LETTERS

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 17, 1999

What both Chittister and Schneiders address is the endless cycle of violence that the hierarchical church and magisterium perpetuate against gay and lesbian people. Catholic high schools are often breeding grounds for such attitudes of violence.

I have taught in Catholic high schools in various parts of this country and have endured the endless ignorant analyses about gays and lesbians that too many high school theology teachers and local priests pass on to countless students in ethics and sexuality courses. Many of the students have seen through this ignorance and developed a more compassionate and enlightened sense about the lives and issues of gays and lesbians. However, these students' voices are often drowned out by the homophobia and violence that so many other Catholic school students, especially Catholic males, promote and perpetuate in the name of the God who they have been told loves gay and lesbian people, but hates the love we dare to live.

And, yes, in the midst of all of this, I have reached out to the many students who commit homophobic acts of violence and to the countless Catholic school students who have been their victims. There has been a great risk in all of this for me (and others) in a school system that will terminate with little thought the contracts of known gay and lesbian teachers.

Homophobic students read an unmarried teacher's compassion and defense of gays and lesbians as a sign that he or she is gay. They attempt to ensnare such teachers who promote thoughtful and logical reasoning about gay and lesbian people and issues. Parents of these same students become inquisitors in defense of the faith and use their homophobic illogic to root out any possible gay and lesbian intruders that might stand in their children's classrooms. Parish priests, often suffering from internalized homophobia, become the allies of these defenders of the faith. These same priests, parents and students start organizations that monitor teachers, curricula and the school so that no positive images of gay and lesbian people are presented.

I have been the object of diocesan investigations. The content of my courses has been scrutinized, my comments written on student papers analyzed and my personal life questioned. All of this in the name of the God who loves us all. All of this because many Catholic people have heard loud and clear the church's message that all gay and lesbian people are "intrinsically disordered."

Why, people ask, do I continue teaching in Catholic high schools? The answer has much to do with what I teach my students. If there is an injustice, I have a responsibility to at least be a voice of protest. My voice is in leading these students toward a greater understanding of the complexity of people's lives. Nazi death camp survivor Viktor Frankel wrote in Man's Search for Meaning that he "called to God from my narrow prison, and God answered in the freedom of space." Someone needs to show Catholic high school adolescents the freedom of intellectual space as the road out of the narrow prison they have been given.