Gay-Straight Alliance History

Adapted from glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender &, queer culture. http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/gay_straight_alliances.html

A Brief History of the GSA Movement in Schools[1]

Perhaps the most important precursor of the GSA movement is Los Angeles’s Project 10, which is widely recognized as the first organized effort to provide systematic support and education for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (GLBTQ) youth in American public schools.

Originating in 1984 at Fairfax High School of the Los Angeles Unified school district, Project 10 was named after the estimate frequently (though mistakenly) attributed to sexologist Alfred Kinsey that 10% of the general population is exclusively homosexual. In the words of its founder, Virginia Uribe, the focus of Project 10 has been “education, reduction of verbal and physical abuse, suicide prevention, and dissemination of accurate AIDS information.”

While most early Project 10 facilitators were straight, Project 10 was originally targeted at GLBTQ youth with no explicit effort to include heterosexual youth in activities. Support groups, the primary activity of the Project 10 model, focus on preventing or reducing at-risk behavior, such as alcohol and drug abuse and high-risk sexual activities, among GLBTQ youth. Since its inception, Project 10 has been influential as an important model for the development of support groups for GLBTQ youth.

The first school-based groups to call themselves Gay-Straight Alliances were formed in 1988-89 at two private schools in Massachusetts, the Phillips Academy in Andover and the Concord Academy in Concord. The faculty advisor for the Phillips Academy group conducted workshops about the gay-straight model throughout Massachusetts, which led to the formation of many new GSAs and to the eventual adoption of the gay-straight group model by the Governor’s Commission for Gay and Lesbian Youth in Massachusetts as the preferred model for their Safe Schools Program.

The adoption of the GSA model by the State of Massachusetts Safe Schools Program in 1993 is one of three key events that spurred the development of the Gay-Straight Alliance movement. The other two were the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming; and the 1999 Federal Court ruling in Utah-East High Gay/Straight Alliance v. Board of Education of Salt Lake City School District, 81 F. Supp.2d 1166, 1197 (D. Utah 1999)-which found that denying access to a school-based Gay-Straight Alliance was a violation of the federal Equal Access Act.

The Gay-Straight Alliance model has been promoted as an intervention strategy for making school environments safer and more inclusive by a number of national organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Human Rights Watch (HRW), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and many others.

One of the most important organizations in promoting Gay-Straight Alliances is GLSEN, which was established nationally in 1995. It provides educational, public policy, student organizing, and development resources in print and web-based form, as well as on-site training and technical assistance to schools that want to address school safety and inclusiveness issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

Although some school districts attempt to impede the organization of GSAs, the movement has nevertheless grown rapidly. GLSEN, which maintains an on-line registry of school-based GSAs, reports that by 1999 there were 600 GSAs, a number that had grown to 1,000 in 2001, and to more than 3,000 by the end of 2008. Despite these impressive figures, the number of school-based support groups for GLBTQ youth remains small when measured against the need.

 

A Brief History of the GSA Movement in Colleges[2]

Although students attracted to others of the same sex had developed semi-private meeting places and informal social networks at many colleges and universities since at least the early twentieth century, the first formally recognized gay student organizations were not established until the late 1960s. But the success of these early groups, along with the inspiration provided by other college-based movements and the Stonewall riots, led to the proliferation of gay liberation fronts on campuses across the country by the early 1970s.

At many colleges and universities, these organizations were male-dominated, prompting lesbians to demand greater inclusion and often to form their own groups. In the 1980s and 1990s, bisexual and transgender students likewise sought recognition, both within and separate from lesbian and gay organizations.

 

Early Student Groups

The first student gay rights organization, the Student Homophile League, was formally established at Columbia University by Stephen Donaldson (born Robert Martin) in 1967. Donaldson had been involved in the New York City chapter of the Mattachine Society, but when he arrived at Columbia, he could not find any other openly GLBTQ people and was forced by school administrators to move out of his residence hall after his roommates complained about living with a bisexual man.

Upon finally meeting other GLBTQ students, Donaldson suggested that they form a Mattachine-like organization for women and men on campus, what he envisioned as the first chapter of a national coalition of student gay rights groups.

With Donaldson’s assistance, Student Homophile League branches were chartered at Cornell University and New York University in 1968 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the spring of 1969. Two non-affiliated groups also formed in early 1969: Homosexuals Intransigent! at the City University of New York and FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression) at the University of Minnesota.

These first student organizations provided support to individuals who were questioning their sexuality, passed out gay rights literature, held dances and other social events, sponsored lectures, and spoke in classes and residence halls about being gay. Through these efforts, the groups improved the campus climate for GLBTQ people and made it possible for many GLBTQ students to accept themselves and come out. Moreover, by gaining institutional recognition and establishing a place on campus for GLBTQ students, they laid the groundwork for the creation of GLBTQ groups at colleges and universities throughout the country.

 

Gay Liberation Fronts

Thus, contrary to the popular perception that gay student activism began only after the Stonewall riots, gay groups were organized and visible at several institutions prior to June 1969. However, in the aftermath of Stonewall, the number of gay student organizations proliferated. By 1971, groups existed at more than 175 colleges and universities.

Whereas the Student Homophile Leagues were initially influenced by the Mattachine Society, the post-Stonewall student organizations were often inspired by and named after the more militant Gay Liberation Front (GLF), which had been formed in New York City in the summer of 1969. Like the first gay student groups, campus GLFs sponsored social activities, held educational programs, and provided support to individual members. But GLF activists typically sought greater visibility and were more consciously political than gay student leaders had been previously. Members were often committed to radical social change and embraced confrontational tactics, such as demonstrations and sit-ins, to challenge discriminatory campus policies.

