Quakers as Teachers

This morning, I was sitting in on a teen First Day school class. I had not been to this group before, but I wanted to meet the woman running the group as we had previously communicated about me talking with the group about glbt issues. Because the scheduled speaker/activity was late, we actually spent much of today talking about these issues. There were 4 youth in the group (a senior, a junior - both from a local Quaker private school, a freshman from a suburban public school, and a sixth grader).

Rather than lecture, I did what I usually do, turn to questions for discussion. Here's what was identified: at the private high school, sexual orientation was absolutely no big deal, according to the students from that school. But, at the suburban school, the youth reported that gays were annoying - loud and irritating. I asked if the lesbians were the same, and he said no. We talked about why there might be more reactivity to male homosexuals (and, perhaps more reactivity from among within this group). We seemed to reach a point of understanding taht we live in a time where it is easier for females to slip out of feminine roles, than for males to slip out of masculine roles (such as express their affection for each other). For this same youth, I hasked if the "annoying gays" were the only gays in the school, and he said they are the only one's that are out. I asked how gays who come out are recieved, and he stated that they are generally directed towards the annoying gays, which led to a discussion about how we often tend to reflect the behaviors of our environment (I used regional accents as an example).

At this point, we abruptly shigted gears because the scheduled presenter showed up. He is involved with Amnesty International, and talked about the 3 issues on AI's docket for this week that are their letter-writing campaign. This is where something interesting - perhaps troubling - happened. The three issues are clearly of concern, but the coercion to sign the three letters was not good. The youngest member of the group stated he wasn't sure he wanted to sign the letters (his stated reason: wondering what would happen to him. The teacher said he'd become a good person if he signed the letters). She really did not leave "not signing" as an option, and the older kids pretty much jumped on the bandwagon. At first, I did not want to sign them either (I'm not much for that kind of activity, although I support others in doing it), but also felt as if that was not ok.

My concern here is the overly coercive/lack of dialog approach to activism. It seemed like what was happening was this: "here's the problem (amnesty issues); we all agree these are problems; now, do what I say to address this" For me, this didn't seem to be the best of Quakerism as a process of unerstanding and love; instead it seemed to be more of the bad stuff - a fundamentalist, don't ask questions, just get in line approach to social justice.