I went to a weekend knitting retreat at a privately funded place for gay male spirituality of any tradition in the world at the end of a country road in upstate New York. The men were mostly white and of probably mostly northern, middle and eastern European stock(pale white in other words). A Chinese American gay male knitter showed up. Nice guy and good knitter. Wish the knitting group was more varied and less totally “vanilla”. It wasn’t planned that way, but for some reason unknown to me, most of the male knitters I have encountered here and there have been just other light complexioned white guys like myself.
I did take knitting lessons once from an African American gay male who is very accomplished at knitting. But I had a Latino gay male knitter for a while at a knitting I run attended now by all straight women who all like gay men (just socially that is). But there are some non-white gay male knitters who are on a knitting and crocheting website. Hopefully some of those guys will start showing up and bring in some diversity to future gay male knitting retreats where I attended.

So in some cases these days, these things are “luck of the draw” and don’t always work out a certain planned way.

If someone goes to a discriminatory country club, that’s their choice to be with those kinds of people. Kids are independant of their parents and have different thoughts and beliefs, but they do not have the final word in choosing their school, especially if they cannot voice their opinions because the parents themsevles discriminate against them. Precisely because it is parents who make the decision, we must make sure that there is no possibility of a parent sending thier kid into a harmful situation.

If an abusive parent beat their child and wanted to send them to some school where children were given harsh corperal punishment, we wouldn’t allow that. It is society’s responsibility to make sure that kids are not abused. We also have to make sure that kids are not discriminated against or hurt mentally. Because the kids who are most effected by the school’s policty do not make the decision of where they go, we have to make sure that there is equality and protection anywhere they can possibly go. We have to make sure that any institution calling itself a school is really a safe place for kids to learn, and not some bigoted, abusive system that works to the parents’ benefit, but not to the students’.

And if a privately funded place says upfront it is all-lesbian why would males gay or straight want to be there?

Same as why would females whether gay or straight want to be at a privately funded place or group that says upfront that it wants to be all gay male?

As long as a place IS PRIVATELY FUNDED AND TAKES NO GOVERNEMT MONEY AND HAS NO TAX-FREE STATUS and is totally participant-supported and has as its own stated mission and purpose to be an environment where certain members of a group can spend time with just certain people with a singular goal or purpose like a gay male nudist camp etc, or an all straight woman’s group or whatever. These things create a certain environment where certain people can be themselves amongst people of a common interest, goal or affinity.

So long as no public money is involved or no tax-free status is involved and the funding is strictly private raised by people of a like mind, who cares? But in the case of this school if tax-free status is involved, GO AHEAD AND YANK ITS TAX-FREE STATUS, OF COURSE!
That widens range of choice for every one. People can have an all whatever it is they want to go to and associate with their own kind and somewhere else there can be an all-inclusive. Just like would you want fundies busting in and upsetting a school for gay kids insisting that their kids should come too just like Peter said. At what price forced and enforced inclusiveness for every last thing around us. Just like as a gay man, I have no desire to see how I can get my way into the heteros only allowed nudist camp in Crownsville, Maryland when I can go to Gunnison Beach at Gateway National Park on Sandy Hook in New Jersey where everyone gay, straight, family with kids are in the water all nude and no one gives a rat’s rear who is who or who is what, but at the same time none of that inclusiveness is rammed down people’s throats.

The difference between Gunnison nude beach and “the male is allowed in only if he brings a female with him” nudist camp is Gunnison is PUBLIC and the nudist camp is PRIVATE. Public facilities whether tax-free or operating with taxpayer dollars should be made to be inclusive of all.

And if you want to be restrictive, then that is your right as long as you are outright refusing either taxpayer money or refusing tax-free status so you may be free to follow whatever it is you hold most fervently to be important to you.

And when my gay friends and I want to open a progressive private schools for GLBT students, what recourse will WE have when several fundamentalist parents want to send their children?

The private school should have the right to demand whatever restrictions they wish – since the parents can send their children elsewhere if they do not approve of the restrictions.

That is what ‘freedom’ is all about/

As ignorant and backward as their rules may be – no one put a gun to the parents’ head to send their children there.