Publication Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Facing 'tough choices'
Facing 'tough choices'
(February 11, 2004) PTA Council sex talk includes local gay-straight alliance students
by Rachel Metz
Tonight kids will educate parents about difficult life issues when students from local high schools' gay-straight alliances share their stories and experiences.
Eight students from gay-straight alliances at Palo Alto, Gunn and Menlo-Atherton high schools are slated to lead a panel discussion as part of the Palo Alto PTA Council's "Tough Choices; Talking To Your Child About Difficult Issues" seminar in the JLS cafetorium.
For Gunn senior Anna Yanushkevich, co-president of the school's gay-straight alliance club, the evening is a good chance for students to expose parents to different types of lifestyles. Having contact with non-straight members of the panel can also prevent people from perpetuating homophobia by witnessing that queer people aren't just on television, she said.
"It's not a mental disease; we're normal. So yeah, I think it's mostly about exposure," she said.
The discussion is one of four break-out sessions on sex -- the evening's theme. From 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. a group of experts, including health specialist Donnovan Yisrael Somera and co-founder of local parents' group Goodparents, Inc. Joe Connolly, will speak about "How to Talk to Your Child About Sexual Responsibility." After that, parents will fan out into smaller groups to discuss how issues like drugs, alcohol and body image relate to sexuality.
Including the students in the evening is a way of validating gay-straight alliances as legitimate organizations at any school and district, PTA Council representative Kelly Calica said.
"And also in a way ... to have it recognized within the community at large and by the administration and staff," she said.
Students will talk about their issues, what their lives are like and how parents can help them, she said.
Initially, the students' talk was going to be physically separated from the other break-out sessions to give them some semblance of privacy, but they wanted to be involved with everything, event organizer Laura Baldschun said.
"They're really excited about being a part of the talk," she said.
Calica came up with the idea for the sexual orientation panel. The plan emerged, in part, from Calica's personal experience. Her brother was gay, although he never really came out, and died of AIDS in 1991, Calica said.
He was lucky because he had a great network of friends, but not all kids have that, Calica said. She wondered who she would turn to if she was young and questioning.
Then she learned Palo Alto and Gunn high schools have gay-straight alliances. She got in touch with Outlet, a Mountain View-based program for queer and questioning youth, and Outlet program coordinator Eileen Ross helped find kids to serve on the panel.
"It's always helpful to be educating and communicating somehow to the public. The kids that come out and talk are just amazing to me because it takes a lot of courage," Ross said.
Calica isn't sure if the break-out session will be an eye-opener for parents, but thinks it goes along with one of the district's eight focus goals for 2001-2004 -- nurturing the whole child.
"When the school district talks about nurturing the whole child, in my mind the whole child means the whole population," she said.
Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com
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