Gay/Straight Alliances may seem like more political correctness, but their real goal is to teach teens how to question social conventions

There is a reason it is called "coming out" and not "fitting in". You can't fit in if you're not visible, and you certainly can't be equal. I envision a day when two young men or young women of different colours can wait at a transit stop downtown, or a SkyTrain station in Surrey, or a bus shelter in Richmond, arms wrapped around each other, and neck with get-a-room intensity--and raise smiles on passersby instead of fists. Straight teenagers can do it, why not their queer equals? That would be real tolerance. Pride parades, weddings, and rainbow flags are nice, but they're window-dressing. Now high schools are setting up formal extracurricular clubs called Gay/Straight Alliances. Are they an example of political correctness striking a pose, or will GSAs enable queer youth to come out and stay out, wherever and whoever they happen to be? I have a feeling that I'll be in an urn somewhere by the time that happens, if it ever does, because when I read, Google, or watch the news, the news ain't good.

The average news story that contains the words gay or homosexual in association with teenager or adolescent usually contains elements of the following: researchers reveal yet another new study showing that gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT) youth are three to five times more likely to drop out of school, run away from home, or attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers; a recent survey indicates that the rate of HIV infection among young gay men is on the rise; a gang of teenagers beats a middle-aged homosexual to death; pushed over the edge by taunts of "faggot", a boy kills himself. And, alarmingly, the Canadian branch of the U.S.-based Real Women, an NGO that claims to have consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, posts this astounding revelation on its Web site: "The [gay] activists have developed a very real and dangerous strategy. Unable to influence a majority of the adult population, instead, they will reach into the impressionable minds of our children by infiltrating the school system with their propaganda. This effort by homosexual activists amounts to the waging of a cultural war on our children's sexual health and moral fibre. Make no mistake. The lines have been drawn."

On the flip side, some TV shows challenge these depressing gay stereotypes. Will & Grace features two gay flaky, middle-class white men who refuse to grow up, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy stars a white gay hairdresser, a white gay fashion stylist, a white gay home-entertainment expert, a white gay interior decorator, and a token gay Hispanic who sings and dances. On the shows where gay people of colour get some airtime, like Six Feet Under and Queer As Folk, they tend to be professionally accomplished and remarkably good-looking. The public face of gay identity generally provides two options, being a victim or being fabulous, but there is a third one: being seen for who you truly are.

"NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the kids I talk to get their first impressions of gay identity from television," says Romi Chandra, a youth worker with GAB Youth Services at the GLBT Centre in Vancouver's West End, which provides drop-ins and counselling services for adolescents. Not from their parents. Not at school. And definitely not at church. From television.

But when I started looking into things, it became clear to me that students are getting impressions of gay identity at school and at home. They're just not talking about them, because the impressions are so conflicting.

Over the last year, Chandra has presented more than 230 "Pridespeaks" at high schools across the Lower Mainland. His talks are participatory and give gay and straight students alike an opportunity to confront, and talk about, negative perceptions of gay identity. They are very popular, although not without their pitfalls. Last year, at a school in Coquitlam, a group of students barricaded a door so he couldn't get out, and called him "faggot".

Chandra, 25, understands that some GLBT students face additional pressures emanating from negative perceptions of race, the immigrant experience, economic status, and/or the homophobia of their native cultures and religions. They are particularly vulnerable. He's been there. His family, practising Hindus, came here from Fiji when he was 12. When they first arrived in Vancouver and lived in an area of the city with a large Punjabi population, other kids of South Asian heritage teased him and called him names because he sounded different. He befriended another boy in his class who also didn't fit in, because he was white. Then he got a crush on the New Kids On The Block and realized that he was even more different. When the family moved to Maple Ridge, he attended the then ­spanking new Thomas Haney secondary, an alternative school with an enriched learning program and an almost all-white student body. It sounds a little bit like the Vancouver school I went to when I was coming out 30 years ago, University Hill secondary.

