Audio Interview, Kitty Moran Wolfsong, January 28, 2013

EVELYN BAILEY: Today is Monday, January 28th, 2013.

And I'm sitting with Kitty Moran Wolfsong, who

was, in the early '90s, the person who

brought to life again the youth group of the Gay Alliance.

So Kitty, were you born in Rochester?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when--

or how, I should say-- did you become involved with the youth

group at the Alliance?

What were the precipitating factors that

catapulted you into that arena?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, I was in Social Work

School from 1990 to 1992.

And I was also in the early stages of coming out

as a lesbian during that time.

And in graduate school--

youth have always been my primary interest.

I've spent most of my adult working

years in or around schools.

My first masters was in education.

So when I was doing a lot of my graduate school work,

I was doing it on gay youth.

Because what else would one do when

one is coming out as a lesbian?

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: Makes sense.

KITTY WOLFSONG: And as I did some of my projects

in that area, I found out through research

that there currently was no youth group in Rochester.

I knew that there had been in previous years.

I didn't know very much about it.

But I knew that it had not been active for several years

at that point.

So I did some research in other cities.

I went to Syracuse and talked to the folks

that ran their youth group.

I went to Buffalo and talked to their folks.

And I had some ideas about what I wanted to do.

But there was no money for anybody

to be paying for it at that time.

And Chuck Collins and Linda Nichols

were interested in participating with me,

but they had a different vision than I did.

They didn't want gay to be in the title.

They didn't want to call it a gay youth group.

They wanted to call it Light House.

And they didn't want to house it in the Gay Alliance,

because they thought that would scare kids away.

And I thought that housing it in a church would scare kids away.

EVELYN BAILEY: Which is where they wanted to have it?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Right.

So for that first year--

that was in '93, basically, '92, '93, late '92, '93.

They did run it out of the downtown United Presbyterian

Church.

And much as I predicted, they had very few kids finding them.

So at the end of that first year,

Linda Nichols chose to no longer participate.

Sorry.

My daughter is coming.

I don't know if you want to stop that for a minute.

EVELYN BAILEY: So let me stop for a minute.

How did you connect with Chuck Cohns?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Chuck and I both went to the downtown United

Presbyterian Church.

And we had become quite good friends.

And we both were interested in youth.

And

I really liked Chuck a lot because I

felt that he was a really good role model for young people.

He was very-- well, he was very handsome.

But he was also just a man of integrity, and very--

just the way he--

everything about him, the way he carried himself--

I just felt that he would really be a great role

model for young people.

And indeed, that first year that we worked together

at the Gay Alliance, he was a great role model.

The kids really connected with him and really liked him a lot.

EVELYN BAILEY: So Linda left after the first year.

And the second year comes along.

And how did you convince Chuck to go to the Gay Alliance

and move out of--

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, partly, circumstance convinced him,

because we just weren't getting any kids out of the church.

And so he realized that it wasn't working.

And so he wanted something else to work.

And I had been doing a little bit

of leg work talking to Tanya.

Because I wasn't super involved in the actual youth

group that first year, I did a little bit of background work,

and I talked to Tanya.

And she was really interested in having us at the Gay Alliance.

So it was really Linda that was more adamant about not having

it out of the Gay Alliance and not calling it gay.

And I think partly that was her internalized homophobia.

And Chuck had a little bit less of that.

Chuck had a little bit of that going on, but not at the level

that Linda did.

So it wasn't that hard of a sell,

really, to convince him that this would be a better idea.

And once we started talking with Tanya and coming up with a plan

and deciding what we were going to do,

he got really enthusiastic about it.

He was very, very much on board by the time that we did it.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when did you have your meetings

with the youth?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Sunday afternoons.

EVELYN BAILEY: Has that--

I assume you chose that time because it was probably

the most optimal time of it working, of having kids come.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Our choice was basically

evenings, which are hard for kids-- because Chuck

and I were working full time.

So we couldn't do right after school,

which might have been a good time for kids

but wasn't a good time for us.

And I was concerned about safety, kids riding buses

in the evening and whatnot.

I just didn't think that that was a good idea.

And Saturdays, kids usually have other fish to fry.

And so we just thought that Sunday afternoon

was a good time that would be most likely to attract kids.

And it worked out pretty well.

