LGBTQ youth and education

Abstract

Access to education and the treatment of queer youth within educational institutions is another important issue, which was eclipsed by the marriage equality movement. While the mainstream lesbian and gay movement was fighting for marriage equality, LGBTQ youth have been contending with both systemic inequality and macroaggressions in schools. In fact, now, in the aftermath of Obergefell, LGBTQ youth have borne the brunt of renewed efforts to restrict LGBTQ rights under state and federal law. Bills to restrict transgender students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms, in particular, have served to demonize transgender students and mobilize longstanding anxieties about queerness and youth in schools. In this chapter, Thoreson looks at the landscape for LGBTQ youth in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Thoreson examines research detailing the challenges that LGBTQ youth continue to face in schools, takes stock of recent legal and political campaigns targeting LGBTQ students, and considers what kinds of responses might be effective in staving off regressive attacks on the rights of LGBTQ youth in schools. As in the decades-long fight for marriage equality, affirming the dignity and autonomy of LGBTQ youth is likely to require both legal-political and social-cultural interventions, and merits a more thorough and thoughtful approach to children’s rights as part of a contemporary LGBTQ agenda.