La Follette Leads Assembly Critics : Teacher to Continue Aiding Homosexual Teens

A Fairfax High School counselor says she will continue to provide services to homosexual students throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District despite last week’s condemnation of the program by Republicans led by Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge).

“I’m just going to continue doing what I’m doing,” said Virginia Uribe of South Pasadena, a teacher at Fairfax for almost 30 years and founder of Project 10, a counseling and support program for homosexual students and those confused about their sexual identity. Started at Fairfax in 1984, the program was extended to other schools in the district at the beginning of this school year.

Although the program has been largely non-controversial in the past, it drew fire last week when La Follette led the GOP caucus in voting unanimously to withhold new funds for the school district until it stops supporting Project 10.

La Follette, who described the program as “unfit for students,” said she had received complaints from parents after Uribe spoke at San Fernando High School.

It was not clear what effect, if any, the Assembly action might have on school district funding. Project 10 receives no money from the district other than for Uribe’s salary. Uribe, who teaches science at Fairfax, works half time on the program, running an in-school center for homosexual students and advising schools throughout the district on the needs and concerns of homosexual teen-agers.

Mostly Supportive Response

Earlier this week, Fairfax’s principal, Warren L. Steinberg, said: “I’ve got darn near overwhelming response in support of the program.” Uribe said she also has received mostly supportive letters and calls. “I’m starting to get some nasty letters--one in 50,” she said.

Uribe said she has spoken with district officials, who told her the district is committed to counseling “all its children.” She called the district “visionary and compassionate” in its concern for homosexual students.

School board member Jackie Goldberg, an early supporter of the project, said she intends “to honor the program . . . and the woman who started it” at Monday’s meeting of the Board of Education.

Uribe’s project is believed to be the only such school program in the country. She started it after a homosexual student dropped out of Fairfax because of sexual taunts. In an interview before the Republican action, Uribe said the program began as a lunchtime rap session for any students who wanted to attend. At one of those sessions, she revealed that she is gay.

Uribe said homosexual teen-agers often feel terribly isolated among the heterosexual majority. Too often, the schools fail these students, just as their peers, families and churches so often do, she said.

200 Counseled a Year

“We extend all our services to all our children, except lesbian and gay kids. We act as if they’re not around.”

Uribe said she counsels more than 200 students a year, including those from other schools who have heard about the program. She said homosexual students are believed to be at greater risk than their peers for drug and alcohol abuse, attempted suicide and dropping out.

Project 10 is named for the 10% of the population believed by many researchers to be homosexual. It is housed in a Fairfax classroom. Its library includes information about acquired immune deficiency syndrome as well as novels with homosexual protagonists. Students are welcome to drop in throughout the day. They may take away any books that interest them. “They don’t have to check the books out,” said Uribe, aware that many would be embarrassed to do so.

Uribe said the program has been the most exciting project in her long school career. It also has been the occasion of her own “coming out” as a lesbian.

“For most of my life, I’ve been ‘in,’ and I know how strangling that can be,” said Uribe, a 54-year-old grandmother.

Puzzling Crushes on Nuns

Uribe said that as a teen-ager, she never put a name to the puzzling crushes she had on the nuns who taught at her parochial school. Since involvement with Project 10, she has told both her parents and her two children (from an early marriage) of her sexual orientation. All have been supportive.

“I agonized over whether to tell my kids,” she said. “And when I told them, they said, ‘Don’t you think we knew that?’ ”

Uribe believes that responsible adults must break the silence that continues to surround teen-age homosexuality. She said that sometimes students seek her out “because they want to see who this adult in the school system is who talks about this.”

Many of Uribe’s students seem to want nothing more than to have their self-worth affirmed. Self-esteem is often hard-won by homosexual teens, she said. “You have the whole world stigmatizing you, implying that you are morally inferior because you are gay,” she said.

Most of the students who turn to Uribe are male. The majority, she said, “are scared of AIDS, of sex, of sexuality.” She always counsels sexually active students to practice safe sex, she said.

Oblivious Girlfriends

The girls who come to her often are trying to cope with passionate feelings for oblivious girlfriends. Many of the girls say they are confused about their sexual identities. Almost all the students are experiencing some sort of family disruption, Uribe said.

Uribe pointed out that, quite apart from any problems the students have because of being homosexual in a predominantly heterosexual world, they are also young, with all the concerns and uncertainties that trouble other adolescents.

Uribe said she has been in touch with about one-third of the district’s 122 junior and senior high schools since the program went districtwide.

One of her goals is to see that all schools become places where homosexual students are free from harassment and physical danger.

A 17-year-old Fairfax student, who asked not to be identified, said harassment is a given for openly homosexual students.

‘Food Thrown at Me’

“I’ve had books thrown at me, I’ve had food thrown at me, I hear the word faggot 55,000 times a day,” he said.

Uribe would like to see the district institute an anti-slur policy that would include sexual taunts.

During this first year of the districtwide program, she said, she is trying to make as many people in the schools as possible aware that homosexual teen-agers exist, often with special needs and that “we, as a school, can do something about this that will benefit everyone.”

So far, she has spoken mostly to teachers, counselors, school nurses and other support staff members. She hopes Project 10 eventually will be able to add to its staff, including bilingual counselors.

It is never too early to start teaching people that “you have a commitment to human rights and, understand, that commitment extends to everyone,” Uribe said. “We should start in elementary school talking about tolerance and diversity. We have to put a stop in elementary school to overt discrimination. We have to put a stop to games like ‘smear the queer.’ ”