"A lot of people were like, 'Oh, he's different,' but I think we're supposed to be okay with differences. Nobody actually ever talked to me about being different. My parents were pushing these Canadian values on me so I wouldn't be ostracized. At that point I didn't have a culture. Canada was my culture."

Maybe Thomas Haney students didn't openly acknowledge that Chandra was different, but the rest of the world did. It was "faggot" this and "faggot" that. So, in 1997, Chandra started B.C.'s first Gay/Straight Alliance.

GSAs began to appear in North America about 15 years ago, first in Massachusetts. They are official, extracurricular high-school clubs that are usually started from within the school by a gay student, teacher, counsellor, or someone straight who believes in social justice and doesn't like to see GLBT students suffer hatred in the hallways or at home. Some openly gay students, for whatever reason, choose not to join GSAs. Two thousand GSAs are currently registered with the U.S.-based Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, up 700 from the 1,300 of the 2002/03 school year. An estimated 600 clubs are not registered with GLEN. Canada, which has maybe 150 or so GSAs, with a handful of them in Vancouver, isn't as well-organized as the U.S., but that is changing.

GSAs meet on a regular basis somewhere safe on school property and are usually facilitated by a teacher or counsellor. As in any official club, there is a president, secretary, treasurer, and other executive members. The development of organizational, cooperative, and communications skills are among the clubs' many aims. Speakers are brought in to talk about GLBT issues. Members plan and execute special events and fundraisers that promote diversity and tolerance. Last school year, for example, the GSA at Vancouver's Eric Hamber secondary sponsored That Is So Gay Week, including Cross-Dressing Day. ("That is so gay!" is a common putdown in schools across Canada and the U.S., but students aren't consciously connecting the dots to the phrase's intersection with bigotry. In this context, gay means lame.) Sometimes discussions and debates arise when one or more students are targets of prejudicial behaviour by the lockers or in the schoolyard or at home. GSAs are not dating pools, sex clubs, or queer recruitment centres. School involvement means that language is age-appropriate, and no one is compelled to disclose his or her sexual orientation. Some kids don't want to because they're afraid of repercussions outside the club, and many are frightened of how their parents will react.

Some parents and educators don't approve of Gay/Straight Alliances, especially in the U.S., where there have been all sorts of shenanigans. In 1996, for example, rather than allow a Gay/Straight Alliance to meet in one of its high schools, the Salt Lake City school board banned all extracurricular clubs in all schools, including the Young Republicans, the Young Democrats, and the Bart Simpson Fan Club. I'm not sure which is worse, being anti-gay or anti-Bart. The ensuing publicity resulted in Gay/Straight Alliances popping up all over America; after a few months, the courts forced the board to reverse its decision. But American GSAs have had a great ally since 1984 in a piece of legislation introduced by Republican senator Orrin Hatch. The original intention of the Equal Access Act was to ensure that Bible groups could meet as extracurricular clubs in schools, and now GSAs are using it to ensure the very same thing.

IN MY DAY, we didn't call it a club, but in a way my circle of friends formed a Gay/Straight Alliance--I was the gay part--and my high-school memories are mostly good ones. My straight friends couldn't have cared less about who I slept with, reflecting, I believe, the way the vast majority of heterosexuals in Canada today feel about homosexuality. I was fortunate to have supportive, open-minded parents, but my friends gave me the extra boost of confidence to realize that if someone called me a fag it was their problem, not mine. In 1974, I was self-assured enough to bring a boyfriend to a dance, and no one bothered us. Of course, we made sure not to touch.

