Many at School Weary of Furor Over Gay Club

The whole gay club issue at El Modena High School wasn’t of much concern to Ruth Cordero--not until a melee with demonstrators erupted outside the school last week and her two teenagers came home arguing opposite sides of the issue.

“My daughter, who is 18, says that those students need a place they can be comfortable and develop--that they’re good people,” Cordero said. “But my 16-year-old son? Well, he’s a boy. It offends his masculinity.”

Now that the polarized camps are living in her home and activists have confronted one another on city sidewalks, “it’s a huge worry,” Cordero said. “In the middle of the school year to have the police arriving at campus and demonstrators yelling at each other. . . . I’m afraid this is going to just go on and on and on until something serious happens and someone does something crazy.”

Whatever stance they take--for, against or in the middle--students, parents and teachers at El Modena yearn for a return to a time before the school became linked with gay rights.

“My daughter goes out soliciting singing valentines for the vocal music department and now the question comes up, when she says she goes to El Modena,” said Donna Sigalas, a parent organizing opposition to the club.

“You introduce yourself and suddenly you have to tell people whether you’re gay or straight or bisexual.”

At El Modena, when the alliance controversy comes up in conversation, sophomore Gerald Mascardo says that most students he knows feel passionately--not for or against the club, just that they profoundly do not care.

“No one really cares anymore,” Mascardo said. “The only people who really care about it are those who, A, want to start the club and, B, those who are protesting it.”

At the controversy’s start, he said, he cared that high school rivals might label El Modena as a gay school. Now even that worry is boring.

The school landed in the spotlight in early December after the school board refused to allow the alliance to meet. Two alliance founders proceeded to sue the board under a federal equal access law that prohibits discrimination against extracurricular clubs on the basis of political, philosophical, religious or other content of speech at meetings.

Since that time, El Modena has been featured on all of the major news networks and in USA Today, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Christian Science Monitor.

Sophomore Stephanie Shanfield, 16, supports the club’s right to meet but believes media hype has damaged the school environment.

“Lately, it’s not about going to school for education, it’s about going to school to get on TV,” she said.

“Ninety-five percent of the kids and parents here are so neutral on this,” said parent Carol Goodman, whose son attends the school. “They don’t care, they aren’t really for or against it.”

The student population’s diversity--56% white, 31% Latino, 10% Asian and a tiny sprinkling of other ethnicities-- means the school already practices tolerance, Goodman said.

“I could have put my children in private school, but I wanted them exposed to the real world,” she said. “These kids get along so well--I wish the adults could get along that well.”

After a judge took the district to task and granted the club the right to meet, many had hoped that the issue might be resolved by the board of education at its meeting last Thursday.

More than 200 people turned out to see whether the district would drop its opposition to the club or, as a way to prevent the club from meeting without breaking the law, ban all extracurricular clubs.

Instead, the school board moved toward requiring parental permission from high school students who want to join extracurricular clubs. It also banned all extracurricular clubs at middle and elementary schools.

Annbeth Shanfield, Stephanie’s mother, said the board’s efforts to keep gay issues from being discussed at school had backfired.