A high school teacher needs a view on gay rights like they need an understanding of quantum mechanics. It's out there, but their students don't have the tools

A high school teacher needs a view on gay rights like they need an understanding of quantum mechanics. It's out there, but their students don't have the tools to come to grips with it. In an ideal world, our high schools would have taught the Constitution, the American Revolution, slavery, the abolition movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, and on that basis taught the civil rights movement. They would have taught Homer, Virgil, Greek drama, Chaucer, Shakespeare, poetry and novels. They would have looked at modern explorations of identity such as Kafka and Dostoevesky. They would have taught the Bible and the basics of Christian theology and morality, not as Truth but as the mindset and background of most of those who have, to date, built up our culture. (Much as they might teach Marx as vital background for understanding historically important movements.) They would also train students to think and reason for themselves, to recognize and reac to susceptibility to persuasion, and to detect and break down propaganda. With these foundations, a student might then be able to intelligently study "gay rights" or gay identity in literature. Those foundations are the first job of the schools. Let them do that before anything else.