By: Dani Langevin – April, 2022 “If you can see it, you can be it,”- Elizabeth Marvel. Simple words but, so very powerful. Recently the members of the Methuen High School Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) donated $300 to the media center for LGBTQ+ materials, as well as, purchasing a large banner hanging in the high […]
By: Dani Langevin “Everyone’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.” -James Baldwin What is happening in this country? What is this movement to oppress? Why […]
By: Dani Langevin – March, 2022 Last month someone wrote an editorial about public schools interfering in the socialization of students. I’m having a hard time understanding what this person is talking about and the point of their whining. The writer asked the question, “Why can’t our school leaders just back off and let kids […]
By: Dani Langevin – Jan. 2022 I will be presenting you with historical facts and data. You can glean from it what you will. The question is: does systemic racism exist in the US? Here is a timeline of some fun facts. Let’s start with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1871. Here’s the History Channel’s […]
By: Dani Langevin – April, 2021 As a result of the current social climate in America (and the one that has existed since its birth), many friends and colleagues have been asking my advice on how to talk to or “handle” difficult conversations with a gay person. What do you say when they come out? […]
By: Dani Lengevin – Oct. 2019 “How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think,” Adolf Hitler. This should be the current administration’s mantra. As far as I can see, Trump’s administration and most of his followers don’t think or at least have checked the part of their brains that has a conscience […]
By Dani Langevin – Septmber, 2019 I have three grown children. My oldest, a daughter, recently gave birth to my first grandchild, a boy. How lucky he is to be a white male born into this world. At no time will he be discriminated against because he is white or male. He will not be […]
By: Dani Langevin – May, 2018 On April 26, Methuen High School students observed a Day of Silence and have been for a number of years. A Day of Silence is a national event bringing awareness to the silencing effects of anti-LGBTQ+ name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. We silence ourselves to pay tribute to […]
By: Dani Langevin – March, 2018 I wrote this column in The Valley Patriot five years ago and nothing has changed. The talk has been cheap and the rhetoric ridiculous. Change needs to happen or there will be no one left to make it. In 1927, fifty-five year old Andrew Kehoe, school board treasurer in […]
By: Dani Langevin – Nov.2017 In April and June of 2018, the GSA Regional Summit will be coming to Methuen High. It is a safe schools program for LGBTQ students that is, “A joint initiative between Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) and the Massachusetts Commission of LGBTQ Youth. Founded in 1993 in […]
By: Dani Langevin – August, 2017 In June of 2010, in the second column I had ever written for the Valley Patriot, I wrote about what “Don’t ask, don’t tell” cost the military. It read, “It is estimated that there are almost 70,000 homosexuals serving in every branch of the military. Since 1993, over 13,500 […]
By: Dani Langevin – July, 2017 Language, as do creation stories, can define us singularly and collectively. Every culture has its own language and creation stories or stories to explain why things exist. In my opinion, creation stories and those that explain certain human behavior can reveal a great deal about a culture and/or time period. […]
By: Dani Langevin – Feb. 2017 Take a good look at the pictures above. When these children go to school or are out in public, what bathroom should they each use? The picture on the left is that of a young trans boy who is now a girl. […]
By: Dani Langevin – Feb. 2017 When I came out 23 years ago, I was incredibly insecure, nervous almost to the point of paralysis, and petrified to enter into a community I knew little to nothing about. How would I define myself as a lesbian? Will I fit in? Will I find someone? Who will […]
By: Dani Langevin – January, 2017 There has been a lot of focus on celebrity deaths over the past year, especially in the past few weeks where 2016 seemed hell bent on shocking us all with a number of rapid losses. Instead of focusing on the past year’s losses, I thought I’d focus on some […]