What's Life Like For Gay Kids In Public Schools? : NPR

Contents:

• GAY KIDS COMG OUT YOUNGER, BUT PARENTS ASK "HOW DO YOU KNOW?"
• GAY KIDS THE REAL WORLD
• GAY KIDS
• WHAT'S LIFE LIKE FOR GAY KIDS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
• GAY YOUTHS ARE MORE THAN TWICE AS LIKELY TO HAVE SLEEP TROUBLE, STUDY FDS

GAY KIDS COMG OUT YOUNGER, BUT PARENTS ASK "HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

Gay kids are g out earlier — sometim middle school — and many are fdg acceptance.

Enuraggly, beg young and openly gay seems to be gettg easier. Denizet-Lewis wr that when he started workg for the gay men's magaze XY 1998, "we received dozens of letters each week om teenagers the pths of spair.

" Three years later, he says, "a new kd of gay adolcent was appearg on the page - proud, rilient, sometim even happy.

GAY KIDS THE REAL WORLD

" He explas, That's not to say that gay teenagers didn't still suffer harassment at school or rejectn at home, but many seemed ls burned wh shame and self-loathg than their olr gay peers. Not only were there creasgly accurate and posive portrayals of gays and lbians popular culture, but most teenagers were by then regular Inter ers. Gog onle broke through the isolatn that had been a hallmark of beg young and gay, and allowed gay teenagers to fd rmatn to refute what their fai or church sometim still told them - namely, that they would never fd happs and to the Inter and to creasg cultural acceptance of homosexualy (an crease marred, we should note, by measur like Proposn 8), kids who might once have waed until high school or even llege to e out are now dog so earlier.

GAY KIDS

At least 120 middle schools the untry have gay-straight alliance groups, and others let stunts observe the natnal Day of Silence prott agast anti-gay harassment. " They were not, however, silent: "Good luck gettg middle-schoolers not to talk, " the school unselor youth of the Webster kids and other gay middle-schoolers is a sign of how far gay rights have e — but 's also the kids' biggt obstacle to acceptance. A tellg anecdote om Nadia, the mom of a gay 15-year-old named At.

WHAT'S LIFE LIKE FOR GAY KIDS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

" But she had actually asked At if he was gay when she found out he had lled a gay chat le. The irony of a parent spectg her kid is gay and then refg to believe he uld know his own orientatn highlights how much more difficulty some parents have wh burgeong gay sexualy than they would wh a straight kid's of this may have to do wh the misnceptn that you have to have gay terurse to be gay, or that homosexualy is somehow a more "sexual" orientatn than heterosexualy. 'Eileen Ross, director of a Mounta View, CA program for gay youth, says that when a 12-year-old boy says he lik girls, "No one says to them: 'Are you sure?

A lawyer Florida argued that gay-straight allianc promote the "premature sexualizatn of the stunts, " and when At started a gay-straight alliance, his Michigan school ma him ll somethg "ls ntroversial" (he chose "Peace Alliance"). Denizet-Lewis reports the hopeful words of velopmental psychologist Rch Sav-Williams: "This is the first generatn of gay kids who have the great joy of beg able to argue wh their parents about datg, jt like their straight peers do.

And maybe today's gay kids are slowly startg to receive via New York Tim Out In Middle School [NYT Magaze]. "In 20/20's view, Manzie "snapped after a homosexual affair wh an olr man he had met an Inter chat room" - wh the Inter as much implited the tragedy as Steven Simmons, a "nvicted pedophile. Back 1995, I vised rooms where olr men cise for young men and boys and vice versa (like "BarelyLegalM2M") for a week when I wrote a feature for Wired magaze on gay and lbian teenagers rooms are a theater of archetyp, of men wh nam like "HedCoach" and "LuvDad" exchangg horny msag wh "SwmrDu" and "MclKid.

GAY YOUTHS ARE MORE THAN TWICE AS LIKELY TO HAVE SLEEP TROUBLE, STUDY FDS

Sometim meetg offle had turned out to be an unfortable experience, but sometim the young man perceived a posive light - an troductn to a larger circle of iends, or an entree to the wir gay world. For some of the highly telligent, articulate young men, an offle renzvo wh an olr male was a risk that had turned out to be worth tth is, gay teenagers and olr gay men have always found ways to meet, spe every law agast .

Those teractns, ght wh risk on every si, prise a kd of iatory procs for young gay men - one ma necsary by the srcy of believable gay role mols for youth films and on TV, and the fact that 's not ol to walk down the hall of high school wh your bt buddy, holdg hands and gog was possible for gay kids to urt one another openly, teenagers would have a lot ls centive to seek out olr men for the kd of adoratn, engagement, and y, sex, that they n't get om their peers. Most, though not all, teenagers would rather sleep wh someone their own age the past, a gay kid might go to nsirable lengths to ferret out the lotn of the lol gay bar, and park himself on the siwalk outsi on a Saturday night, tryg to look relaxed, hopg to be noticed. If he was lucky enough to live a cy where there were gay youth anizatns, his chanc of fdg a kdred spir his own age were better.