The defiant philosophy and approach of many Gay Liberation Fronts also reflected the influence of other militant campus struggles, particularly the Black Power, feminist, anti-Vietnam war, and student free speech movements. Many GLF members were also involved in these movements and saw gay rights as part of a larger movement to transform society. For this new generation of GLBTQ students, their liberation was fundamentally tied to the liberation of all peoples.

 

Lesbian Feminist Groups

But despite their expressed commitment to women’s liberation, many of the gay student groups were dominated by men and often privileged male concerns, to the exclusion of the needs of lesbians and bisexual women. For example, a priority of a number of Gay Liberation Fronts was protesting campus police crackdowns against men who engaged in public sexual activity. Similarly, while GLF dances were open to everyone, women were frequently turned off by the focus on male cruising at many of these events. As a result, lesbians and bisexual women on some campuses began to hold their own dances and other social activities.

With “gay” increasingly being used to refer only to gay men in the 1970s, many lesbians sought to have the names of gay student organizations changed to include them explicitly. Others chose to form their own groups, recognizing a need to organize around their shared oppression as women and as lesbians, knowing that they would never have a strong voice in groups where men had most of the power. These young lesbians and lesbian organizations played a significant role in the burgeoning lesbian feminist movement. For example, Rita Mae Brown, who had been one of the founders of the Student Homophile League chapter at New York University, subsequently helped establish the Furies, a lesbian collective that shaped the theory and practice of lesbian feminism, and became one of the leading lesbian writers of the twentieth century.

 

Bisexual and Transgender Groups

Bisexual and transgender students likewise sought to be included more fully in campus gay and lesbian groups and formed their own organizations in the 1980s and 1990s. Ironically, many of the bisexual student organizations were begun by women who felt excluded from the lesbian groups that had been established earlier by women who felt marginalized in gay groups.

Transgender students often face discrimination in ways that are rarely experienced by non-transgender lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, such as having to pressure administrators to change school records to reflect their true gender, being able to have access to the appropriate bathroom, and being assigned to a residence hall in keeping with their gender. While many lesbian, gay, and bisexual student organizations added “transgender” to their names in the 1990s, few groups actually changed their focus to incorporate transgender issues, leading transgender students to continue to feel isolated and invisible. This lack of inclusion has contributed to the formation of transgender support groups at institutions where transgender students have felt safe enough to come out to others.

 

A Brief History of the state GSA Network Movement

As more and more GSAs began to form, some states saw the need to network them together. Massachusetts was one of the first through its Safe Schools Program in 1993. GSA Network in California formed in 2001. Up until this point the state GSA network movement focused primarily on networking high school GSAs.

Iowa Pride Network was founded in 2003 and sought to network both high school and college GSAs as part of a broad, long-term goal of a more sustained social justice movement within the state. Currently, Iowa and Colorado are the only states to have a high school and college networking model. However, a number of national organizations, such as HRC and Campus Pride, have been providing colleges resources.

In 2002, Campus Pride started as an online community and resource clearinghouse under the name Campus PrideNet. Campus Pride is the only national nonprofit organization for student leaders and campus groups working to create a safer college environment for LGBT students.

Over the years, the state GSA network movement has become more coordinated and collaborative. In 2006, California’s GSA Network hosted a meeting with states that had some degree of a statewide network. In 2007, The National Association of GSA Networks was formed. A steering committee made up of representatives from California, Iowa, New York, Texas and Wisconsin was created to help determine the best way to encourage and assist in the creation of new state GSA networks

As of 2011 there are approximately two dozen states that have a state GSA network in some capacity. A majority of these organizations are completely led by volunteers. Less than half a dozen have full time paid staff. Some of the state networks are housed within a larger LGBT organization within their states. Some utilize partnering organizations to help them network students.

 

Conclusion

In a little more than forty years, the number of GLBTQ student organizations has grown from a handful found at large universities to nearly all college campuses and thousands of high schools. Even many religiously affiliated college institutions now have a GLBTQ student group, although often only after a long political or legal struggle.

Indeed, the formation of student groups, even at progressive universities and high schools, frequently met homophobic resistance, including antigay violence. Often administrators and student governments withheld recognition or funding of GLBTQ groups and GSAs, and flyers announcing their activities were routinely torn down or defaced. Legislatures in some states, such as Alabama and Colorado, passed antigay legislation aimed at student groups. Eventually these laws were overturned by federal courts, but it is important to observe that student groups were not particularly welcomed by colleges, universities or high schools and often had to struggle for recognition and acceptance.

Along with specific organizations for lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people, many colleges and universities today have groups that reflect the multiple identities and interests of GLBTQ students. For example, the University of California, Berkeley has 14 GLBTQ organizations, including groups for Latinas/os, Asians, Catholics, Jews, graduate students, science and engineering majors, and outdoor enthusiasts, along with an administrative office, a student resource center, and special interest housing.

In high schools, Some GSAs change their name to place less emphasis on the word “gay,” resulting in alternatives such as “Project Rainbow,” “Pride Alliance,” “Common Ground,” “Coexist”, “Spectrum,” or even the “Straight-Gay Alliance.” There are continued efforts to make GSAs and like programs accepting of a wide range of individuals. The common acronym “LGBT” can include many additional letters including “QQASIP”: corresponding to queer, questioning, asexual or allied, straight, intersex and pansexual[3].

With the student bodies of many schools, colleges and universities becoming more diverse, with more GLBTQ students coming out before or during their high schools and college years, the number of GLBTQ organizations will continue to grow.