In LA School, Son of Lesbian Learns "Gay" is a "Bad Wurd"

Laura Sessions
December 3, 2003
Reprinted with permission by The Washington Post | Visit Site

If you harbor any doubt how deeply troubled some Americans are by the idea of same-sex couples, especially couples with children, ask Sharon Huff. For that matter, ask her 7-year-old son, Marcus McLaurin.

Huff, a steakhouse waitress in Lafayette, La., was at home getting ready for her evening shift last month when she got a call from the assistant principal at Marcus's elementary school. Her second-grader had been scolded for saying a bad word to another second-grader, the assistant said, and was told never to use the word again. She could read the details on a school form coming home with Marcus.

Huff spent the next two hours fretting. Could it be a word he had picked up from television, even though she religiously screens his TV viewing? Could it be something he had heard her say?

As soon as Marcus's size-2 high-tops hit the threshold, she pulled the telling piece of paper out of his backpack. Marcus, teacher Terry Bethea had written, "explained to another child that you are gay." The word "gay" was underlined twice.

Huff, 27 and living in a relationship with another woman, sunk into a kitchen chair, speechless. She knew her Cajun neighbors would rather talk about crawfish or football than alternative lifestyles. But were school officials so wary of controversy that they were now forbidding children to talk about their families?

It's one thing to tell kids, as many teachers now do, that they cannot insult others with racial slurs or words like "gay." But in Huff's view, Bethea and Nicholas Thomas, the assistant principal at Ernest Gallet Elementary, were not attempting to stop bullying or even preserve political correctness. They meant to stamp out thought and discussion about a way of life.

"All Marcus was doing was talking about his family with a friend at recess," Huff said in a telephone interview. "It's like one kid asking another kid why he doesn't celebrate Christmas and the second kid saying, 'My parents are Jewish.' Would that kid get in trouble?"

Gallet Elementary is a relatively new school in this midsize, southern Louisiana parish, and its 700-plus students surpass the state average on standardized tests. After Huff's story broke in the local newspaper, the Daily Advertiser, yesterday, school administrators remained cloistered into the evening trying to prepare an official response.

Gallet principal Virginia Bonvillain told The Washington Post, "I cannot comment on anything regarding a student." She referred questions to the school district's attorney, who did not return phone calls.

Other school district officials, in comments during the day to Advertiser reporter Sebreana Dominigue, appeared to support the school, with one exception. "An apology is not due," Superintendent James Easton said. "The child was not singled out because his parent is gay. There are some other issues here."

School Board President David Thibodaux said, "I feel like any discussion by a child of a parent's sexual orientation is inappropriate."

Board member Rickey Hardy, however, said school officials "should apologize to the mother and the kid, and they should do it publicly."

Many listeners to Lafayette's top-40 station KSMB-FM sympathized with Marcus, said Bobby Novosad, program manager and morning show host. "Punished for telling the truth," is how one caller put it.

"For the big city we're trying to be, we go back a couple of hundred years every now and then," Novosad said.
At first Huff played the good soldier. She signed and returned the student behavior contract that came home that day. She took Marcus to in-school suspension the following week as requested, an hour-long class beginning at 6:45 a.m. where he was forced to write several times, "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again."

When he complained to his mother, she said, "Bite your tongue and go along with what they tell you. Mommy will make this all right."

She didn't contact school officials. "I was afraid I might blow up and say things that were ugly. I wanted to be a good example to Marcus," she said. "I really liked the teacher. I still like her."

On the advice of friends, she eventually contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a letter to the school this week demanding that officials apologize to Huff and Marcus and expunge the boy's disciplinary record.

"This case is really beyond the pale," said Ken Choe, a staff attorney in the ACLU's Washington office who has handled many student- and gay-rights cases. "You can't censor children talking, as long as it's not creating a major disruption to the school environment. [Marcus] wasn't talking about sexual acts. His remark was about as innocuous as you can get."

The school violated Marcus's constitutional right to equal protection under the law, as well as his right to free expression, Choe said, noting that the boy with whom Marcus chatted, who lives with heterosexual parents, was not disciplined.

Since being dressed down at school, Marcus has pulled away from his classmates and from her, according to Huff. As far as she knows, it was his first exposure to prejudice. But it was not her first.

Until five months ago, when she moved to Lafayette, she and her son, who is her biological child, lived in a small town in Mississippi. She said she knew from a young age that she was a lesbian, but "because of family and friends and perceptions, I hid that."

She got married, divorced and then three years after the divorce, found a woman to love. "When I told my parents, they were okay with it until people in town realized what was going on and then they were embarrassed," she recalled.

She met partner Heather Manley over the Internet and moved to Lafayette because that's where Manley's family lives. The couple plan a commitment ceremony in March and intend to stay in Lafayette, where they've got jobs and friends.

"Sharon has our full support in whatever she's trying to do," said Nat Belloni, regional manager for Logan's Roadhouse, the Western-style restaurant chain that Huff works for. "She's a good employee and we enjoy her company."

Huff said her son has known about her lesbian relationships for several years. "I tell him that he's just like any other kid except that he has two moms. Some children are adopted, some are raised by grandparents. A family are people who love each other."

It was just such a matter-of-fact attitude that got Marcus in trouble. As he was standing in line for morning recess, his classmate asked him about his mother and father. He replied that he didn't have a mother and father; he had two mothers. When the other child asked why he had two moms, he said his mother was gay and when the questioner persisted and asked what that meant, he responded, "Gay is when a girl likes another girl."

Bethea, his teacher, heard the exchange and scolded him in front of his classmates, according to the ACLU, then sent him to the principal's office in place of recess. In her report to school officials, Bethea wrote: "This kind of discussion is not acceptable in my room. I feel that parents should explain things of this nature to their own children in their own way."

Marcus got her message. On his behavior contract, he was asked what he did.
"I sed bad wurds," he wrote.
When asked what he should have done, he replied, "cep my mouf shut."