The Safe Schools Coalition of Washington State has documented the difference made by gay/straight alliances and other gay-related student groups. In its 1996 Annual Report entitled "Safe Schools Anti-Violence Documentation Project," the Coalition released the findings of its research on in-school support groups. In response to questions about the effect of gay/straight alliances and other gay-related groups, students overwhelmingly responded in the affirmative that:

• "having a group at school makes school a safer place for Gay/Lesbian youth";

• "having a support group helps me stay in school"; and

• "youth involved in the support groups are less likely to attempt or commit suicide."

Sadly, more tragic proof arises in the detailed story of Jacob Orosco below. If you know of students in trouble with their club, please call our receptionist at (212) 809-8585 (or e-mail at lldef@aol.com) for information on obtaining our legal guide entitled "RESOURCES FOR DEFENDING GAY/STRAIGHT STUDENT ALLIANCES AND OTHER GAY-RELATED GROUPS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS." In our advocacy for gay/straight student alliances around the country, we have found that the single most important thing we can do to protect the club is to get the legal guide into the hands of the school's attorney as soon as possible.
David Buckel, Staff Attorney, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, October 18, 1997 Front Page
PO Box 8263,Philadelphia,PA,19101
(Fax 215-854-4483, print run 515,523)
(E-MAIL: inquirer.editorial@phillynews.com)( http://www.phillynews.com)

For teen gay activist, a sudden, baffling end
He killed himself after leading a battle against bias at his Utah high school.

By Gwen Florio
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

SALT LAKE CITY -- This time last year, Jacob Orosco's life was fuller than it had ever been.

He was out of the closet, not just to friends and family but to the entire community. He had helped found a gay club at his high school, a move that had prompted the Salt Lake City school board to shut down all extracurricular activities rather than accept the club's existence.

He had been featured in a documentary film that focused in part on the club's struggle and the national reaction to it. He had danced with boys at the prom and helped lead panels on the problems of gay youth, speaking out on the need for gay teenagers to have organizations of their own.

"To me," he had said, "taking clubs from us is like putting a gun in our hands and waiting for the trigger to be pulled."

His friends recall those words with a shudder.

Last month, just after school started, Orosco hanged himself. He was 17, a senior in high school. In his final days, he had been busy reorganizing the club, the Gay/Straight Alliance. Despite the extracurricular ban, it had held evening meetings last spring at his school, East High, which is required by law to rent space to community organizations. In his final days, he had been dealing with a new obstacle, finding $400 to buy a $1 million liability insurance policy demanded by the school before the club could resume its evening meetings.

Why Orosco killed himself remains a mystery. He didn't leave a note. And his mother (he was estranged from his father) has kept her thoughts to herself.

"But I think it would have helped if that club had been in place," said Tim Wiser, whose daughter, Erin, was one of the club's founders. "He could have talked to somebody."

Those who knew him are hesitant to make a direct link between Orosco's suicide and the battle over the club -- which, at one point, had the state legislature talking about giving up all federal education aid rather than accept the club's existence.

In fact, his efforts as one of the 10 founders of the Alliance, and the controversy surrounding its existence, had seemed to help him.

"That's what's so ironic about his death. He actually hadn't gotten as much bashing after he came out," said Camille Lee, a science teacher at East High, referring to the name-calling Orosco often faced from fellow students who had suspected that he was gay.

But the harassment didn't end altogether. After his death, members of the Gay/Straight Alliance scheduled a memorial service. They passed out fliers in school.

"In memory of Jacob Orosco," the fliers said.

Except that on several, his name was crossed out, with new words scrawled above it, so that the fliers read:
"In memory of a quir."

Being young and gay isn't easy anywhere.

The national Gay Lesbian Straight Educators Network says that 97 percent of gay and lesbian students in public high schools report hearing homophobic remarks from fellow students. The group cites a 1989 federal Health and Human Services study indicating gays and lesbians account for 30 percent of teen suicides.

And in Utah, there is an additional source of stress -- the position of the dominant Mormon Church.

Orosco wasn't a Mormon. But the church's teachings profoundly influence public policy in Utah, and the atmosphere in the schools.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepts gays on one condition: that they renounce their sexual orientation.

