Teach Your Children Well

At Bilerico, there is a thought provoking piece entitled "The Lies That History Tells: Rainbows and Gays Don't Exist". A quote:

I am fortunate. I am fortunate that I found a solid group of friends that I eventually could come out to and be accepted by. I am fortunate that even in the mist of homophobia I learned to accept who I was. I am fortunate that I was able to read and study history for myself and find that there are numerous amounts of out and proud LGBT people in history who deserve to be taught about in schools. James Baldwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare, Eleanor Roosevelt and many others. I heard all of these names in school but was never told the whole truth about their lives.

I know in my heart, that many are not as fortunate as I was. I know that there are still confused students in red states roaming the halls of our public schools hoping for someone to tell them that "it's ok, the thoughts you have don't make you any less of a person." The gay rights movement has come along way in the past decade, and I know it will continue to push on--I'll be on the front lines--but I also realize that we have a long way to go. We still live in a hetero-normative society where being gay in many communities is not normal. Maybe if people would tell the whole truth in our history classes and paint a picture of reality, it will be that much easier for the next generation of LGBT's to accept who they are.

I agree that this too is part of that subtle heteronormativity I spoke about earlier.  The biblical accounts of King David and Jonathan, the Centurion and his pais, and many others get sanitized.  Why?  Because the fundies see it as 'icky' and 'immoral'. 
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