That first year, by the end of the year,

we had a pretty solid core group of about eight kids.

Some weeks we had six.

Some weeks we had twelve.

But generally, there were eight of them

that came fairly regularly.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so what did you do with them for two

hours on a Sunday afternoon?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, the first hour was reconnecting.

We'd go around the circle and ask them

how their week had been.

And I think the first meeting, we

asked them what topics they were interested in.

So we did have different topics that

were somewhat youth-driven.

There were times when something would be in the news,

or something would be going on locally

that we would talk about.

And usually, the first hour was very formal and very much

facilitated by the adults, and the second hour

was more social where the kids would just hang out and maybe

play games, talk with us, whatever.

Sometimes the first hour would extend into the second hour

by the kids' choice.

If they wanted to stay in a formal, big group, we did.

But if they wanted time to just play, that was fine, too.

Because they didn't have a lot of opportunity

to be with other gay youth at that time.

At that time for most of the kids that were coming to group,

being out in school was not safe.

Very few of them had anybody that they

talked about being gay with.

One or two of the kids had some outside friends that knew they

were gay, but most of them didn't.

And so they really looked forward

to that time of being with each other

and talking about what it felt like to be

so isolated in school and issues with parents.

We had a couple of parents that were really

supportive and lovely, and brought their kids to group,

and would come and talk to me, and were really great.

We had other parents that were pretty negative

and made life pretty hard for the kids.

EVELYN BAILEY: So the levels of acceptance within families

varied a great deal?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

EVELYN BAILEY: And did the kids want

to therefore not only come to the youth group,

but did they feel safe in their own homes?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Not all of them did.

We had one kid in particular that

didn't feel safe in his home.

And eventually, we did end up getting him into foster care

eventually, because it just wasn't working.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what ages are we talking about, Kitty?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, that first year,

we did have a couple of college kids

that came that ended up co-facilitating with us.

But the majority of the kids were between fifteen

and eighteen or nineteen.

EVELYN BAILEY: In 1993--

while AIDS was first identified in Rochester in 1981,

AIDS Rochester came into existence in 1984

with the hotline.

And then CHN came into existence a couple of years later.

So by the beginning of the '90s, money

was beginning to come through the pipeline,

and there were treatments.

How much of a concern was AIDS to the young people

you were meeting with?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, I don't think high school kids

worry about that sort of thing very much.

They're invincible when they're fifteen, don't you know?

But we did address it with them a couple of times.

We had one facilitator who worked for AIDS Rochester.

So we rotated our facilitators.

I was there almost every Sunday.

Chuck and I were there almost every Sunday.

But we had other facilitators that

would sign on and come first, second, whatever.

I can't remember.

Honestly, I should have written all this stuff down,

because I don't know.

I don't think we met every Sunday.

I think we met every other Sunday.

But I'm not positive, because that

was nearly twenty years ago.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you advertise in The Empty Closet?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes, we did advertise in The Empty Closet.

And we put signs up around the city in places

that we thought kids would go to.

There were a number of known hangouts,

especially for kids that were a little alternative.

And so those were the places that we would hang up signs.

Because the kids-- some of the kids

might have known about The Empty Closet, but a lot of our kids

really didn't until they started coming to group.

But they could read signs.

EVELYN BAILEY: I can check the meeting times and the frequency

through The Empty Closet.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yeah, do that, because I just can't remember

exactly how often we met.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, in 2012, 2013, kids in the youth group

usually have a day of silence, a gay prom.

Were those events?

KITTY WOLFSONG: I'm trying to remember

the first day of silence.

I was involved with the first day of silence.

But I'm not sure if I was the facilitator or it

that was after Patti started.

It seems like-- gosh, I just remember that for sure.

Do you remember, Debbie, whether the first day of silence

was with us or with Patti?

DEB MORAN: Oh, I think it might have

been after Patti came over.

KITTY WOLFSONG: I think it was, because I'm not

sure I even knew about it.

I think she's the one that made me aware of it.

But I was there for that first one.

It was a pretty exciting event the first time we did it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Gay prom?

KITTY WOLFSONG: No.

Well, the first gay prom that we did was also after Patti came.

Yeah.

Because she definitely was instrumental in creating that.

But I'm not positive.

