School Board Gives Gays Legitimate Chance

The year was 1968, heady days for an era that conjures images of long-haired, pot-smoking, free-loving, war-protesting rebellion. But in the small town of Nevada, Mo., where Pam Ellis was a high school senior, the student dress code was still strictly enforced.

No T-shirts allowed. Boys were required to wear shirts with collars--with their hair trimmed short of those collars. “Girls couldn’t wear so much as culottes, and definitely not pants. We were very conservative.”

Today Pam Ellis is a school board member in Glendale, a community that will never be confused with such liberal bastions as, say, Santa Monica or West Hollywood. But a few days ago, over the ardent objections of religious conservatives, Ellis and her colleagues gave their official blessings to a small group of Hoover High students who decided they wanted to have a gay-oriented club on campus.

Memories of Philip may have helped Pam Ellis form her opinions. He was a classmate back in ‘68, and he was different. Everybody knew that Philip didn’t like girls, at least not the way other boys did. Some people accepted Philip for who he was and some people didn’t. They called him a fag. They called him a queer.

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Revolution is sometimes slow, sometimes fast. For my money, nothing in the annals of civil rights in America may have had so much success, so quickly, as the gay movement. Homosexuality, once almost universally regarded as the province of sicko perverts who really ought to be locked up, has in a single generation become widely if reluctantly perceived as a matter of personal freedom and a simple fact of life. This may not be true in Salt Lake City, where school officials recently abolished all school clubs to keep a gay club from forming. But in conservative Glendale, duly elected representatives wrestled with their consciences and determined to accept this club for what it is.

The controversy surfaced publicly a few months ago, but as teacher Carl Halverson tells it, this gathering of students had its informal beginnings three years ago. Halverson, 30, joined the math faculty and made no secret of the fact he is gay. Candor that not so long ago could have cost him his job now earned him a measure of respect. Curious students, some gay, some not, started talking to him about their problems, and an informal discussion group began.

Sex itself wasn’t what students wanted to talk about. They talked, Halverson says, “about teen issues--family, friends, romance, things at school. It was more like, ‘People are calling me “fag” in PE. What should I do about it?’ ” He remembers one distressed girl who was convinced that a certain teacher hated all women.

“They never brought up sex or intercourse,” Halverson says. “I just think it’s not something they feel comfortable talking about in front of their math teacher.”

Last fall, the students decided they wanted to be recognized as a club, something that would give them the right to put up fliers on campus and advertise meetings in the daily bulletin. They submitted a charter and school officials realized they had a little political firecracker on their hands. Some student leaders raised objections and, according to Halverson, school administrators let the matter simmer. Perhaps they hoped it would just go away.

It didn’t, and later district Supt. Bob Sanchis was forced to consider it. Legal counsel was sought and Sanchis proposed a policy that would require parental consent for all student clubs. This may seem reasonable, since parental consent is required for students to go out for football, for liability reasons. At school board meetings, Pam Ellis and her colleagues weighed the options.

Testimony came from opposite sides. There were religious conservatives who saw this matter as yet another handbasket taking us all to hell. And there were well-organized gay students and activists, warning that a parental consent requirement would have a chilling effect. And they reminded board members that many gay teens, uncertain where to turn, attempt suicide and often succeed.

Pam Ellis says she never saw parental consent as a valid idea, though not for reasons activists expressed. It was, she said, simply impractical: Teenagers who wanted to join the club but were afraid to ask Mom or Dad to sign a consent form would simply do what teenagers have done through the ages--forge a parent’s signature.

The board looked for a second option and found it. Under the new policy, parental consent would not be required. Parents would simply be notified that such a club exists. If parents wanted to talk to their children about it, that was up to them.

Halverson suggests that the testimony of students helped sway the board. One girl testified twice. In her first appearance, she explained why she believed that a parental consent requirement was a bad idea. In the next, she told the board how, after her parents learned about her earlier testimony, they kicked her out of the house.

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This all made me think about a friend. Jesus is a nice Latino Catholic boy who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. A few months ago, he came out of the closet. He’d told his family and some friends before he told me.

His experience has been rare. Jesus hasn’t lost any friends over this disclosure, and his parents had already dealt with the fact that his sister is lesbian. The day Jesus told his parents, the conversation ended with his father suggesting he bring his significant other over for a family barbecue. Now Jesus and his companion have entered escrow on a home.

In my own pimply adolescence, I might have thought of him in derogatory terms. But maybe not. Just as Pam Ellis knew Philip, I knew Brandon. Brandy, as we called him, lived down the street and he was different. A friend of my sister, Brandy was in our house often. A couple of months ago, my mother and sister went to his funeral. AIDS, I’m told, was the cause of death.

And I thought about another boy I knew back then. Not long after high school, that guy committed suicide. Afterward, I was told he was gay, although that wasn’t the term that people used.

* Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Please include a phone number.