News
Outright Faces Attacks
Town Meeting to be Resurrected
AIDS Czar to Appear at Conference
Local Organizations Get Training
Ruth Dwyer: The OITM Interview
by Doug Ebeling
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Youth served by Outright Vermont participate in the annual Youth Pride march in May, as well as the Pride Vermont parade each June. photo: Max Stroud |
“I think you might find this one helpful,” said Keith Elston as he directed a determined-looking college-aged woman to a book on coming out in a small lending library.
It was a typically busy afternoon in the crowded downtown Burlington offices of Outright Vermont, an agency set up to address the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer young Vermonters. A short time later the phone rang. Elston, the organization’s executive director, rushed to answer, and then spoke calmly and quietly to a teenager from central Vermont about the youth group’s meetings and activities.
The youth group meets in the comfortable, sunny “XandO” room painted in bright colors, full of the smell of poster paint and markers. This room, used as a lounge and meeting space, is crammed full of furniture and is located just beyond a small work room containing a couple of older personal computers and lots of art supplies. Freshly made posters from recent gay pride events adorn the walls.
This resource for Vermont youth has recently been under attack as angry opponents of the civil union law target organizations serving the GLBT community in Vermont.
“They are offering information that homosexuality is acceptable and normal,” Stephen Cable, president of an anti-civil unions group called Who Would Have Thought, Inc, charged in an article in the Rutland Herald in July. “That hurts many, many people of the evidence shows that it’s a destructive behavior.”
David Ayer, a Barre School Board member, and Rep. Nancy Sheltra, R-Derby, have also been making angry noises about Outright in recent weeks.
The most frequent charges seem to be that Outright is trying to “recruit Vermont youth” and that Outright “asks people to come out,” according to Ayer. Ayer and Cable say that they “sympathize” with the “plight of gays and lesbians” and do “not want to be perceived as intolerant.” They are “concerned” and “have homosexual friends,” both told the Herald.
Those charges are largely based on presentations the group makes around the state.
Outright offers two distinct and separate presentations. The first is described by Elston as “Safer Schools” and is focused on diversity issues, harassment response and prevention, and homophobia. This is the only set of programs presented at schools.
Elston stressed that the presentation is tailored to the age of the audience. A group of teachers and administrators, for instance, would hear a different presentation than would a group of eighth graders.
Safer Schools programs are only presented if Outright is contacted by a school and invited in to give the presentation. According to Elston, the invitation most often comes because educators become aware of the use of “antigay epithets” or because a student, or the parent of a student, complains about harassment incidents. Outright will discuss “general respect for differences” and try to help educators work towards a safer environment for all of their students.
Outright receives money from the state education budget to cover the costs associated with providing the Safer Schools presentations. There is approximately $12,000 available to the agency, although it is not delivered to the group up front. The agency receives the money on an invoice basis for their actual program expenses, such as travel and materials used in the presentation.
A second, separate program is “HIV/AIDS Risk Reduction and Prevention.” This program is never presented in schools. It is offered on-site at the Outright center in Burlington on a monthly basis. This presentation includes frank and explicit talk about sex, and the risk and prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Elston says that they talk about sex, provide condoms, and “make no apologies for that.”
According to Elston, the audience for this program are those already served by Outright, and the agency doesn’t “make decisions about whether what they are doing is good or bad; we give them the information to make decisions for themselves.”
The HIV/AIDS presentations are funded by a $25,000 grant from the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In order to receive the money, Outright must meet specific objectives and make detailed reports to the CDC regarding the number of programs offered, the number of youth who attend, and the number of new attendees to the program.
This presentation also includes the use of a one-page quiz to gauge attendees’ knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases. This information is used to tailor the presentation to address any specific misinformation or misunderstandings.
Elston believes that civil union opponents are intentionally combining aspects of both of these programs, and taking aspects of them out of context, in order to fan the flames of the angry reaction to civil unions among some Vermonters.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “who they are really affecting are youth who desperately need a safe place to find support, ask questions, and find friends.”
Tawnya McDonald, a member of the volunteer governing board, said that the reaction of the youth served by Outright is “anger that they are being misrepresented. We wouldn’t be facing these attacks if it wasn’t for civil unions and it wasn’t an election year.”
McDonald said some of the youth served by Outright are able to vote, and that these attacks may have the impact of energizing and empowering them to get involved.
She hoped that others would take action also: “It is time for the community to support our youth.”