See, those college students that I

mentioned earlier that helped us facilitate,

Patti was one of them.

And so there were some things that she and Juliana

helped to create that may have been

before Patti was officially hired by the Gay Alliance.

And that's what I'm trying to figure out.

Because I helped out with those things, but I don't think

I was the one that was really instrumental in creating them.

I'm sure it was the two of them that created them.

I just don't remember what the sequence was of when.

I participated.

I remember going to the first night out.

Well, the first time, we all met Mother's and we had a youth

night at Mother's.

That was the very first outing.

And that was after Patti was hired.

That was before the gay prom.

And I was there for that night.

And so I think the prom was--

and there was--

I remember the youth prom was associated with the sweetheart

ball the first time.

Because what we did was we had a separate room for the kids

on the night of the sweetheart ball.

It was back when the sweetheart ball was held, I think,

at the Radisson.

And the kids were not allowed in the room where alcohol

was being served, but they were allowed

in the other part of the area.

And that was the first time the youth were involved.

And I don't remember what year that was, either.

But that's something that you probably could find out

in The Empty Closet.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, you were a volunteer?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes, I was a volunteer.

EVELYN BAILEY: And Chuck was a volunteer?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes.

We were both volunteers.

EVELYN BAILEY: After that first year, how many

other volunteers came on board?

KITTY WOLFSONG: I think I had a total of about six volunteers

that worked with us.

Not all of them every week.

There were one or two that were pretty committed

and came to most meetings and then others that

rotated through.

EVELYN BAILEY: So what made you stick with it?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, I like kids.

And I enjoyed doing it.

I don't know.

I guess I feel like--

I guess I feel like it's part of my spirituality

that there's a certain amount of time you need

to give back to your community.

I'm not big on giving money to things

because I don't know where my money is going.

But I figure if I volunteer a certain amount of time,

then that's worth about the same thing as money.

So that's-- that's sort of how I felt about it.

EVELYN BAILEY: What is it about you?

You could have devoted your time or committed your time

to adults or to seniors or to--

KITTY WOLFSONG: Because if you're--

just about any other marginalized group--

if you're black, your parents teach you

how to survive in the white world

and how to survive with the oppressive larger culture

and so on and so forth.

But if you're gay, you've got nobody.

You've got no adults teaching you how to navigate the world.

And so my feeling about it is that gay youth

need positive role models.

And when I started at Hillside, which was actually

the year before we took the youth group to the Gay

Alliance, I had a young boy who everybody except him

knew he was gay.

And he loved the girls because he liked to do their hair.

And he was so flamboyant, and just

a delightful, charismatic, wonderful young man.

And I remember when he first started tentatively

admitting to me that maybe he had sexual feelings for boys.

His belief about that was that if he was gay,

he was going to live his life in bars

and die young because he would just live a life of depravity.

Because that's the image in his community.

He was of Hispanic descent, and that

was the image that had been given

to him by his family of origin.

He had been told that that's what happened to gay men.

And I'm pretty sure that he had been

told that because from a very early age,

they probably knew he was gay.

You laid laid eyes on this kid, you'd know.

But when I told him that it was possible for him

to marry a man, and they could have

a little house with a white picket fence

and adopt kids if they wanted to,

the idea was completely foreign to him.

He just couldn't even imagine that maybe he

could have that life.

Because that's what he wanted.

He wanted to have children.

And he wanted to have a little house

and live a little suburban life.

And the fact that I was the first adult that

told him that he could be himself and have that

really meant--

really touched me.

What we tell kids they can be is what they become.

And if we tell them that all they can be

is second class citizens and alcoholics and depraved,

then that's what they're going to be.

But if we tell them that they can be whatever they want to be

and that they have the ability to create whatever life they

want to create, well, maybe they won't be a rocket scientist,

but they'll create a whole lot better life

than they would have if we told them that they

were going to be nothing.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you--

couple of questions.

You talk about this young man who was Hispanic.

What was the prevalent concept of homosexuals

in the African-American community?

KITTY WOLFSONG: It wasn't a whole lot better than his.

There's a lot more homophobia even today

in the African-American community

than there is in the mainstream white community.

It's getting better.

In every community, it's getting better.

It's 2013 as opposed to 1993.

So that's 20 years difference in time.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were these kids involved in churches?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Some of them were.

