Queer Youth Take on Nation

by Chuck Franklin

Benjie Nycum & Mike Glatze of Young Gay America found a unique way to travel across the United States and included Burlington on their journey. Young Gay America is a web site (www.younggayamerica.com) that provides a fun, informative forum for gay youth to share their experiences.

Assisted by Andy Brown (volunteer webmaster, Kansas high school student) and Teddee McGuire (graphic designer), Nycum and Glatze charted a three-week journey in late March and early April from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to San Francisco in search of the stories and experiences of gay youth.

Every day, they drove to a new location, writing journals and editing photographs on a laptop in the car. They e-mailed the content to Brown, who posted the stories, photos, articles, book and music reviews to the website.

“I dunno how this happened, really,” exclaimed Nycum on April 6 from a crackling cell phone while on the road near Beckley, West Virginia. “We were sitting around trying to figure out which way to drive home to San Francisco from Halifax. Mike joked, ‘Maybe we should make a website!’”

“Before I knew it, Andy and Teddee were brainstorming ideas and we had a site designed. We launched it the night before we left. That was a week ago and already we’ve typed over 25,000 words and taken a couple hundred pictures. We’ve done radio interviews, photo shoots … even Ricki Lake’s people have called to ask us questions!”

The two landed in Burlington on the evening of March 26 and spent the next day talking to young people and visiting a few places. They talked to two small groups of young gays and lesbians at Outright Vermont. The conversations were informal and personal, covering a wide variety of topics – piercings, the local gay community, gay stereotypes, life’s struggles and how to deal with them, living in Burlington, relationships, and school violence. To read a transcript of the two group sessions, go to the Young Gay America web site (www.younggayamerica.com).

Nycum and Glatze also chatted with two young men named Ricky and Chris on Church Street.

What did they think about Burlington? It’s a SAAB city.

“Dude, there are so many SAABs in Burlington. We tried to take a picture, but they wouldn’t all fit into our lens,” they wrote on March 28.

“There are lots of hot boyz and very cute girls all over the place in Vermont,” they continued. “Lots of young activity going on. Lots of skateboarding. Lots of kewl punks, or at least they look kewl.”

The truly satisfying part of their adventure was the dozens of e-mails pouring in from queer kids asking for advice, according to the two. One anonymous interview done via e-mail with a teen explaining his life in the closet “makes me cry every time I read it,” said Glatze. “It feels like we might be able to make a difference out here.”

The three-week journey came to a close April 12, when Nycum and Glatze arrived in San Francisco for a reading of the Lambda Literary Award-Nominated The XY Survival Guide, a resource book for gay teens written by Nycum while the duo served as editors of the leading gay teen magazine, XY.

“We hope to be able to do a Young Gay America 2 if we can raise the money,” said Nycum. “We’d like to take YGA to the northwest, places like Idaho, Alberta, Montana, and maybe make a major stop in Laramie, Wyoming. Kids out there really benefit from hearing about the experiences of others who are in similar situations. The more chances we get to do this, the better.”

According to the Hetrick-Martin institute, 80 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth report severe isolation problems. They experience social isolation (having no one to talk to), emotional isolation (feeling distanced from family and peers because of sexual identity), and cognitive isolation (lack of access to good information about homosexuality).

Young Gay America seeks to break down the social, geographical and cultural barriers that frequently drive gay teens to depression and suicide.