Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Inc. et al v. Camdenton R-III School District et al

Filing 60

REPLY SUGGESTIONS to motion re 6 MOTION for preliminary injunction , 33 MOTION to dismiss case (Surreply Suggestions) filed by David A. Cortman on behalf of Amicus Alliance Defense Fund. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit 1 Part 1, # 2 Exhibit 1 Part 2, # 3 Exhibit 1 Part 3, # 4 Exhibit 1 Part 4)(Related document(s) 6 , 33 ) (Cortman, David)

(Ç 2000 by Amy Sonnie, Contributors retain copyright to their individual works, All rights

reserved,
Manufactured in the United States of America,
Printed on acid-free paper,

This trade paperback original is published by Alyson Publications,

P,O, Box 4371, Los Angeles, CA 90078-4371.
Distribution in the United Kingdom by Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd.,
Unit 3 Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green,

London N22 6TZ England.

First edition: October 2000

0001 020304 1098 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

.

ISBN: 1-55583-558-9

Credits
· "America's on Sale!" by Alix Lindsey Olson first appeared in Only the Starving Favor
Peace, Feed the Fire Press, Sept. 1999,
· "Beginning Revolutions" by Colleen Donovan appeared in Capitol Q News, May 1997
and Seatte Gay News, May 1997.

· "Dancing in the Shadows" by Siobhan Brooks first appeared in Trikone magazine, Vol.
13, No.3, July 1998.

· "exorcisms" by sts first appeared in the 'zine nightmare girl #2, Oct. 1996,

· "grown-up" by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán first appeared in Vital Signs, Vol. 1, Issue 2,
1998.

April

· "illustrations" by sts first appeared in the 'zine Way Down Low, 1998.
· Impossible Body has appeared in The Journal of Lesbian Studies and The Lesbian

Polyamory Reader, ed, Marcia Munson and Judith P. Stelboum, Haworth Press, 1999.
· "Line" by Sherisse Alvarez first appeared in Waterways Chapbooks, 1997.
o "This is to me.,," by Jason Roe first appeared in the 'zine Kill the Robot #6, 1995.

o "was ich bin" by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán first appeared in Expressions, Jan, 1998.
· "Why Life?" by Cecilia Isaacs-Blundin first appeared in Sojourner: The Women's
Forum, Oct. 1997,
o Cover design by B, Zinda.

Ex. 1 - 17

RNI"L1;lI'I,,i.IIG.ilNf.;;¡;l

many who is legion who blends in who sticks out who
speaks out bcuz I am often denied community i have no home
save this body n even that is under attack

grown-up
for Sapphire, who wrote me a permission slip

as a little boy growing up, i used ta sit in the bathtub, take the
little spikey thing u put soap on, n lay on it, press my little prepubescent dick on it hard, impale myself, sometimes until i bled.

then i'd take it, bloodied n bruised, n tuck it between my legs,
standing in front of the mirror, pushing the fat that wuz my chest
together, seeing what it would b like ta have cleavage, thinking

perhaps i could escape my fate by becoming a woman, i wondered what it'd b like ta have a pussy, what it would b like ta cut

it off, ta simply not have it around no more.
as a little boy grow-

ing up, i starved myself. i remember doing over fours hours of
exercise each day, eating only watermelon n starkist tuna from a

can for weeks on end, trying ta puke but not being able ta stom-

ach the convulsions, being depressed/ashamed whenever we
had ta go shopping for school clothes, clothes that would not fit.

i hated the month of august for this very reason.

as a little boy
growing up, i spent my summers in the sun, laying out all day, trying to b darker, wanting ta b whiter. i spent hours in the bathroom,

trying ta wash away my body, my skin color, my sex, contemplat-

ing suicide, homicide, genocide, that which i could bring about,
that which others were capable of.

as a little boy growing up,
7

Ex. 1 - 18

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Tug of War Grip, etching, 38 x 35.5 cm, 1999

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A Process of Change, etching, 38 x 35.5 cm, 1999

103

Ex. 1 - 19

i;i.iSn=i,II.,;.t.III
Dancing in the Shadows, an interview
MinaI is a young queer from India and has been a sex worker in

the SIM scene for a year and a half. He has taken a break from sex
work and lives in San Francisco. In this interview MinaI talks about

his journey into sex work as a way of uplifting his self-esteem
around body-image issues, his feeling of empowerment doing sex

work in drag, his experience coming to the United States from
India, and being queer while coming to terms with identifying as

being transgender.

