The San Leandro school district has a history of problems with parents and students "tolerating" the fact that gay people and gay students, y'know, exist:

In 1997, a parents group at the high school demanded that a gay teacher be fired after she came out to her class. In 2002, high school English teacher Karl Debro settled a lawsuit with the district for $1 million after he was disciplined for giving a lecture on racism and homophobia. A judge declared unconstitutional a district policy banning "controversial issues" from the classroom without a principal's approval.

San Leandro High School has one of those Gay-Straight Alliances - a club where students of any sexual orientation can come together and decide they all have a right to exist, not to hide, not to have to pretend to be of the other orientation, etc. This promotes understanding, so many fundamentalists fight such clubs to the bitter end, but San Leandro has one.

The alliance created a poster with recognizable gay symbols on it, like the pink triangle (remember, that was the one forced on gay people by the Nazis in concentration camps to mark them as less worthy of respect than Jews) and the rainbow flag, and text that says "This is a safe place to be who you are."

Art teacher Tom Laughlin, who is gay and who oversaw the poster's design by students in the Gay-Straight Alliance, said he was surprised by the level of intolerance for homosexuality that he perceived when he started teaching at the high school five years ago. He said he recognized that it was critical when a student called him a "fag."

"There was a real need to do this," he said. "A lot of students didn't know about gay people in general."

The district has been trying to make teachers, students, and parents understand that their harassment and insults can make school a dangerous and unwelcome place for gay kids:

Gay students have toured the district's schools speaking to teachers about the harassment they've encountered. For the past two years, teachers have been required to attend annual three-hour sessions addressing the problems faced by gay and lesbian students in school and how to deal with students' homophobic comments.

At this year's session, the district distributed these posters to teachers and directed them to post them in classrooms. Make sure you understand this: teachers are told that they must display posters telling gay kids "This is a safe place to be who you are."

Five teachers at San Leandro High School have refused to comply with a school district order to display a rainbow-flag poster in their classrooms that reads, "This is a safe place to be who you are," because they say homosexuality violates their religious beliefs, Principal Amy Furtado said.

Can you imagine the furor that would happen if a teacher refused to display a poster that told Christian kids "this is a safe place to be who you are," especially in a school with a history of harassing Christian kids? Or maybe the same thing for Jewish kids?

[Aside: the entire concept of "born-again Christianity" hinges on the concept that people choose to come to Jesus. They made a conscious choice to dedicate their lives to Christian pursuits. And yet many people who made this choice say that members of their religion must be a protected class, but gay people must not be protected from harassment or discrimination because they "choose" to be gay.]

District officials said the poster is an effort to comply with state laws requiring schools to ensure students' safety and curb discrimination and harassment. They say that too often teachers do not reprimand students who use derogatory slurs or refer to homosexuality in a negative way.

"This is not about religion, sex, or a belief system," said district Superintendent Christine Lim, who initiated the poster policy. "This is about educators making sure our schools are safe for our children, regardless of their sexual orientation."

They still have a long way to go.

Another teacher at the high school - who was not one of the five […] - said he did not intend to display the poster.

Business teacher Robert Volpa said he was out of town Monday and did not attend the training session and had not heard about the poster. He said, however, he would not put it up in his classroom even though he agrees with the message.

"I think it's outstanding. Any hate language is not permissible," he said. But he added, "I have a problem with the district mandating anything that could be political."

As long as teachers think that telling students "this is a safe place to be who you are" is a political statement that should be avoided, there's a lot of work to do.

And lest you think this is someplace in the red-state boonies that just doesn't know any better, check out a map. San Leandro is just across the bay from San Francisco.