Opinion: Local Columnist's Attack on SB48, Gays Deserves a Response

A local about-town-kind-of-guy recently penned a column in another media outlet which was essentially a tirade about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered being portrayed in a positive light.

I think he did this because as an about-town-kind-of-guy, he’s come to assume that Dixon is one large reservoir of anti-gay sentiment that he can tap into.

I think he’s mistaken. Dixon may be small, but I don’t think the majority of its citizens think small.

In particular, he () zeroed in on a law due to take effect at the end of the year (California Senate Bill 48, or SB48). Reading his description of the law, one would think that teachers would be required to encourage students to become homosexuals.

Past California law required that the study of California history include the roles and accomplishments of most minorities and ethnic and cultural groups. SB48 simply ensures that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered are included among those minority groups.

SB48 also specifies that instruction and teaching materials shall not disparage or express a negative bias in connection with race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality or sexual orientation.

For example, it would have prohibited a former math teacher and football coach of mine from saying, as he did in the 1950s, that African American males have a different body odor than white people.   

So, SB48 isn’t involved per se with sex education as taught as a classroom subject, rather with the inclusion and portrayal of minorities in the study of California and American history. I don’t see much that’s controversial here, actually.

However, Mr. Hickman takes the tricky leap to deduce that under SB48, children will “… be exposed to a perverted minority life style.”

Back when I was growing up in the 1950s, there was virtually no public information about homosexuality. My parents never talked to me about sex. I once read a Reader’s Digest article about prisons, where the unfamiliar word “homosexual” was used.

I tried to find it in the family dictionary, but it wasn’t listed! Yes, in those days sometimes we had to really dig to learn about sex. Today, if young people haven’t heard about the various forms of sexuality in sex ed and from their parents and friends, they’ll certainly find it online. 

Mr. Hickman also goes beyond SB48 to speak of gays and lesbians etc. as abnormal and perverted. I guess he puts himself in that great category of “normal,” which I guess means that all “normal” people have sex following the same standard manual of Normal and Approved Sexual Practices, which of course doesn’t allow for any experimentation to liven up the experience.

Please, sex is one of life’s peak experiences!

Essentially, Hickman is labeling 520 Dixonites as abnormal and perverted (sounds like the Salem witch trials). I arrive at this figure by using a standard estimate of four percent of a population identifying themselves as gay or lesbian, and a Dixon population of 13,000 over the age of 18 (according to the latest census).

I suppose each and every one of those 520 is ready to say, “Thank you, Mr. Hickman, for thinking so highly of us, your neighbors, your city employees who may put themselves in danger, your civic volunteers, and the people you deal with in your business.”

Mr. Hickman, of course, is free to think whatever he wishes about people who are different than he is. But to mount a soapbox and urge others to join him in a realm of “small thinking” is another thing entirely.

He seeks to stuff behind closet doors those who often traveled a confusing and difficult route in discovering and expressing their sexual identity, an identity that probably wasn’t what they and their parents expected, but was part of their basic makeup since their earliest days.

As part of this, what those young people who will become gay and lesbian need are supportive and understanding families and communities. They need to be able to attend school without being hazed and bullied and teased. As in SB48, they deserve to receive the same praise and recognition for their accomplishments throughout their lifetime as all the other minorities do.

Do I dare say in Dixon that gays and lesbians also ought to be able to marry, hold hands in public, and live the full lives that others enjoy? Yes.