I knew I was gay since I came out of the womb and into the closet
I found this to be an interesting article, if you read it all and comment on it and actually find it interesting, you just might be one of my favorite people ever.
Copyright 2004 The Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)
December 17, 2004 Friday
City Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1107 words
HEADLINE: A NEW GENERATION;
Coming out: Young gays say it's easier;
But that doesn't mean it's easy as fears and insecurities persist
BYLINE: Karen Eschbacher
BODY:
The Patriot Ledger
Joshua Munro was putting up a rainbow-colored flag and a few posters in a display case at Hull High School earlier this year when students passing by muttered a profanity-laced insult about the gay-straight club being "a bad idea."
The 16-year-old ignored the slur, but the next day the flag, a symbol of gay pride, disappeared. The banner was recovered with the help of administrators, but the incident rattled Munro.
"It hit me hard," said Munro, an openly gay junior who launched the school's gay-straight alliance with a friend.
At a time when Massachusetts has become the first state in the country to allow same-sex nuptials, and when popular television shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" have brought glimpses of gay lifestyle to the mainstream, experts and teenagers say young adults feel more at ease coming out while in high school.
But despite that growing sense of acceptance, the incident in Hull is an example of the struggles gay teenagers continue to face, from insecurities about telling family and friends to the verbal jabs they endure from sometimes insensitive peers. Easier, not easy
"It's easier for many young people to come out, but not easy," said Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Youth.
Dorene Adams of the South Shore Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (SSHAGLY) agreed. While she has seen a gradual change in climate for gay students, "I don't think things are as different now as people would like to think they are" - especially in more politically and culturally conservative areas like the South Shore.
Adams, the group's program director, said she knows one South Shore Catholic school student who isn't out but has found acceptance from a few staff and classmates who know the student is gay. Some wait until college
A Catholic student would never have confided such a thing in years past, Adams said. Yet even among public school students, half of the 20 or so gay and lesbian teens currently active with SSHAGLY have avoided coming out at their schools.
It's impossible to know exactly how many South Shore teenagers identify themselves as gay or lesbian because some wait until college or later to come out and others tell only a few close friends. Surveys, however, offer at least some indication.
Four percent of high school students who participated in the state's 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey described themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, and 5 percent said they had engaged in same-sex sexual contact. Nationally, 5 percent of students identify themselves as lesbian or gay, according to a recently released survey by Widmeyer Communications, conducted for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The studies also paint a picture of a community at risk.
Students who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual or who had any same-sex sexual conduct are more than four times as likely as their peers to have attempted suicide, according to the 2003 Massachusetts student survey. They were also more likely to admit to alcohol and drug use, and to have skipped school because they felt unsafe.
"There are a lot of pressures for gay youth in general," said Liza Suarez, a psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. "Coming out brings another level of stress for them. Teenagers are already struggling with finding their own identity, how they should style their hair, who they should hang out with.
"It's hard enough for them to manage these pressures at a basic level. They also have to deal with peer aggression, being ostracized by their peers and adults, many times in their own family."
Facing such pressure, SSHAGLY director Dorene Adams says, most students wait to come out until they're seniors.
"In case harassment happens, they're already leaving (when they graduate)," she said. But she and others say that experience can vary widely from school to school, even from peer group to peer group.
Angela Hughes, a junior at Hull High who worked with Munro to launch the gay-straight alliance, came out more than a year ago to her best friend and remembers the fear she felt at the time.
"I was frustrated about everything," Hughes, 16, said during a SSHAGLY meeting. "I was in tears. I said, 'There's something I have to tell you. I don't want you to leave me. I still want you to be my friend.'"
Hughes said she was among the first open lesbians in her school, a point she wears with pride. Overall, she said the school - from teachers to classmates - has been accepting. Her girlfriend will occasionally come up in conversations.
"I just don't care, and people don't care, either," Hughes said.
Change of scenery
For Timothy Gallant of Hanover, the experience was markedly different. As a student at South Shore Vocational Technical School, he said, he was subjected to a barrage of harassment from other students, so much so that he suffered panic attacks.
"There was a lot of taunting, gestures, they went out of their way to make my life a living hell," Gallant, 16, said.
"I'd get up in the morning and want to go back to bed."
The stress was so bad that he walked out of school one day, ended up in the hospital and was treated for depression. Soon after he transferred to South Shore Charter School, a small school in Norwell.
There, he has found support among what he calls an "eclectic" group of students and is now leading a charge to increase state funding for gay-straight alliances in schools to ensure that other students can have support networks in place. Like Hughes and Munro, he's also a member of the South Shore Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth.
Spreading tolerance
Munro, the Hull student who said he "knew I was gay ever since I came out of the womb and into the closet," is doing his part to spread tolerance a little at a time. He'll interrupt students when they call something "gay" instead of stupid, and he'd eventually like to work with teachers to offer advice on how to curtail anti-gay remarks, even those that aren't intended to be hurtful.
"I know personally I've stopped a lot of people from saying the word 'gay' or 'faggot,'" he said. "At lunch a freshman said, 'You're such a faggot' to someone else. I said, 'Excuse me' and he stopped."
Despite the difficulties he's faced, Gallant thinks most gay students feel more comfortable coming out now than they might have a decade or so before.
"It's becoming a lot easier," Gallant said. "I talk to people who are college-level and they'll say, 'You came out in high school?' Then there are kids who are 13, 14 and they'll say, 'I'm gay.' Our generation is so much more accepting."
