This is a hard question. 

It’s hard partly because of its legal implications. Georgia Tech, another state school, recently lost a lawsuit because its safe-space program distributed literature uniformly criticizing traditional interpretations of the Bible. Not surprisingly, a federal judge ruled that this practice violated the First Amendment by favoring particular religious viewpoints. (Georgia Tech has kept its safe-space program but dropped the religious literature.)

Legal matters aside, the question raises difficult policy issues. What counts as “safe”? 

Safe-space programs generally involve a school-sponsored diversity training focusing on LGBT issues. Upon completing it, participants receive a sticker to display on their office doors announcing their “ally” status. 

Given how often religion is used as a weapon, I can understand why many LGBT students would not feel “safe” while being judged as sinners. We should never underestimate the potential damage done by telling youth, at a delicate stage in identity formation, that acting on their deep longings could lead to eternal separation from God. 

In contemplating my friend’s question, I mainly thought of those vulnerable students, and how best to protect them. I also thought of my friend John.

John is a faculty member at a small private liberal arts college. He is an evangelical Christian who believes that homosexual conduct conflicts with God’s plan as revealed in the bible. And yet John defies easy stereotypes. He supports civil marriage equality, decries the various ways religion is used to harm LGBT people, and avoids “heteronormative language” (his words) in his classroom. 

While he believes that homosexual conduct (not to mention plenty of heterosexual and non-sexual conduct) is sinful, he also believes that all humans – himself included – have an imperfect grasp of God’s will, and that we should generally strive to respect other people’s life choices and give them wide latitude in forging their own paths. John and his wife have welcomed me in their home, and during grace before the meal, his wife asked for God’s blessing on me, my partner Mark, and our relationship. (For the record, I did not take the latter to imply approval for every aspect of our relationship.)

In light of all I know about John and his loving treatment of LGBT persons, I can think of few spaces “safer” than his office. Any program that would disqualify him draws the circle of “safe spaces” too narrowly.

Moreover, there are good strategic reasons for wanting to make the circle of self-proclaimed allies as inclusive as possible, consistent with the well-being of LGBT students. We need people like John to make their presence known.

Yet I am not suggesting that we draw the circle so broadly as to rob “safe space” of any real meaning. Any student in any campus office – stickered or not – should expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. Presumably, the safe-space sticker denotes venues that substantially exceed that bare minimum (as John’s office would).

So how does one draw the circle broadly enough to include John and other conservative religious allies while excluding those who might rant about gays burning in hell? 

As with any policy question involving human beings, there’s no perfect formula here (just as there are no perfect people). To some extent, the desired group will be somewhat self-selecting. Those interested in condemning LGBT people to hell generally don’t attend voluntary pro-gay diversity trainings. 

Yet there are also steps one can take to tailor the circle. My recommendation would be to include, among various other elements of a pledge taken by safe-space training participants, something along the following lines:

“I understand that my own values and beliefs may differ from those of students who seek me out for a ‘safe space,’ and will refer students to appropriate resources given their particular values, beliefs, interests and desires.”

The idea here is that students who wish to retreat to a “narrower” circle will be assisted in doing so. Note that religious people offer such assistance all the time. Think, for example, of the Christian who helpfully directs a student to the Buddhist Student Center, despite her personal conviction that eternal salvation is through Christ alone.

On this approach, students who want pro-gay religious literature can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. At the same time, those who want the advice of fellow conservative evangelicals, for example, or fellow Orthodox Jews, can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. 

Admittedly, my recommendation would allow conservative religious students to request and receive – in a designated “safe space” – literature of a sort that’s often deeply damaging to LGBT people. But the approach is preferable to the alternatives: a public university’s (illegally) favoring particular religious viewpoints, on the one hand, or its becoming silent on religious issues–the Georgia Tech solution–on the other. 

