First Amendment lesson changes minds over GSA

Several Coeur d’Alene teens say they learned lessons in the First Amendment, pressure and acceptance after they discussed how to disband the new Gay-Straight Alliance student club at Lake City High School.

Terra Mills, a senior, and Tommy Anderson, a sophomore, were among those angry that the student club formed last fall. They still don’t support or accept homosexuality, but they are no longer trying to break up the group.

For Mills, the realization that such groups are protected under the First Amendment changed her mind. “There’s really no grounds for us to even consider taking the club out,” she said.

“I don’t have to stand by their beliefs, values,” she added. “I can stand by the fact that they want to form their group.”

Members of Lake City’s GSA group declined to be interviewed for this article.

Part of a network of more than 700 GSA clubs in U.S. high schools, the Lake City club formed last fall. The clubs exist to “create safe environments in schools for students to support each other and learn about homophobia and other oppressions,” according to the network’s mission statement. The clubs also look for ways to fight discrimination, harassment and violence in schools.

Anderson said he backed down after he gained a better understanding of why the GSA group exists. He initially thought its members would try to convert people on their views of homosexuality and recruit confused underclassmen.

“I made too many assumptions,” he said.

Anderson said at one point he was giving them a hard time. But after talking to a student involved in the GSA group, he got another perspective.

“They’re trying to help each other through all the hardship they go through. … They shouldn’t take as much harassment as they do,” he said. “They’re nice people who deserve respect.”

Still, both teens said they are firm in their belief that homosexuality is wrong, and they intend to join a conservative Republican student group now forming at the school.

“We want to feel like we belong somewhere,” Mills said. Sometimes she keeps her views to herself in class, feeling she’s in the minority, she said. “We get labeled bigots. We get called ignorant and close-minded.”

Students in GSA and those forming the Republican group recently have attended each others’ meetings and engaged in lively discussions. Mills said she saw one commonality between the two sides. “They want to be treated equally,” she said. “We want to be treated equally, too.”

And regardless of whether they’ll ever bridge the divide, Mills said, “The two groups are conversing right now. That’s a good thing.”

Deanne Clifford, a student adviser and math teacher at the school, agrees. This episode was a lesson about having a voice – for gay students and those who disagree with them.

It was a civics lesson for the student council, too. Student leaders sought views from the student body when considering GSA’s application to organize.

The experience these students had and the understanding they took from it cannot be taught in a classroom, Clifford said. “This has been huge.”