By Lincoln Anderson
Every few minutes, another student came walking down Astor Pl., a United Federation of Teachers union member at his or her arm, providing security. The students were gay, some, transgendered, cross-dressed as women. As each passed a pen of police barricades where supporters were rallying and blowing bubbles, a joyous cheer rose up, helping propel the students to the door. “God Loves You” read a sign in the crowd.
Across Astor Pl., a group of tough-looking Christian fundamentalists wearing black T-shirts with antigay slogans shouted detractions against the school. “Repent Homo, Trust Jesus,” read the back of one man’s shirt. Nearby, surrounded by a pack of reporters and cameras, local politicians were making speeches in support of the students.
It was the first day of classes at Harvey Milk High School.
Over the summer, the school became a lighting rod after increased city funding allocated this year turned a small program of 71 students run by the Hetrick Martin Institute into a full school, this year with 100 students, next year planned to have 170 students. The Reverend Ruben Diaz and a rightwing Florida group filed suit, saying black and Latino students in the public school system would be deprived as a result of funds being directed to Harvey Milk High School.
At the Monday morning press conference, a Hetrick Martin alumnus told how being able to go there pulled him out of a deepening depression caused by being uncomfortable at his former school, which had led him to be frequently absent.
“If not for the Harvey Milk School, I’m sure I’d be dead or flipping burgers somewhere,” he said.
Local politicians and officials who spoke noted that, according to studies, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth face higher dropout and suicide rates — in each case, 30 percent higher than heterosexual students. An expansion of a 17-year-old program, the school is specifically designed to provide a refuge for the “most at-risk” L.G.B.T. youth, those who have had the most difficulty in school or at home, from bullying and abuse.
“Hetrick Martin Institute has a record of success,” said Council Speaker Gifford Miller. “We have to acknowledge that in our society there still exists enough hate and bigotry that this is needed to make schools safe.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the U.F.T., said, “It’s rare that the union needs to escort students into school on the first day.” She compared it to scenes of the integration of schools in the South in the 1960s.
Said Representative Jerrold Nadler, “Every student is entitled to dream of education free of discrimination, free of harassment, free of hate-filled curses like those from the people across the street.”
That Harvey Milk High School is needed “represents a failure of society,” Nadler said. “In the meantime, we must have a refuge and a sanctuary — Otherwise we will have lives on our conscience.”
Also lending support were State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Scott Stringer, State Senators Tom Duane and Liz Krueger and City Councilmember Christine Quinn.
The school supporters were a diverse group.
“We’re just New Yorkers who support the school,” said Jon Winkleman, 36, a waiter at a Midtown restaurant who is gay. “I was pretty lucky — I was slammed against a locker, called a fag. That’s nothing compared with what a lot of these kids have gone through.”
Holding a rally sign with rainbow-colored lettering, Judy Biener, 39, who is straight, said, “I’m a high school teacher. I feel it’s more important to be here than to even meet my students. I can meet my students tomorrow.”
On the other side, holding an “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve” banner, Ruben Israel, 43, a burly construction worker, flew in from L.A. for the counter-protest.
“Because it’s wrong,” he said, asked why he’d come. “It goes against God’s nature. So as Christians we come out here to warn against it…. Two male ends — you get no electricity. You need male and female…. In San Francisco, you have lesbians beating up each other. It’s part of nature. Some people are a little more aggressive and they go after them.”
However, Israel said he was also recently in Florida to support the death penalty for a man who killed an abortion doctor, because even though Israel is against abortion, he’s against murder.
Carmen Cruz, a 13th St. resident, who said she’d seen posters for the rally and came by to see for herself, was a bit incredulous, noting it was the fundamentalists who were, in a sense, invading the L.G.B.T. community’s turf.
“I mean this is the Village. This is where they are,” she said. “This is where they belong. This [the fundamentalists] is more odd than that [the gay high school].”
Cruz said her daughter had been trying to get into the Harvey Milk High School, because “She was raped by a few guys and now she’s bi.”
Singing “God Bless America” and carrying antigay signs, eight members of the Reverend Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., protested outside the Department of Education headquarters in the Tweed Courthouse.
The five women and three men began their demonstration shortly before 8 a.m. at the Harvey Milk High School. An hour later, they turned up at the Tweed Courthouse.
“It’s a fag high school,” Phelps told a reporter, referring to the Harvey Milk School. “It’s to protect little fags, an absolute fraud on the nation and on this town.” His followers carried signs saying, “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates America,” some with obscene drawings.
Phelps said his group would remain in New York to appear later on Monday on Sirius Radio, a radio Web station that Phelps described as part of a “fag network.” The Westboro Baptist group mounts frequent protest against gay-related events in New York and elsewhere and has even appeared at funerals of people who have died of AIDS.
According to Richard Haymes, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, the 170 students who will be at Harvey Milk High School next year are about 1.7 percent of gay and lesbian youth in city schools.
“They don’t learn how to be gay or study gay math; they’re there because they need a safe environment to learn,” Haymes said.
Similarly, Bill Salzman, the new principal of Harvey Milk High School, said despite the raucous start, it was time to get down to work. “We’re doing business as usual here,” he said, speaking later on Monday afternoon. “What we’re doing is preparing the students for Regents and Achievement tests in each and every class.”
With reporting by Albert Amateau