GSAs sound all nice and liberal and progressive, but 30 years since people told me that being gay was "just a phase you're going through", their very existence indicated to me that maybe things hadn't changed as much as I thought they had. So I went back to school to check one out. Last May, I found myself sitting amidst a group of teenagers in a GSA classroom at Sir Winston Churchill secondary, attending one of their regular Thursday lunch-time meetings. There are 20 members, but only 10 to 15 showed up at the several meetings I attended before school broke for the summer, and I was able to get to know a few of them quite well. There was also an afternoon of videos about gay youth brought in by the Vancouver Out on Screen Film and Video Society. Its upcoming video festival (August 5 to 15) will help fund the Gay and Lesbian Educators of B.C., which, in turn, supports GSAs, as does the Vancouver school board.

Churchill is an academically challenging school situated in an affluent South Vancouver area of '60s-style Brady Bunch houses and huge new homes sausaged into their property lines. The neighbourhood straddles two federal ridings with new political clout: Vancouver-Quadra's Stephen Owen is Canada's new minister of western economic diversification, and Vancouver-Kingsway's Ujjal Dosanjh, a man who knows how important strategic alliances can be if you want to survive, is our new health minister. Both are strong supporters of same-sex marriage.

I hear that Winston Churchill knew a thing or two about the importance of allies too. It's rather ironic that much of Churchill's student population--which is predominantly Asian, with a considerable South Asian and Middle Eastern presence--came here to escape countries still struggling to get out from under the indelible imprint of his, and Britain's, heavy hand.

Like a 15-year-old Grade 10 student whose parents left East Africa in the 1970s. She joined the GSA because she doesn't think gay people should have to endure the same kind of verbal abuse that her parents endured when they moved here. At the last minute, she asked to be pulled from this story.

Another student, Ali, is from Iraq. He's 17. He's the only person I've talked to who experienced the Gulf War bombings, when he was only four. Ali is not his given name. He chose it. If his parents found out I talked to him, there would be hell to pay. Ali just graduated and is preparing for university in the fall, where he will pursue a degree in a field that is practical and financially secure. He's a fan of Irshad Manji, a young Canadian Muslim woman who wrote the controversial book The Trouble With Islam. I saw a fan letter he wrote to her. It said: "I am part of the Gay/Straight Alliance in my school. I find acceptance here. Where can I find acceptance in the Muslim or Arab world?" He was the only student in the GSA who came out and told me, unequivocally, that he is gay--the one with the most to lose. So if anyone thought that GSAs existed to "out" people, that is, evidently, not the case. (Not all of the students were reluctant to reveal their identities. However, they were given the option of being interviewed on a first-name basis only, to encourage the others to participate.)

Every time Wing tells people her name, they look befuddled (like I did), so she says: "You know, like chicken wing." Wing is 16, and going into Grade 12. A talented artist, she is in Rhode Island for the summer, taking a six-week art course. "When I graduate, I want to go to the best art school in the world, which is probably in New York City." Born and raised here, last year Wing came back from spending three years in Peru, where her father was working. Her exposure to the poverty and social injustice there reinforced her sense of fairness and belief in equal rights for everyone, which is why she belongs to the GSA. "My mom took me to a Pride parade when I was younger, because she thinks I should be exposed to all different cultures." Wing is the only student I interviewed who had been to the Gay Pride parade. She's straight.

Wing is good friends with Andra, who is the same age. Andra came to Vancouver with her parents from Romania when she was 10. She wants to be a forensic psychologist. I think she thinks that things here are a little more advanced than they are; she doesn't understand why there needs to be a gay community. Andra is straight.

Dominic Pistor is 17. He wears Che Guevara and Free Tibet T-shirts. Dominic was born in Europe and lived in a dozen different places before coming to Vancouver with his parents, who are Belgian and German. He wants to be a professional bassoonist and will be attending the music program at Vancouver Community College in the fall. He's straight. I asked him if anyone ever bugged him about being in the GSA. "No, not really," he said. "But some of the music guys make jokes because bassoon is fagot in French and fagott in German."

