Rather than continue one hijack, I’ve started a thread where we can explore people’s attitudes toward suicide.
CJ
I don’t have much experience with pride groups, actually; when I was in high school, such a thing was unthinkable, and when I got to college I couldn’t get up the guts to go to the one that was on campus.
I do recommend the glsen.org site for tons of resources on the subject. This page is a compilation of their articles on starting GSAs. I found the Jump Start series of articles to be particularly useful.
If I find out anything more, I’ll let you know.
That link looks helpful, Mr. Visible!
FWIW, I’ll be calling today to sign up for the in-school education program I mentioned before.
One tip for any sort of campus GLBT group is to make it clear that the organization and meetings are also open to “supportive friends” or something like that. This isn’t just because there will be straight people who will want to help and be supportive (in my experience there won’t be a lot of them, but they exist), but also because plenty of young people are so nervous about coming out that they won’t attend a meeting that they think is only for people who are already out. They might be too scared to come, or feel like they aren’t as worthy as the students who are already out. These are often the people who need the most help, so it’s important to make the organization seem welcoming, non-threatening, and low-pressure to them. They’ll come out in their own time.
You may encounter some student members who will want to do something like have everyone form a circle and announce their sexual orientation. Avoid this at all costs. It will be intensely embarassing, even terrifying, for members who are already afraid to come out, and many will leave the organization and never look back if their comfort boundaries are invaded that way.
One term for this that I’ve come across in some of the circles I move in is “friendly” as in “Gay-Friendly” or “Pagan-friendly”. You might also want to do what some ACOA groups do and declare some meetings “closed” and others “open”, with open indicating that anyone who is curious can come. I was program chair for a Mensa Regional Gathering last fall and, in addition to daily Friends of Bill W. meetings for members of AA and NA, we also had a program called, “So, What Is All This 12-Step Stuff Anyway?” for people who weren’t addicts, but did know what it was all about and who might know or want to help someone who is.
Another thing that people who are setting up groups might want to consider is setting up an on-line group so people can talk casually and somewhat anonymously. I found it easy to set up and maintain a group through Yahoo! Groups, and you do have the option of making posts invisible to browsers.
CJ
That’s awful, andy.
I don’t understand how anyone could put a doctrine ahead of their own flesh and blood. 
Oops. That was referring back to andygirl’s post, two pages back, about Daryl’s suicide.
Yes, second what Lamia said. I remember from experience that it was terrifying enough to attend the meeting in the first place. (I didn’t even go the first time around.) If I had been shocked like that, I don’t know what I would have done.
Anyway, some of them will be so happy to finally meet some Real Live Queer People that they’ll burst out in a shower of rainbow confetti. I know I did. It’s charming to watch. :mad:
;):p:eek:
Link.
I hope y’all will forgive the semi-hijack, but I wanted to point out this MPSIMS thread. Matt, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by it:)
I apologize -
Has anyone mentioned going to their local UU or other Welcoming Congregation for tips?
I know the UCC and some Episcopalean churches also have Welcoming Congregations. (Hi, Poly.)
The UUs also have a sex-ed curriculum that includes discussion of the same-sex/bisexual/transgendered spectrum; I don’t know how it works for the littler kids, but the adult group discussion was very interesting, and I know the HS group is handled in a similar fashion.
My UU Fellowship is going to be starting to revisit our Welcoming Congregation status and seeing what MORE we can do - for teens and adults.
That’s an excellent idea, SisterCoyote.
National list of “Welcoming Congregations” in the Episcopal Church. Note that this is incomplete; my own parish, St. Mark’s in Raleigh NC, which is absolutely committed to welcoming gay members and has so specified in many of its publications, has not seen fit to adopt the resolution needed to be officially on this list.
UFMCC is a worldwide denomination of churches specifically organized to provide Christian outreach to marginalized folk, with gays and Lesbians atop the list.(It was founded by a gay Assemblies of God minister who was defrocked for being gay.) But, among other things, they provide an outreach to handicapped people as well.
Sorry I’m jumping back a bit
His4ever said
I don’t think that its a different thread topic at all. What Christian parents do with the “situation” is very much part of Poly’s OP (assuming the “we” includes parents). Obviously there are things that society can address, but for some guidance parents beyond “stop being ignorant” would useful discussion.
[sub]With apologies to Dr. King as deemed necessary by the reader.[/sub]
Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, a document was signed by rebels of our mother country, some fighting for a cause they felt utterly doomed; others fighting for the same cause they felt utterly necessary. That document called for—nay, proclaimed—principles so simple and obvious we often take them for granted.
But in those two hundred twenty-nine years those principles have been denied to people after people. The reasons are at once varied and unified in their bases. When all is stripped away we are left with one simple, unadulterated, unavoidable, inexusable and, above all, imminently mutable fact: they have been denied.
We are now farther than we were then in allowing for the redress of this grievance. And we must go much further to complete that process.
