NYT: Coming Out in Middle School

I just finished reading a lengthy article called Coming out in Middle School (on my blackberry screen over the course of two days). It's about sexual identities...

All of this fluidity, confusion and experimentation can be understandably disorienting for parents and educators. Is an eighth grader who says he’s gay just experimenting? Could he change his mind in a week, as 13-year-olds routinely do with other identities — skater, prep, goth, jock — they try on for a while and then shed for another? And if sexuality is so fluid, should he really box himself in with a gay identity? Many parents told me they especially struggled with that last question.

bullying...

What is clear is that for many gay youth, middle school is more survival than learning — one parent of a gay teenager I spent time with likened her child’s middle school to a “war zone.” In a 2007 survey of 626 gay, bisexual and transgender middle-schoolers from across the country by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (Glsen), 81 percent reported being regularly harassed on campus because of their sexual orientation. Another 39 percent reported physical assaults. Of the students who told teachers or administrators about the bullying, only 29 percent said it resulted in effective intervention.

families...

Though many of the parents I spoke to needed a period of adjustment before accepting their children’s announcement that they were gay or bisexual, others offered immediate and unequivocal support. “The biggest difference I’ve seen in the last 10 years isn’t with gay kids — it’s with their families,” says Dan Woog, an openly gay varsity boys’ soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., who helped found a gay-straight alliance at his school in 1993. “Many parents just don’t assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they’re gay.”

and Gay Straight Alliances...

Indeed, courts — citing the Equal Access Act, which requires public schools to provide equal access to extracurricular clubs — have consistently ruled against schools that try to block G.S.A.’s from starting. (The 1984 law was the brainchild of Christian groups fighting to allow students to form religious clubs in schools.)

in Middle Schools across the US.