School of Love
Students in middle and high school are brutal. Between clothes, hair, grades, and cliques, to fit in you have to work hard to conform. What does that mean? No “crazy” hair.
No “ugly” clothes. No weird laugh or bad grade. (Be it too high or too low, depending on your clique.) And within the clique of school in general, you are DEFINITELY not allowed to be gay or bisexual. Gay and bi students go through years of tormenting from their fellow classmates. There are some cliques that allow gay members, but those groups are still looked down upon in the whole scheme of the school.
In recent news, there have been several gay teens who have committed suicide because of all the teasing they have had to face. That is utterly unacceptable. Why is bullying someone to the point of suicide because of their sexuality tolerated, while loving whomever you choose is not? Some people say that gay men are more likely to molest young boys but statistically speaking, straight men are much more often sexual predators. Gay people are typically kind, contributing members of society. Drew Barrymore, Megan Fox, Fergie, and Angelina Jolie are all gay or bisexual celebrities who are practically worshipped all over the world by all types of people. Yes, all types of people.
Because it takes all types of people to make the world the place it is. We need the Perez Hiltons and Rush Limbaughs and Lady Gagas and George W. Bushes to maintain balance. If everyone in the world agreed on everything then everyone would be the same, but life wouldn’t be the same. Our schools need to accept, or at least tolerate, the LGBT students enrolled in them. They’ve already got it hard enough as it is.
Life doesn’t automatically get better for them the moment these students walk at graduation. Instead, they are always going to be put down in society. All of that could be cured if school bullying on gay students would stop because high schoolers grow up to be politicians and CEOs and teachers. If we change our views on people who are different from us, maybe the world itself will change. It may take time, but it’s possible.