Because we are not faced with the fiftieth anniversary of the last teen to commit suicide because a community did not respond, or a family abandoned their child, or a school let it be known “you … are … not … welcome … here”. We are faced with it every day of our lives and it cannot continue. For those principles to ring true, for America to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, for each American citizen to know, breathe, and exude life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this country must change. A people must change, communities must change, thought must change and hearts must change.
We are told when young that “you can do anything you want to”. The media inundates us with images of people doing what they want. And for so many of us it is not an option. We live our lives in secret, or we deny ourselves the chance at a life and not a mere existence nor the continuous, robotic, automatic intake of oxygen. America is the land of opportunity, we are told.
And in the two hundred twenty-nine years since we told our mother country “We will not be subjugated, we will not be downtrodden, we will not be your subject, bound and gagged, powerless to your every whim” we have bestowed that upon another people and it must stop now, for it cannot continue.
We rise up. And we are checked. We fight, and we win. Slowly. At times, at first, alone. For too long we dared not surface; when we did, we were rebuffed by those sworn to protect every American citizen from harm. And then we said “Enough. We will live our lives and with pride. You will not take that from us; not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever.” And we have been saying that since, and it has brought us to a place where, sometimes, we can be safe. Sometimes we can let it be known who we are.
And sometimes we have been killed for it. Sometimes we have been beaten, we have been imprisoned, we have been denied housing or employment or solace or to give solace. We are denied that which is so heavily emphasized throughout this country’s history and so often the world: a family. Rights so common to most in this country that we do not, cannot conceive of a live without them … they are not ours. As we live and breathe we see others with those rights that, though written in law, have been taken away from us through some force that must needs be alien to those who conceived of this country and fought so hard to guarantee the freedom of her citizens.
Today, and tomorrow, and next week and next month and next year and until we are free we will be here. You cannot ignore us; if you do we will overtake you and it will become our country. You cannot fight us: truth triumphs over both evil and hubris. You cannot make us hide: we have come too far at too great a price to back down now, either for ourselves or those who made that first stand. You can join us and be known as part of the force that made this country the land of the free.
And we are told “Why can’t you just be like us?” We are like you. We bleed red, we cry tears, we wail out in pain, we jump for joy. We love, we cherish, we adore, we believe, we struggle, we fall back and try again, harder and higher, until we are satisfied. Our desires are yours: to be truly free American citizens, as you are. Our motive is yours: freedom; equality; a share in this American life of promise you have.
This is the greatest country in the world, we are told. Freedoms unimaginable elsewhere are taken for granted here so that when they are violated the smallest child asleep in the deepest cave under a hundred thousand blankets hears a nation cry out “NO!” Yet in some ways we are no better than those we pity half a world away; rights not given in poor, starving countries are similar to those denied our people, your people, here.
Do you fear us? Do you imagine your American way of life slipping out of your grasp? Is your dream fading as yet more in this country are recognized and afforded the same freedom you have had since your birth? Are you threatened by the idea that a people you have marginalized, denigrated, stuffed into a closet, stomped on and seemingly left for dead is back, and was never gone? Or do you fear that you will be left behind as we step forward once, twice, ten times, a thousand times to claim that same freedom you had before your first step?
We seek prosperity as you do. We, too, wish to see this country greater than it was before us.
You who would block our path to freedom are alone. We are stronger than we were when we were stronger than you still. We have succeeded, we succeed now and we will continue to succeed until we have ultimate success. And those who join us will taste freedom ever sweeter, seeing it newly bestowed on those who had deserved it so long ago. And will you watch as a nation celebrates? Will you fight it?
You will fight it alone. You will be the fly on the ankle of America, and your greatest measure against us, as you summon your entire being’s strength and concentrate every fiber of your existence to hurt us once and for all, may not be felt. It will be only by looking in your direction that we will be aware of your presence. And on that glorious summer day, in a field of daisies, with those we hold close to our hearts, you will be wholly unnoticed. We will look up to a blue sky, we will dance with our eyes wide open, proud of who we are, and we will fall asleep under a starry sky and be free.
We have power, and we are growing stronger than we have ever been. We will not be ignored by America nor her people, and indeed we are not. We have fought and we have won; we are fighting and we are winning. We will continue to fight, and we will continue to win until the final victory is ours. Our fight is with Truth on our side; yours is with a weapon far weaker: fear. You will fight with your fear and it will envelop you until you lose everything you have, or you will see through your transparent fear and the light of our Truth will call you forward to join us.
And you will join us.
And we will be stronger than we have been before, a truly united country. We have been United States, but now we will be united, every one of us, and we will be the strength this world has yet to see.
I have a dream that one day these words will be thought unnecessary to any people, for surely freedom is something for all, and everything to many. I have a dream that one day bigotry, hatred and those words of denigration will be as archaic as the mindset that bore them out of the darkest places on this earth. I have a dream that one day American citizens will be judged not by their ideal mate but by their American ideals. I have a dream that people will live in peace, all of them free, all of them proud, all of them happy.
I have a dream that one day any American citizen will be asked “What do you think of that person?” and respond not “Oh, he’s always being so gay. I wish he’d stop” but “I admire him.”
