[freya]

Well, here's a very positive story from a few years ago. I posted it on a different thread once, but it goes here ever better:

When my gay son (L) was a sophmore in HS, he had to take this "health" class that included a seriously lame-*ss unit on sexuality. Anyway, the unit began with him having to explain to the teacher the difference between sex and gender when she started out by using the terms "male" and "man" and "female" and "woman" interchangeably, and it only went downhill from there.

Every couple of days he would come home with a story about some new silliness, and we would talk about what he might do to try to make the situation better for himself, but, after the first lesson, he really seemed to decide that he was just going to put up with it and keep his mouth shut -- except for complaining to me. Well, he did OK with that strategy for the the majority of the unit (If you can define "OK" as: managing to keep his mouth shut even though he was getting more and more angry and resentful and frustrated by the whole thing)......

....until, one day at the very end of the unit, I'm at lunch with some colleagues, and I get a phone call from him:

L: "Mom, you're going to be getting a call from a principal because I just walked out of health class."

Me: "What happened?"

L: "Well, she wanted us to do this exercise where we had to respond to some really stupid questions she handed out (for the girls) about how they feel about certain things that boys do and (for the boys) how we feel about some things that girls do. And it was so stupid and insulting and just like yeah-sure-everyone-in-the-world-is-straight, and I was just so angry and pissed-off already that when it came my turn to answer the question: 'I like it when girls.....', I said: 'I like it when girls go out with other girls and leave the boys for me,' and then I said '...and this lesson is so stupid and insulting that I can't take it anymore and I have to leave.' And I left."

Me: "Well, OK, go to your next class and if anyone gives you any trouble, have them call me. And when they call, I'll take care of it." (I did also take the Al Anon teaching opportunity to explain to him how taking care of himself by addressing some of the issues with the problems in the curriculum beforehand with the teacher might have kept things from having to get to this point.)

So, I get back to my office and, sure enough, there's a message from a principal asking me to call her back ASAP.........and, wow, after listening to him talk about this BS for several weeks and not getting involved or interfering in his life by trying to "fix" it all myself, I am SO fired-up and ready to rumble over this one, I call her back immediately:

Me: "Hi, this is CC, LS's mom returning your call. What's going on?" .... trying my best to sound all innocent-and-clueless-like, just waiting for her to try to start in on my son and/or to try to defend the BS curriculum.

......but the joke was on me because, instead, she says: "Ms. C, I'm very sorry to have to tell you that your son walked out of his health class today because apparently there were some serious problems with the curriculum and he felt discriminated against as a gay student...." ...and she went on to apologize to me profusely and offered to meet with me and L and the teacher to make sure he was OK, etc....etc.....etc...."

Wow! What a (pleasant) shock that was -- although I do have to admit it was a little bit of a let-down not to get to have a big fight over it, seeing as how I had gotten myself all worked up already and everything.

freya