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Charles Haynes is one of the nation's leading experts on religious liberty in the public schools. He has worked with groups from across the political spectrum to help schools create ground rules for respectful dialogue on hot-button social issues. 

Haynes recently spoke with us about one of the fiercest battles in the culture wars: the battle over sexual orientation and public schools. This battle has grown all the fiercer since Education Department official Kevin Jennings started drawing fire for his past work at GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

Schools need to create a safe environment for civil dialogue, Haynes told us. They need to protect the rights of everyone, from conservative Christians to gay rights advocates. They cannot guarantee that everyone will agree, but they can promote trust and respect.

Haynes gives Jennings a full-throated endorsement for supporting these essential principles.

Public School Insights: What do you think is happening when people discuss sexual orientation in public schools?

Haynes: I think in many places people are speaking—or should I say shouting?—past one another about this issue.

Schools, as usual, are caught in the crossfire of the larger culture wars in the United States. We have administrators, teachers and school board members struggling to figure out how to handle this very difficult issue at a time when the larger culture is not handling it well.

Public School Insights: Is it possible for teachers, administrators and other school stakeholders to create common ground on issues of sexual orientation?

Haynes: Yes. I think it’s not only possible, I think it’s imperative that we try harder.

Unfortunately, in many school districts people put their heads in the sand and hope this issue will just disappear and that they won’t have a fight. But then they are unprepared when something emerges, and it inevitably will.

I think the challenge is to get out in front of this. The best way to do that is to bring people together, make sure that everyone’s perspective is included, and then look at how the school system can respond in a way that protects the rights of people on all sides.

Public School Insights: So you’re talking about a respectful environment, rather than agreement on the issue of sexual orientation.

Haynes: That’s right. Public schools, and public school officials, should not be taking sides in the culture war fight. Public schools are for everybody. It’s the responsibility of leaders in public schools to make sure that everyone has a voice at the table and that we learn how to address issues—even one as emotional and divisive as this one can be—with civility, with respect for the rights of one another.

This discussion is going to be different in different parts of the country, depending on the laws of a particular state. So there are going to be different contexts for the conversation, and of course school officials have to understand what the law is where their school district resides. That’s the starting point.

But given that framework, there are many ways in which people with very deep differences in opinion on how to handle sexual orientation issues in public schools can work together and in some cases find common ground.

Public School Insights: A few years ago you were instrumental in the creation of what you called a First Amendment Framework for finding common ground on issues of sexual orientation. What was the goal of this framework?

Haynes: We wanted to suggest a process for dialogue. We didn’t want to be prescriptive and say, “This is how a school district should answer all of these questions,” because, again, I think that’s going to be different in different places.

But we did want to provide a framework that is rooted in the Constitution, built on civic principles we share across our differences. A framework that would enable people to come together and have a respectful dialogue. So that was the goal.

We knew the only way to offer this civic framework was if it came from both sides. So we tried to bring together people who have very different views about sexual orientation and how the question should be handled in public schools. We worked together to see if we couldn’t provide some guidance to school districts who have constituents with very different views about these issues.

We were successful in coming up with some guiding principles and a process that school districts [can] follow [to] work through a lot of these issues without litigation and without dividing their community.

Public School Insights: Have these principles actually been in use in school districts around the country?

Haynes: Yes. There are a number of school districts that have written to us. Wayne Jacobsen, my co-drafter in this process and head of an organization called BridgeBuilders, which helps people to build common ground, has heard from a number of districts. He himself has also gone into a number of districts using this process, as have I.

There are a number of places in the country that report that this framework has been very helpful to them. There are a number of other areas of the country—Florida and elsewhere—where at various conferences of educators this agreement has been distributed to superintendents and other school leaders to take home and hopefully use when they are addressing these questions.

Public School Insights: You created this framework with the help of people on very different sides of the issue of sexual orientation in schools. How did that work?

Haynes: It was a challenging process. It took over a year to get the right language, because the differences are very deep on this question. But for the end product to have credibility we knew that we had to involve people in the process who have very different views but were willing to work together to find some way forward.

GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), then headed by Kevin Jennings, agreed to participate in this process and help write these guidelines. On the other side the Christian Educators Association International, headed by Finn Larson, also agreed to come and work on this.

I think at the beginning of the process Finn Larson and Kevin Jennings both had real questions about whether we could reach agreement on any language on this issue. But as we worked at it over the months of discussion, we did in fact come up with some significant agreement on how to handle this issue.

Sometimes how we debate these questions is just as important as what we are debating. The how is very important and in this case people—these two different organizations, which have very different views about homosexuality—agreed on the civic framework that would help us to at least bring more civility to this conversation.

