More than 50 years ago, a group of students at New York City’s George Washington High School formed one of the first Gender Sexuality Alliances (GSA) in the US, paving the way for an influx of LGBTQ+ student groups in decades to follow. It is often thought that the first school-based GSA was formed in 1988 at Concord Academy, a private school in Massachusetts, but the queer student group at George Washington High predates Concord’s club by more than a decade.
Today, queer students and GSAs are facing backlash and harmful new laws from anti-LGBTQ+ lawmakers and school boards. But for the students who participate in these organizations, they’ve always been a source of community, solidarity, and support.
The George Washington GSA, founded in 1972, was mostly comprised of LGBTQ+ students of color, plus a few straight students, who wanted to create social change at their school. The goal of the Gay International Youth Society, as it was called, was to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment for students while also engaging in political activism.
Eighteen-year-old student Elie Lamadrid first presented the idea to a teacher, Alexander Levie, who later became the group’s faculty advisor. Levie convinced the school’s principal to approve the club, and its first meeting was held on December 20, 1972. Three weeks later, two members of the Gay Activists Alliance, Jean O’Leary and Morty Manford, spoke at the Society's first open forum to advise students on how to recruit more members.
In a 1976 pamphlet titled “Growing Up Gay,” O’Leary described the students as “dynamite people.” At the time, the group consisted of 20 members, including 15 queer students and five straight allies. The group advertised all around school to try to get other students to join.
According to Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, the group’s formation came during a key moment in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights: Just three years after the Stonewall riots, the Gay International Youth Society became part of a growing queer youth movement in 1970s New York. Renna, who lived in NYC at the time, tells Teen Vogue that the students’ organization of the group and its recognition by George Washington High School was “extraordinary.” She adds, “It really is part of what was a wave of activism, agitation, and revolution in many ways post-Stonewall.”
According to “Growing Up Gay,” the Gay International Youth Society put forth three main demands in advocating for the equal rights of queer students in all NYC high schools: the right to form gay groups of a “social and political nature”; the right to “fair representation” in classes about sexuality; and the right to equal treatment as human beings, including “the removal of all textbooks and other educational media that treat homosexuality as an aberration.”
The group called high school “a microcosm of society,” asserting that queer students were forced to deal with the same prejudices and inequalities that occur outside of school and were thus expected to hide their true selves or risk being outed to their parents. As a result, the group argued, the school system was oppressive to LGBTQ+ students, which required political action and activism to right such wrongs.
In an article included in the pamphlet, an unnamed student, likely a member of the group, wrote: “To maintain our rights and dignity, we must assert ourselves and our very being! This is political! The very nature of coming out not only demands that we become political, but there is no other choice. To end this discriminating abuse, political organizing becomes mandatory. If we don't, the few social rights we've been given will be taken away again, or worse, we'll be allowed to just ‘keep our place.’”
The group also advocated for the rights of LGBTQ+ teachers — who could have been fired if they came out or were somehow outed to the school administration — arguing that it was “up to students to create an atmosphere that will help them too.”
Other than a chapter in Stephan Cohen’s book The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail and a 2007 graduate research paper by Dominique E. Johnson, very little has been written about the Gay International Youth Society. Johnson, who wrote about the group as a graduate student, first came across the 1976 pamphlet detailing the organization's history and demands while digging through the archives at the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s library.
According to Johnson, this lack of literature feeds the idea that the first school-based GSA started at a private school in New England with mostly white, wealthy students. The Gay International Youth Society, she says, “were students of color” who wanted to “make sure that, as young LGBTQ students, they were also part of this movement.” They actively took steps to “improve the educational experience of students, especially students who were marginalized.”
Johnson describes the group as “intersectional” and says its members were “very good activists trying to use not only their student government, but their collective power with the principal to talk about changes they'd want to see at their school.”
As Johnson and Cohen both explain, the contributions these early youth activists and school-based GSAs made to the LGBTQ+ rights movement — and in blazing a trail for future LGBTQ+ student groups — are often neglected or left out of historical accounts of the time period. Still, the legacy of these activists lives on today.
GSAs and other similar LGBTQ+ student groups have proliferated in recent decades and continue to help LGBTQ+ students find community and belonging. Due to the increase in anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes and legislation by mostly Republican lawmakers, however, these groups are again being subjected to strict scrutiny and hostility in states across the country.
Earlier this year, a GSA at Boone High School in Florida was forced to cancel an event featuring a drag queen after the school received a call from the state's Department of Education. According to The Washington Post, GSAs have also faced attacks from political pundits and conservative parents, who misguidedly believe GSAs are breeding grounds for “political indoctrination.”
In reality, these clubs help LGBTQ+ students find comfort and hope. Joshua Medina, a senior at Sunnyside High School in Fresno, California, tells Teen Vogue that he used to get bullied when he was younger, and though he sometimes still hears derogatory comments in the halls at school, joining its GSA has changed life for the better. Says Medina, “I was scared to be myself.” Since coming out and getting involved in the GSA, however, he feels he can be authentic and express himself the way he wants to. “It brightens up my day when I get to see all my friends in the club,” he adds.
For Mellohi Russo, a junior at Hoover High School in Fresno and the president of Hoover’s GSA, leading a queer student group has enabled them to help younger students make connections and build relationships with other LGBTQ+ students. They also say they’ve observed a noticeable difference in the behavior of members after they join the group: “They went from coming to school and sitting on their own in the mornings to having this huge group spanning three different tables by the cafeterias. They've gone from not wanting to come to school to excited every day.”
Russo’s GSA discusses politics and what’s going on in the community and the country a little more than Medina’s, but both groups work to address bullying and the overall treatment of LGBTQ+ teens in school, where some still feel emboldened to express homophobic and anti-trans beliefs. Russo says they hope GSAs can continue to thrive, educate, and spread awareness so “we don't go back to a point where we have to start all over again and fight for our rights all over again, because we just got them.”
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