trans, and she's not talking to you about it, it is because she doesn't trust you. If they're talking to some adult at school about it, that's because they can't think of anywhere else to turn. 

Policies like this are not a directive for schools to talk to parents; they are a directive to students not to trust schools.

The most immediate and clear result of a policy like this is that students will understand that the school staff cannot be trusted, and so they simply won't tell them.

Policies like this will do nothing for parents. The children who would talk about these things will still do so; those who don't trust their parents enough to talk to them, still won't. And parents will not be clued in because the children will not talk to their teachers, either.

Policies like these are no help to teachers (not that they are meant to be). Teachers can now wonder about stupid stuff like if Patricia's request to be called Pat is a violation of the rule that requires a phone call, so they'll get to do less teaching and more nickname and suspicion-of-LGBTQ phone calls, which will in turn be a nuisance to parents who either don't care abut nicknames or who are so panicked over this issue that they jump every time their child does anything that might reveal "tendencies."

Most of all, this will not help children. LGBTQ students will be even more isolated,  not just by the loss of a place to turn, but the notion that being LGBTQ is the kind of thing they call your parents about, like skipping class or cheating on a test. 

Some LGBTQ kids will be fine. Because they have healthy relationships with their parents, they'll come out at home. Then home and school will touch base, coordinate how things are to be handled, and everyone will do what they can to support the child through what can be difficult and momentous and emotional issues.

Others will not. More isolation, more depression. Maybe more homelessness. Possibly, God forbid, more suicide. 

It's bad policy. It doesn't help any of the people it pretends to help, and hurts some of the most vulnerable and helpless young people. It's bad policy.