Educação para a diferença é um direito : a adequação constitucional das políticas públicas de combate à homofobia nas escolas

Abstract

Public policies against homophobia in schools are appropriate policies to our constitutional system understood in its integrity, when taking into account the understanding of rights as essential protections of minorities in relation to the interests, aims and values of the majorities, and the tensioned and complex joint among the constitutional principles that govern our political community. Every child and teenager who attends public schools has an individual legal right to education for difference, to an education that is plural, emancipatory and egalitarian, which is guided by the principles of identitary liberty and equality as difference, it is: each student has the right to have her personal autonomy protected from any constraints, to freely develop her personality and identity (including her sexual identity) and therefore be treated with equal concern and respect because of that identity. For promoting rights of freedom and non-discrimination, public policies against homophobia in schools are constitutional requirements that must govern public activities of all institutions of the State. At individual level, each citizen served by the school has the individual legal right to obtain compensations or other protective attitude when having her equal dignity injured on the basis of a homophobic discrimination, and she may even claim judicially a compensatory approach by the State through judicial intervention. At collective level, nevertheless the collectivity of oppressed sexualities cannot claim judicially both the preparation and execution of public policies that assure their rights, they may legitimately claim the same through public manifestations that aim to persuade and pressure legislative and executive branches to fulfill the constitutional obligation of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual identity by the means of the execution of effective rights policies. And the policies we shall introduce here, although they have not so far achieved a significant degree of practical success, they sign the concern of some sectors of civil society and government with the injuries caused by homophobic violence.