Students Form Support Group for Gay Teens

With the blessing of their principal, teachers and classmates, students at Fountain Valley High School have formed a support group for gay teen-agers.

The support group is believed to be the first of its kind at an Orange County high school campus, educators said. Students said the acceptance of the group by school officials is a major leap in gaining the support they need.

“I think it’s a historic step that it’s finally realized in the high school system. It has been long overlooked,” said a senior and a founder of the support group who is gay.

Another senior gay classmate said the support group would help other gay students come to terms with their sexual identity.

“I’m not doing this to help myself, but to help others,” he said. “I know it’s something that is difficult, and I want to help others make it through it.”

Calling themselves the Fountain Valley High School Student Alliance, those involved hope to bring more awareness, tolerance and acceptance of gay and lesbian lifestyles through a support group that is open to all their classmates.

The students have been meeting informally the past month.

About 30 students--both gay and straight--are participating in the group, school officials said. Their goals are to support classmates in times of need and provide a positive environment for students to meet and share information.

“These are kids who are dealing with a lot of internal questions about their sexuality,” Principal Gary Ernst said. “These kids just want to be able to have someone to talk to and support them. They have the right to meet on campus and discuss any issue they want. And they’ve got my blessing.”

Michael Poff, an English teacher whom the students approached for guidance, has opened his classroom as a place for the group to meet.

“These are our students. . . . It’s terrible that this one group is not accepted. We want to acknowledge them,” Poff said.

Chris Baron, another English teacher, said that it is important, and appropriate, for the students to be able to meet.

“It doesn’t matter what their race, sexual orientation or religion is, they’re our students, and I just can’t imagine not supporting them,” she said.

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Baron said that gay students often feel “great pain and loneliness.”

“When you find out what they’re going through, the pain silently and alone, there’s a tendency to reach out, answer questions and deal with the confusion,” she said.

Ernst said that during the past couple of years he has been confronted by students wanting to form a group for gay students.

Because the students mobilized and had strength in numbers this school year, they proposed the idea to form a club to the Associated Student Body executive council.

Ernst met with the Huntington Beach Union High School District Board of Trustees Oct. 26 to inform them of the students’ proposal. But he said that district guidelines for campus clubs clearly state that a club must be related to the school’s curriculum, such as the Spanish Club.

“Based on policies adopted, (trustees) see it as a non-issue. The group doesn’t meet club status, but they have a right to meet on campus,” Ernst said. “A co-curricular club must have an educational benefit to the students. This club is about sexual orientation. We don’t teach sexual orientation in our curriculum.”

The only other non-curricular group that meets on the high school campus, which has about 2,500 students, is for Bible study.

As a result of the policy already in place, the Board of Trustees took no action on formation of the Student Alliance.

Trustee Dirk Voss said he is opposed to the Student Alliance meeting on campus but cannot prevent it from doing so because of a fairness issue. “Our hands are tied. . . . There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

Voss said that because he supports religious and church groups meeting on campus, he can’t deny the Student Alliance’s right to meet as well. “I am reluctantly supporting this because I want these other groups to be able to meet,” he said.

Board of Trustees President Jerry Sullivan also said the district has no choice but to allow the students to meet.

“It’s an equal-access issue,” Sullivan said. “Religious clubs can meet without school sponsorship, and we’re going to handle this the same way.”

Sullivan declined to offer his personal views, except to say: “It’s just an issue that’s bound to come (up). I’d rather it happen somewhere else, but we’ll survive it.”

Trustee Bonnie Bruce said, “I do believe we do have a good policy that all school clubs are tied to the curriculum.”

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Bruce said she also supports the policy to allow groups not related to the curriculum to meet.

“Our role is to try to create policy that is fair to all students and not single out one particular group over another,” she said.

Ernst said the students are allowed to bring in outside speakers to Student Alliance meetings--with his approval--and make announcements over the school’s public address system. However, teachers present at the meetings cannot participate.

Students not involved in the Student Alliance said they also believe their gay classmates should have the right to meet.

“I don’t think we should stereotype the gays,” said one 14-year-old female student. “We should treat them like everyone else. If they want to have a club, they should go for it.”

Her classmate, also 14, said: “These people are no different than anyone else. And they shouldn’t be ridiculed or laughed at.”

A male freshman said it’s OK for others not to condone a gay lifestyle, but it’s wrong to cast hatred for teen-agers who have a different sexual orientation.

“The Bible says hate the sin, not the person,” he said.

Midge Treadway, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Assn., said parents discussed the formation of the Student Alliance at a recent meeting.

“We all took a deep breath, but the general consensus was, if they follow the rules, so be it,” Treadway said.

Gay rights supporters called the students courageous for fighting for the right to meet on campus.

Don Ventura, co-president of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Orange County Chapter, said such a group can only foster empathy and provide much-needed information to all students.

“I think that only through this kind of organization can the right type of information be disseminated to students and teachers,” said Ventura, who has a gay son. “I feel strongly that this type of organization should be allowed on every Orange County high school campus.”

Jeff LeTourneau, co-founder of the Orange County Visibility League, a gay and lesbian activist and civil rights organization, said the group will help gay youth to realize that they are not alone. With such a group, he added, gay students will “have peers to socialize and to discuss their problems with.”

Bob Whyte, a member of ACT-UP Orange County, an AIDS activist group, said that it is difficult for gay teen-agers to deal with their homosexuality, and even harder to tell their parents.

“When you consider the heterosexual modeling we live with in our life, for a young person at a high school age or younger to come out to themselves that they are gay is pretty difficult,” Whyte said.

“The thing I would like to see in high schools is that children and their parents be taught that homosexuality exists within the normal range of human expression,” Whyte said. “That normalcy is not a point, but a range, and that homosexuality is well within that range.”