by Shelly Mcrae

Created on: October 01, 2007   Last Updated: April 27, 2012

Teaching children about sexuality and the kinds of love associated with sexual activity begins with the parents. Parents lead the way, but schools play a vital role as well.

School populations are representative of their respective communities. That means there is diversity in cultures, race, religions, family structures and sexual orientations.

Whether parents believe homosexuality is biological in origin or a lifestyle choice, it is their responsibility to teach their children it is not their place to pass judgment on others.

If parents teach intolerance to their children, those children will bring that intolerance to school. They will bully and tease anyone who is different, or whose family structure is different, than their own. Now it becomes the school's problem.

Teachers and administrators, then, need to step in and correct the disruptive behavior. It's no longer a matter of whether or not sex education should include a unit on homosexuality. It's a matter of educating an intolerant child. The parents have created a need for discipline.

Homosexuality exists, whether the intolerant like it or not. Educators, in their struggle to create and maintain safe environments for children while in school, are forced to go beyond basic academics and address more global issues, such as divorce, pregnancy outside of marriage, and homosexuality. Why? Because children will express learned hatred toward others both verbally and physically. The teaching of tolerance becomes a form of preventative discipline against hate crimes committed at school.

Intolerant parents have created a need for this kind of discipline.

Parents who teach their children tolerance, who teach their children that everyone is of value, and that whether someone is heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual, it's not their place to pass judgment, are contributing to the betterment of society.

It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children how to live in this world, not in some hermetically sealed microcosm of selective ideology. It begins with elementary school; children learn about the depth of differences between people in this environment more than any other thus far in their lives. If the core values of their home life are those of tolerance, understanding and love, children will contribute those values to their environment.

Should parents see homosexuality as a sin, as an aberration of nature, they certainly have the right to express that belief to their children. But if, along with those beliefs, they pass on hatred for homosexuals, and that hatred manifests itself in the school environment, those parents have now abdicated the right to deny the school to teach their children about homosexuality, or at the very least, tolerance.

Parents lead the way in teaching their children about homosexuality, but its what the children take to school with them that determines the school's role in the furtherance of their education.

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