Public School Insights: Are there any parts of that language that you see as a particularly strong accomplishment, given how challenging this process was?

Haynes: I think the most important area of agreement is—and perhaps it’s obvious to say but until one looks at it, it’s not so obvious—that people on all sides of these issues want their schools to be safe for everybody.

Christian groups may feel very deeply about the issue of homosexuality, but they don’t want gay and lesbian kids to be bullied, harassed or called names any more than gay rights groups do.

On the other side, GLSEN and other groups advocating for gay and lesbian students don’t want evangelical students to be bullied, called names or harassed because of their religious beliefs.

So both sides, or all sides really, want a safe learning environment for everyone, and that’s a very good place to start.

It’s probably not surprising that most people want this, but what is somewhat surprising, at least in our conversation, was how much people on both sides of this issue also want schools to take freedom seriously.

What I mean by that is that it is important for us to acknowledge that students should be free to express their views about these issues as long as they do so with respect for the rights of others and are civil. And if we create an environment where students are given opportunities to express what they believe, they are more likely to be civil than if we keep pushing this down and trying to censor anybody from talking about it. That only creates a backlash and incivility and ugliness.

So people on all sides of our conversation agreed that we need to work towards a school climate that is both safe and free. In other words, schools that work for safety for all students but also recognize the importance of free speech and free exercise of religion, so that students understand that they can have appropriate opportunities to express their faith and their views on these issues.

Public School Insights: You mentioned Kevin Jennings, who is now director of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Kevin has recently been embroiled in a bit of controversy. There are particular interest groups claiming that Kevin is not fit for that role--that he represents a “radical homosexual agenda” in schools. Is this your impression of Kevin, and do you think this in any way carries the conversation forward in a thoughtful way?

Haynes: No, it’s very unfortunate. It’s fallout from these larger culture war fights, where unfortunately extreme voices on both sides often dominant the debate. I think that’s what’s happening here.

The irony is that people who have deep religious convictions--conservative religious convictions--about this issue should actually be very pleased that Kevin Jennings is at the Department of Education. In my experience, though he certainly has a strong viewpoint about these issues, he is one of the most fair-minded people that I know or have worked with. In the process of creating these guidelines, he demonstrated an openness to the views of others, a willingness to work towards a school culture that would protect the rights of everyone, including people of deep religious faith who have strong views on this issue. I think that he really has a track record of being a person who wants to work with others and who creates school communities that protect everyone’s rights.

Obviously, GLSEN is an advocacy group in many respects. But I think a close look shows that what they are really advocating is for safe schools for gay and lesbian students, and for fairness. For an end to bullying and harassment. So their goals are really consistent with what I think most Americans on all sides really want in their public schools.

I think he is an excellent choice to head up that part of the department and I think once he is given an opportunity to show who he is—to show his interest in working on behalf of all parents and students—I think he’ll be widely accepted and supported.

Public School Insights: You’ve noted elsewhere that advocacy groups have a tendency to use public schools as a battleground for their positions in the culture wars. Do you think that this is having a negative effect on our ability to use public schools as a public square in this country?

Haynes: I think that public schools are often the victims of these culture war fights. That is why we were very careful in these guidelines to talk about the importance of public schools not taking sides but as being places that give people on all sides an opportunity to really engage one another with civility and respect. But that’s very difficult in a culture war environment, especially in the age of the internet when any local fight can become a national issue overnight. Then everyone seems to have a stake in battling it out, using the school as the battleground.

Now, there are advocacy groups and advocacy groups. In other words, I think there are some that are very responsible and understand the need to try to work these questions out without demonizing the other side, without a causing a division in the community.

Over the years I have worked with a number of groups that I think have really tried to bring about peaceful solutions without compromising their convictions—that have tried to find common ground and work things out. Groups like the Christian Legal Society, for example. And I would count in that number GLSEN.

I think GLSEN has really tried to work with others and to find areas of agreement. Our guidelines are one example, and I think there are other examples in the history of GLSEN. So again, I think that advocacy groups can play a positive role if they are willing to work with people on the other side and they also understand that public schools and school officials need to be honest brokers. They can’t become culture warriors.

Public School Insights: Are there any questions I should have asked but didn’t?

Haynes: I think that what we have to understand in school districts today is that of course there are going to be winners and losers on particular policy issues involving sexual orientation. People in different parts of the country are in different places. Laws are different in different places. But wherever we are in the country, if we can find a way to use our constitutional principles—our First Amendment principles—to come together and to have a civil dialogue, then I think there are ways to find genuine common ground. We just have to find a way to get people to sit together and to listen to one another. Hopefully, if they use this guide that we came up with, they’ll be able to do that.

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