Safe Spaces by August

     As I was reading "Safe Spaces" by August I becomes really distracted at times because I wasn't too intrigued by this authors writing style. I really liked that August was informative of the LGBT lifestyle and gave examples of teachers discriminating against students that are not heterosexual but the author never really said anything to pull my attention in. As I continued to read the article I read some of the students stories for example Maria. Maria is an "out" lesbian taking a Spanish class, and on her test she got back from her teacher she noticed the teacher marked wrong one of her answers. The question include " Do you have a sweetheart?" And Maria responded with " yo tenga una novia." Maria's response with "novia" was marked wrong because it is the female representation of sweetheart and next to it the teach put "novia" the male version of sweetheart. Maria was offended by this because her Spanish teacher just automatically marked it wrong because she was a girl and her sweetheart was supposed to be a boy, which in Maria's case it isn't. I tried to imagine myself as the teacher and wonder what I would do in a situation like this. What if I didn't know the student is gay? Is that my fault? My intentions wouldn't mean to offend her but if I had in any way I would have apologized and gave her back to points that she deserved because in her situation her answer to the question was correct. I then reflected on this article to my own life. I went to a Christian school for elementary school and I was really sheltered from the outside word. For example, when I had no idea what 92.3 pro FM was until 5th grade! My dad is also a State Trooper so he tried his best to hide the mess of the real world from me, my brother, and sister until we reached an appropriate age. When I switched to a public school in sixth grade I think I learned more about the "real world" than I did in school. I started learning this about myself, my friends, my town and especially my family. One day my dad had finally told me that my aunt, his sister, was a lesbian, it was as if so many things clicked at once. I had never given it a thought why she wasn't married, or why she didn't have a boyfriend, or why she occasionally brought friends that were girls over to my grandmothers house for dinner sometimes, until that moment. My dad and his family also grew up very religious and believed that being gay was wrong. Because of this it created a lot of turmoil between the two of them and we had actually lost connection with her for years, until my dad opened his heart and came to terms that it wasn't his life so why was he worried about it. I felt really bad for my aunt that he made her feel so ashamed for who she was and that she missed a lot of years of our lives for a reason that doesn't make us love her any less. I couldn't imagine my own family basically shunning me for who I was just because society and religion didn't think it was "right." My aunt is married now and the happiest I've ever seen her I'm glad that she can be who she is and happy in her own skin and that she could forgive my dad.