Iowa Is a Big Step for the Midwest -- Maybe

When she was in her early teens, she thought the only way to escape scorching ridicule was to kill herself.

"I'm shaking as I think of this," she said, rubbing her arms as her classmates listened. "I knew I couldn't change who I was, and I knew that no one wanted to accept me."

Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath before continuing.

"But then I realized I was too afraid to commit suicide," she said, shrugging her shoulders as she fought tears. "I couldn't even get that right. I couldn't use the one escape available to me."

Three years later, she is no longer afraid to be who she was meant to be.

"This group saved me," she said, managing a soft smile, which immediately was returned by the dozens of students around her. "I'm alive because I found them and they found me."

During my visit Tuesday with the Gay-Straight Alliance at Cleveland's John Marshall High School, I couldn't help but think of those who insist that homosexuality is unnatural and somehow "fixable."

If ever there were a group who wouldn't have chosen to be terrorized and rejected, it's these kids. One after another, they told stories about being harassed, sometimes threatened. They described parents who hate them and siblings who are ashamed of them.

One 16-year-old girl said her family rejected her, and a boy yelled out, "You've got family here." When another 16-year-old girl said her elder sister told her that she is going to hell, a girl sitting across the room jumped in to reassure her.

"I'm straight, and I'm a Christian," she said. "I carry a Bible in my purse. Half of the people here are my best friends."

Principal Rhonda Saegert invited me to learn more about her school. My visit dovetailed with the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling last Friday, which legalized gay marriage.

Most GSA students didn't know about the Iowa ruling. The news triggered audible gasps and a rolling wave of whispers:

"Married. … Married? … Married."

"They're in the Midwest," I told them as their heads slowly nodded.

"They're just like us."

Well, sort of.

Iowa isn't Ohio, no matter how many confuse us on the coasts. (Must be all those vowels and flights over our mutual fields of corn.) As a state, we're more conservative, and too many here think limiting marriage to heterosexuals is the only thing standing between us and the end of civilization.

David Masci, a senior research fellow at The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, said supporters of gay marriage have reason to be "very heartened" by the Iowa Supreme Court's decision: "It's a major step in mainstreaming gay marriage. But I don't think we should overinflate the significance."

Still, the news from Iowa makes me hopeful about our patch of the Midwest, too. Just last Monday, a wildly diverse group of 75 people traveled through a spring snowstorm to gather in the lobby of the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland and join singer Tom Goss in making a music video celebrating love in all its couplings.

During rehearsal, Earl Pike, the director of the task force, walked over to where I was sitting and leaned down on one knee.

"I don't know what it is," he said, "but the older I get the more easily I get emotional at moments like this." When I suggested that at our age we've known enough loss to know how precious any love is, he nodded.

I warned the GSA students that some readers would say that the last thing these kids need is an organization that supports their "lifestyle."

They were quick to respond.

"The last thing we need are feelings of loneliness," one girl said.

"The last thing we need is to lose our second family," one of the boys said.

"Our only family," another boy said.

Then the girl who once considered suicide spoke up.

"It's not this group that's going to hurt us," she said softly. "But those kind of judgments could kill us."

She sat up straighter and amended her observation.

"Not me, though," she said. "They won't kill this person. I am happy to be alive."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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