Homophobia doesn't seem to be the only divider at school. Seventeen-year-old Caitlin Hung, who is half-Asian but can "pass", said: "People say things to you that they wouldn't say if they knew you weren't white." She's waiting to hear whether or not she's been accepted into Carleton University's mass communications program and would love to be a news anchor for CNN or the BBC. Hockey, softball, you name it; this girl's got game. Sometimes people call her "butch". She's straight.

I asked Hung if she thought it was hard for people to come out of the closet at Churchill. "No," she said. "If you say you're gay, you'll be popular with the girls. Everyone watches Will & Grace, and everyone wants a gay best friend."

Finally, Darren and Brandon. Darren is 17 and going into Grade 12. Brandon is also 17 and has just graduated. They were both born and raised here, and they are both white. Darren wants to do something in the area of sound recording when he graduates and is studying Japanese for the summer. Brandon is the only student who has the queer-youth look I was half-expecting: lots of piercings and the black wardrobe to go with them. He's a whiz at the guitar. I watched him play "Classical Gas" with the guitar over his head, and that isn't easy. He plays keyboard and drums, too.

At every GSA meeting I attended, Darren and Brandon were physically affectionate with each other, and the doors were wide open. When I asked them if they were concerned about hostile reactions from other students, they said no and told me that they weren't boyfriends. "It's complicated," I was told.

I'll say.

ERIC SCHILPEROORT, 57, was the facilitating counsellor, or sponsor, for Churchill's GSA, but he has just transferred to King George secondary. I'm not surprised that he's so thin and wiry. His workload last year was 400 kids. "How can anyone counsel four hundred kids?" he asked, and I didn't have an answer. Schilperoort holds various degrees in theology and education. He came out a few years ago, when he was in his 40s, and has three adult children, two who live with him. He grew up on a farm in south-central Washington state, the son of Dutch Calvinists who belong to the Christian Reformed Church.

Schilperoort thought his religion could save him from his fantasies about making love with men, and he got married when he was 21. In the early '70s, put off by the Vietnam War, he and his wife moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he was a preacher. Over the years, so that he could analyze Scripture better, he learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He spent several years teaching Bible studies in Surrey, when he realized, in the early '90s, that he couldn't continue living a lie.

His remaining parent and siblings still don't accept him. "I asked my father, 'What's more important to you, your principles or your son?' He said, 'My principles.' "

Then the incident with Ali happened.

One day I showed up at Churchill and Schilperoort advised me that I couldn't talk to Ali any more. He'd told his family he was gay. They did not react well.

A few weeks after summer vacation started, Ali called me himself. Dominic had given him my number.

We met in a coffee shop far from his home, and he told me everything. There was a lot of praying and a lot of verbal abuse. "My mother said things to me that no mother should say to her child." There was a threat of physical violence, but I have a pretty good idea it was rhetorical. When he had an anxiety attack and an ambulance took him to hospital, he wanted his family to know that he didn't blame them. He said he isn't angry with them, he doesn't hate them, he doesn't hate Islam, he just wants to be accepted for who he is. That says a lot about Ali's character and courage, but his magnanimity is due in no small part to his friends in Churchill's GSA.

"They are the reason I stayed sane," Ali said.

Caitlin Hung told me that she had had an argument with her born-again-Christian brother, who said that Ali was being a bad Muslim. Darren said he empathized with Ali and wanted to support him but that, because his own background is so different, he can't relate to the situation and is himself probably being arrogant. Arrogant is not the word I would use. I'd say mature. Ali told me that when he saw Brandon after this happened, they didn't say anything but had a hug that was "like a conversation". Dominic said, "Maybe some adults need a Gay/Straight Alliance more than we do."

WHEN I WAS talking to Romi Chandra, I asked him something that had been on my mind for a long time. I asked him how he responds when people on the religious right talk about GSAs, or anything else with the word gay in it, and say that there is a "homosexual agenda".

He said, "We are promoting an agenda, and our agenda is critical thinking and to challenge what you have been taught."

Shouldn't that agenda be the entire point of going to school?