Kicked out, gay teenager finds role (by Desiree Cooper for The Detroit Free Press)

[marmar]

Kicked out, gay teenager finds role

July 12, 2007
BY DESIREE COOPER
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

At 47, sometimes I still wonder who I am. But 20-year-old Brandon Kneefel already is certain about who he is -- and he's paid a heavy price for it.
"I was 14 when my parents asked me if I was gay," said Kneefel, who was born in Dearborn and raised in Livonia. "I said that I was, and they immediately wanted to get me counseling."
For Kneefel, a popular student who holds track and field records at Livonia's Stevenson High School, it should have been a relief finally to acknowledge outwardly what he'd felt inside since he was 4. Instead, it unleashed a nightmare.
His family was humiliated and repulsed by his homosexuality. They objected to him running for student body president, fearing he would negatively influence other students. They didn't want him to play football for similar reasons.
"All I saw was their fear," he said.
When he was 16, the tension came to a head, and they cast him out of the house. He went to school the following day -- still in his pajamas. Kneefel lived with a friend's family until he graduated with a 3.5. Unable to afford college, he applied for an Army ROTC scholarship at the University of Michigan. He got it but relinquished it after his first semester.
"I could not be gay and be in the Army," he said. "I wasn't being true to myself."
That took courage, but it also derailed the life of the young actor, intellectual and athlete.

The cost of self-denial

Jorge Valencia knows a lot about teens like Kneefel. He's the executive director of California's Point Foundation, the nation's largest publicly supported scholarship grantor to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
"Gay youth are 4.5 times more likely to skip school than their non-gay peers because they don't feel safe there," said Valencia, a gay man who grew up in a Mormon family in Texas. "LGBT teens have three times the dropout rate, are more likely to run away from home and are three to four times more likely to take their lives than non-gay peers."
Plus, many LGBT youth often are ostracized by their families, making it difficult to get a college education, he said. That's why the foundation offers scholarships, leadership training and mentoring to promising LGBT youth. Point scholars -- 84 this year -- are supported until they graduate. Kneefel is one of them. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070712/COL03/707120362/1081&GID=qMReSHIlta3dkWZwrSh+aGJpdOX2pQfCxHliv/bNh1w%3D

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Glad to hear of this program n/t

[caseycoon]

2. Great program!

I'm happy to see this!