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Student gay groups offer safety, socializing
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DAYTONA BEACH -- About five years ago, a 12-year-old Broward County girl was sent to a place where the mission is essentially to turn gay people straight. It was too much for the seventh-grader. While she was on the phone with her best friend, she shot herself to death.
Michael Reyes, a 17-year-old Spruce Creek High School student, was figuring out he's gay about the same time. But his story is a lot different.
By his freshman year of high school, he was taking a steady verbal beating of gay slurs. He quietly endured the bullying for a while, and then he fought back by starting the school's first Gay Straight Alliance about a year ago.
"I know a lot of students need someone to go talk to and be themselves," Reyes said.
The Spruce Creek senior is a local pioneer of sorts. The alliance he started was the second formed in Volusia County.
The first was spearheaded by a former DeLand High School teacher in the fall of 2007. A third alliance was organized at Deltona High School last fall.
Gay Straight Alliances have been cropping up around the country since 1988, and there are more than 4,000 nationwide now, according to advocacy groups. There are more than 100 in Florida, and about 20 in Central Florida.
The alliances are part support group, part social club. As the name suggests, they're for kids of all sexual orientations and heterosexual kids do join. They focus on equality, tolerance, education and school safety.
Sometimes members talk about the best way to deal with homophobia. Sometimes they talk about selling candy to raise money for a suicide prevention hot line. Sometimes they just offer a compassionate ear.
"The high school years are so difficult anyway, and if you have questions about your sexuality, wouldn't it be nice to have people who feel like you do?" asked DeLand High School teacher Joanna McKenney, who's in charge of the alliance there.
GSAs began surfacing as the country's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population (GLBT) launched what has become its civil rights era. With everything still evolving, there's an odd mix of tolerance and intolerance in schools.
Reyes said it's not unusual to see two girls holding hands in school, and no one reacting to it. He and other students said it's also not unusual for GLBT kids to endure some pretty brutal harassment.
One study showed some GLBT kids are tormented with sexual epithets 26 times a day, said Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida, a statewide education and advocacy group dedicated to ending discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, race, gender identity and class.
Pollitzer said GLBT kids are probably having more problems than ever because so many more are out and have become visible targets.
"In the '80s there was no one to beat up because they were all in the closet," he said.
Enter the alliances, a safe place for teenagers trying to figure out who they are.
"It literally becomes a lifeline," Pollitzer said. "It's the one safe place they can go. Sometimes it's the only safe place in their entire world."
McKenney, a 10th-grade teacher, is heterosexual. But she brings an understanding to her group as the mother of a 32-year-old daughter who is a lesbian, and the sister of a gay man who she said killed himself "due to the pressures of his choice."
"I've created this safe haven for them to come to," McKenney said. "It's like a cozy little home. A lot of them don't have that.
"I'm a teacher, but I'm a person they can trust. I'm here for them. One of my kids said: 'I can't wait for Thursdays (meeting days) to come.' "
One student who had behavior problems is "like a new kid" now, she said.
"I wish my daughter had something like this when she went to high school," McKenney said. "She struggled. She never fit in anywhere."
The groups have stayed pretty small. DeLand High has about 3,200 students, but only 19 kids in the GSA. Spruce Creek has about 2,800 students, and 23 kids in its GS.
There's not always a happy ending after an alliance starts.
"They often face enormous pressure," Pollitzer said. "Some people are very hostile to them."
Anyone who tries to keep an alliance from forming, or to kill one, eventually learns about recent court decisions protecting the groups.
Equality Florida offers training and support to alliances, as does GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian And Straight Education Network. Established in 1990, the network focuses on making schools safe for all students.
The founder of the DeLand alliance, former science teacher Victor Arguelles, said he took a lot of flak from some teachers and parents.
"At our first meeting we had two cops outside the classroom because we had so many complaints," said the 26-year-old Arguelles, who's openly gay. "One teacher who didn't know what I look like was talking about the club and how shameful it was right next to me once."
But when he was trying to decide whether to take another job, which he since has, he said one of the toughest things was letting go of the group. He remembers helping a boy who was kicked out of his home after joining the alliance. And he recalls standing up for a boy who cross-dressed when another student harassed him.
"I didn't want to leave them," Arguelles said. "Some kids would say to me 'I feel like a loser and a failure, like no one in my family loves me.' I really do believe in the one and a half years my group was there we made an impact."
Arguelles said he still hopes to organize an "equality ball," a prom-like event for kids throughout Central Florida of all sexual orientations.
As he gets ready to graduate and step down as his alliance's president, Reyes hopes the club goes on.
"I feel like I'm leaving something behind to help kids," he said.
GLBT BULLYING
More than 86 percent of children who are gay, lesbians, bisexual and/or transgender reported being verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation, 44 percent reported being physically harassed and about 22 percent reported being physically assaulted, according to a 2007 survey of more than 6,000 GLBT students.
The study, conducted by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, also found that three out of five GLBT youths (60.8 percent) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation.
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