Siobhan Brooks: How did your parents accept the fact that
you're gay?
Minai: I told them I was gay and giving up religion at the same
time, but they were most upset that I was giving up religion. They
thought that without religion I would be lost and never come back

to the "path of righteousness." But they were alright. i was living

at home then, and they were accepting. The drag upset them a
lot, more than the gay stuff. They were hoping that i would have
an arranged marriage, and i told them if they could find me a hus-

band, I'd be willing to settle down. (Laughs)
S: Are you in school?

M: I just finished law school and took the bar, and when I find
out my results I'LL look for a nonprofit job. I know I don't want to
be a lawyer.

S: How did you get into sex work?

171

Ex. 1 - 20

revolutionary 11'4$
M: Well, before I get into that I have to tell you how I got into
81M generally, since I used to be a complete vanilla bottom. I'm
gay, by the way; I'm exploring being transgendered, and I've been

doing drag for about ten years, on and off. Drag was never a sexual thing for me, I've always had sex "as a guy." Around March of

last year a friend asked me about rape fantasies-she wanted to
know what my fantasies were. I realized I hadn't been fantasizing

at alL. When I did start thinking about it, my fantasies were all
about whipping. I started reading up on 81M, and it was making
me interested in sex for the first time. Before, I never knew what

the big deal was with sex. I put a personal ad in the paper to do
scenes with different people, and I realized that for what I was
doing, I could be getting good money. I had a lot of friends in the
for
sex industry who were asking me, "Why aren't you charging
what you're doing?"

80 that summer I did it for free and learned what I needed to
do, and by November I started putting out ads in the Bay Area
Reporter. My ads were sort of genderfuck: my picture was taken

from the neck down in a corset, fishnets and garter belt. It was
a dom-type look. I realized there weren't that many guys into
doing 81M professionally, and the ones that were were really
butch-so I stood out a lot. It was great. It was the first time I had
really good sex, I was getting paid for it, and I felt totally in con-

trol. It was good, but I was wondering how many people I was
losing by advertising as a fem dom. I started putting ads online
without the fem look and got a lot more response, so I switched
to just having a nude picture in the paper as opposed to a girlish

one. The responses were more than I could handle, which is a
good thing. That's how I got into sex work, as a way of exploring
my sexuality.

172

I

i

Ex. 1 - 21

revolutionary

m;;n;

about feeling unsafe because these are issues that-stereotypi-

cally-women usually worry about in sex work and life in general.
How has your self-image improved from doing sex work?

M: I feel a lot more confident and secure with myself. I think
that has a lot to do with 81M and coming into my own power.

176

Ex. 1 - 22

II

II

Ex. 1 - 23

Copyright (Ç1995 by Kurt Chandler. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by arrangement with Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Printed on acid-free paper,
This trade paperback is published by Alyson Publications Inc"

P.O. Box 4371, Los Angeles. California 90078-4371.

First published by Times Books. a division of Random House Inc" in 1995
First Alyson edition: April 1997

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 1-55583.417-5
(Previously published with ISBN 0.8129.2380.4 by Times Books,)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chandler, Kurt.
Passages of pride: true stories of lesbian and gay teenagers I Kurt Chandler.
Includes index.

1. Gay youth-United States-Psychology-Juvenile literature, 2, Gay youthUnited States-Social conditions-Juvenile lierature. 3. Lesbian youth-United

States-Psychology-Juvenile lierature. 4. Lesbian youth-United States-Social
conditions-Juvenile literature, 5. Coming out (Sexual orientation)-United StatesJuvenile literature. i. Title.
HQ76.26.C43 1995

305.2'35'08664-dc20 95-6931
Cover design by Bruce Zinda.