Some of them were not.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did that play--

in your experience with these young men and women,

was that a positive experience?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Rarely.

EVELYN BAILEY: Being involved with formal religion?

KITTY WOLFSONG: In most cases it was not.

In most cases it was very, very negative.

And the messages they got in church were that they would--

that they were evil if they were gay, and that being gay

was a choice, and that all they had to do was pray to God,

and they'd be saved, and they wouldn't be gay anymore.

I'm not saying every church is like that.

That would be just ridiculous and highly stereotypical.

But it is much more likely for churches

in the minority communities to be like that than it is--

and certainly, there's a lot of charismatic

or very conventional churches in white society as well.

But in minority communities, they're more prevalent.

EVELYN BAILEY: Suicide?

KITTY WOLFSONG: I was very, very lucky to not ever have that

while I was running the youth group.

We had a couple of kids that had a little bit

of suicidal ideation, a little bit of--

I don't think anybody ever attempted,

but there would be talk about it sometimes.

But after Patti took over, there was a young woman, a young girl

that did kill herself about two years in to, I think,

the time that Patti was--

and I was very--

at that point, I was still--

I was kind of supervising Patti because there

wasn't anybody at the Gay Alliance

that could supervise her.

So if she had an issue, if she had something

that was social work-y that she needed to deal with,

I was the one she came to.

And there was a pretty devastating experience when

that young lady killed herself.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you--

and I don't remember.

That's why I'm asking you if remember.

Was that after Matthew Shepard or before?

KITTY WOLFSONG: that's a really good question.

I'm not sure.

I think it was after, but I'm not positive.

That young lady had some mental health issues

aside from being gay, some depression issues.

As it happens, I met her mother a few years later.

And her mother was not unsupportive of her.

So it was much more of a depression-related issue

necessarily than totally a gay-related issue.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you recall, even

in your work with youth in schools

or at Threshold or at the Gay Alliance,

were suicide rates up in the '90s?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yeah.

The national numbers indicated yes,

that suicide rates were definitely higher

among gay kids.

It was not something I had personally witnessed.

But the kids that got to us had some support.

They had friends.

They had somewhere to go.

And even the one kid who eventually ended up out

of his home knew that there were people

that cared about him that were going to find him a safe place

to live.

So in many ways, our kids were at much lower risk

than kids who--

the kids that are at the highest risk

are kids that don't find a group, that

don't have anybody to talk to.

Maybe they haven't told anybody until their suicide note,

and maybe not even then.

So sometimes we don't even know how many

kids that are completed suicides actually

were gay, because they may or may not

have ever told anybody that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you involved with GSAs?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes.

After I stopped doing the youth group at the Gay Alliance,

I was working at Franklin High School,

and I started the GSA there.

It took a couple of years bucking the administration

to get that off the ground.

But it happened.

The first few GSA meetings that we had were under the radar.

And gradually, we became more of an official group.

EVELYN BAILEY: With the GSAs in mind,

they weren't in any way organized.

Within the school, the individual school,

they may have been.

But there was no GSA city meetings or--

KITTY WOLFSONG: For a while there,

we did try to organize a little bit.

There were a couple of meetings of facilitators of area school

GSAs.

But people who work in schools are generally

pretty busy people.

And getting everybody to come together for a meeting

wasn't always really easy.

We did keep in touch by email, and we consulted each other

and knew what was going on in other people's schools.

Oftentimes, the day of silence was the one day that we would--

the first year that we went to the day of silence,

we all met at St. John Fisher College.

And there were a lot of GSAs there that day.

And that day, I connected with a lot of other facilitators,

and we talked to each other and whatnot.

But I think that might be the only one that we

went to the central location.

The other years--

I think that year was the last year that the youth group was

in the Atlantic Avenue site.

Once we moved over, they moved over to the Main Street site.

There was a big enough room to really hold

a big Day of Silence Rally.

So after that, we didn't go to St. John Fisher anymore.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you involved with GLSEN?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: What is GLSEN?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Gay Lesbian Straight Educator's Network

is what that stands for.

EVELYN BAILEY: And do you remember when that

might have come on the scene?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well I think it had been around

before I got involved in it.

I got involved in the late '90s.

But I certainly was not--

it had been there before I came on board

and continued after I stopped being actively involved.

