Social Work, Schools, and “Don’t Say Gay”

(Editor’s Note: The Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, goes into effect in Florida on July 1, 2022. As this law takes effect, similar laws are being considered in other states around the U.S. Read the text of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law here.)

by Brittany Stahnke, DSW, LCSW, LMFT

     My mom called me, on the borderline of tears, to tell me about a law in my home state of Florida that is banning the use of the word “gay” in grades K-3. The new law doesn’t specifically include the phrase “Don’t Say Gay.” However, opponents have adopted this phrase to reflect what they believe and fear to be the effect and intent of it.

     My mom has a gay daughter. A daughter who has suffered profusely—not due to her identity as gay, but due to the slew of mental health and relationship concerns that followed this acknowledgment. When her daughter was 27, she confessed that she had known for years—years in which she was in a straight marriage—that she was different. Years of trying to make an unworkable marriage work. Years of pretending, years of increasing anxiety, until finally, those years ended in her husband leaving. And the years that followed only meant stigma, blame, and the onset of obsessive anxiety.

     You’d think that coming out is the hardest part, but it rarely is. Years following, her daughter found love, but the self-hate and undiagnosed mental health concerns only grew worse, until the day that daughter ended up in the hospital for undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. The same day that daughter decided she didn’t deserve that love she had found and nurtured for years.

     That daughter is me.

My Story

     At about 23 years old, I was sitting on my couch with my husband at the time, watching a show on television. To this day, I cannot remember the show or what was going on. In watching, and for the first time in my life, I realized something: I was not straight. The realization probably should have been, “You are gay, Brittany,” but it wasn’t. I just knew I liked women.

     I went to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought for a while. Is this bad? What do I do? Nothing. You do nothing. After all, I have never really loved a woman, and isn’t that what matters?

    Marriage to me is sacred. In fact, I don’t quite know anybody my age who thinks as grandly about marriage as I do. It is forever. It is better or worse. It is sacrifice. Therefore, the rest is irrelevant.

     I went back to the living room and finished the show.

     I am an academic. I was the straight-A student, the overachiever, the brainiac. I still am. Today, I am a professor, and it is the best suited job I could imagine for myself.

     Sexuality is more than who you love. And who you love is more than the heart. It is the mind, the soul, the body. And I don’t fit in one box—I have loved men, after all. My mind is the most important of those things, so I married a man I connected with—still do connect with. I didn’t know until I was 27 and fell in love that I could love a woman in all these ways, not just one.

     My wife is a different story. She has never been in love with a man. She has known as long as she has had self-awareness that she is gay. Her relationships have been with women. But even for her, this life, this identity is not a straight arrow.

     We’ve both wanted to be different. Normal. Able to have friendships with either sex without worrying it would lead to feelings that are unrequited on one part. Able to be close with women and not have them think there is another agenda. Or able to be close with men without us thinking there was another agenda.

     Being different changed me forever. I am more isolated, introverted, and emotional than ever before. I have struggled more with self-love than ever in the years that I was someone else. I grew up in a household boosting my confidence. I was told I was beautiful, smart, and could do anything. My parents were always there. I never suffered abuse or neglect at the hands of a family member. Not because I was lucky, but because my parents parented. I always felt safe.

      And yet—not as a child, but as an adult with my own career, home, and sense of self—I hated myself for being different. Every inch of me hated that I could not choose who to love.

     There do not need to be laws that force people to pretend certain uncomfortable topics don’t exist. We hate ourselves either way, because our society does, in ways it just does not see. In the assumption we are straight. In the laws to not discuss sexual orientation or gender identity so other people can have “freedom.” Or what I—as a person with a doctorate in a field created from the roots of social justice—deem hatred.

    I have worked with hundreds of children who suffer abuse and neglect. And even more who have suffered a lack of acceptance, love, and purpose. We as a society, as human service workers, can only do so much about who has children and how those children are cared for. But we can ensure that schools are safe places.

Schools, the Law, and What It Means for Children

     I am a social worker, but I took two years off from that title to work with kids in schools. I taught 4^th, 6^th, and 8^th grade students. And I counseled them. I had a 4^th grader who was identified as bisexual, and he talked to me about it. My students knew I was a counselor, because I wanted them to feel safe. That did not mean that we talked about sexuality as a class—that never happened. In fact, this class did not know I was gay. I did not have pictures of my family, as the straight teachers did, on my desk. I didn’t say “my wife,” even once, even though that wife taught at the same school down the hall from me. But when a student told me, one on one, that he was gay, I told him that I was, as well.

     School social work is one of the lowest paid areas of our field. Actually, anything working with the most vulnerable individuals is. Especially children. These workers do it from the heart. They do it to be the safe space that these children do not have in other places. With this law, will we be able to do what we are there for? With children struggling with sexuality, do we turn them away? No, we don’t. I am confident that we will find a way. We will try to find creative ways to follow the laws of our state, although--above all else--we must follow our ethical code. To help people in need and to address social problems. We challenge social injustice. We respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person. We will remain ethical, because that is what our profession requires of us.

    When people don’t feel safe to speak, those around them miss things. Things that are more taboo than the word “gay.” Depression. Bipolar. Suicide. Wanting to die. If a child senses they cannot discuss one topic, they sense they cannot discuss others.

     When you are different, far more so than those who are not, you need to be told you are accepted, loved, important. Because the world is constantly giving messages that this is not so. Restricting topics that encourage this validation—race, sexuality, disability—keeps those who are different from knowing they matter. It encourages the above issues as a result.

     The Parental Rights in Education law restricts such students from having a safe space. Some students are safe to speak at home, safe to tell a parent how they are feeling, but so many—more than we even know—are not. School is supposed to be a safe place; it is supposed to be the one place where children have the power to speak up to their peers, their teachers, their counselors. This law gives parents the rights to deny their children all services that public schools are meant to provide. They are denied a counselor to speak with. They are denied privacy in any conversations they have with school personnel, as parents can access all previously confidential records. There will likely be more situations like this one, in which an 18-year old was denied the opportunity to talk about being gay in a valedictorian speech. With this law, effective July 1, 2022, parents have the right to deny their child these services, this space to be themselves.

    Parents have enough rights. Children don’t.

     The first amendment gave us rights to say what we think, what we feel. The Don’t Say Gay law takes away these rights. But even more than this, it takes away something greater. The right to say who we are. What we are. It takes away us. And, although the law doesn’t explicitly use the word “gay,” that is its truest purpose, at the heart of its creator and the legislators who condone it. Don’t let the details convince us of anything different.

Brittany Stahnke, DSW, LCSW, LMFT, is an assistant professor at Newman University, where she teaches and conducts research on mental health, marriage, and suicide. She holds doctorate and master’s degrees in social work. Dr. Stahnke is author of The Doubting Disease.