Georgia Religious Conservatism

[strandinthewind]

Gay school club splits Cleveland

> By ALAN SVERDLIK
For the Journal-Constitution
> Published on: 02/24/05

CLEVELAND — In a North Georgia community that values politeness next to godliness, what would incite students at the lone high school to jeer a 16-year-old classmate as she walked down the auditorium aisle, rose in hand, during the annual Valentine's Day assembly?

In the words of senior Stephen Milhollin, Kerry Pacer did something "unheard of in White County": She founded a club for gay students and their allies.

The possibility that the Gay-Straight Alliance soon will be meeting at White County High School has swept this town of two traffic lights into a state of anxiety as it waits for the controversy to be resolved at tonight's school board meeting, if it's resolved at all.

The undercurrent in the debate is more Old South vs. New than straight vs. gay. As newcomers have flocked to the Georgia mountains, they have brought with them attitudes and assumptions at odds with Appalachia's deep-seated conservatism. An uneasy détente usually prevails, but sometimes the volatile mix of ideas combusts.

"You say the word 'gay' around here and people run and hide," said Cheryl Fister, a 42-year-old transplant from Ohio who arrived seven years ago with her husband and daughter. "We were all put on earth by a loving God. If you're with somebody you truly love, even if they're of the same sex, you must be doing the right thing."

A town divided

A native son doesn't see things that way. "If these kids feel that being gay is completely normal, then why are they putting their sexuality on parade?" asked Kenneth Monroe, 56, a feed supplier who traces his family's roots here to the early 1800s. "It's not the kind of thing that goes over well in the mountains."

The founding of the GSA seemed like a done deal earlier this month when a group of students led by Kerry, her mother and a member of a homosexual rights advocacy group approached the school administration. Paul Shaw, the school superintendent, told them the GSA might be formed as long as it met the criteria for all extracurricular clubs.

"The administration is opposed to this action, but the Equal Access Act requires that students be allowed to form a club if there are other noncurricular clubs operating at the school," Shaw said in an e-mail to the school faculty. "It has been suggested that I spend tax dollars to fight the law. I do not believe I need to spend tax dollars on a case that cannot be won."

As word spread, the atmosphere in Cleveland, birthplace of the Cabbage Patch dolls, became charged. Calls jammed phone lines at the school's office. Letters to the editor of the local weekly teemed with opposition to the club. And beyond the booing of Kerry, her younger sister Lindsay was told to change when she wore a shirt to school that the administration "considered inflammatory," according to Savannah Pacer, the girls' mother. The shirt displayed the word "hate" with a diagonal line through it.

Worried about what was coming from the pulpit, Shaw visited last week's meeting of a local ministerial association to "ask us to tone down the rhetoric," said the Rev. Phil Hoyt, a Methodist pastor.

Amid the furor, the students provided the school with a list of the club's six members, bylaws and the name of a faculty adviser, a ninth-grade English teacher. The GSA has begun to meet informally, with Kerry as president, but the high school "is trying to thwart its formation by stalling" on formal approval, said Beth Littrell, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Georgia chapter, which is advising the GSA. "These kids have done everything that every club" at the 1,000-student school has "done to get officially sanctioned."

Despite the superintendent's advice, the White County Board of Education might bow to community pressure and ban the GSA, although a legal challenge from the ACLU would likely.

Having moved to White County a decade ago, the Pacers, who have lived in several other states, are among the newcomers. Savannah Pacer, a native of New Jersey, is active in Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, an organization that counsels the five GSA clubs already existing in Georgia schools.

The incident in the auditorium illustrates how passions have filtered down from adults to kids. Clutching a rose given to her by a female classmate, Kerry, an openly gay junior, joined a procession at the Sweetheart Assembly the Friday before Valentine's Day. Boos filled the air as Kerry followed in step.

"Everyone at school is like 'It's against God. It's against God,' " Kerry said. "They tell me God is watching me, but who is watching them?"

Cultural change

Kerry said Principal Bryan Dorsey had made it clear "he wouldn't make us jump through hoops to get started, but that's basically what he's done." Dorsey has not returned recent phone calls seeking comment. He did respond once, right after news of the club spread, saying he "would not tolerate threats, intimidation or bullying."

Kerry's face is well known in Cleveland, although it's usually shaded by the bill of the purple cap she wears to work at a popular sandwich shop. She was an object in motion Sunday morning, filling orders for the after-church crowd.

A brisk walk from the shop is the Cleveland United Methodist Church, where Hoyt delivers the 11 a.m. sermon. A New Yorker by birth, Hoyt has spent the past 20 years ministering to North Georgia congregations. All the communities he's familiar with are in the grip of cultural change, he said, including White County. "A lot of folks who are moving in have different life experiences, different ideologies," he said. He regards the controversy around the GSA essentially a "theological problem."

"Part and parcel of a lot of these mountain towns is the centrality of religion," he said. "They're already sensitive to change, and here comes a challenge to their moral convictions."

At the Kountry Kupboard, up the highway from the church, the back section is considered the locus of Cleveland's small talk and gossip. Fister, a cashier, looked over her shoulder in mock fear as she talked about "coming to the Bible Belt."

"We wanted to get away from the grime and the noise and the crime," she explained. "We wanted somewhere we could live off the land and purify our souls."

But Fister conceded she cordons herself off from local people when controversy flares because her views conflict so much with theirs. "When the talk turns to gays, it eventually turns to religion," she said. "That's when I kind of bow out."

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/0205/24gsa.html