Queer Youth and the Culture Wars: From Classroom to Courtroom in Australia, Canada and the United States

This article builds on Lugg's (2006) Lugg, C. 2006. Thinking about sodomy: Public schools, legal panopticons, and queers. Educational Policy, 20(1): 35–58. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] discussion of surveillance in public schools and how queer youth are resisting schools’ current efforts to regulate sexual orientation and gender expression in the U.S. and internationally. Legal complaints initiated by queer youth against their schools for harassment and access to extra-curricular activities are discussed. The number of cases in the past five years has increased significantly and the courts are siding with the youth and their allies, demonstrating that queer youth are significantly impacting the dismantling of heteronormative regulatory regimes and improving the school experiences for themselves and queer adults.