Getting Involved and Feeling Groovy

In her first two years of high school, Hope Mueller did well in school, played softball outside of school, and had a core group of friends that included many of her teammates. But ask her to describe herself during that period, and she comes up with an unexpected list of adjectives: "Shy. Scared. Fat. Outcast. Stupid."

Hope had known for some time that she was a lesbian, but she felt she didn’t have anyone she could talk to about it. It was getting progressively difficult to get up and go to school. She was chastised for being different and choosing different friends. "I hung out with the geeks – the people other people wouldn’t talk to."

When Hope came out to her friends and teachers, she says they were supportive. But others weren’t. Soon she became tagged as the only openly lesbian student on campus. "It wasn’t that I went around saying, ‘hey, I’m Hope and I’m gay.’ I just told a few friends and they told a few more friends and pretty soon a lot of kids knew." The reactions that followed were anything but supportive. In her junior year, her car was vandalized and classmates left her notes with single words written on them: "dyke," "homo," "queer," "die."

Hope sought out help, and she found it – in the form of her English teacher Vicki Shaffer, co-chair of GLSEN-Wisconsin and a faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance (GSA). Vicki first helped her to become involved in the GSA (which she would end up chairing within a year) and later, when the harassment at her school escalated and her grades suffered, Vicki recommended her for an alternative public high school where she was able to find more support. Even after switching campuses, Hope remained committed to the GSA at her former high school and continued to work with her friends there.

Among their many activities, this year the GSA organized a "Pledge of Respect" with a number of other student-organized groups working to ensure respect and safety for the students in their school. Signed by nearly 900 of the school’s 1,600 students, the pledge stated that students would not support or partake in harassment and that they would respect their classmates regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

The Pledge has worked. "I don’t get sh__ anymore for being gay," Hope says. "A lot of people ask me questions. They hang out with me and my girlfriend."

"Sometimes it’s really overwhelming," she says of her work. "I don’t get a lot of personal time." But Hope remembers a student who approached her after a speaking engagement at a conference. He had attended the event reluctantly, but her words made an impact: "He said, ‘I’ve come to the realization that I’m gay and you saved my life.’ Just by my story. I learned that you don’t know how you can affect people’s lives with just a few words – and that’s really inspired me to keep doing the work that I do."

Hearing Hope speak now, it’s hard to imagine her as the "shy" and "scared" freshman she described herself as having been. She will head to college in the fall to pursue a degree in Criminal Justice and Police Science, and wants to become a detective. "I’m really observant," she says of her choice of career. "I love to learn who people are and what they know – to get into their minds. And I want to give something back."

Caitlin Ryan, a nationally recognized clinical social worker specializing in the health and mental health needs of adolescents, isn’t surprised by the confidence and security that Hope has found. "In all social movements, we’ve seen that activism – standing up for yourself and for others – is a very empowering experience. It stands to reason, then, that it would be empowering for LGBT youth." And she points to Hope’s involvement in her school’s GSA as one reason for the change. "The major task of adolescence is identity development. And during that period, they are separating from their families – peers become much more important than parents. Not being able to find a peer group where they’re accepted for who they are is a devastating loss. On the other hand, finding a group where they can be accepted is incredibly empowering."

Efia Miles, a 22-year-old student at Georgia State, came out in college, and understands the importance of peer identification. "In high school," she says, "there were no role models or people I saw that were proud to be gay, who might have helped me to understand what my feelings were." But when Efia met an openly gay man in one of her college classes, things began to change.

Shortly thereafter, she began attending regular meetings for young adults at Atlanta’s Gay and Lesbian Center and started on a path that would lead her to become a staff member at Youth Pride, an Atlanta-based organization working to empower LGBT youth. "It was relatively easy for me to come out," says Efia. "But hearing stories of how hard it was for other people my age to come out and learning about the harassment and violence that people experience, made me want to get involved more." So when she came out, Efia "jumped right into community involvement."

Efia’s philosophy is simple: "When you’re outnumbered, you don’t have to change to conform. Just be yourself." And with a teacher as a mother and a minister for a father, Efia says it’s in her blood to act as an advocate, an educator and a resource. She describes herself proudly as African-American; bisexual (although she doesn’t care much for labels); a "womanist" (she doesn’t like the term "feminist"); and a queer activist. She makes the route she has taken, a three-year journey to professional activism, filled with pride and with outspokenness, seem like the most natural course of action.

To Ryan, too, the involvement of young people in the movement is natural. And necessary. "The task of young people," she says, "is to challenge ways of thinking, to question their parents and others, to look at things in new and fresh ways that are a part of changing culture and society."

18-year-old Michael Bisogno has certainly taken on that role. In 1998, Bisogno joined a group of the nation’s most prominent LGBT leaders in a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, testifying as a young person and hate crime survivor in the wake of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard’s death. Michael himself shakes his head at the idea that two years prior, he had been struggling with drug and alcohol abuse and coming out. He admits it’s been a long road to Washington, D.C.

In spite of the fact that he was still "interested" in girls at the time, Michael had begun to realize he was gay in middle school. He came out to one of his teachers in his eighth grade year – he was beginning to find support, though it was scarce. By the time he got to high school, he faced intense harassment from his peers. "Everybody knows in high school. There are rumors, you know? I was an actor. I was dating girls and then I stopped. The rumors started there." The rumors culminated in a brutal assault during his sophomore year, when he was surrounded, pushed up against a fence, beaten and shoved into a trashcan by eight of his classmates.

He came out to his parents shortly thereafter. And while they were accepting of him, the harassment he had long encountered at school had had a lasting impact. He says he was "down in the dumps – I had no self-esteem at all. You spend every day of your life with these kids telling you that you mean nothing and it’s hard to feel okay about yourself." Throughout the year, he had been drinking and using drugs. And after that last incident, he entered a period of depression and contemplated suicide.

About a year after the assault, Michael recognized that his parents really were behind him, and he found support again from that middle school teacher he had come out to – who, as it turned out, was herself a lesbian. Having heard about Michael’s attack, she contacted him and invited him to speak at a conference she was helping to organize.

And that’s when Michael began his journey to Washington. GLSEN’s Kevin Jennings was the featured keynote speaker, and approached Michael after hearing him speak. "He took me aside and said, ‘you just may be the first gay President.’"

The two traveled together to visit the Attorney General several months later. "It’s a funny thing to say I’ve gone through tough times – I mean, I’m only 18 – but I have," he says. "Every LGBT person knows what it’s like to grow up in this world, and if you are able to take those negative experiences and turn them into positives, that’s when you can make changes, that’s when you recognize you can accomplish anything." And that may even include becoming the first gay President.

Wonbo Woo, formerly of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is a freelance writer in New York City.