REKHA BASU

ACCEPTANCE FOR GAY STUDENTS

When it comes to social issues, Iowa is considered somewhat less progressive than California. So occasionally it's nice to see we're ahead.

Orange County is the latest battleground over high school gay-straight alliances, which support gay students or students with gay family members. Parents at California's El Modena High recently prompted their school district to go to court to shut one such after-school club down.

But gay-straight alliances are thriving, uncontested, in Iowa, where some people consider them a lifeline and the only place they can find unconditional acceptance.

"You can come here and just be your total self and you're accepted," one young woman at Roosevelt High School's Straight and Gay Alliance in Des Moines told me. "Whenever I have a bad Thursday, I come here and tell people.... and vent, and then I'm happy."

Gay-straight alliances first made news in 1996 when school district officials in Salt Lake City, Utah, finding they couldn't just scrap the one there, banned all after-school clubs.

Last Thursday afternoon, SAGA members packed Room 216 at Roosevelt, preparing display posters for a high school open house. With its mix of black and white, heavy and skinny, conventional looking and spouting hairstyles in colors not found in nature, the room had the laid-back feel of a 60s consciousness-raising session. But the most striking thing was the air of acceptance and the easy camaraderie.

Co-president Witney Smith was taking a poll:"How many people know someone who's gay but is afraid to come out?" About a dozen of the 20 students raised their hands.

For all the easy laughter, something serious is at stake. Shawn Beirman runs Youth Alliance, an organization working with at-risk lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths. For her master's thesis, Beirman in 1998 surveyed young Iowans who identified themselves that way; 81 percent reported having been verbally harassed, 39 percent said they were physically assaulted and 12 percent said they had been sexually assaulted because of their sexual orientation. Nationally, one in four have been kicked out of their homes.

Beirman also found a disturbingly high use of substances and a 12 percent school dropout rate. But her most alarming finding was that 57 percent had thought about suicide in the previous year and 27 percent had attempted it. (That's twice the national average for all youth.)

Many of the 700 gay-straight alliances nationally were spurred by the violent death of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. In the Des Moines area, they were also prompted by a survey showing the frequent use of anti-gay slurs in schools. Part of the goal, when they began a few years ago, was to hook students up with resources in the community. Lincoln, East, Valley and Ames all have them. North and Urbandale have had them.

Some of the founders are straight people wanting to support gay peers. "Coming to the group doesn't mean you're saying you are one way or another," said Patty Sneddon, a Roosevelt senior. "Questions people have are talked about openly." For example, one student Thursday was seeking advice on how to deal with a teacher who allows anti-gay slurs to go unchecked in class.

Of course, some parents have a tough time thinking about teenagers in relation to any kind of sexuality. But Beirman and others say it's not about sex so much as it's about getting support to navigate the tricky territory of crushes, flirtation and dating, which is easier for heterosexual kids.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries may be people who don't attend but appreciate that there is such a group, said Emily Pullen, a senior and co-president who started SAGA a year ago. "I imagine there's a lot of people who wouldn't be caught dead here," she said, "but they may be questioning something.

Now for some news on the heterosexual front. On Sunday, I wrote about Fox's revolting spectacle called "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" in which 50 women competed to marry a rich guy they knew nothing about. Tonight's rebroadcast has been canceled because the hunk, it turns out, was the subject of a 1991 restraining order sought by a former fiancee who said he had threatened her. Tell me you're surprised.

• Register Columnist Rekha Basu can be reached at basur@news.dmreg.com or (515) 284-8208.