In October 2006, Wheaton College hosted the annual conference of the Illinois Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Wheaton is a private Christian institution, and students are held to a strict code of ethics that forbids the consumption of tobacco and alcohol on campus. Wheaton's students are also required to sign a 'Community Covenant' at the time of admission, which explicitly condemns 'homosexual behavior' as 'sexual immorality.' At the same time, the Wheaton College Teacher Education Program, which emphasizes social justice, requires that student teachers should 'learn to work effectively with all children and their families regardless of race, creed, religion, national origin, sexual preference, disabling condition, or capabilities.' Furthermore, they are to 'ensure that all students, regardless of any differences, are truly educated.'
Erica Meiners and Therese Quinn—from Northeastern Illinois University and the School of the Art Institute, respectively—were two of the professors of education who attended the conference. Both are out lesbians who engage questions around social justice and sexuality in their pedagogy and activism; they saw many contradictions in Wheaton's injunctions to its students. Was Wheaton adopting a convenient 'blame the sin, not the sinner' stance around the issue of sexual orientation? Is it possible to ensure that LGBTQ students are 'truly educated' if their teachers are required to explicitly condemn their sexual orientation?
Meiners and Quinn distributed flyers highlighting the real dangers faced by LGBTQ students. Meiners' and Quinn's actions drew responses from Wheaton administrators. After some exchanges, the two decided to organize a public forum and invited Wheaton to send a representative.
The event, 'Anti-Gay Pledges and Teacher Education: A Dialogue about the Tensions between Private Beliefs and the Public Good,' took place on Feb. 20 at the Jane Adams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted, and was attended by approximately 25 people. While Wheaton did not send a representative, the organizers sought to ensure that there was ample time for a full and fair discussion. Kevin Kumashiro, of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education and the University of Illinois at Chicago, served as the moderator. He emphasized that the point would be not to reach closure or ensure agreement among all, but to grapple with the philosophical issues raised by the topic. As the two-hour program progressed, it was clear that the critically engaged attendees reflected a broad spectrum of opinion.
In an overview of the events leading to the forum, Meiners and Quinn presented their concerns and questions about such pledges. Attendees then broke up into discussion groups and reconvened to offer perspectives and ideas about the best approaches to the issue. The questions posed reflected a general sense of the tension between the public and the private, between civil rights and liberties and what might be defined as the general good of the many. What are the consequences when a private institution sets standards for public education? And how do discriminatory policies contribute to the dehumanization of LGBTQ bodies in schools?
Many in the room were themselves teachers. They reflected upon the long history of stigmatization faced by LGBTQ teachers, who are often portrayed as predators or recruiters seeking to convert all students to a 'gay lifestyle.' An overarching theme was the severe under-funding of the public education system. In an environment of increased privatization and scarce resources, are public school teachers prepared to deal with similar questions and conflicts that might come up with regard to class or race? Does signing the covenant translate into something tangible in terms of effects upon students?
Quinn pointed out that education is supposed to be a learning experience. She added that students enter into college with the expectation that they will learn to grapple with any conflicts between their value systems and the realities of their environments. By making students sign on to such pledges at the outset, Quinn argued that colleges like Wheaton are effectively stunting the students' ability to come to their own conclusions and asking them to echo a pre-determined set of principles and beliefs; in effect, they sign on to a pledge of bias.
Despite the clear anti-gay nature of such pledges, some forum attendees saw potential for future organizing and educational reform. One participant pointed out that this was an opportunity to bring questions around sexuality and education into the ambit of social justice organizing, which tends to ignore such issues.
Not all participants were ready to assume that such pledges were themselves intrinsically harmful, asserting that many people distinguish between belief and action and that signing a piece of paper may not in itself signify deep-seated homophobia. For some, lingering doubts remained about the First Amendment questions raised, and they asked about the long-term consequences of policing private institutions.
Yasmin Nair can be reached at welshzen@yahoo.com .
