Turning anti-gay ways to tolerance
Youth conference gathers educators, students,
gay rights advocates to explore teaching acceptance
BY OLIVIA WINSLOW, Newsday.com from the Web, March 8, 2005
As a gay student at Lindenhurst High School, Matt Cotty, 17, said he was "deeply offended" by the anti-gay language he heard in the hallways
-- comments such as "That's so gay" and "queer."
He decided to take action, and he formed a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school to raise awareness.
So far 45 such alliances have been formed at schools on Long Island, and it's not just gay students who become involved.
"It must be stopped," said Danielle Parpounas, 16, an 11th- grader at West Islip High, of intolerant speech.
She and her friend Heather O'Gara, also a 16-year-old 11th-grader -- they're straight -- became active in the alliance at their high school because they found anti-gay comments unacceptable.
Along with their school's alliance adviser, school psychologist Robert Matuazzi and others, Parpounas and O'Gara attended a workshop, "Creating a Culture of Support" for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students in schools at the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth conference yesterday at Hofstra University.
The 10th annual conference, LIGALY's largest, drew more than 300 people. Most of them are high school students, along with some middle school students, college students, educators, school counselors and school psychologists, organizers said.
"The goal is really to help give the youth the skills to go back and change their school environment and their community as well," said David Kilmnick, LIGALY's executive director.
"Change really happens at the local level."
For the past five years, the conference has been held at Hofstra, where the School of Education and Allied Human Services is a co-sponsor, said Jane Goldman, the education school's senior assistant dean.
Goldman said the faculty and administrators were "committed to a social justice agenda. ...
We feel a real sense of mission" with LIGALY.
LIGALY's assistant director, Robert Vitelli, said most school districts wouldn't send students to the conference years ago, but now there was much more support from districts toward LIGALY's effort to make schools safer for gay students.
Rachel Rosenberg, 18, a senior at Jericho High School and a workshop presenter who identified herself as a lesbian, said the conference provided information "on so many different levels, especially for people who aren't 'out' yet," alluding to those who have not yet declared their sexual orientation publicly.
"Some people are facing so much stuff."
The conference's keynote speaker, Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide gay rights group, told the audience, "We are living in historical times.
Change is happening all around us," despite backlash from those opposed to what Van Capelle said was a quest to win full "civil rights" for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
The conference, whose theme was "Vision, Action, Progress," sought to empower young people to take action against homophobia.
Teachers said they attended to support programs for gay students and also to learn how to instill tolerance among all students.
Said Sam Moxon, a Lindenhurst High teacher and adviser to the gay-straight group Cotty started:
The goal is "accepting a person for who they are."
While some students at the conference talked of having difficulties being accepted at home, Cotty has support there.
"He's my son," said his mother Arlene Cotty, contacted at work. "I love him, I support him and he's a good kid."
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