Table Of ContentMad River, Marjorie Rowland,
and the Quest for LGBTQ
Teachers’ Rights
New Directions in the History of Education
Series editor, Benjamin Justice
The New Directions in the History of Education series seeks to publish innovative
books that push the traditional bound aries of the history of education. Topics may
include social movements in education; the history of cultural repre sen tat ions of
schools and schooling; the role of public schools in the social production of space;
and the perspectives and experiences of African Americans, Latinx Americans,
women, queer folk, and others. The series will take a broad, inclusive look at Ameri-
can education in formal settings, from prekindergarten to higher education, as well
as in out- of- school and informal settings. We also invite historical scholarship that
informs and challenges popu lar conceptions of educational policy and policy mak-
ing and that addresses questions of social justice, equality, democracy, and the for-
mation of popu lar knowledge.
Dionne Danns, Crossing Segregated Bound aries: Remembering Chicago
School Desegregation
Sharon S. Lee, An Unseen Unheard Minority: Asian American Students at the
University of Illinois
Margaret A. Nash and Karen Graves, Mad River, Marjorie Rowland, and the
Quest for LGBTQ Teachers’ Rights
Diana D’Amico Pawlewicz, Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies
and the Failure of Reform in American History
Kyle P. Steele, Making a Mass Institution: Indianapolis and the American
High School
Mad River, Marjorie Rowland,
and the Quest for LGBTQ
Teachers’ Rights
MARGARET A. NASH AND KAREN L. GRAVES
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
978-1-9788-2751-6 (cloth)
978-1-9788-2750-9 (paper)
978-1-9788-2752-3 (e-pub)
Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress.
LCCN 2021050027
A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2022 by Margaret A. Nash and Karen Graves
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by
U.S. copyright law.
References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author
nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the
manuscript was prepared.
Chapter 1 adapted with permission from Graves, K., Nash, M. A. (2018). Staking a Claim in
Mad River: Advancing Civil Rights for Queer America. In D. A. Santoro & L. Cain (Eds.),
Principled Resistance: How Teachers Resolve Ethical Dilemmas, pp. 171–185. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Education Press. Copyright © 2018 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www . rutgersuniversitypress . org
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
Dedicated to Marjorie Rowland and to all the brave
LGBTQ educators, past and pre sent.
There is no pos si ble conflict between the
interest of the child and the interest of
the teacher. . . . F or both the child and
the teacher freedom is the condition of
development. The atmosphere in which
it is easiest to teach is the atmosphere
in which it is easiest to learn. The same
things that are a burden to the teacher
are a burden also to the child. The same
things which restrict her powers restrict
his powers also.
—M ARGARET A. HALEY, 1904
Contents
Preface ix
1 Staking a Claim in Mad River 1
2 “I Had to Be the Fighter” 15
3 The Meaning of Mad River: Implications of the Case 41
4 “Coming Out of the Classroom Closet”:
LGBTQ Teachers’ Lives after Mad River 61
5 Movements Forward and Back 82
Acknowl edgments 93
Notes 95
Bibliography 115
Index 127
vii
Preface
In 1974, a high school principal asked a guidance counselor who identified
as bisexual to resign. She refused, confident that she was good at her job,
that she helped students, and that the principal was wrong to ask her to
resign simply because of her sexuality. Eventually a jury and some judges
agreed with her, but a majority of judges did not. The counselor, Marjorie
Rowland, lost her job and never worked in a school setting again.
Rowland’s story took place outside of Dayton, Ohio, but it could have
happened almost anywhere. It did happen almost anywhere, for de cades,
including in the pre sent day. Unbeknownst to Rowland, other educators
were facing similar situations. Some of them took their cases to court, while
others did not have the financial or emotional resources to fight what
seemed like an inevitably losing battle. Rowland did choose to fight, backed
with the institutional support of the National Education Association, which
had just recently included sexual orientation in its category of protected
groups. Her case is impor tant, not just b ecause she chose to pursue justice
but because it led to a written statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice
William Brennan. While Brennan’s statement changed nothing for Row-
land, it became a foundation for other civil rights cases for LGBTQ people.
This book is the story of what happened to Marjorie Rowland, how it hap-
pened, and why it m atters.
LGBTQ p eople have made great gains toward social, po liti cal, and
legal equality in recent years, and these gains are to be celebrated. But there
also have been tremendous backlash, targeted vio lence, and some erosion
ix
