I was just in a discussion with some friends about the importance of teaching about the lives of great humans that were LGBT and their overall objection to the idea came down to "Why does everything have to be about sex? Can't we just teach facts?"
My answer is no. We must not white-wash these people and their wholesome full story out of the history books. Whatever we teach our kids, we teach them whole.
How do we teach about Alan Turing and his life without teaching that the British Government tortured and persecuted him until he committed suicide? In a very real sense, Alan Turing saved the world... so how can we make an honest recounting of history without mentioning what the British government did to him in return?
Oscar Wilde was the greatest playwright of his age, a poet, the greatest of wits, and a keen observer of the human condition. When we teach "The Ballad of Redding Gaol", how do we teach it without also teaching why the British government locked him away in that prison to begin with? How does one even begin to teach about Wilde and his world, and manage to hide the fact that he loved men?
How do we teach about the causes of the Stonewall Riot without teaching why the police were arresting everyone in sight? How do you teach about the Stonewall Riot without teaching how utterly commonplace it was to round up and jail people for no other crime than loving and wanting people who were, in the eyes of the law, the wrong sex for someone to love? When we teach about Aushwitz and Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, do we simply erase from history the 10,000 men the Nazis murdered there for the crime of loving men?
We rightfully teach the part that Abigail Adams played in inspiring and influencing John Adams. Shall we be silent then about the love and mutual inspiration that Sally Ride and Tam O'Shaugnessy shared?
How can teach Constitutional law while omitting landmark cases like Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges?
Do we think we can teach students about the greatest sculptor of his age, show them the glory that is "David", and that our children will simply fail to notice the exquisite care that Michelangelo had for the male form? Shall we teach of Dante's love of Beatrice, and omit Michelangelo's love of Tommaso? Who shall we tell our students those poems were written to?
The list of LGBT lives that have contributed to the greatness of the human condition in art, and music, and literature, and the sciences goes on, and on, and on.
Because of a great many of my policy preferences, acquaintances (and sometimes friends) commonly presume I'm a Republican or a Conservative. I am engaged in no "progressive agenda" to push any form of sexuality on anyone. I ask for no special privileges for myself, for LGBT folks, or for anyone else
What I ask that when we teach our children of the lives and events that have shaped the world we live in.. we teach it whole, LGBT folks included. Anything else is an injustice to both those that shaped our world, and to our children.
To my surprise, several of those in the discussion had never heard of Alan Turing because in the time and place that they (and I) went to high-school, our history books and teachers never mentioned him. You can imagine why.
Turing was weird, socially awkward, brusque, almost certainly on the Asperger's spectrum, and gay as hell.... and played a critical part in both saving and shaping the world. We will never have a chance to thank him, but we can start making it right by making sure that he, his life, and the lives of others like him are never white-washed out of our history books again.