>Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1993 11:52:39 EST >From: Workers World Service Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit MASSACHUSETTS LESBIAN/GAY YOUTH WIN LEGAL PROTECTION By Kristianna Tho'Mas Despite an atmosphere of right-wing attacks on gay civil rights, lesbian and gay youths have won a major victory in the state of Massachusetts. Massachusetts, a battleground in the early 1970s over school desegregation and busing, has become the first state to pass a law prohibiting discrimination against lesbian and gay students in public schools. Gov. William F. Weld says he will soon sign the bill, passed by the State Senate into law. The anti-discrimination law affirms the right of openly lesbian and gay youth to the many "rituals" of adolescence: to form alliances and clubs, to take a date to a prom, to participate out of the closet in sports. YOUNG LAVENDER TIDE The legislative victory came after an organized mass of lesbian, gay and straight students descended upon the state capital. The students came with a single-minded purpose: to get the State Senate to pass the anti-discrimination law that had been hung up in committee for the past two years. Troix Bettencourt, a student at Northeastern University, helped lead the effort. He was one of the hundreds who wrote letters to their legislators and staged candle-light vigils outside the Statehouse. Lesbian and gay youths and their supporters marched with placards that read, "Every student has a right to an education." "There were 1,000 young people up here endlessly," said Marty Linsky, Weld's chief secretary. Gay youths in Massachusetts had forced the issue to the fore by pointing out, among other things, that there is a 28-percent drop-out rate among gay high-school pupils. The suicide rate among gay teenagers is also alarmingly high. According to some estimates, as many as 60 percent of all teenage suicides are gay. The far right mobilized against gay rights for youths. C.J. Doyle of the "Catholic League for Religions and Civil Rights" claimed the law would "result in both limitations upon free speech and discrimination against Catholics and other religious believers, as voicing criticism of homosexual conduct will be viewed as harassment." Gays countered that free speech does not include the right to burn crosses in oppressed communities or to gay bait or bash someone verbally or physically--and that's what the law addresses. One of the young people at the Statehouse said she had hidden her sexual orientation out of fear. "This is for me and my friends," she said. -30- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 West 17 St., New York, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@blythe.org.) + OPEN HOUSE! NY TRANSFER NEWS COLLECTIVE FREE ACCESS! + + December'93 e-mail: nyt@blythe.org December'93 + + 212-675-9690 info: info@blythe.org 212-675-9663 +