Many Students Support Schools’ Gay Pride Month : Education: Few have heard about June’s controversial designation by the Los Angeles school board. Some doubt it will make a difference.

Like several of her classmates at John F. Kennedy High School, Blythe Klein had no idea that the Los Angeles school board had designated June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. But it seemed a logical decision to her once she found out.

“I am for it,” the 18-year-old senior from Granada Hills said one afternoon this past week. “We have other months for people who are proud to be who they are.”

Klein’s comment echoed the sentiments of many San Fernando Valley students and came just a few days after scores of angry parents staged a protest at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters over the school board’s declaration. About 130 people participated in last Monday’s rally, which was organized by a Pacoima-based group called Parents and Students United of the San Fernando Valley.

But interviews with students--most of whom were unaware of the special designation--showed that most are supportive although some were skeptical about whether the month would make a difference.

“It’s only fair they get the same recognition as everyone else,” said Latashia Deveaux, 17, as several of her Reseda High School classmates nodded in agreement during a lunch period last week. “Maybe it’ll make people realize that they’re no different. And it might make homosexuals and lesbians feel better about themselves.”

Although the school board approved the proclamation in mid-May, officials said that did not leave enough time to issue suggestions to schools about how to promote gay and lesbian pride on campus. Apart from announcing the declaration over the public-address system or in classrooms, few schools in the Valley have promoted the effort, blaming, in part, the chaos of final exams and end-of-year activities.

The district’s volunteer Gay and Lesbian Education Commission earlier this month compiled information packets to help schools incorporate the month into classroom activities. But only about 25 of the packets have been requested so far, said acting director Laura Hale, who added that the commission did not have the money to mail them to all 625 district campuses.

As a result, word of the resolution has yet to filter down to students. But adults who work with homosexual teen-agers and sexually uncertain youths called the board’s decision a significant step in increasing the self-esteem of gay and lesbian young people on campus, who are at greater risk of dropping out of school and who attempt suicide at a higher rate than their heterosexual peers.

“To finally have an organization like the school board say, ‘You’re not a nonentity--you’re a human being worthy of having pride,’ is really important,” said Mary Petersen, an English teacher at Chatsworth High School.

For the past semester, Petersen has met once a week at lunch with students in a fledgling gay and lesbian support group on campus, formed at the suggestion of a 15-year-old student who came to grips with his homosexuality earlier this year. The group, which has more established counterparts at a few other Valley high schools, operates under the auspices of a districtwide program to help teen-agers deal with human-relations issues.

“They need to have a door open to get into the mainstream,” Petersen said. “It encourages them that somebody’s supporting them.”

Several students last week compared Gay and Lesbian Pride Month to other district-sanctioned months that celebrate women’s history, African-American pride and Asian/Pacific-American heritage.

“They have a black history month, and everyone expresses themselves,” said Koroush Mohajeri, 15, who is president of the freshman class at Reseda High School. “You should also have a gay and lesbian month. I think it’s good.”

“If they want a gay and lesbian month, that’s great. It’s fair,” said Bobby Rogers, 18, a Kennedy High School senior. It would signal to homosexual teen-agers that there is “nothing wrong” about their sexual orientation, he said.

“Awareness is important. Ignorance is one of the biggest problems in this country,” said classmate Baldwin Fisher, 17. “They should actually start in junior high or younger. You start educating people from the beginning.”

That is the aim of the Gay and Lesbian Education Commission, which is working to develop a list of famous homosexual historical figures so teachers next year can implement a district policy on multicultural education to include lessons on contributions of gays and lesbians to society.

Most of the students interviewed said they would welcome lessons pointing out that such noted artistic figures as Michelangelo and Cole Porter were homosexual. But the students’ opinion of whether such a curriculum or the designation of a special month would in themselves alleviate anti-gay discrimination on campus was mixed.

Students said derogatory terms for homosexuals are often used on campus in general conversation as well as in locker-room banter among boys. Teen-agers who are thought to be gay are often verbally and even physically harassed.

Stereotypes still persist, as was evident when a group of boys, told about Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, mockingly dropped their wrists and began laughing among themselves.

“It’s going to cause a lot of problems,” predicted Jeff Cody of North Hills, a sophomore at Kennedy. Students “who are prejudiced against those people are going to go out and ridicule them.”

“It’s all right to have it, but you don’t have to have a whole month dedicated to it,” said Susan Ngo, 17, at Reseda High. “It’s just too much.”

But Roger Kameya, a Kennedy senior, said education about gays and lesbians is needed so that today’s teen-agers do not adopt what Kameya and other youths characterized as the more intolerant attitudes of their parents’ generation. “If you start with us, then the generations that go on will be a lot more aware,” he said.

“Those parents who think it’s offensive and not natural--they’re scared and not educated. My parents are that way,” added Long Ngo, a senior at Reseda. “These are the ‘90s. They should catch up with the times.”