Universities are places for free exchange of ideas. As long as that’s done in a compassionate manner that respects student autonomy, it should never be considered “unsafe.”
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John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
For over seventeen years he has traveled the country speaking on homosexuality and ethics. His writing has been featured in regional and national periodicals, at the online Independent Gay Forum, and in numerous scholarly anthologies. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.
For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

(Chicago, Illinois) President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday tapped Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan to become secretary of education.

Duncan advised Obama on education issues during the campaign and has run the country’s third-biggest school district for the past seven years.

As CEO of Chicago Public Schools, the 44-year-old has focused on improving struggling schools and closing those that fail – a policy that has sometimes put him at odds with parents and the teachers union.

Obama highlighted Duncan’s approach by choosing a Duncan turnaround story, Dodge Renaissance Academy, as the backdrop for Obama’s formal announcement Tuesday. Duncan closed the perennial test score cellar-dweller 2002 and then reopened it with new staff, an overhauled curriculum and more teacher training. Within years, test scores at the school soared.

Duncan is seen as gay-positive.

This fall he supported an LGBT high school for Chicago. Called the Social Justice High School: Pride Campus, the plan was put on hold last month following opposition from conservatives and concerns by some members of the LGBT community.

The plan is being reworked and is expected to be taken up next year.

Under the original plan, the school was to open in 2010 and eventually serve 600 students, about half of whom were expected to identify as gay. 

Its mission statement said it would serve “the underserved population of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning youth and their allies.”

That has been replaced by one that offers protections for students regardless of “orientation,” but doesn’t mention sexuality. Instead, the Solidarity school aimed to address “citywide concerns over violence, bullying and harassment.”

As opposition to the original plan mounted and concerns were raised by some gay activists that the school would segregate gay young people, Duncan stepped back.

“If we’re going to have a separate high school, let’s put the bullies in the high school, not the (gay) kids,” Rick Garcia, political director for the gay rights group Equality Illinois said last month.

In announcing Duncan’s nomination, Obama called him “the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners.” 

“He’s not beholden to any one ideology, and he’s worked tirelessly to improve teacher quality,” Obama said.

But some Chicago teachers said they were disappointed with Obama’s pick.

“I don’t believe Mr. Duncan’s model is a model for America,” said Deborah Lynch, a teacher at Gage Park High School and a president of the Chicago Teachers Union from 2001-2004.

Lynch criticized Duncan’s strong advocacy for charter schools, which tens of thousands of Chicago students now attend. She accused him of dismantling of the public school system on which so many poor children depend.

Duncan majored in sociology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in 1987.

After graduating, Duncan played professional basketball for four years in Australia, where he also worked with children who were wards of the state.

Duncan ran an education nonprofit on Chicago’s South Side before working in Chicago Public Schools under former chief Paul Vallas, now the schools chief in New Orleans.

If he is confirmed by the Senate, Duncan is expected to be less polarizing than Bush secretary Margaret Spellings.

Spellings has promoted abstinence-only education in the nation’s schools, despite concerns that it ignores gay sex issues.

The federal government spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education.

A study mandated by Congress last year found that students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex within a few years as those who did not.

The study, by Mathematica Policy Research, also found that students who attended the abstinence classes reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts – 14 years and nine months.

A report a year earlier by the Society of Adolescent Medicine found that abstinence-only education was “unlikely to meet the health needs” of gay students because abstinence-only programs focus heavily on no sex until marriage and ignore homosexuality. This could lead to increased risk of infection among these youngsters, the investigators said.

Sixteen states have declined to take part in the federal program.

In 2005, on her second day on the job, Spellings issued a scathing attack on an episode of the PBS children’s series “Postcards from Buster” for featuring a same-sex couple.

In a letter to  Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of PBS, Spellings issued a veiled threat of funding cuts if the network did not pull the show. 

“Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television,” Spellings said in the letter. 

She also suggested that PBS to consider refunding the money it spent on the episode.

The episode was dropped by the network.