Harvey Milk High School

During the Civil Rights Movement, the case of Brown v. Board of Education overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. The Plessy v. Ferguson trial had made it legal for schools and public things to be "separate but equal." Brown v. Board of Education decided that "Separate but equal is inherently unequal." In the past twenty years, the youth of America has done similar things in the education system trying to get fair and equal treatment of gay, bi-sexual, lesbian and transgender students (GLBT). The Harvey Milk School (HMS) in New York City was first made in 1984, yet because of a rise in unfair treatment of GLBT students, their administration decided to expand their campus to house (for teaching) more students. Increasing the size of the school has made people talk about whether it is a good thing to have it or not.

In the past twenty years, the statistics of hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth have gone up. During 2002, law enforcement agencies reported 7,462 hate crime incidents that involved 8,832 offenses. Incidents of anti-gay hate violence rose 24 percent in the last six months of 2003, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to stri

"People do use the term `gay' as an adjective to describe anybody stupid or crazy or not cool. It's degrading the whole term and what it represents," Melanie, a student interviewed said. "Words hurt," she added. "A gay kid could be on the brink, ready to give up, and hears that word all the time. I can be in a conversation down the hall, and I can hear it. It grabs me. You can't avoid it. People should understand not to do that." The public schools' failure to protect these students means that they are left to choose between suffering alone as they seek an education or leaving the mean-feeling environment by dropping out of school. The bad feelings the students feel are worsened in many cases by the rejection of their families, communities, individual teachers and administrators, and rejection by members of the adult lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities who are too scared of being "out-ed" to offer support to gay youth.

The American people have responded to idea of making Harvey Milk High School bigger. Whether their response is talking within their homes and communities to creating petitions blocking the expansion, they are interested. Perhaps someday in America everyone will everyone else as equal, and that would be good.

ke down sodomy laws. While our country is the one of the best in technology and social rights, in Tennessee on March 19th there was a law passed that banned homosexuality. This decree was overturned in less than three days, but it was still obvious that discrimination exists. Bad things are not only happening to the older members of the gay community. Statistics of discrimination against GLBT youth are even worse. In a survey of over five thousand GLBT students, 97% said they regularly hear homophobic slurs. 53% of the students reported hearing slurs from teachers and staff. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are nearly three times more likely as their heterosexual peers to have been assaulted or involved in at least one physical fight in school, three times as likely to have been threatened or injured with a weapon at school, and nearly four times as like

Some topics in this essay:
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