© 2003 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

o the latest controversy in town is the now public Harvey Milk High School for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. I had a hard time, initially, deciding how I felt about this, because every time I thought about it, I kept remembering an old Billy Crystal routine and breaking into fits of giggles:

"I tell ya, 'dis New York thing, 'dey have a gay high school now. It's 'de only school 'dat has a pink school bus. Don't get me started! Oh 'dey do. 'Dey come to 'da school and say 'What's for lunch,' and says, 'Him.' I tell ya it's nuts!"

But I finally got control of myself and really considered the reasoning behind the school, which until now was privately funded by the Hetrick-Martin Institute of San Francisco. According to the organization's website, the Harvey Milk School "offers [GLBT] youth an opportunity to obtain a secondary education in a safe and supportive environment." They believe that "success requires the ability to respect and value the diverse human community," which they apparently accomplish by segregating one diverse human community from the others. Makes perfect sense to me.

Apparently there has been a high rate of gay students being beaten up and tormented by straight kids in public schools. So rather than waiting for all these kids to bring semi-automatic weapons into the classroom, the Harvey Milk School (named for San Francisco's first openly gay city supervisor who was assassinated in 1978) was created "as a haven of tolerance and acceptance" for the GLBT community.

Well that's great. This finally sets a precedent. I can't understand why people are so up in arms about the whole thing. And since the mayor has taken the first big step for us, saying that kids who are being tormented for their differences can have their own separate school, let's not boycott the movement. I say, let's expand on it.

I know I certainly could have used a separate high school for kids such as myself. I got beaten down and called fag too many times to remember. What I really needed back then was a school for skinny girly boys who listened to classical music and everybody just assumed was gay. I know there must be plenty of other boys in that same boat right now. So right off the bat, we can make a school for them and call it the Niles Crane School.

Next up, we of course need schools for all the fat kids and kids with bad skin. So the Lou Costello and Agent Orange Schools are essential. And don't forget the Mikhail Gorbachev School for all those kids with unfortunately placed birthmarks. We can stick all the kids with cleft palettes, webbed feet and buckteeth into the P.T. Barnum School. And although this one is probably more of a necessity out on Long Island than in the city, we should definitely establish the Stifler's Mom School for any kid whose mom or sister is the town whore.

And those are just right off the top of my head! I'm sure with the right city planners, we can effectively divide up all our tormented kids into their own separate schools, each with their own uniquely supportive environments. Then we can send the twelve remaining prom queens and all-state quarterbacks to school in Newark. Celebrate diversity! Keep them separate! Thanks for leading the way Mr. Bloomberg!

It will be a grand new era for the New York City public school system. Though, now that I think about it, I do have one concern. Is it too idealistic to think that fat kids won't pick on other fat kids? That girly boys won't pick on other girly boys? That one Harvey Milk student won't torment another because he's fat? Oh dear, I can already see that we're not going to get away with our overly broad Hetrick-Martin approach to school creation. We're going to have to build even more finely segregated schools for the kids who get shunned and tormented from their "havens of tolerance and acceptance." I can already see a need for the Harvey Buttermilk School and other such extensions.

Mayor Bloomberg, Hetrick-Martin, you are true visionaries with our children's ever-increasingly fragile psyches close to your hearts. I encourage you to keep the ball rolling. We should never let our children be told by fellow students that they are different… Apparently, that's your job.