From Baltimore Gay Life

National Coming Out Week Spurs Protests in Pikesville

by Beth Barnes

As part of their plans to participate in National Coming Out Week, students of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at Pikesville High School planned events ranging from a queer-theme film screening to a finale at the end of the week when gay-identified students would wear rainbow colors and straight-identified students would wear pink to show their support.

The original plan changed drastically when a local minister called for a protest against the events planned for the Coming Out Week during his weekly radio show on WEAA.

Since then, the Pikesville students have garnered national media attention, from both supporters and detractors, as they have organized events at the high school to promote tolerance for LGBT students.

On Monday, October 17, about 15 to 20 anti-gay demonstrators stood on the street corner near Pikesville High School picketing the students as they came to class at seven in the morning. The demonstrators held signs, sang hymns, and chanted to get their message across to the students as they entered school.

"The anti-gay people were holding signs that said things like Come Out to Jesus, and God Loves you Not Gays," said Meredith Moises, of Equality Maryland. "And they were using the bullhorn to really drive the message home to the students as they crossed over to get to school."

Moises noted that Pikesville High School is a primarily Jewish school and that the protest occurred during the high Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

"How would I feel if I were Jewish, gay or straight, and saw these folks out there with their 'Jesus Will Save You' signs?"

The small but vocal anti-gay demonstration galvanized the GSA to petition the school administration to allow a rally to show support for the gay and lesbian students at the Pikesville school.

"I was pretty offended by that [the anti-gay demonstration], that they come protesting against something that doesn't harm anybody," said Reed Shusterman, co-founder of the school's GSA. "We want to make it a safe learning environment, where people can be themselves. It's not like the Gay Straight Alliance is trying to make people gay, we just want to be supportive of all students."

The school's administration, led by Principal Dorothy Hardin, gave the students the necessary permit, and requested a police presence for the rally on October 20, held on the outskirts of the school grounds.

Nearly 100 students attended the Thursday rally, holding signs and waving to passing motorists.

According to Moise of Equality Maryland, support from the students far outweighed the initial anti-gay demonstration.

"The students felt that they were under siege by people who came out to picket their week of support. It (the rally) was a show of support by students, lots of whom were straight."

"Standing at the rally, I was amazed at the numbers of trucks, buses, cars, you name it, of people going by and waving and showing support," said Margaret Williams, president of PFLAG Baltimore. "I don't think we would have done anything like this, normally, but we felt it was important to show up and to be present for the students who have asked for us to be here, to be there as adults and help them."

"I don't think that they had really thought out their strategy, that they really knew what they were doing," Moise said about the anti-gay demonstrators. "I doubt they expected the students to come together and drown them out in this way."

The attention of both the pro- and anti- gay movements has begun to focus increasingly on youth, with both sides spending more resources and more time on outreach and education. Gay youth has become feature worthy for mainstream moderate publications such as Time Magazine, and the flurry of press around the attempts of ex-gay ministries to "reform" homosexual teenagers has raised questions about where today's young adults stand on the issue of homosexuality, and what students who identify as gay will experience in and out of the classroom because of their sexual orientation.

According to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network there are 3,000 Gay Straight Alliances nationwide registered with them. There are even more unregistered groups of students are creating and getting involved in clubs and organizations that are designed to combat the often alienating teenage years of gay, lesbian and transgendered youth.

The events at Pikesville High School drew the attention of both local and national media.

"Children shouldn't tease them because of what they choose to do, but morally, it's wrong for them to be out here and parents to supporting them," Flores Chappele, a parent, told WBAL-TV.

"If everyone was to turn gay - every man was to sleep with every man and every woman was to sleep with every woman - where does the children come in?" she added.

Duane Johnson, the on-air personality whose broadcast sparked the involvement of groups like Equality Maryland and PFLAG, is the youth minister at Greater Bethlehem Church in Baltimore, which is located about four miles away from Pikesville High School. Mr. Johnson could not be reached for comment.

PFLAG's Williams summed up the reality of the situation for the students at Pikesville High School this way, "I feel like this school is doing just fine by itself. In the end, they'll have to deal with this themselves. The students, gay and straight, promoted tolerance, and they rallied together this week in a really wonderful way. That's what really matters most."