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JACKSON, Miss. -- Zach Booth of Vicksburg was 13 years old and had never seriously pondered his sexual orientation.
"I wasn't particularly attracted to girls, but I just figured I would grow into it," said Booth, now 21. "But then one day a bunch of us were at the pool and this guy, who was a little older than me, took his shirt off and I could not take my eyes off of him.
"That's when I went 'Oh, crap. Am I gay?' It was so hard to reconcile that thought in my own mind. All I had ever heard was that gay people were bad and someone you don't want to be. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking 'You don't look gay.' It just didn't seem possible."
There are countless stories similar to Zach Booth's, said Sarah Young, a new voices fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and a member of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, which summarizes its mission as an organization to "ensure that students have a safe learning environment by protecting students' constitutional rights, ending discrimination and fostering acceptance through public education."
"I know there are a lot of people going through the same thing because we get calls from students who say 'I'm gay. I'm being harassed. What can I do?'" Young said.
Phone calls have increased, Young said, since Wesson Attendance Center senior Ceara Sturgis chose to have her senior portrait taken wearing a tuxedo instead of a drape. Sturgis, who is gay and a member of the National Honor Society, was informed in September that her photograph would not be included in the yearbook.
Telling the world - and one's parents - that he or she is gay can be a traumatic experience, Young said.
"Reaching high school students has been very difficult," Young said. "Kids are worried about being kicked out of the house, financially cut off. But we know they are being bullied (at school.)
"I actually had a student call me and tell me that he was constantly being called a certain name by a teacher. When we offered to come to his school and give a program about bullying and how it is wrong, he became very afraid. He felt the bullying would get even worse and that he might have to come out to his parents. So he said 'no thanks.'
"And I think it's even tougher for men to come out because men often feel threatened about a man not being manly."
Booth, a junior at the University of Southern Mississippi, chose to become openly gay when entering his senior year at Vicksburg High School.
"I think maybe my parents suspected it because even though I had girlfriends, I never called them or invited them over to the house," Booth said. "When I did tell them, my mom cried for about two weeks. My dad didn't speak to me for a while. And I felt awful.
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