Time for a rethink

The recent Wear It Purple day got a lot of good media attention, and so it should. Our experience here at Twenty10 tells us that as many as 60 percent of young people who are same-sex attracted have experienced some kind of verbal or physical abuse.

The vast majority of this is happening within educational settings. Everything from hate campaigns on Facebook, to being left out of activities, to graffiti on lockers, to not making it in one piece home from school.

Video projects like It Gets Better are essential for letting young people know that there are other people out there who support them and who understand what life might be like for them, but until the education settings that young people find themselves in on a daily basis are made more welcoming of diversity, the problems of growing up queer are just not going to change.

Expert after expert tells us that if young people don’t feel included on the basis of their sexuality then there are going to be significant barriers to learning and development.

So, what’s it going to take to see the changes that we need to see in our educational settings here in Australia?

A string of public suicides like the ones that prompted Katherine to initiate Wear It Purple day? None of us want to see that happen, irrespective of where we sit on the great Australian cultural divide of opinions on and of same sex relationships.

Until we are able to effect change, and as long as there are those like the Australia Christian Lobby — which is against publicly announcing schools as open and welcoming of all students, irrespective of their sexual identity because of some misguided fear about the promotion of “homosexual behaviour” — we are failing to support our young people to have the time and space to work their identity out for themselves.

We are telling them that they are not OK.

Time for a cultural reboot me thinks.

By REBECCA REYNOLDS
info: Rebecca Reynolds is the Managing Director of Twenty10. Visit www.twenty10.org.au