So it's 2007 and people in blue states like New Jersey and New York say it's fine to be gay. Well, don't tell that to Andre Jackson.
Apparently, Andre Jackson is a pretty typical, normal high school kid. A senior at Newark's East High, he forked over $150 for a special tribute page in his yearbook, one of about 20 where students pay for pages they design filled with pictures depicting them with their families, girlfriends and boyfriends, and friends found at the back of his school's 100-page publication. Andre obeyed the school's regulations (which prohibit shots of gang signs, rude gestures and graphic photos) and filled his with pictures of people important to him, including one of him kissing the person he's dating. He showed up, excited, at the school's senior banquet on Thursday night, ready to collect his copy of the yearbook and to see his special page.
Andre never got to see his special page as he designed it. Neither did any of his classmates. While the seniors waited at the banquet for the yearbooks to be distributed, Newark school staff were in an adjoining room, busily blacking out a photo on Andre's page in each of the 230 yearbooks about to be distributed to the East High class of 2007. What was the problematic photo of? Andre kissing his boyfriend, David Escobales.
Let's be clear here. The kissing part wasn't the problem, as the yearbook had many photos of boys and girls kissing in it. It was the boy kissing a boy they had a problem with. In fact, Newark Superintendent of Schools Marion Bolden called the photograph "illicit," making her personal double standard official school policy as she did not direct school staff to black out any heterosexual kisses in the yearbook which Superintendent Bolden, I guess, deems "licit" (is that a word? What the hell is the opposite of illicit, anyway?). In a magnanimous gesture, Superintendent Bolden offered to refund the $150 fee Andre paid for the page. Andre turned Ms. Bolden and her 30 pieces of silver down, figuring that was just too low a price for his human dignity. Andre's principled stand makes me proud to be gay on this Gay Pride Sunday, 2007.
Ironically, students at East High don't seem to be as hung up as those "teaching" them seem to be. Andre's classmate Uerequenia Pereira reported in the Newark Star-Ledger that she sees same-sex couples kissing all the time at her school and it's no big deal. But then adults got involved and the problems started (as is so often the case in schools, base don my ten years of teaching high school history). Russell Garris, the assistant superintendent who oversees the city's high schools, brought the photograph to Bolden's attention Thursday afternoon, apparently concerned the picture would be controversial and upsetting to parents, Bolden said. In an admirable display of leadership, Superintendent Bolden reminded Mr. Garris that Andre had abided by school rules, that he had just as much right to pay tribute to whomever he wanted to as any other student who bought a page, and said she would deal personally with that any parent who was upset if they called, before sending Mr. Garris on his way. Wait, wait, wait, wait, that's not what happened; silly me! Instead, in a dismal display of spinelessness, Ms. Bolden apparently commended Mr. Garris on his Puritanical homophobia, began looking for black magic markers, and made sure there were enough in the stock room to obliterate the Love that Dare Not Show Its Face in the Newark Public Schools. And in the process ruined Andre's graduation, sending him off with a stinging reminder that he is neither typical nor normal, at least in the official view of the Newark Public Schools.
I'll be spending Gay Pride Sunday here in New York as a judge for our 37th annual parade, helping choose the best float (among other categories). What I'd rather do is be its traffic cop and divert the 1 million expected participants off of Fifth Avenue, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and across the state line to Newark and Ms. Bolden's office, where we'd all wait for her to show up to work Monday morning and ask her to explain to us personally why she had Andre and David's photo blacked out of the East High Class of 2007 Yearbook. Ain't gonna happen, I know, but a girl can dream, can't she?
