A Wisconsin school district is paying almost a million dollars to a former gay student for not protecting him from being repeatedly harassed by fellow students.

I hope this sends a very strong message to school officials all across the nation that this serious problem must be addressed.

School is a terrifying and traumatizing experience for kids who are gay or merely suspected of being gay. I know because I lived it.

I am a 43 year-old-man who has never forgotten that little boy of nine who discovered his “difference” and felt so alone, and the verbal and physical assaults I received during school.

One way we can make our schools safer is to discuss gay issues in the classroom. Otherwise we send the wrong message to youngsters, gay and straight — that gay life is not worthy of discussion, that it is permissible to make jokes and taunt classmates, that gay people are not real human beings.

Should such issues be discussed in school? You bet.

That’s the function of education — to open students’ eyes, minds, hearts and souls to the world around them. They don’t necessarily have to agree with everything they read or hear, but they do have to try to understand it.

Straight students need to talk about gay issues, just as whites must learn about the civil rights struggle, non-athletes must take physical education and youngsters preparing to live in the 21st Century must know the history of ancient Greece and Rome.

Like it or not, homosexuality exists.

It surrounds us every day. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s world citizens. They will have gay and lesbian co-workers, bosses, neighbors. Perhaps they’ll even have a gay or lesbian child.

What better place to begin hearing, discussing and thinking about gay issues than in school?

We need to clear up the STAGGERING amount of myths, misinformation and just plain propaganda about homosexuality. We need to substitute actual facts and information.

Some people will listen to the question “Should the schools teach about homosexuality?” and their ears register only two words: “teach” and “sex.”

We do not want to teach your kids to have gay sex. That is absurd, and that is propaganda. What we gay people are asking is that schools teach the following:

1. That we exist — an undeniable fact.

2. That we have made many contributions to society, such as Walt Whitman’s poems, Willa Cather’s novels, Alan Turing’s invention of the computer — again an undeniable fact.

3. That families come in more than one form and that some students have gay parents — again a fact.

4. And finally, that anti-gay activity hurts everyone, gay and straight, as well as being detrimental to education and to business.

What’s the worst that could happen if truth, understanding and tolerance are taught? That more kids would be gay? Nobody believes that.

But maybe a little hate will be lifted.

William C. Stosine

Iowa City, Iowa