LAGUNA BEACH : Gay Support Group Members to Speak

Members of a Fountain Valley High School gay support group that won an emotionally charged battle last month to keep meeting on campus will speak tonight in Laguna Beach.

The speakers are being hosted by Laguna Outreach, a local gay and lesbian group that supported the Fountain Valley High School Student Alliance when the organization hit a wall of opposition from students and parents who wanted the meetings stopped.

Laguna Outreach President Doug Reilly said the community’s reaction to Wednesday’s meeting will help determine whether the city’s gay and lesbian youth could benefit from additional support.

“We’d like to hear from (the Fountain Valley students) how they went about setting this whole club up and see how appropriate it might be to have something like that here in Laguna Beach someday,” he said.

Laguna Outreach’s board of directors is also considering launching a youth discussion group to help youngsters deal with issues involving their sexuality, Reilly said.

“That’s something we’re thinking about right now, and we’ll make a decision fairly soon about that,” he said. “This program coming up Wednesday will be a way of gauging interest in that concept.”

In Fountain Valley, the uproar arose after the alliance formed in October with about 45 gay and non-gay members. Some students and parents bitterly opposed the group and demonstrated against allowing its members to meet on campus.

Last month, during a public hearing that attracted more than 300 people, the Huntington Beach Union High School District trustees voted 4-1 to allow the alliance to continue meeting.

Laguna Beach Unified School District Supt. Paul M. Possemato said Tuesday that such controversy is not likely to erupt in Laguna Beach, partly because young people in that city are taught early to accept the diversity of the community. Laguna Beach has a large gay population.

Possemato said issues involving gays and lesbians have been discussed in the past at Laguna Beach High School, and that the district has already moved “far beyond tolerance to acceptance.”

“Laguna Beach has a greater base from which to build receptivity and acceptance,” he said.

However, neither Possemato nor Reilly said they are sure such a support group is needed at the high school at this time. And Possemato said the student leadership should have a key role in making such a decision.

In an interview Tuesday, the leader of the conservative Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, which opposed the Fountain Valley alliance, said care must be taken not to “advocate and promote the homosexual lifestyle under the disguise of tolerance.”

“We should not encourage children to be homosexuals,” the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon said. “We should encourage them to have reparative therapy and come out of the lifestyle.”

Reilly, however, scoffed at the notion that support groups encourage homosexuality.

“It’s never a matter of recruiting anybody,” he said. “That’s just absurd. It’s really more a matter of, ‘How do you help people who don’t know how to deal with their feelings?’ You shouldn’t have to pretend to be anything other than what you are.”

The meeting will be held at the Neighborhood Congregational Church on St. Ann’s Drive at 7:30 p.m. Non-members will be asked to donate $4.