Let's be the Bayard Ruskin of CPS

Young girls are coming out as queer at younger and younger ages - and continuing to face incredible barriers to life, love and that uniquely American promise: the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, I recently saw About Face Youth Theatre's most recent production that showcased just how challenging high school continues to be for queer youth. I was horrified to hear how little sex education they were receiving in schools (they made the sex ed I received in the eighties look good) and how that was affecting not only their coming out experiences but also their sexual behavior (and unknown risk factors).

Young women's sexual journeys are rarely as clean cut as young men's sexual journeys. So for those young women that know they are queer - somewhere on that Kinsey Scale - and then be harassed and scared to attend school is completely unacceptable.

High school is already fraught with difficulties: academics, developing hormones and sexualities, nuanced and shifting social hierarchies, identity formation, and no frontal lobe to speak of. If one difficulty can be removed, not to mention years of therapy prevented, we should remove that difficulty.

Which makes social isolation and bullying sound softer than it is. Being thrown down flights of stairs, out windows, and beaten up regularly are not soft. But they are highly effective. Young queer girls no longer want to go school the next day. Often times they don't.

Chicago is creating a school for LGBT youth.

If the only thing that comes out of this school is queer young women with high school diplomas, we will have succeeded.

If this school can serve as a place for us to gather best practices on LGBT youth to implement in other schools, we will have begun to change the game.

If this school serves as a catalyst to talk about violence in general, we would be the Bayard Ruskin of CPS.

And while we are practicing best practices, this column on Milwaukee's Alliance High School has some wisdom to shar. Here's their website: Alliance High School Website