Many thanks to inkdragon for her prayers for my ill student, and for her kind words in my guestbook. Our GSA [Gay Straight Alliance] is a new club this year, with a very small but loyal membership. Here's the reason -- the only one that counts -- that I became one of its co-advisors:
Teenagers who identify as GLBT [Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgendered] are three times more likely to kill themselves than teenagers in general.
That was enough for me to feel that if there was anything that could be done, it had to be. If we can only provide a place where these kids can sit for an hour once a week and not feel like freaks of nature, that's okay with me. Once we get going, we'll have guest speakers and such; for now, we're still trying to convince most of the kids in the school that you don't have to be gay to come to a meeting. That's why its called the G-A-Y S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T alliance.
We did meet a little resistance from the principal when we asked to start up the club, but not much, really, and nothing but support from the rest of the staff and the Student Government. We started with four girls (much harder to get boys to come to this club, but we have a few now) and we made it clear from the beginning that
it's not a dating service, and
no one ever needs to declare him/herself as anything. The important thing about the club is that it really doesn't matter here. Nobody cares. However, hetero- type people are generally unable to resist making that clear to everyone. Whatever.
What we really want is to reduce the climate of anti-gay sentiment that is not even terrible in our school, but still exists. It exists everywhere. The most common thing we hear in a high school is when a kid says in a real put-down way "Oh, that's so gay." What does that mean, exactly? I asked a kid recently when I heard him say it, and he said it means "That's so stupid." "Well," I asked, "why didn't you just say stupid?" How do you suppose a gay kid -- or a gay anyone -- feels when he hears "gay" used as a synonym for "stupid"? Not too good, I'll bet.
I always wanted to work with some club in the high school. Since I was on the school magazine as a kid myself -- a real angsty-kid poet, I was -- I went for that, and advised the magazine for about five years. Then I worked with the Junior Class for 15 years: proms, trips, fundraisers. I was most definitely not a prom kind of kid myself, but it was fun, and a lot of it. I enjoyed the frivolous nature of it, somehow, but I got too old to do that much work at that pace! So last year, no club for me. What with my own sick kid at home and then my mother dying, it was the right choice for me.
Then one day, another teacher, a guy in his mid-thirties, asked for my advice as a school-club veteran. He asked what I thought of his starting a Gay-Straight Alliance. I told him it was a good idea, but only if I could be his co-advisor. Voila.
My daughter had a friend in high school; they had been in Scouts -- Boy Scouts, the co-ed older branch -- together and had been friends for years. Everyone in school knew he was gay except for him. He just didn't get it. To my daughter, it was so irrelevant that she would get annoyed if anyone asked her if she thought he was gay. She didn't care. He woke up and came out as soon as he got to college. I asked him recently, when I was telling him about the GSA, if he thought such a club would have made a difference to him in high school.
He said that in high school, he only knew one person who was openly gay, and that kid was extremely effeminate, as well as militant about gay rights. Daughter's friend knew one thing: he wasn't that. If that was gay -- and he had every reason to believe it was -- then it wasn't him. He says the club would have helped him understand more, about others and himself. It would have made a difference to him.
That's all I needed to know.
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I'm watching American Idol, for now
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
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