Ex. 1 - 24

AWARENESS Â 4

"Immediately, I noticed my interest level was much higher than
with the straight magazines."
Even in grade school, Derek's affectional "pull" was not toward the
opposite sex. His friendships with girls were never sensuaL. There

were none of the prepubescent games of "doctor," or the "I'll show
you mine if you show me yours" explorations typical of young boys
and girls. Instead, Derek's "experimentations," as he calls them, were
with other boys. Throughout his childhood, from age five on, Derek
would sneak off with a frknd into someone's basement or the woods
along the back alley, where they would take off their pants and play
with each other, usually fondling each other's genitals. It became habituaL.

"At that time, I didn't quite have a name for it," says Derek. "It was

something that I liked doing, that felt good, that I wanted to do as
often as I could. The other kids always recognized it as being something bad and dirty. And all I wanted to know was, When can we do it
again?"

, By the time he was fourteen, he began to put two and two together. Something clicked. Although he only had a murky sense of
what it meant to be "gay," the label seemed to fit him.
"I was just thinking it through, analyzing the situation to death, asking myself, What does this mean? And I realized I might be gay," Derek

says. "Once identifying that, I came to the conclusion that these were
the cards I was dealt. I knew people didn't approve of it, so I decided
to keep it to myself rather than open myself up to ridicule."
Though he felt sure he knew himself, he revealed nothing about his
sexual identity to his mother or father. Until the day he was caught.

Derek grew up in St. Paul, in a large African-American family. He was

the baby of the family, the last of six children-four boys and two
girls-raised by Donald and Vernita Johnson. Theirs was a "blended"

family; each parent had two children from a previous marriage.
A month before Derek was born, the Johnsons moved into a threebedroom rambler in a multiracial, solidly working-class neighbor-

i

Ex. 1 - 25

Dan I: A Deer in Headlights .. 33

guys-and I wasn't some twisted pervert living in the middle of
nowhere who was going to be condemned to hell."
The calls also symbolized a kick at the walls of his closet. He did
little to conceal the calls from his parents. So when the first monthly
phone bil arrived after he began making the calls, it included hundreds of dollars in charges to 900 numbers around the country. His
calls, Dan says, purposely provided his parents with "smoking gun" ev-

idence of his homosexuality and quickly drew attention to his plea for
help.
"They were mad that I had charged all these calls, and they were
concerned," he says. "My mom especially wanted to know why."
So Dan tried to explain: "I think I might be gay," he told them, "but
I'm not really sure. I want to find out."
"Well, what do you want us to do?" asked his mother.
"I need a book," he said. "I'd just like to read something."
"Fine, we can do something about that," said his father.
"And that's all I really wanted," says Dan, looking back. "But that's
all he didn't do. He completely ignored it." Weeks later, when Dan
asked his father about his promise of finding a book on homosexuality,
his father told him he hadn't gotten around to it and the subject was

dropped. The long-distance phone calls, too, were ignored. "If you
didn't talk about it long enough, it didn't happen," was the typical reaction by his parents, Dan explains.

N ear the end of summer, just before starting his sophomore year in
Twin Cities newspaper. Scanning
the classifieds, he came upon an ad for a "Man-2-Man" massage. Home
alone one day, he called the telephone number listed in the ad and set

high school, Dan picked up a weekly

up an appointment to meet a man namedTom. Tom offered to drive to

Zimmerman. So, over the phone, Dan directed him to a secluded road
in his subdivision. "Stop where the pavement ends," Dan told him.

A couple of nights later, Dan pulled the broken screen from his
bedroom window and slipped out of the house while his parents slept.
He hurried to the prearranged rendezvous spot, and there, in the dark

of night, he met Tom for the first time, man-to-man. In the back of
Tom's van, the two had sex.

Ex. 1 - 26

AWARENESS it 34
"He gave me a little shoulder rub and the next thing I knew his

hands were all over me," Dan remembers. "It wasn't a bad thing. I
didn't necessarily know it would turn into sex. But I kind of knew
what I was doing."

