Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community by Dennis Carlson

1. "Within normalizing communities, some individuals and subject positions get privileged and represented as "normal" while other individuals and subject positions are disempowered and represented as deviant, sick, neurotic, criminal, lazy, lacking in intelligence, and in other ways "abnormal." (p233 Carlson)

When I read this quote I thought of Johnson and the culture of power as well as his topic of privilege. I found this quote to be important because it talks of all the positions that are under-privileged. This quote seems to come right out of Johnson's article. Carlson seems to be very similar to Johnson. Carlson seems to be troubled by the word "normal" and he seems not to like to use it.

2. "To the extent that gayness is recognized in the curriculum, it is likely to be in the health curriculum, where it is associated with disease. For example, one of the most popular health texts on the high school market is Health: A Guide to Wellness, which mentions homosexuals or homosexuality once in acknowledging that "the first group in the United States diagnosed with AIDS were male homosexuals." (p.237 Carlson)

This quote was shocking to me but then when I thought about it, the quote was so very true. Being a freshman, its only been a few years since I've had health. I do not remember ever talking about homosexuality besides AIDS. The quote is unfortunately true. If students were educated more about this topic then maybe it would be more accepted if it was taught effectively.

3. "It is now estimated that up to one-third of all adolescent suicide victims are gay, approximately one-quarter of all homeless youth in the United States are gay, and dropout and drug abuse rates among gay youth are likewise high." (p.239 Carlson)

This quote is important to the text because it shows the damage that oppression does to homosexuals. These statistics are shocking to me and when I read them I could not believe that the numbers were that drastic. Carlson also puts quotes into his texts that are from high schools showing how students are tormented. These quotes were sad and I could not believe that kids have put up with hearing those words.

Carlson's article difficult to read because the ignorance that people have in the United States towards the gay population. To those people the word "gay" means different and not normal. I do not like this and this article makes me watch my words as well as friends words. The word "gay" has become a word meaning bad. I never understood why people used it but it became part of most everyones vocabulary. I'll admit that I was a user of the word "gay". I never thought it was a big deal because I was not against the homosexual orientation. With this article I found that anything like that is wrong and should not be said or done. Reading this article was hard because it was not the narrative that I like to read. Kozol and Rodriguez were narratives and I liked their work better. But, in the end I liked Carlson's article because he talked about things that people do not like to talk about and was not afraid to make his opinion known.