Copyright 2004 The Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)
December 17, 2004 Friday
City Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1107 words
HEADLINE: A NEW GENERATION;
Coming out: Young gays say it's easier;
But that doesn't mean it's easy as fears and insecurities persist
BYLINE: Karen Eschbacher
BODY:
The Patriot Ledger
Joshua Munro was putting up a rainbow-colored flag and a few posters in a display case at Hull High School earlier this year when students passing by muttered a profanity-laced insult about the gay-straight club being "a bad idea."
The 16-year-old ignored the slur, but the next day the flag, a symbol of gay pride, disappeared. The banner was recovered with the help of administrators, but the incident rattled Munro.
"It hit me hard," said Munro, an openly gay junior who launched the school's gay-straight alliance with a friend.
At a time when Massachusetts has become the first state in the country to allow same-sex nuptials, and when popular television shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" have brought glimpses of gay lifestyle to the mainstream, experts and teenagers say young adults feel more at ease coming out while in high school.
But despite that growing sense of acceptance, the incident in Hull is an example of the struggles gay teenagers continue to face, from insecurities about telling family and friends to the verbal jabs they endure from sometimes insensitive peers. Easier, not easy
"It's easier for many young people to come out, but not easy," said Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Youth.
Dorene Adams of the South Shore Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (SSHAGLY) agreed. While she has seen a gradual change in climate for gay students, "I don't think things are as different now as people would like to think they are" - especially in more politically and culturally conservative areas like the South Shore.
Adams, the group's program director, said she knows one South Shore Catholic school student who isn't out but has found acceptance from a few staff and classmates who know the student is gay. Some wait until college
A Catholic student would never have confided such a thing in years past, Adams said. Yet even among public school students, half of the 20 or so gay and lesbian teens currently active with SSHAGLY have avoided coming out at their schools.
It's impossible to know exactly how many South Shore teenagers identify themselves as gay or lesbian because some wait until college or later to come out and others tell only a few close friends. Surveys, however, offer at least some indication.
Four percent of high school students who participated in the state's 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey described themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, and 5 percent said they had engaged in same-sex sexual contact. Nationally, 5 percent of students identify themselves as lesbian or gay, according to a recently released survey by Widmeyer Communications, conducted for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The studies also paint a picture of a community at risk.
Students who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual or who had any same-sex sexual conduct are more than four times as likely as their peers to have attempted suicide, according to the 2003 Massachusetts student survey. They were also more likely to admit to alcohol and drug use, and to have skipped school because they felt unsafe.
"There are a lot of pressures for gay youth in general," said Liza Suarez, a psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. "Coming out brings another level of stress for them. Teenagers are already struggling with finding their own identity, how they should style their hair, who they should hang out with.
"It's hard enough for them to manage these pressures at a basic level. They also have to deal with peer aggression, being ostracized by their peers and adults, many times in their own family."
Facing such pressure, SSHAGLY director Dorene Adams says, most students wait to come out until they're seniors.
"In case harassment happens, they're already leaving (when they graduate)," she said. But she and others say that experience can vary widely from school to school, even from peer group to peer group.
Angela Hughes, a junior at Hull High who worked with Munro to launch the gay-straight alliance, came out more than a year ago to her best friend and remembers the fear she felt at the time.
"I was frustrated about everything," Hughes, 16, said during a SSHAGLY meeting. "I was in tears. I said, 'There's something I have to tell you. I don't want you to leave me. I still want you to be my friend.'"
Hughes said she was among the first open lesbians in her school, a point she wears with pride. Overall, she said the school - from teachers to classmates - has been accepting. Her girlfriend will occasionally come up in conversations.
"I just don't care, and people don't care, either," Hughes said.
Change of scenery
For Timothy Gallant of Hanover, the experience was markedly different. As a student at South Shore Vocational Technical School, he said, he was subjected to a barrage of harassment from other students, so much so that he suffered panic attacks.
"There was a lot of taunting, gestures, they went out of their way to make my life a living hell," Gallant, 16, said.
"I'd get up in the morning and want to go back to bed."
The stress was so bad that he walked out of school one day, ended up in the hospital and was treated for depression. Soon after he transferred to South Shore Charter School, a small school in Norwell.
There, he has found support among what he calls an "eclectic" group of students and is now leading a charge to increase state funding for gay-straight alliances in schools to ensure that other students can have support networks in place. Like Hughes and Munro, he's also a member of the South Shore Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth.
Spreading tolerance
Munro, the Hull student who said he "knew I was gay ever since I came out of the womb and into the closet," is doing his part to spread tolerance a little at a time. He'll interrupt students when they call something "gay" instead of stupid, and he'd eventually like to work with teachers to offer advice on how to curtail anti-gay remarks, even those that aren't intended to be hurtful.
"I know personally I've stopped a lot of people from saying the word 'gay' or 'faggot,'" he said. "At lunch a freshman said, 'You're such a faggot' to someone else. I said, 'Excuse me' and he stopped."
Despite the difficulties he's faced, Gallant thinks most gay students feel more comfortable coming out now than they might have a decade or so before.
"It's becoming a lot easier," Gallant said. "I talk to people who are college-level and they'll say, 'You came out in high school?' Then there are kids who are 13, 14 and they'll say, 'I'm gay.' Our generation is so much more accepting."