2 Dozen Teachers, Staff Declare That They Are Gay : Homosexuality: On National Coming Out Day, Los Angeles educators leave the closet. ‘This is the right thing to do,’ one instructor says.

Daniel Smith, a mathematics teacher at San Fernando High School, had decided to drive downtown to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s headquarters building, stand in front of a television camera and proclaim to the world that he is gay.

He was nervous. It wasn’t that the news would come as a surprise to many of his fellow teachers or students. It was that Smith, 37, moonlights as a computer programmer for a small company, and he was not sure his part-time job there would be safe.

“But this is the right thing to do,” the bilingual instructor said Friday when it came his turn to stand briefly behind a podium in the late-afternoon haze. Then he stepped aside and another teacher, and another and another--more than a dozen in all--took his place.

It was part of the fourth annual “National Coming Out Day,” sponsored by a coalition of gay and lesbian groups to give more visibility to their numbers. It was also the first time in the history of the event that a group of teachers had publicly gathered to declare their homosexuality, according to one of the co-founders of the national event.

More than two dozen gay and lesbian teachers and staff members, led by Los Angeles school board member Jeff Horton, participated in Friday’s news conference, although a number of them declined to identify themselves.

“I’m not developed enough,” said one junior high school physical education teacher. “I’m very scared.”

Horton, 43, who took office six months ago representing the Hollywood-Echo Park-downtown section of the Los Angeles school district, said he was “tired of keeping secrets” and felt that his declaration would give emotional support to gay students, who he said suffer from damaging isolation.

Horton said he “will not become a one-issue board member,” but said he would push for additional counseling for gay students and urge that discussion of sexual orientation be expanded into many academic areas.

National Coming Out Day, which commemorates the Oct. 11, 1987, gay-rights march in Washington by 600,000 demonstrators, coincided Friday with a large rally in Sacramento to protest Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of AB 101, which would have banned job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Rob Eichberg, author of “Coming Out--An Act of Love” and co-founder of the annual commemoration, congratulated the Los Angeles teachers for being “heroes. You are a symbol of what (the event) was intended to do. We are everywhere, and that is absolutely the truth. . . . Once we all come out, we will change the face of prejudice forever.”

Scott Plotkin, president-elect of the California School Board Assn., which represents school board members, predicted that parent reaction to such demonstrations by teachers will be mixed.

“There are going to be parents who deeply respect and love the teacher regardless of their sexual preference . . . in fact, many will see it as an act of tremendous courage. But the greatest problem will be with those parents who aren’t tolerant. Obviously, the teachers have made a judgment and they’re prepared to live with the heat,” Plotkin, a member of a Sacramento-area school district board, said during a telephone interview.