Gay teens strive for acceptance
in conservative Bible Belt states
Plans for school clubs cause community uproar
By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune from baltimoresun.com March 27, 2005
CLEVELAND, Ga. -- Kerry Pacer was used to the whispering behind her back, the name-calling and the snickering when she walked down the hall.
But when almost the entire student body at White County High School booed as she accepted a rose from a female friend during a Valentine's Day program last month, she knew it was time to do something.
Pacer, who said she never has tried to hide the fact that she is a lesbian, did what other gay students in schools across the country have been doing for more than a decade.
The 16-year-old junior began trying to organize a chapter of the Gay-Straight Alliance, which promotes tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals.
But in White County, a hub of Christian conservatism nestled in the north Georgia mountains, the idea of a school-based group that supports homosexuality put the community in an uproar and thrust this quiet haven where Cabbage Patch dolls originated into the national debate on gay rights.
"There has always been a lot of bullying at school, and there was never anyone to stand up for me," said Pacer, explaining that she and other gay students felt a Gay-Straight Alliance club would promote understanding.
"I knew there would be people who disagreed with it, but I had no idea it would grow this big."
With heightened national attention on family values as championed by Christian conservatives, students such as Pacer said they have felt pressure to keep their sexual orientation hidden, particularly in conservative Bible Belt states where many people believe homosexuality is a sin.
Those attitudes were manifested in November when voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.
Throughout the country, school districts have become a legal battleground for issues that disproportionately affect gay students such as bullying and harassment.
Though there are more than 1,300 Gay-Straight Alliance groups in schools nationally, some gay rights groups report a rise in hostility at schools in communities that are less accepting of such organizations.
As a result, courts have intervened to ensure the rights of gay students.
Election issue
Often, the cases come to light during the spring as students prepare for proms and other social events.
Some schools try to bar same-sex teenagers from attending the prom as a couple.
Those who do attend often say they feel unwelcome. Meanwhile, gay students increasingly are opting to hold their own proms, segregating themselves from the larger student body.
"During the election cycle, there was a lot of rhetoric being used about gay people, some of which was not supportive of gay people and their families," said Heather Sawyer, senior counsel for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a New York-based gay rights group that handles cases on behalf of gay students.
"When young people hear the message that we as a country want to deny gay families civil protections we provide other families under law, it has a negative boomerang effect on how young people may treat other students they know or perceive to be gay.
"Some of the states amended their constitution during the election to make sure gay couples could not get married.
The campaigning around this discrimination against gay people was real ugly, and it sends a message that gay people are not entitled to the same equality and rights as nongay people."
Despite the federal Equal Access Act of 1984, which requires public schools to allow all non-curricular clubs the same ability to organize as the traditional chess club or pep squad, some districts have tried to get around the law, often bowing to pressures of the larger religious community.
While few districts have gone so far as to ban all noncurricular activities, others have tried to restrict gay students by limiting their freedom of expression.
A high school in Salt Lake City recently created a policy requiring students to submit written permission from their parents if they want to take a same-sex date to a school dance.
In Webb City, Mo., a gay student was punished by his high school for wearing T-shirts with gay pride messages on them.
In Cleveland, Ga., hundreds of residents turned up recently for a school board meeting where the Gay-Straight Alliance proposal was expected to be heard.
But before the meeting the students withdrew the proposal, opting instead to form a chapter of Peers Rising in Diversity Education, or PRIDE, that would focus on bullying, tolerance and diversity.
While school officials acknowledge that they probably would lose a court battle to prohibit the club, community members still oppose it.
Last week, dozens of opponents protested at the school, led by anti-gay activist the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan.
Meanwhile Pacer, a teenager with streaked brown hair and a penchant for red nail polish, has become a well-known gay activist in this town of 1,900 people.
Many feel unsafe
Bullying and safety issues continue to be a major problem for gay high school students, according to activists.
A national survey conducted in 2003 by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network found that most gay students feel unsafe at school.
Eighty-four percent of them said they had been verbally harassed, threatened or called derogatory names, and 41 percent said they had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation.
Most of the gay students surveyed said faculty never or rarely intervened when present.
Last year, six gay and lesbian former high school students won a $1.1 million settlement against the school district in Morgan Hill, Calif., for discrimination they suffered while students.
According to the suit, the students were verbally and physically abused by other students who were never punished by school administrators.
A number of court cases have set a precedent for Gay-Straight Alliances, including a lawsuit filed in 2003 against the Lubbock Independent School District in Texas, which tried to bar students from forming an alliance on campus.
Similar cases have gone to court in Orange County, Calif., and Cannonsburg, Ky.
The courts ultimately agreed with the students, saying schools that receive federal money could not discriminate.
Little support
Despite the law, such clubs remain a hard sell in places such as Cleveland.
"I just don't think it's right to have a club like this. It ain't in the Bible," said Gary Colwell, 18, a brick mason who grew up in the area.
"We see them walking around holding hands, and it makes everybody feel uncomfortable."
Many of the 1,000 students at the countywide high school feel the same way.
Some of them said it would be almost impossible to get straight students to join a club that supports gays.
"I don't know anybody who would want to join," said Logan Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore at the high school.
"We used to be known as the redneck school, now everybody is calling us the gay school.
I wish the whole thing would just go away."
White County School Superintendent Paul Shaw has met with religious leaders in an attempt to explain the law and ease the controversy.
He said outside pressures have made it more difficult to resolve the issue.
"The religious community has been against it. You try to listen to both sides, but this is an emotional issue because we are a very conservative county," Shaw said.
"If this were left up to the kids, it would get resolved very soon. But regardless of what happens, in the end we will still be White County."
'Climate is changing'
That too could cause a problem in the long term. Part of the difficulty, according to the Rev. Phil Hoyt, pastor of Cleveland United Methodist Church, is that large numbers of newcomers are moving into the area, bringing with them big-city values that longtime residents are reluctant to accept.
"People are moving here from all over, so the climate is changing. It's getting more progressive and changing the culture, and people are afraid of that," said Hoyt, adding that he sees the case as more of a legal issue than a moral one.
"We now have to acknowledge that we have gay students in our high school, and people are in an uproar."
Savannah Pacer, 51, Kerry's mother, is one of those transplants. She and her ex-husband moved with their two daughters to Georgia from Baltimore in 1995.
She said she knew things would be different in the Bible Belt South, but she had not expected this.
"We have always supported Kerry and taught her to stand up for what she believes in," said Pacer, a real estate agent and a co-director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, which works with Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in Georgia.
"Kerry is lucky to have her family's support. But there are a lot of teenagers out there who don't."
The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
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