I’ve never understood those who look back on their youth as if it was a Country Time Lemonade commercial: long, carefree summer days spent anticipating the upcoming school year, filled with Friday night football games and that almost “holy” school spirit. Perhaps that’s what it was like for some, but like the “fat” kid, the flat-chested teenage girl, or the stereotypical nerd, if you are gay, chances are the wonder years were anything but wonderful.

Despite the great strides made to protect GLBT youth, sadly not too much has changed. According to the California Safe Schools Coalition, more than 200,000 California students each year are targets of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. More than 30 percent are threatened or injured in school each year, and 91 percent of all students reported hearing their peers use anti-GLBT slurs. Additionally, 40 percent heard teachers making negative comments or slurs. It’s been proven that this unsafe and often torturous environment has increased dropout rates, drug use and even suicide among GLBT youth.

In attempts to curb harassment and protect students, California passed AB 537, which changed the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000 to include actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity to the existing nondiscrimination policy protecting students and school employees in all public schools in the state.

Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) groups have also reduced harassment and violence in schools. Statistics show that students whose schools have a Gay-Straight Alliance club are 16 percent less likely to be harassed because of sexual orientation and 23 percent more likely to feel safe at school.

Additionally, the National Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA), is a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-GLBT bias unacceptable in schools take a daylong vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment – in effect, the silencing – experienced by GLBT students and their allies. Founded in 1996, the Day of Silence has become the largest single student-led action towards creating safer schools for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

In response to the growing popularity of the Day of Silence, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian legal group, helped organize the Day of Truth (held the day after the Day of Silence), which aims to mobilize students who believe homosexuality is a sin. Students wear T-shirts with the slogan, “The Truth Cannot Be Silenced” and are provided cards to pass out to classmates on the Day of Silence, which took place April 13 this year, declaring their unwillingness to condone “detrimental personal and social behavior.”

At Poway High School, Alliance Defense Fund poster-boy Tyler Chase Harper, who filed a lawsuit against the Poway school district last year for forcing him to remove a T-shirt that said, “Homosexuality is Shameful,” led a student rally on the Day of Truth and disseminated flyers at lunch entitled, “The Truth About Homosexuality,” which listed varying statistics about homosexuality that were for the most part opinion-based and offensive. For example, it stated that there is an “undeniable” link between homosexuality and pedophilia, and claimed the average lifespan of a “homosexual male or female WITHOUT AIDS is 33 years shorter than that of a heterosexual.”

Does the Day of Truth or, more specifically, the Day of Truth at Poway High, promote discrimination and harassment based on gender and sexual orientation?

Students should have the right to discuss issues and opinions freely unless it has the capacity to incite violence, or disrupts students’ ability to learn. One student said she was called a “dyke” following Harper’s speech. Is this the “truth” students are learning from the Day of Truth?

Poway High has an obligation to protect their students. Gun shy following last year’s tango with Harper and the ADF, Poway High should never place the safety of students second to concerns over legal repercussions. If racist literature was being disseminated (race is also a protected class under the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act) the administration would not hesitate. Homophobic, hate-based literature is no different.

The Day of Silence is a beautiful metaphor, but now it’s time to raise our voice. At the end of the Day of Silence, students should gather to break the silence and hopefully, in turn, break longstanding stereotypes. For each falsehood, we must counter with fact. Each time a student speaks openly against us, we must speak out against homophobia. Students will listen to whoever is speaking. After the bell rings, what message will they take home if we remain silent?