Everyone should learn LGBTQ+ history, even those who aren’t allies

Illinois public schools are now required to include LGBTQ+ history in their curriculums. And this move matters, even if you don’t support the change.

The first time I ever heard about the Stonewall Riots was during my senior year at a high school in the suburbs of Illinois. I didn’t hear about it in a history class, read it in a book, or find it in the library as part of an assignment. My first introduction to LGBTQ+ equality was in my creative writing class, which that year included only 10 or so students.

I don’t remember how it came up. But I’m glad our teacher — an open member of the LGBTQ+ community — took the time to make completely ignorant teens like myself aware of such an important piece of history.

No teacher, textbook, or documentary I’d encountered throughout my mandatory history education had so much as mentioned LGBTQ+ history. I had no idea I was supposed to know about it. We were taught black history. Even women’s history. Why not this?

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who has been asking this question since leaving the Illinois public school system behind. Now, legislators are actually doing something about it.

The Inclusive Curriculum Law will increase awareness of “the whole story of our shared history,” according to  Equality Illinois CEO Brian C. Johnson. This involves requiring public schools to address historical moments such as The Stonewall Riots and the origins of the modern LGBTQ+ equality movement in classrooms across the state.

This is not the first time a state public school system has been required to address LGBTQ+ history. Illinois and several other states have passed similar laws prohibiting the discrimination of historical LGBTQ+ contributors in textbooks and other materials provided to instructors and students.

The hope, of course, is that more states will follow suit in the years to come — preferably sooner rather than later.

Reactions to this news were as mixed as you’d expect, from one extreme to the other. I actually started counting the number of Facebook comments from parents threatening to pull their kids out of public school if they were going to be forced to learn about “gay rights,” and I stopped at 20.

Technically, you don’t have to “force” your kid to learn anything you don’t want them to learn. But depriving them of the opportunity to experience inclusion in the classroom would be doing them a disservice.

Why should even those who don’t support LGBTQ+ rights learn about their history — or allow those around them the opportunity to learn it? Because history is the study of the people’s past, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are, in every sense of the term, people.

All people deserve respect. All people deserve the chance to succeed. Regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, religion, and gender, every population’s history deserves to be known. This applies especially to the histories of populations that have been glossed over or ignored.

We talk a lot these days about needing better LGBTQ+ representation in pop culture, in various industries, in government — which we do. Where do you think changes like that start? By integrating the history into younger generations’ mandatory educations.

If you want to ignore a very real, very impactful piece of your nation’s history to salvage the merit of your own beliefs, you absolutely have every right to do so.

But before you pull your kids out of the local school district or move to a different one, perhaps consider that one of the most valuable lessons a child can learn is that all people are people. Just because they’re different from you doesn’t make them any less human

How else can we educate younger generations about LGBTQ+ history? Share your thoughts in the comments below.