Dan continued the liaisons with Tom throughout the summer and
into the following school year, having sex-usually masturbation and

oral sex-with Tom in his van or his Minneapolis apartment. Dan
would leave his room just before midnight and return by dawn; his par-

ents never knew he was gone. Or sometimes on weekends, he would

tell his mother he was taking a long walk and disappear for hours with
Tom. Twice, Tom took him to a stretch along the Mississippi River in

St. Paul known as Bare Ass Beach, a wooded flats that for years had
been claimed by gay men as a private cruising spot. But Dan was uncomfortable with the place. He remembers men wandering silently
along the sandy trails along the river in the dark, searching for a companion, and then disappearing into the underbrush to have sex. It was
too ritualistic and secretive, Dan says, and seemed dangerous. Two
summers later, his misgivings were borne out when a gay man was shot
to death and another seriously wounded in the woods. near the beach.
Even though Tom was older, almost twice Dan's age, Dan felt unthreatened by him. Dan admits thatTom was a "troll" in every sense of
the word-an older, closeted gay man seeking sex with a man much

younger. But Dan says he was not intimidated by the discrepancy in
their ages. "He kind of had me in a corner in that he knew I didn't
have access to anything I wanted," says Dan. "But everything was consensual."

The encounters with Tom were "a mix of coercion and plain old
hormones," Dan acknowledges. But he knew no other way, he adds
defensively. He had no gay peers in school and no contact with the gay
community in the city. In his isolation, he was left to his own devices,
Dan says. Tom became a convenient way into the city and an

available,

albeit exploitative, link for Da~ as he established his homosexual identity.

"He wasn't exactly a friend," Dan says of his relationship with Tom.
"He wasn't exactly a lover. He wasn't exactly a role modeL. He wasn't

i
i
i

Ex. 1 - 27

Dan I: A Deer in Headlights'" 3S
exactly anything. What I got out of it was sex, and someone who made

me feel nice for once. Sex was a totally different way to feel good. It

was a very easy way to get away from the pain. I was young. He
brought me down to the city, where I wanted to be. And I was very
young."

By his junior year in high school, Dan's life had become an emotional
roller coaster. At home, his sexual orientation was ignored. He told
his parents of a weekend support group in Minneapolis for gay youth

that he had read about, but they were quick with excuses to keep him
from joining. "That's an hour's drive to get to Minneapolis," his father
told him. "I drive into the city every day. I don't want to do it on the
weekends, too."

In school, the harassment wore on, shaming him, turning him
numb inside. Gym class was especially intimidating. In the locker
room, Dan would-remove his glasses to avoid being accused of staring
at the naked bodies of other boys.

"I knew if my eyes lingered too long on somebody I was dead, becaùse I knew they'd never let me live it down," he says. "I looked at the
floor, I looked at the lockers, I looked at the ceiling tiles. I tried to be
as nonchalant about it as I could. But it was very humiliating, what I
was putting myself through."

Students, usually "the jocks and burnouts," says Dan, confronted
him at every turn-teasing him for the way he dressed or the way he

talked or the way he walked. He couldn't walk down the hallway
without being laughed at. During the Persian Gulf War, Dan wore a
black armband as a sign of protest. Immediately, he was labeled a

"commie pinko" and a "traitor." Dan decided to tryout for the track
team. With his long legs he might make a good sprinter, he thought.
But his enemies wasted no time in hounding him off the team. On the
first day of tryouts, they mockingly warned the other teammates to
stay away from "the faggot" in the shower. No one came to Dan's defense, not even the coaches. He quit after the first practice.
"I decided to do a little project for myself," says Dan. "I wanted to

Ex. 1 - 28

AWARENESS. 92
self or be a lesbian. I knew that I could not live the straight life and get
married to some guy. I had absolutely no attraction to boys, and the
thought of marrying one was terrifying. Everyone in my church was
getting married at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. My sister was getting married to a guy we'd grown up with."
While still in high school, she had an affair with a teacher. "She was

forty-four and had a daughter who was a year younger than me, who
went to my school. Needless to say, it was all very confusing, but exciting as well. The moment right after we kissed for the first time, I ran
to the mirror and looked at myself. I was ecstatic. I thought I would
look different. I said in a barely audible whisper, 'Im a lesbian.' About
six months later, we stopped being physically sexual, at my request. I

was racked with guilt feelings and knew that it was out of control. I
was terrified of someone finding out. . . .

