An increasing number of athletes, politicians, and celebrities are opening up about their homosexuality, serving as inspirational role models for gay people who are still “in the closet.”
Although it no longer comes as a shock to find out that someone is gay, there are still a great number of anti-gay and lesbian attitudes that discourage many young and elderly homosexuals to feel at ease with themselves.
Phrases such as “you’re gay” when someone commits a stupid deed, associates the word “gay” with negative connotations, which automatically makes people assume that being gay is something bad.
The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club hopes to take a step further in the fight for human rights and tolerance for gay communities. During human rights week, GSA put up posters of poems written by people who have been directly affected by anti-gay attitudes, referring to this activity as the “I AM CAMPAIGN” because the purpose is for gay individuals to admit who they are.
According to Andrew Beccera (’10), who originally came up with the poster idea, many of the students were inspired to write their own stories and poems during the process of copying the stories from online onto the posters. Although all of the stories were anonymous, the members felt that it is their way of coming out to society.
GSA member Aden Yaghobi (’10) believes that the club provides a sanctuary for gay students where they can feel at ease with themselves and come to terms with who they really are.
“If people are in a group who is tearing down these posters, obviously they will do it with them. But when you pull them aside and talk to them one-on-one and they read these stories for themselves, they usually accept that what they did is wrong,” Yaghobi said.
Although the members were excited about the posters, they were unsure about the kind of reaction they would receive.
During Human Rights Week, the club received mostly positive responses. People they would expect to be against it responded rather neutrally. Most of the freshmen, however, tried tearing down the posters and made fun of the club, which almost resulted in a physical fight.
“When we were putting up the posters, I knew that people were going to pull them down, rip them, spit on them, step on them and even laugh at them,” Beccera said. “But as a club we have to stand up for what we believe in.”
The club has been the most active since it first launched in 1995 by Social Science teacher Daniel Kimber.
In Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death and laws against sodomy are far harsher on men than they are on women. Two Iranian teen boys, Hamzeh Chavi and Loghman Hamzehpour, were beaten and hung for participating in homosexual acts. Although human rights activists were outraged and tried opposing the execution, the government responded with anger toward journalists, not only because they knew what they were doing was wrong but also for reporting the persecutions to the rest of the world.
Watching the young Iranian boys murdered simply because they were willing to accept themselves for who they were is something that should make anyone “with a heart,” squirm, according to Yaghobi.
Although more gay voices are being heard, society is far from accepting same-sex marriage and relations as the issue with Proposition 8 evidently proves. In nations such as Latin America or Iran, where “male macho” culture is prominent, gay individuals are terrified of coming out because revealing their sexuality results in persecution. According to Avert.org, 2,509 gay men were murdered from 1997 to 2007 in Latin America alone.
