Jerry Peterson, the executive director of the Ruth Ellis Center in Highland Park

HIGHLAND PARK, MI — A run-of-the-mill brick building in Highland Park is a beacon of hope for gay and transgender Detroit-area youth in search of refuge and community.

The ones who come are usually out of options — there are so few to begin with — and yearn to find people like themselves, others confused, frightened or shunned because of their sexual preference or gender identity. Someone who gets them.

Here, inside a two-story building on Victor Street just one block from a sprawling industrial building and warehouse, a gay teen can talk openly about their same-sex boyfriend or dress as the opposite sex without judgement.

This is the Ruth Ellis Center, a nonprofit organization that formed in 1999 out of the realization that the gay, bisexual and transgender community, especially youth, are under-served and overlooked in Detroit.

Specifically targeted are homeless LGBT youth between 14 and 24, who studies show comprise a disproportionately high portion of the homeless youth population, nearly 40 percent.

The center serves LGBT youth more than 4,000 times each year, whether through counseling, temporary foster care or its drop-in center.

At the Ruth Ellis Center they can eat, wash clothes, shower, meet with counselors and support groups, get HIV tested, and pick up hygienic supplies, like shampoo, deodorant, condoms and lube.

Young adults at the Ruth Ellis Center express themselves with a dance called voguing. Voguing is a highly stylized, modern house dance that originated in Harlem in the 1980's with the LGBT community. The Ruth Ellis Center is a youth social service that helps homeless and at-risk gay, bi-attractional, transgender, and questioning youth. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

Most of the visitors learn about the center through word of mouth, most of it surrounding Vogue Night, a social dance event held each Monday and Wednesday evening.

Although its current service offering is important and successful, newly hired Executive Director Jerry Peterson has a grander vision.

The San Francisco transplant, his trimmed beard slightly graying, brings with him 30 years experience working with nonprofits, several of those years related to LGBT causes.

From his desk in the bare-bones office on the first-floor of the center, the former pastor shares his vision.

Peterson talks about creating a foster placement program for gay and transgender youth, implementing a prototype family intervention and counseling program the rest of the nation may one day model, and his dream of starting a gay and transgender friendly neighborhood in Detroit." Not just a "gay-borhood," he says, a "progressive enclave."

Young adults surround a pool table at the Ruth Ellis Center, a nonprofit that advocates for gay and transgender youth. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

He envisions the center purchasing and renovating two or three affordable bungalows for transition housing that offers a "strong peer network," and enlisting an area bank to create a micro-grant program for Ruth Ellis clients to start businesses.

More than his experience and ideas, Peterson brings his own understanding of what gay and transgender teens are battling. He grew up one.

Peterson came to the realization he was gay while reading Dr. David Reuben's 1969-published "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex," a book that paints the gay community as a promiscuous population who could change their behavior and live a happy heterosexual life with a dose of some good psychiatry.

"I was like, if this is what I am, I hate this," Peterson said. "So part of my passion for this job is also if I can help them show up in the world as they are much earlier in life than I did.”

He's now in a happy relationship with his same-sex partner, Rev. Roland Stringfellow, but that wasn't always the case.

Peterson married a woman when he was 21. Prior to the vows, he told his finacee, mother and mother-in-law about his sexuality.

"None of us, including me, wanted it to be true," Peterson says. "So we just said, 'Ah, go ahead get married, it will go away,' and it didn’t work."

After 17 years and three children, the couple mutually parted and Peterson embraced his openly gay life. "I'm an open book," he now says.

"I was so terrified of coming out that I was really, seriously, suicidal," Peterson says. "That scared me enough that I did seek psychiatric help. This is part of the reality of life. There are a lot of people going through this."

Peterson's approach to helping the Detroit area LGBT youth is to first accept them as they are. He says the teens Ruth Ellis helps are judged not only for their sexuality or gender identity, but often for the lifestyle their family's rejection breeds, including homelessness which can lead to involvement in the sex trade "for survival."

"The reality is that we have to work within that culture," says Peterson. "We have to start where they are, not where we want them to be; and that’s the uniqueness of Ruth Elllis, the skill and ability to meet these people and their families where they are because there is really no other place in Detroit."

Peterson expects his prior involvement with the Family Acceptance Project , a formula developed by San Francisco State University in 2002 to counsel families with LGBT children, will help with his mission.

"It’s not about saying, 'You're harming your child, you need to change.' We're basically saying we know you love your child and you're concerned," Peterson said. "Are you willing to consider stopping some of the behaviors that are most harmful to your child? There are a lot of families who really do love their kids and they don’t want to harm them."

He'd like to see the center develop a short-term foster program, two weeks to a month, for teens who are coming out to their families.

"The purpose for that would be to help stabilize them emotionally and help them support their own sense of identity," Peterson said. "During that 30-day placement, we work closely with the family ... helping them understand the harm of rejection."