"Everything we do in the church is to offer them the help, the support and the structure that will point them to happiness and joy," said the Elder Jay E. Jensen, who took part in a "healing" workshop here last month designed to help gays and lesbians become straight.

State law forbids Utah's public school teachers from saying anything in the classroom that would imply acceptance or advocacy of homosexuality.

Lee, one of three Utah teachers who came out of the closet during the fight over the clubs, said parents have never complained about her own orientation, although several called her to protest the club. But she said gay students faced intense pressure from both parents and peers during that time.

When Orosco and nine other friends tried to form the club, a group of students at West High, across town, formed SAFE -- Students Against Fags Everywhere. A state legislator talked of "serious concerns about the group's moving into recruitment of fresh meat for the gay population."

After East High banned all clubs rather than permit the Alliance to meet, students in other groups were openly resentful, accusing the gay and lesbian students of spoiling things for everyone.

The Alliance responded by holding off-campus seminars seeking to underscore the need for the club. Erin Wiser said a videotape of one of those meetings showed Alliance leaders sitting at a table, with signs on the wall behind them listing discussion topics.

One of those signs was directly over Orosco's head. It read: Suicide.

The video was shown last month at a private memorial service the Alliance organized for Orosco. "When it got to that part, everyone gasped," she said.

Members of Utah's gay community responded to the suicide with frustration, and despair.

Since Orosco's death, Lee said, two lesbian students have dropped out of school, citing antigay harassment. Meanwhile, Wiser, who graduated last year but stays in touch with the club, is getting letters from a friend who writes regularly about the desire to commit suicide.

"We're so afraid of copycats," she said. "That would be the worst thing of all."

People who commit suicide frequently drop hints, becoming despondent, or changing their personal habits toward the end.

Not Orosco.

His friend Kelli Peterson, a club founder who graduated last year, described an exuberant youth who bleached his dark hair blond, dabbed iridescent polish onto his nails, and responded to taunts of "Hey, fag!" with a grin and a joking challenge: "Yep. Interested?"

Friends who posted messages on a Web site set up in Orosco's memory dwell on that zest for life.

"We just wish he could have seen himself the way we saw him -- as a vibrant and impressive young man who turned handsprings on a sunny lawn to the applause and admiration of his friends," wrote Jeff Dupre and Eliza Byard, two documentary filmmakers who interviewed Orosco and others involved in the club for their film, Out of the Past, on the history of gays and lesbians in the United States.

Many who posted e-mail never knew Orosco. In the three weeks following his death, the Web site was accessed 952 times. For gay teens, the Internet provides an anonymous way to discuss the same topics that the Alliance focused on in public, said Alan Ahtow, director of the Stonewall Center in Salt Lake City.

While Ahtow said Orosco's death underscored the need for such clubs, Gayle Ruzicka, head of the Utah branch of the conservative Eagle Forum, said it proved just the opposite:

Groups such as the Alliance "lie to children," she said. "They tell them they're born that way, instead of telling them the truth -- that you can make choices in life, that it [ homosexuality ] is like any addiction. It can be overcome."

Gay support groups hope Orosco's death will serve as a rallying point for people to demand more tolerance, especially in schools. The Tazbaco Catalog, which markets to gays and lesbians, has created a memorial fund in Orosco's name, with proceeds going to assist new gay-straight alliances in high schools around the country. In addition, Tazbaco paid the $400 insurance fee demanded by East High before the Alliance could meet this year.

The ban on all extracurricular clubs remains in effect at the school, so the Alliance must rent space from East High in the evenings, like any other community group.

Utah's American Civil Liberties Union is investigating whether any other groups were required to get liability insurance and if other extracurricular clubs have begun to meet again despite the ban.

"We will aggressively pursue litigation if we receive any complaints," said Carol Gnade, the group's director.

Orosco's friends say they are committed to carrying on the work of the Alliance without him. As a result of the publicity she received last year as one of the Alliance's organizers, Kelli Peterson gets to speak to gay youth groups around the country.

"We want everyone to know that a very worthwhile person has left us," she said, "and we want a voice for the people who can't even speak out for themselves."