I really don’t see how telling people you’re gay is a form of recruitment (or how outing yourself holds any “secret purpose” at all), but this keeps coming up.

In Out of the Closet, In the Classroom Jennifer Ives tells Brian McNeill at Connection Newspapers how she doesn’t want to be seen as a gay recruiter and how that affects her outness at work.

As an openly gay science teacher at Madison High School, Jennifer Ives knows she has to watch what she says to her students and their parents.

“I really don’t want to be seen as recruiting my students to be gay,” she said. “It’s sort of a don’t ask, don’t tell environment.”
Ives, 34, who has taught at the Vienna school since 2000, said she feels a little more accepted among the faculty and students with each passing year.

But there is still the fear that one angry parent who is uncomfortable with her sexual orientation could put her job in jeopardy.

A few days ago I was promted to take a look at Too Much Information? by Peggy Noonan over at WSJ.com’s Opinion Journal by a post at Downtown Lad. Peggy’s opinion, you should keep your sexuality to yourself, seems to be only directed at gays. She spends the first half of her column talking about a person’s sexual orientation being a private matter and in the next half tells us about a woman who is about to marry a man.

Laura is funny, irreverent, beautiful and about to be married. She once told me that before she met her excellent fiancé she’d met her share of frogs.

Hey Peggy, I think that type of information should be kept private. Why do I need to know that she’s in a straight relationship?

Everyone who thinks gays should “keep it to themselves” should do the same. That means no marriage, no more my boyfriend this, my girlfriend that, no more engagement and wedding rings. Unless, of course, you’re openly trying to recruit.