I tried to write this column a year ago.
It’s about a charter school, its sex-ed class and the courage to talk straight with kids.
For three years now, Denver’s Odyssey School has invited gays, lesbians and transgender folks to speak about their sexuality with seventh-graders.
It’s a program that the school, which takes diversity and social justice as seriously as it does academic rigor, is very proud of.
Still, the school refused to go public last year for fear it would be misunderstood or even undermined by Denver Public Schools.
“Frankly, we didn’t want to be told that we couldn’t teach it,” said director Marcia Fulton.
Finally, Odyssey has decided to come out of the closet.
On a recent Tuesday, Fulton and her board allowed me to sit among 26 13-year-olds in Jeanne Boland’s class listening to three grown-ups recount the odysseys of their own coming out.
“I didn’t have the words for it, nor the community around me to figure out that I was attracted to women. Certainly nobody talked about it in my school,” said Christine Cimini, 41, a University of Denver law professor. “It was hard to live a life that felt like a lie.”
Caitlin Looney, 28, a wilderness therapist, described the abuse she endured as a kid in Mississippi, where her minister tried an exorcism to “get the lesbian demon out of me.”
“It’s just kind of weird to think that people think we choose this,” preschool teacher Earnest Armstrong, 25, said of his preference for men. “It wasn’t a choice. It’s who I am. The only choice was whether to be open about it.”
I might be way out of middle school. But I’m not so old that I can no longer tell when kids are uncomfortable or embarrassed. Without so much as an eye-roll, students sat in their hoodies and skinny jeans respectful of and engaged by their visitors.
Some asked about their religions. Some wondered about severed ties with friends or family. Some wanted to hear about the challenges Cimini and her partner face in raising their two kids.
One asked how to meet potential partners. And one kid talked about his gay cousin.
There are some who no doubt will argue — and write and call — that talking to teens about homosexuality encourages it.
“Kids that age are impressionable,” said Jeff Johnston, a gender-issues analyst with Focus on the Family. “For someone like me who grew up with same-sex attractions and didn’t know how to handle them, it may have steered me toward homosexuality.”
Neither Odyssey’s curriculum, this column nor, apparently, the saga of Colorado Springs’ own self-hating gay pastor Ted Haggard is likely to change their minds.
Still, I argue that every school should hold panels like Odyssey’s.
Statistically, it’s safe to assume that most of Boland’s students are straight and will remain so even after the panel. Meeting people who aren’t demystifies homosexuality and fights prejudice and hate.
It’s also safe to assume that some in Boland’s class are questioning their sexuality and have faced, say, being called “dykes” or “homos” at their lockers. For them, I have no doubt that the panel lent comfort and hope.
Fred Sainz, 41, is the spokesman for the Gill Foundation, a Denver-based group advocating for gays and lesbians. He recalls his dad, a Catholic immigrant from Cuba, telling him, “Better a dead son than a gay son.”
“As somebody who grew up in a way-off suburb and was confused about my orientation,” he said, “this is exactly the kind of stuff that would have helped me know that I wasn’t alone.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
