When I was in high school in the 1980s, our social studies class did an ethics exercise called The Lifeboat Dilemma. This is what the The Lifeboat Dilemma looks like today:

A lifeboat holds a maximum of six people. There are ten people that want to board the lifeboat. The four individuals who do not board the boat will certainly die. Who gets to board the lifeboat?

Woman who thinks she is six weeks pregnant

Lifeguard

Two young adults who recently married

Senior citizen who has fifteen grandchildren

Elementary school teacher

Thirteen year old twins

Veteran nurse

Captain of the ship

This differs from the list we were given in school. When I did this exercise, one of the people that wanted to get into the lifeboat was developmentally disabled, one was physically disabled, and one was a lesbian.

I remember this because in those days, in my small town, the only kids who knew what a lesbian was were the Catholic kids. They had been warned in confirmation that homosexuality was evil. (It was the early 80s. Before Will & Grace. Before gay pride parades. Before people in small conservative towns were ‘out.’)

When the class finished, neither the people with disabilities, nor the lesbian, were allowed into the lifeboat.

Nearly 30 years have passed since we did that classroom exercise, and it makes me sad in so many ways. Even in a school of 200 kids–and that’s 7th through 12th grade–there were boys and girls who were gay.

It was decades before some of the kids in my hometown came out, and I don’t know any of them who came out until they put some distance between them and home. Doing The Lifeboat Dilemma must have been confusing and terrifying for them.

I expect that those kids walked a difficult journey to self-acceptance and peace. They deserve a spot in the lifeboat as much as anyone else.

Did you do The Lifeboat Dilemma in school? Who would you let into the lifeboat? Who would you keep out?

[This post originally on The Socratic Project.]