An art history teacher includes portraits of same-sex couples in her studies. An English teacher has discussed writer Langston Hughes, who is widely believed to have been gay. And in 11th-grade U.S. history, Daniel Jocz covers LGBT issues, especially during the unit on 20th century civil rights movements.
Using video clips of Kanye West, Tyra Banks and other celebrities, Jocz engages his students in lively discussions about language -- including the taunt "that's gay." His students study the LGBT resistance to police arrests in the Stonewall riots alongside Rosa Parks' refusal to sit in the back of the bus. And the murder cases of Emmett Till, an African American teenager, and Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, are examined in the class segment on hate crimes.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, November 01, 2011 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 News Desk 1 inches; 52 words Type of Material: Correction
LGBT Americans: Three headlines with an article in the Oct. 16 Section A about a new law requiring California public schools to teach about the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in state and U.S. history erred in describing the subject matter as "gay issues" and "LGBT lessons."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, November 06, 2011 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 News Desk 1 inches; 52 words Type of Material: Correction
LGBT Americans: Three headlines with an article in the Oct. 16 Section A about a new law requiring California public schools to teach about the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in state and U.S. history erred in describing the subject matter as "gay issues" and "LGBT lessons."
"I'm a history teacher, and this is history," Jocz said. "It's part of the narrative. You can't remove it."
Students say such efforts have created a safe and nurturing environment.
David Columbus, a senior and president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance club, said he remembers being pushed around and called names since he was 3 because he liked Barbie dolls. When he realized he was gay in eighth grade, he said, he wanted to die and wished he had cancer instead because that was more acceptable.
At school, however, Columbus said he has thrived under the support.
"This law's going to educate kids about LGBT people, and once you get education, you'll respect them, and nobody's going to bully them anymore," said Jennifer Vanegas, a straight member of the club.
But the new law, which added LGBT Americans, European Americans and the disabled to groups whose contributions to California and U.S. history should be studied, has sparked open rebellion from some teachers and families.
Sixty miles east of Wonderland, Calvary Chapel Corona -- an evangelical Christian church of 1,200 congregants in western Riverside County -- is an active opponent. At least seven families pulled their children from public schools in protest.
"This law teaches children that it's OK to be gay, and that's not my Christian values," said Bryan Breuer, who withdrew his children from public schools. "I don't understand trying to force this on my children."
Grace R. Callaway, a public school teacher near Yuba City, said she will refuse to teach LGBT issues to her fifth- and sixth-graders because she believes homosexuality is a "destructive lifestyle."
She has also taken issue with a short biography recently presented in her daughter's high school history class that described John Berry, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as the "highest-ranking openly gay federal employee in U.S. history." She and some other religious conservatives want to remove their children from such lessons as they can do with sex education.
How administrators plan to handle "conscientious objectors" like Callaway is unclear.
For now, L.A. Unified, along with school districts in south Orange County, Elk Grove and elsewhere, has started meeting with staff members to figure out lesson plans.
"We're looking for places of natural fit," Chiasson said. "We're not going to shoehorn in something gratuitous just to make a point."
