Danny Hernandez Guest Blog: The Importance of GLBT Resource Centers

This is a guest blog by Danny Hernandez, a long-time community organizer and advocate who's championed neighborhood, alternative transportation, water and university area issues. He currently is serving his third elected term on the flood control board (AMAFCA), as UNM graduate student government council chairman and Director of the Albuquerque Pride Parade.

This past weekend I had the privilege to be invited to a northern New Mexico high school gay-straight alliance (GSA) training seminar. I say “privileged” because I’m neither a queer kid trying to figure things out nor a high school faculty member GSA sponsor looking for better ways to serve the kids at my school.

At this training, I felt the way many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth feel in our hetero-normative society: not quite belonging. It was a slightly uncomfortable feeling, but not for being around LGBT folks. It was because I didn’t really earn my stripes, so to speak. Most of what I know about being queer, as the GLBT kids like to call themselves nowadays, comes from second hand, third hand or book knowledge.

In other words, I never had paid my dues by coming out to my parents, family and friends. Unlike queer youth in our society, what I felt was a friendly uncomfortable feeling -- not an I could be risking my life by exposing who I am to strangers kind of uncomfortable feeling, the certainty that I will be bullied in school kind of uncomfortable feeling or the risk of being kicked to the street by my parents if I came out uncomfortable feeling. Although I’ve experienced racial discrimination and even hatred, I’ve never experienced the kinds of discrimination and hatred members of the LGBT community feel -- some even from their own family members.

The more I think about it the more I realize that these are brave kids!

High school GSAs are necessary to help kids who question their gender identity figure out who they really are, to get the resources they need to feel more comfortable in their own skins and to deal with the anti-queer bullying that takes place in schools.

In my mind, regional LGBT resource centers are high school GSAs writ large.

Since not every high school or even every school district in New Mexico has a GSA, a GLBT resource center in the vicinity can go a long way toward serving the needs of queer youth.

Young people aren’t the only ones in the LGBT community who need resources. People who live outside of mainstream (read “accepted”) society are often at risk and need a little extra support.

The LGBT community has special health, mental health and social support needs. AIDS education is the first thing to come to mind, but there’s a strong need for peer-to-peer support as well. LGBT teens are twice as likely to commit suicide as teens who identify themselves as being heterosexual. I haven’t seen the data, but I suspect there are similar numbers for adults.

People begin to question at every age. College students often come out after the pressures to conform are relieved post high school and post parental control. Most of us know of moms or dads who, after raising a family, decided to be honest with themselves and come out to those families. If the theories surrounding the Kinsey Scale and other sexuality spectrums are correct, there are many people still in the closet.

Not all adults are accepting of diversity, especially the different expressions of gender and of sexual orientation. Bullying members of the LGBT community doesn’t end at adolescence. A GLBT resource center could be a place that helps educate the community at large, family members or even clueless, but friendly, allies like me.

Join Us Thursday: This coming Thursday evening Angie Poss and I have organized a fund and awareness raiser at Exhale Bar and Grill Nightclub to support NM GLBT Centers, Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission it is to get GLBT centers built throughout New Mexico. The variety show-style event will showcase drag kings and queens, dancers and singers. Many elected officials (more if the special legislative session has ended) and candidates for office will be in attendance. Please tell your friends!

For more information go to the event page on Facebook.

This is a guest blog by Danny Hernandez. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the page.