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Outspoken
Gay teenager works to change negative attitudes
Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll
Kate Mabe says that many of her peers don’t realize that they’re being hurtful.
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Published: November 14, 2008
One day, out of curiosity and frustration, Kate Mabe counted the number of gay slurs she overheard as she walked down the hallways of her high school. In a minute and a half, she said, she heard 35, including "That's so gay" and the terms fag and dyke.
Kate, 16, is openly gay and an activist. The pain that the casual insults inflict is hard to describe, she said. "It just hurts."
A recent study done by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, known as GLSEN, shows that in the past year, nine out of 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students experienced verbal harassment at school. One of five endured physical assaults. GLSEN has developed a new ad campaign for television, radio and print called "ThinkB4YouSpeak." Ads with actress/singer Hilary Duff, comedian Wanda Sykes and others target the use of insulting language, especially the phrase "That's so gay," which has become slang for something stupid.
As of last week, according to the campaign's Web site, www.thinkb4youspeak.com, more than 175,000 sites contained the phrase "That's so gay."
Kate recognizes that teens use the slur without thinking. After training she received as a part of GLSEN's Jump-Start Leadership Team, a group of more than 50 young people from across the country, she knows that many of the teens who use such phrases don't have anyone who is gay in their lives and don't think how hurtful such phrases can be.
Julie Cunningham, a school counselor at Reynolds High School, said that students don't really stop and think about the implications of what they say in social settings. "They're not deliberately speaking to insult or condemn people around them. They're just kind of throwing out the common vernacular among adolescents." But even if it's not deliberate, it can hurt, she said.
Students who are taunted or made to feel different feel a sense of rejection and a sense of isolation, Cunningham said. "I think there is one big difference when you are talking about a student who is homosexual in that there can be such condemnation because there's a lack of understanding. Not many teenagers have stopped to examine their own feelings about it."
When Kate first revealed her sexual preference, she dealt with her parents' shock and the taunts and casual insults of classmates. Eventually, her parents came around, and she changed schools. Now, she works to teach people that gay people "are normal," she said. "We're just like you."
Kate, who lives in Pfafftown, grew up being taught to care for everyone equally. Her parents had gay friends, she said. But the thought that someone in their family might be gay was not talked about.
"You never think about it, being in a relationship with somebody gay if you're not," Kate's mother, Neena Mabe, said. "If you have a relationship, you learn that gay people are just like us. It should be a non-issue." But it took some education and some soul-searching to arrive at that conclusion.
She had always told herself that gay people were no different from straight people, she said. "But when I was faced with a child who was gay, I had to question, ‘Do I really mean what I say?'"
"It's a different story when it comes and sits down at your dining-room table every night," she said.
Kate knew early on that she was different. When girls started talking about boys, she held back. She finally realized why, she said, when she was 12 or 13. She struggled with her faith and stopped going to church.
"It had a huge impact on my mental health," she said. She finally told her mother she was bisexual, although she knew that she was gay, in an attempt to soften the blow. "She absolutely went ballistic," Kate said. "She refused to talk about it for months and months. It's so hard for a parent to find out a child is gay when they don't think it's necessarily right."
She knew that her mother was grieving over the future that she envisioned for her only daughter -- a home of her own with a husband and children. Kate didn't know that her mother had thrown herself into research, trying to understand.
One day at home, Kate, her mother and a friend were outside together. When the friend stepped inside, Kate's mother stopped her. She asked for clarification about Kate's sexuality, and Kate told her she was gay.
"I walked back in the house -- my best friend was on the couch -- and I said, ‘I'm out.'"
"You're leaving?" the friend asked. "No, I'm out," Kate replied.
Her mother came to her a few months later and handed her a flyer on a session on healthy relationships that Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG) was having.
"Do you want to go to this?" her mother asked. Kate replied, "What? We're talking about this now?"
Once she realized that her mother had been working to accept her sexuality, Kate helped by referring her to books and Web sites. "It's how she processes things," she said.
Her mother struggled more than her father did, she said.
"My mom had trouble accepting; he had trouble understanding." He said something like ‘I don't care if you like this kind of guy or that kind of guy." She answered him: "Do you know what the term ‘gay' means? No guy." He answered with silence. For a long time, they didn't talk about it. But he eventually came around to support her.
In middle school, Kate became infatuated with a girl who seemed to return her feelings. Then the girl got scared, Kate said.
"She just told her friends some really nasty stuff about me. It sparked some really bad rumors." The rumors followed her to high school. But with the love and acceptance of her family behind her, Kate became more open about her sexuality. She became involved in PFLAG and wore shirts with such slogans as "Gay? Fine by me."
"People would make comments about it and be so rude," she said. One day, a teacher asked her in front of the whole class, "Are you gay?"
"Yep," she replied with a look that discouraged further questions.
Cunningham said, "Obviously, that's not an acceptable question, really, for any of us in education to ask someone outright because it should not have any effect on how we teach or how we counsel or how we try to serve the students' needs in general."
Kate got sick of the gay jokes, the slurs, the lack of understanding. She changed schools. Stan Huck, the director of guidance at Mount Tabor High School, which Kate now attends, said that the school works hard to get its students not to behave disrespectfully and to shield students who would be taunted by slurs.
"A lot of the teachers are very sensitive to those issues and to helping students to be shielded from those remarks." But, he said, "I don't believe that everybody does an equal job."
Kate said she still hears hurtful remarks. "The thing that bothers me most is they say I flaunt it," she said.
When one boy asked her, "Where's my straight-pride parade?", she replied to him: "When you walk down the hallway holding your girlfriend's hand.
"Straight people don't even have to think about it."
Speaking out comes naturally to her now, and she works with several organizations dedicated to gay issues. She is comfortable with her sexuality and has resolved her issues of faith.
"I believe God made me gay because he thought that I could handle what came to me, and I would be one of the movers and shakers who would change everything."
Her mother, who keeps PFLAG brochures on her desk at work at Carolina Logistics Services, beamed as she listened to her daughter talk.
"She's very strong," her mother said. "She's got a view of social justice she can only get first hand."
■ Janice Gaston can be reached at 727-7364 or at jgaston@wsjournal.com.
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