I have a dream that one day there will be no closet in America that hides the secret of a teen too scared to tell her friends she is gay for fear they will abandon her, or worse.
I have a dream that one day people will die of old age, not from utter despair with a country that promises freedom for all and delivers freedom to few.
I have a dream that one day the parent who disowns a child for who that child is will no longer exist; loving parents who care for their children as they ought will have replaced them. And indeed they must, if this country is to strive toward the greatness her people envisioned two hundred twenty-nine years ago and still cannot hold in her hand and give to her people, that it might flourish and blossom under our care.
I have a dream that throughout the world this country shall be known not for what it has done to some but for what it will give to all.
If America is to be what its founders dreamt of, I cannot dream alone. I must not dream alone. My dreams must be as crowded as the halls of justice, teeming with those newly given their freedom. My dreams must be crowded like the doors of far-off lands that do not know freedom, as their people leave a life of despair for a life of promise, of acceptance, of prosperity and of love.
If America is to live up to the words on her Statue of Liberty, I cannot dream alone. If we are to accept the tired, the weak, the yearning to be free; if we are to accept the downtrodden and the cast-off; if we are to accept those who seek the liberty some of us know and some of us will know, I must not dream alone.
And I do not dream alone.
Tell your friends. Tell your parents. Tell your local government, tell your state government, tell the federal government. Tell every American citizen you see from the Aleutian Islands to the Florida Keys; tell every boy and every girl that I do not dream alone. Shout it in the streets; print it in the papers; “film at 11: I do not dream alone.” Saturate every inch of soil this country has, let every ear be hearing, every mouth be proclaiming, every eye be reading that I do not dream alone.
I do not dream alone.
Beautiful, iampunha. Just beautiful.
Well, Iampunha the people who are opposing your message in schools and communities do not think that you can just claim yourself another MLK fighter for justice. You see, race and sexual orientation are not the same thing. Acting like they are only confuses your argument. Instead of your “I have a dream” teary-eyes melodrama, you should come up with something original. :rolleyes:
UnuMondo
That’s a lovely acorn you have there, UnoMondo. If you want, you can back up and look at the entire forest. Picture it 20 years from now. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Those of us who oppose the legitimisation of homosexual behavior are keeping this discussion on topic. Essentially, we’re providing this answer:
None, unless it can be presented without saying that homosexual behavior is acceptable. It is one thing to tell a student that his orientation is part of who he is, but it is a very different - and unacceptable to most of the world population - thing to tell him that he can engage in homosexual behavior. The Catholic Church, for example, as you well know (though most Catholic posters on this board choose to ignore this teaching) accepts homosexual orientation and attempts to comfort those who feel depressed in youth (support youth groups, etc), but at the same time clearly says that gays are called to celibacy and that homosexual behavior is wrong. This is a approach which is implemented at numerous Catholic parishes and universities.
Just because some of the posters here disagree doesn’t mean it’s not a valid point in the debate. Last time I checked the thread did have “debate” in the title.
UnuMondo
Okay, Unu Mondo, that’s a fair statement. Do you speak for them? On what grounds do you claim to speak for them? Are you perhaps one of them? You’ve demonstrated a tendency to apparent surliness and lack of empathy on a number of threads lately, but I don’t get a sense of what it is that you yourself stand for. (I may not be looking at the right threads to see that.)
What do the people who oppose iampunha and those who stand by what he says here (which I’m proud to be include in) think? Why do they think that? Put forth some propositions for debate, man! You need not agree with us, but state your own POV; don’t just take potshots at those of others!
“You see, race and sexual orientation are not the same thing. Acting like they are only confuses your argument.”
Well, on the most elementary level that’s quite true; they’re two different innate characteristics, each of which some people use to create divisiveness. But at rock bottom, where do you see a difference that justifies your post? Why is “one of these things not like the other?” IMHO, both are unchosen characteristics that have historically been used for ostracism of a minority. Both involve an element of choice in that one can react to hatred and violence with hatred and violence or with the ideals that Dr. King taught, borrowing the satyagraha concept from Gandhi and framing it in a Christian message.
Paddy, that was an absolutely beautiful adaptation. It’s by no means the first time I’ve seen Dr. King’s speech adapted to the gay rights movement; the first time was on a now defunct, remarkably insightful and well done website produced at age 13 by a heir to one of America’s great fortunes and his boyfriend, who should in a year or two become strong voices on your side of the battle. And let me suggest that instead of acorns, perhaps what you are looking at are hazelnuts, and I offer to you the words of Julian of Norwich to sustain you:
I’m hearing much of that “desperate rush for normalcy” in the attitudes of many here that was mentioned in the original post. The topic isn’t is ‘gay good or bad’ - it’s how do we help gay teens. Not everyone will agree on steps to do that (not that they need to in GD), but even opposite sides should agree on fundamentals. No one wants children to commit suicide, for example. I think its there’s a great deal to gain in educating Christian parents on compassion towards gay teens.