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 Youth Pages
Gay Teens Come Out in Southern Utah, Form Gay-Straight Alliances
“We wanted to create more tolerance in our community for everybody”
May 2010
High school students in Utah are coming out at younger ages, telling their stories, and sharing their dreams for a hate-free society. As four St. George high schools have recently approved Gay-Straight Alliance clubs for the first time, stories about gay teens have recently appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune, QSaltLake, and other papers. The Salt Lake Tribune has posted some of their stories on YouTube.
“We felt alone,” said Logan Hunt, a gay senior at Dixie High. “We were worried about our [LGBT] friends we had met. They were often depressed. ... We wanted to create more tolerance in our community for everybody.”
But Hunt and his friends met with resistance from some school principals who denied their applications or insisted the clubs meet requirements that the ACLU considered onerous.
Jason Osmanski, a Snow Canyon sophomore who championed the GSA at his school, hopes the club can teach all students to be kinder to their LGBT peers. After he came out as gay in ninth grade, he said, he was taunted or shoved into lockers on a daily basis. The tormenting has slowed in high school, but he still gets called derogatory slurs, he said.
“I'm hoping that kids who are gay and come out won't be harassed” any more, he said.
Osmanski was bracing for a denial when he spoke to the assistant principal this month about his GSA application.
“I had my [ACLU] 'know your rights' card out and ready,” Osmanski recalled. But the assistant principal gave permission. “The second I walked out of the office, I started screaming and jumping. I was to the point of tears.”
He said that success was the “most amazing experience” of his life. At least, the 16-year-old added, “so far.”
A recent editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune defends the struggle of Utah's gay teens and praises their accomplishments.
“Those are very modest goals -- to be tolerated, and not be harassed,” the editorial reads. “To be allowed to be yourself. It shouldn't be a thing you have to fight for.”
“Hopefully, thanks to the courage and leadership shown by kids like Hunt and Osmanski, hearts and minds will be changed, and future generations of gay Utahns will find not only tolerance, but inclusion and acceptance as well.”
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© 2012 Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons
www.affirmation.org
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