A Measure of Progress. The U.S. 7th Circuit
Court of Appeals has
dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Wisconsin public school
teacher, Tommy Schroeder, who claimed he suffered years of crude
anti-gay heckling by elementary and middle-school students.
Schroeder sued the school board, charging it had refused to require
sensitivity training and did not adequately punish harassers (the
board claimed it did punish students who could be identified, and
that Schroeder exaggerated the problem).
I don't necessarily agree that the suit lacked merit, but I found
it significant that one of the judges who ruled with the majority
opinion to dismiss, Reagan appointee Richard A. Posner, wrote the
following:
For a conservative federal judge to be moved to affirm that the law protects gays -- even if finding that in this instance a gay claimant had no case -- is a sign that, despite a few neanderthal state judges, we"re making irrefutable progress toward achieving equality under the law.
Unqueer. Keith Boykin is a black gay writer/activist and a man "of the left." Still, I enjoyed reading his recent article "Queer as White Folk" in which he takes on the use of the Q word. "Despite the claim that "queer" is more inclusive than "gay" and simpler than "LGBT," the word "queer" is just as white as the television show that bears its name," Boykin writes. "It does not represent the vast majority of black homosexuals and bisexuals." He concludes, ""progressive activists should think twice before promoting the term "queer" as inclusive language, especially to blacks." I hope that ruffles a few feathers on the "more correct than thou" gay academic left, and helps derail once and for all the "call us queer" bandwagon.