"I decided during the end of my freshman year in college that I
would not kill myself, but that I would be a lesbian. The next step was

coming out to my family. But I didn't have to, because my mother
read my diary. I was finally having a relationship with a woman I'd
been trying to seduce for months, and I'd written about our lovemak-

ing in minute detaiL. My mother must have read it all because she
looked like a ghost when she approached me. She said, 'I finally know

who you really are.' But I was the same exact person she always knew
and loved, only happier, stronger. It broke my heart. I had been very

close to my mother, .her favorite. . . . Nothing between us has ever
been the same.

"It's been about seven years and my family stil won't have anything

to do with me, although my mother does call me about once a year

(she only lives twenty-five minutes away) to see if I am okay. She
won't hug or kiss me. It's really painfuL. I've let her go quite a bit since

it happened, but it stil hurts tremendously. My sister is the same, only
she won't talk to me at all, and won't take my phone calls. . . .
"I never apologized for being a lesbian and never denied it after that
night. And I'm thankful for that, for being strong enough at that point
to avoid that shame."

I
i
!

Ex. 1 - 29

II

ii

MARY L. GRAY
Cl

III

_i:

dJ

.

II
II

II

~

f

Ex. 1 - 30

Published by
Harrington Park Press, an imprint of

The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY

13904- 1580

t£ 1999 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved, No part of this work may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America,
Cover design by Monica L. Seifert.

The Librar)' of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as:
Gray, Mary L.
In your face: stories from the lives of queer youth / Mary L. Gray,
p. cm.

ISBN 0-7890-0076-8 (alk. paper).

i. Gay youth-United States, 2, Ilomosexuality-United States. i. Title,
HQ76,3,U5G7J 1999

30S.235-dc21

98-46426
CIP

ISBN 1-56023-887-9 (pbk.)

Ex. 1 - 31

58 111 Yòur Face: Stories fì011 the Lives of Queer Youth

calling me and seeing how I was doing, but they didn't call for about
two and a half weeks after I came out to my mom. I called them, and
they said, "Oh, we've been waiting to hear from you." I asked back,
"Well, why didn't you call?" And my mom said, "Oh, we've been so
busy." I moved out after that. I moved out with my friend and lived in
Los Gatos.

I'd already dropped out of high school by this point. I just needed
my space. I wasn't too motivated to do anything with my life, and so I
decided to move out. I had some money saved up, and I lived with my
friend's parents, while he was away at college. It was time for me just
to be by myself and hang out. And that's what I needed, I think. It was
less stressful for me 'cause I didn't have to deal with my parents. But I

didn't go about it in such a graceful way. I went about it in a very
destructive manner, which was something I regret now.

My relatives would flip if they knew I was gay. But the only family
I really consider myself having is my mom's. I've pretty much disowned my dad's family. I haven't talked to them in going on seven
years, except for a couple of ons and offs, you know, shouting

matches. My dad is really cool; my mom is stil kind of unhhhhhh. I
said to her a couple of days ago, "I'm going over to my girlfriend's."
She said, "Oh, whose house are you going to?" She does stuff like
that, and I said, "I'm going to Heidi's house." And she's, like, "Who's
Heidi?"

Todd Fay-Long

I don't remember exactly when I started coming out, but I joined
this youth group called Positive Images; it's the Sonoma County gay/
lesbian/bisexual youth group. I got a boyfriend instantly; he picked me
up right away, right when I joined the group. He was older; he was
twenty-five, I was sixteen. He was just really supportive of me. I went

with him to this gay prom in Sonoma County called the Rainbow
Prom in the middle of May. I had told my dad I was going to this high
school prom. The day after the gay prom, I called my mom and I came
out to her on the phone. And she was like, "I always knew. . . no big
deaL." Just like that, "No big deaL." She was very suppo1iive. And I
said to her, "But I can't tell Dad, you know. . . . I just can't tell him."
She agreed and said I shouldn't tell him.
I

Ex. 1 - 32