How to Start a Gay Straight Alliance | Amerin Civil Liberti Unn

Contents:

• THE RADIL HISTORY OF THE FIRST GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCETHE RADIL HISTORY OF THE FIRST GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE
• TEACHG TOLERANCE: MEET THE TEACHER WHO STARTED GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANC
• HOW TO START A GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE (GSA)
• GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANC
• TRIUMPHS AND SETBACKS OF GAY STRAIGHT ALLIANC
• GAY-STRAIGHT/GENRS & SEXUALI ALLIANC
• MULTIMEDIA HOW TO START A GAY STRAIGHT ALLIANCE

THE RADIL HISTORY OF THE FIRST GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCETHE RADIL HISTORY OF THE FIRST GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE

ActivismJune 24, 2022The Radil History of the First Gay-Straight AllianceIn 1972, high school stunts New York Cy formed a revolutnary group that wanted power, not jt pri. When Elie Lamadrid, 18, suggted startg an after-school gay youth club the wter of 1972, Gee Washgton High School, the Washgton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, had been a source of trouble for school admistrators and cy officials.

The Stonewall Inn, unlike many other gay bars, also tered to a clientele of trans, genr-fluid, and unhoed teenagers who, bee of their age, were barred om other waterg hol. From s start, the gay liberatn movement was also a youth movement—and one of the primary plac om which spread was high school.

By this pot, Gee Washgton had e unr Prcipal Samuel Kostman, who ate tuna fish sandwich wh stunts the feteria twice a week and approved what might have been the first public gay-straight alliance a school. Soon, the Gay Internatnal Youth Society was born. They wanted the right to form gay groups.

TEACHG TOLERANCE: MEET THE TEACHER WHO STARTED GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANC

And they wanted to be treated as equal human begs, which they said meant “the removal of all textbooks and other tn media that treat homosexualy as an aberratn, rather than as an tegral and important part of human sexualy. They hoped to form a work of gay stunt groups high schools all over New York Cy.

As Stephan Cohen wr The Gay Liberatn Youth Movement New York: ‘An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail’, “Gay liberatn school-based groups are an important and largely neglected phenomenon.

Though most histori trace the first gay-straight alliance to the ele private Conrd Amy Massachetts 1989, wh Phillips Amy soon followg, the Gee Washgton High School club predat this group by 17 years. By the club’s unt, there were 20 people the group, a mix of rac, ethnici, genrs, and sexuali that clud ne lbians, six gay men, and five straight alli. The Gee Washgton gay group benefed om other gay liberatn and stunt rights anizg.

HOW TO START A GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE (GSA)

The Gee Washgton stunts the gay-straight alliance said that the terms set by the Bill of Rights allow stunts across to cy to form their own polil anizatns. Three weeks after the club was formed, the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA), which had already started recg high schools, addrsed the Gee Washgton high schoolers an open fom.

Gay rights advot Manford and Jean O’Leary, om the GAA Speakers Bure, answered qutns and gave advice to the stunts, whom O’Leary scribed as “dyname people.

If early gay rights groups like the Mattache Society were aaid to anize wh young people for fear of beg labeled sexual predators by straight homophob, post-Stonewall groups saw youths as ras. In his book, Cohen scrib the work of groups like Gay Youth, a subset of the Gay Liberatn Front; and the Street Transvte Actn Revolutnari (STAR), led by Rivera and Marsha P. ) It was mored that there were gay groups anizg high schools around New York Cy, but the Gee Washgton High School was the first to e out publicly.

GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANC

By the end of the 1972–73 school year, the gay liberatn movement had actured. I have lost my apartment for gay liberatn, and you all treat me this way? ” On that day, Cohen argu, the gay liberatn movement end.

TRIUMPHS AND SETBACKS OF GAY STRAIGHT ALLIANC

What happened to the Gay Internatnal Youth Society the wake of such schisms is unknown, but seems their story, too, is part of the larger fettg of radil histori, particularly the ntributns of people, as Rivera put her speech, outsi “the whe middle-class club. By the ’80s and ’90s, Cohen wr, the radil aims of the school gay groups had been eclipsed by a more “cremental civil rights approach promoted by the Natnal Gay Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

While the Gay Internatnal Youth Society nounced their school as “opprsive to all who are forced to participate, ” the later GSAs stead wanted to create safe spac wh . “In a lot of ways, I thk that [groups like Gay Internatnal Youth Society] are more radil and more touch wh the prent-day queer movement than a lot of the groups were the ’80s and ’90s, ” Cohen told me.

GAY-STRAIGHT/GENRS & SEXUALI ALLIANC

” That was how members of STAR uld march alongsi the Young Lords, how members of the Gay Liberatn Front uld stand weekly vigil outsi the Women’s Hoe of Detentn where Black Panthers were jailed, or Huey Newton uld wre of the gay and women’s liberatn movements that “we should une wh them a revolutnary fashn. This is why the story of the Gay Internatnal Youth Society is so important. How many other school groups like the Gay Internatnal Youth Society, who fought not only for dividual rights but llective eedom, were San Francis, Boston, Louisville, or Detro?

And part of what we lose is the ia of gay liberatn, which was a liberatn for all where the object was not jt pri but power.

From Gay-Straight Alliance to Genrs & Sexuali Alliance, check out our prs release on why we changed our name. Parl Gay?

MULTIMEDIA HOW TO START A GAY STRAIGHT ALLIANCE

'One of my stunts wants to know if you're gay. Homophobia had been on the agenda for discsn, and Parl arrived a few mut late, jt time to hear a mtee member clare that homosexualy wasn't an issue at Newton South so they might as well move on to the next topic. This wasn't California, after all, and his 20 years at the school, the mtee member had never enuntered a sgle gay had been teachg history at Newton South for four years, but only a few iends on the faculty knew he was gay.

'"He scribed his experienc growg up gay Grafton, Massachetts, the 1980s. Figurg out he was gay middle school was a eply trmatizg experience -- one that drove him far to the closet. Kids were regularly beaten up for beg gay, and the word fag was the mon parlance for 'd hated ceivg people and had felt overwhelmed wh shame at beg gay.

Wh no role mols and no one to talk to, he had end up attemptg suici his first year llege bee he uld not envisn a life which he uld be happy and would have helped enormoly, he told the Commtee on Human Differenc, if he'd had even one openly gay teacher high school to serve as a role of his lleagu were moved to tears by the time Parl fished talkg at the meetg, and om then on at Newton South High School, the social and emotnal nsequenc of beg gay entered the public nscns. He has put that wisdom to work ever sce, advotg for the rights of gay stunts to learn an atmosphere ee of harassment, discrimatn, and threats of and Straight Kids AlignComg out at school galvanized Parl. Wh six months, he started Newton South's Gay-Straight Alliance -- the first such group at a public school.