NY Times Magazine: Coming Out in Middle School

[Heidi]

Austin, a gay 13-year-old from Oklahoma.

Coming Out in Middle School
Published: September 23, 2009

Austin didn’t know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. “I don’t have any clean clothes!” he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.

When I met up with him an hour later, he had weathered his wardrobe crisis (he was in jeans and a beige T-shirt with musical instruments on it) but was still a nervous wreck. “I’m kind of scared,” he confessed. “Who am I going to talk to? I wish my boyfriend could come.” But his boyfriend couldn’t find anyone to give him a ride nor, Austin explained, could his boyfriend ask his father for one. “His dad would give him up for adoption if he knew he was gay,” Austin told me. “I’m serious. He has the strictest, scariest dad ever. He has to date girls and act all tough so that people won’t suspect.”

Austin doesn’t have to play “the pretend game,” as he calls it, anymore. At his middle school, he has come out to his close friends, who have been supportive. A few of his female friends responded that they were bisexual. “Half the girls I know are bisexual,” he said. He hadn’t planned on coming out to his mom yet, but she found out a week before the dance. “I told my cousin, my cousin told this other girl, she told her mother, her mother told my mom and then my mom told me,” Austin explained. “The only person who really has a problem with it is my older sister, who keeps saying: ‘It’s just a phase! It’s just a phase!’ ”

Austin’s mom was on vacation in another state during my visit to Oklahoma, so a family friend drove him to the weekly youth dance at the Openarms Youth Project in Tulsa, which is housed in a white cement-block building next to a redbrick Baptist church on the east side of town. We arrived unfashionably on time, and Austin tried to park himself on a couch in a corner but was whisked away by Ben, a 16-year-old Openarms regular, who gave him an impromptu tour and introduced him to his mom, who works the concession area most weeks.

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[Ken Burch]

1. This is the part the gaybashers either forget, or don't give a damn about

Their words make life miserable for kids like this.

Sometimes, the pain and the social rejection drive them to suicide.

And this is why we ALL need to support kids who establish Gay/Straight Alliance clubs at their middle schools and high schools.

May Austin(and all those like him in our schools) have friends and supporters, for they will surely have enemies.

[Heidi]

3. Educators quoted in the article also concede that gay kids spend their school years struggling

more than learning in many instances, mostly because a lot of schools don't know how to deal with openly gay students. Protecting them would be a hell of a good start.

[harry_pothead]

2. I like this part:

"Indeed, courts — citing the Equal Access Act, which requires public schools to provide equal access to extracurricular clubs — have consistently ruled against schools that try to block G.S.A.’s from starting. (The 1984 law was the brainchild of Christian groups fighting to allow students to form religious clubs in schools.)"

Be careful what you wish for.

Great article. I'm in the Teacher Credential program and I sent it to my adolescence prof.

[Heidi]

4. We've gotta start doin' better by ALL kids, and that includes

protecting kids targeted by bigots because of their sexual orientation. Thank you for sharing the article with the adolescence professor. :hi:

[harry_pothead]

5. Anything to help us become better, more inclusive, more aware future teachers.

[FreeState]

6. K&R

boy have times changed from when I was in school - I dont think there was one single person out (in the 80s)