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Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Like religion, language, and ethnicity, sexual orientation is an important component of a person’s identity. Schools are often the places where teens develop social skills and begin to align with peer groups. For adolescents who do not identify as heterosexual in today’s culture, this process of social acceptance and approval is fraught with danger, fear of rejection, and even physical harm. sexual orientation An enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction that a person feels toward people of one or both sexes. Typical categories applied to sexual orientation include heterosexual, homosexual (gay and lesbian), bisexual (sexual attraction toward both sexes), and transgender (having characteristics of the opposite sex). The acronym LGBTQ is sometimes used to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as a group. The “Q” stands for Queer, where “Queer” serves as an umbrella term that encompasses many people as it intersects with sexual orientation and gender identity. It includes anyone who does not associate with heteronormativity; rather, they have nonbinary or gender-expansive identities. Because sexual orientations are often hidden from view, LGBTQ individuals are often thought of as the invisible minority. In schools, fear often prevents these students from revealing their sexual identities; it is therefore important that schools and classrooms provide safe havens for those of our students whose sexual orientation is not aligned with the majority. Attitudes about sexual orientation are a product of individual family biases and beliefs. Students bring these to school, and LGBTQ youth often have to cope with prejudice and isolation. Lack of family support for these youngsters exacerbates the problem, and there is an enormous fear of stigmatization. These students are at greater risk than others for being harassed and bullied, experiencing depression, and attempting suicide. LGBTQ An acronym used to represent lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, and includes Q for Queer, an umbrella connotation that encompasses different ways of experiencing gender and sexuality. For the first time, in 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) included two new questions in its Youth Risk Behavior Survey. One question asked students about their sexual orientation and the second question asked about the gender of their partners. Twenty-seven states agreed to keep these questions in their survey, and the results indicated to researchers that clearly 8% of high school students, or about 1.4 million teens, report being lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The next group to be counted will be transgender teens. In 2017, for the first time, the CDC sent out its annual survey with a new pilot question on gender identity and expression. The United States will be able to count, for the first time, how many transgender students are in its high schools. A 2017 report stated that about 150,000 high school students, or about 0.7% of 13- to 17-year-olds living in the United States, identify as transgender. These data were released by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. The think tank, which researches issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, based its estimates on statistical modeling rather than direct surveys of children (Blad, 2017). While there is no information available as yet on the number of states that allowed the CDC transgender question to remain on its Youth Risk Behavior Survey, it is hoped that those results will shed more light on the number of transgender students. The reason that these data are so important is to protect the rights of all students, including transgender students. Federal civil rights laws should protect the interests of transgender children, and more complete data could help explain the need for clear, consistent policies related to transgender students to state and local officials. During the Obama era, schools were put on notice that they could be found in violation of the sex-discrimination protections of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 if they didn’t honor students’ gender identity. Sadly, the subsequent administration of Donald Trump withdrew this guidance, rescinding the Obama-era ruling. In withdrawing that guidance, the Trump administration left it to state and local decision makers to determine how to handle a range of issues, including what restrooms and locker rooms transgender students should use, whether to call them by their desired pronoun, and how to handle identifying their gender on student records (Blad, 2017). The experiences of LGBTQ students in schools is captured by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN, 2015) National School Climate Survey. The most recent results indicate that schools nationwide are hostile environments for LGBTQ students, the overwhelming majority of whom routinely hear anti- LGBTQ language and experience victimization and discrimination at school. As a result, many LGBTQ students avoid school activities or miss school entirely. The vast majority of LGBTQ students (85.2%) experienced verbal harassment (e.g., called names or threatened) at school based on a personal characteristic, most commonly sexual orientation (70.8% of LGBTQ students) and gender expression (54.5%). Almost all of LGBTQ students (98.1%) heard “gay” used in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”) at school; 67.4% heard these remarks frequently or often, and 93.4% reported that they felt distressed because of this language (Kosciw, Greytak, Giga, Villenas, & Danischewski, 2016). Because all students deserve to work in an environment that is both friendly and supportive, student groups have emerged in high schools all over the country to combat LGBTQ bias and discrimination. These groups or clubs are often called Gay-Straight Alliances; they are student-run organizations that provide a safe place for students to meet, support each other, talk about issues related to their sexual orientation, and work toward ending homophobia. Teachers can also create safe havens in their classrooms by interrupting statements of bias when they hear or see their occurrence. The GLSEN website offers many suggestions for teachers to enable their LGBTQ students to be full participants in the life of the school.