Teen students: Gay
and straight together
BY STEVE ROTHAUS,
from the MiamiHarold.com on the Web, January 22, 2007
Kelcie Currier of Tamarac says her
world changed the day she joined her high school's gay-straight alliance club.
"Just knowing that there are other kids like me, or who care about the same
issue that I do, it makes me feel great. Less alone. That life is
not hopeless," said Kelcie, 17, a junior at J.P. Taravella High in Coral Springs
who came out as a lesbian about four years ago.
Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) are student-led clubs, usually at high school and
middle schools, that promote respect and address antigay name-calling, bullying
and harassment. Spectrum, the Taravella club, is one of more than 3,000
GSAs nationally and 80 in Florida.
"They meet every day somewhere, without any problem," said attorney Robert
Rosenwald Jr. of the ACLU of Florida's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender) Advocacy Project.
Rosenwald represents another 17-year-old lesbian, Yasmin Gonzalez, who is
fighting to start a GSA, as the clubs are called, at her high school in Central
Florida's Okeechobee County.
Okeechobee High Principal Toni Wiersma told Yasmin that her club was unwelcome.
Yasmin sued the Okeechobee School Board.
"The objection is not to a GSA, per se. The objection is to the premature
sexualization of the students. If this had been a heterosexual club, it
would have been denied," said attorney David Gibbs of Seminole County, who
represents the Okeechobee schools.
Okeechobee has an abstinence-only policy. The GSA would violate that, said
Gibbs, who became well known in 2005 representing the parents of late coma
patient Terri Schiavo in their fight to keep her alive.
DRAWING THE LINE
"We all agree that school boards can draw the line," said Gibbs, who is
president of the Christian Law Association. 'If someone says 'We want to
start the Young Terrorists club,' clearly that may not be in the best interest
of the school board. The Young Prostitutes [club] -- that's where we draw
the line."
Kelcie Currier cringes at such talk.
"That's ridiculous," she said. "Don't they even understand the concept of
a GSA? They're reading into it something that isn't there. It isn't
to promote sex. It's to support community and outreach. To have
someone to be there if you need support."
Kelcie is an officer of the Taravella GSA, which has 15 members and meets every
other Thursday.
"My school's GSA is mostly gay men and straight females," she said. "It
really depends on the area you are in. There are several other schools in
my area in which most of the students are gay females and straight men.
'It's mostly whoever wants to join. You don't have to be gay or have an
'alternative lifestyle.' You just have to come with the mind-frame that
these people are people, regardless of sexual orientation."
A DIFFERENT VIEW
Alexandra Flores, another Taravella student, said that attending the GSA "has
helped broaden my horizons."
"Being a straight person, I don't have that perspective," said Alexandra, 16.
"It's a very good viewpoint for the oppression and discrimination [gay people]
have that I don't experience. It's certainly made me a whole lot more
sensitive that what people make as commonplace comments can be very hurtful."
Unless a student discloses his or her sexual orientation, other club members
might not know who's gay and who's not.
Kelcie's mom, Gayle Telego, said the club is "a great thing."
"I'm glad the schools are doing it. Kelcie had a lot of ridicule,
especially in middle school. She was depressed, wondering if anything is
wrong with her," said Telego, 48. "I told her she should meet other gay
people."
Telego said Kelcie and her friends have become "well rounded" by being in the
GSA.
"A lot of people think that being gay is a disease," Telego said. "They
need to be educated. A gay man is not going to make a pass at a straight
man. Society has taught that being gay is wrong, that you are going to get
AIDS. Who am I to judge? It's between you and your maker."
Not every parent is so supportive.
"My mom, she would prefer me to be a prostitute than a lesbian," said
Haitian-born Weedlin Randel, 20, a former member of the GSA at North Miami High
and current youth vice president of Pridelines Youth Services, a Miami group
that offers safe space to gay teens.
"If it weren't for [the GSA and Pridelines], I couldn't be myself," Randel said.
There are dozens of GSAs throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach
counties, said Robert Loupo, executive director of GLSEN South Florida, a
network of gay and straight schoolteachers.
Clubs exist at high schools including Booker T. Washington in Overtown,
Hialeah-Miami Lakes, Dr. Michael Krop in Northeast Dade, Miramar, William T.
McFatter Tech in Davie, and Fort Lauderdale. These and other South Florida
GSAs began uneventfully, most with little or no opposition.
EQUAL ACCESS ACT
The GSAs came into being after passage of the 1984 federal Equal Access Act, a
law sought by conservative Christian groups to allow religious clubs in public
high schools.
'One of the things that came up during discussion, 'If gay kids wanted to meet,
too, they could,' " Loupo said.
It's under the Equal Access Act that the ACLU filed suit Nov. 15 in Okeechobee
County.
"If you allow any clubs to meet, you have to allow all clubs to meet, including
gay-straight alliances. Some schools just refuse to follow the law," said
Rosenwald, the ACLU lawyer.
The ACLU has never before fought for a GSA in Florida. Similar cases have
been won in Georgia, Kentucky, California, Utah and Minnesota, he said.
Broward educator Teri Williams, 46, reminds people that behind the lawsuits are
real children, many whose lives are turned upside down after they identify
themselves as gay or lesbian.
"I had a student who was thrown out of his house," said Williams, former GSA
advisor at Coral Springs Charter school. "He came home and found his
belongings outside the house in the rain."
Williams is straight, married and the mother of three grown children, none of
whom is gay. She first became aware of gay youth issues nearly two decades
ago.
"An episode in my life is a student who committed suicide," Williams said.
"It was many, many years ago when I began teaching. The conversations
began around a suicide letter he left that stated, 'Please tell them I'm not
gay.'
'I thought, 'How can this happen?' I realized that this child did not have
a community. There must be a human connection. For so many gay kids,
they feel they don't have a community. They don't have a connection.
For me, the GSA is a critical component in our school for these kids."
'IT'S NOT EASY'
Jose Ventura, 18, graduated from Jackson High in Miami last May. He knew
at least 20 other gay students there and was president of Jackson's GSA for two
years.
"It's not easy to be out," said Miami-born Ventura, whose parents are from the
Dominican Republic. "My mom knows about me, but we don't talk about it a
lot."
When Ventura got to Jackson, the school didn't have a GSA.
"We wanted to start one up, to hang out and to educate everyone in our school
about sexual orientation," he said. "The first year, we had six kids.
We'd talk, go out on field trips, things like that."
Ventura said that because of the alliance, he went from being "very shy" to
"very outgoing."
"Through the GSA, I learned to speak out to people," Ventura said.
His advice to other gay teens: "Look for support. It's going to get
lonely out there and you need someone to talk with at least once in your life."
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