I've not worked at a school for the last five years.

So that takes me out of--

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you involved with the training at--

I don't know that it was GLSEN, but that Keith Powell

negotiated with the Rochester City School District.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes, I participated

in doing some of that training.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: And that was for the entire city?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes.

And I did one of them.

At least one, maybe two.

I'm not sure.

But I spoke.

I wasn't in the audience.

I was on the stage of at least one of them.

It might have been more than one.

I can't remember.

I do a lot of public speaking, so I don't always

remember everything that I've done.

But I know that I've done it.

And I did at least one GLSEN training, maybe more.

EVELYN BAILEY: And the focus of that

was not necessarily about homosexuality,

but about violence or bullying.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yeah, bullying.

It's about teaching respect.

And I think that the big message of that

was that regardless of what your personal beliefs, every child

deserves to be treated with dignity.

And if you are personally opposed to homosexuality,

that's your right as a person to have an opinion.

But it is not your right as a person to mistreat someone

because you don't like what they're doing or who they are.

Just like if you don't like--

if you have something against Arabs,

you don't get to mistreat an Arab kid.

You just don't get to do that.

As a teacher, it's your job to treat every child

with dignity and respect.

And you're there to teach them.

You're not there to tell them how to live their lives.

And that was our big message, was

you teach respect, you get respect.

And when you see kids mistreating each other,

it is your job to interrupt that.

A lot of times, teachers don't know what

to do when they see things.

They know they're wrong.

They know it shouldn't be happening.

But they don't know how to intervene.

So part of what we did was talk to them about some ways

to appropriately intervene.

EVELYN BAILEY: Over the course of the years that you were

involved with the youth group, with GSAs, with dealing

with youth, is there one incident or one experience that

really stands out in your mind as having some impact on you

personally?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, there's a few.

There's some positives and there's some more painful.

EVELYN BAILEY: Take the positive.

KITTY WOLFSONG: OK I think that--

well, there's a couple, actually.

One really super positive for me was a young girl

that I started working with her when she was in seventh grade.

And this was not part of the youth group per se.

And she was kind of an awkward girl, didn't

know what to do with herself, and lots of family issues.

And gradually came out as a lesbian.

And watching her embrace her sexuality

and begin to feel good about herself

over the course of working with her for five years,

that was pretty positive and wonderful.

And the other, actually, was a straight kid

that came to the GSA.

He came with his friends.

And he had been in the Urban Suburban program

as a little boy and didn't come to Franklin

until he was in high school.

And he was involved in the GSA for two years.

And at the end of the second year, he graduated.

And at our end of the year gathering,

we were talking about our experience in the group

and what we liked about it and everything.

And he stood up instead of just sitting in his seat.

And he came over, and he gave me a hug.

And he said, I've been in a lot of different schools,

and I've had a lot of different teachers.

And you're the first person who ever taught me to think.

And that was pretty powerful in terms

of making me feel like I did do what I wanted to do.

It wasn't about if you're gay or if you're straight.

It's about using your mind and having healthy relationships

and learning how to be the best citizen you

can be with integrity.

And that was the message that I wanted to send them.

And he got it.

That was cool.

EVELYN BAILEY: Given that you've been out of education

for four or five years, do you have

a perspective on how life for a gay student has changed?

Is it better?

Has it really changed?

Because the process of coming out

is still laden with fear and trepidation

and uncomfortableness and all of those things.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, even though I don't work in a school

anymore, I'm mainly still working with youth.

I work with youth in my private practice.

I work with kids between twelve and twenty-six.

And I think that things are definitely improving.

It's easier to come out.

Kids have role models on TV.

They have The New Normal.

They have Modern Family.

They get to see things that kids twenty years ago didn't

get to see.

But it's still dependent somewhat

on how religious is your family and how

strongly does your family adhere to old-fashioned homophobic

values.

And if they're in a family that's

very old fashioned and homophobic,

then they're going to have a hard time.

And if they're in a more open-minded family,

it'll be easier.

It also has a lot to do with individual personalities.

Some kids fit in socially no matter what,

and other kids just don't fit in socially.

And the social media of Facebook and all of that

is the good news and the bad news.

Because on the one hand, they can find community online.

They can find other gay kids.

They can know they're not the only one.

But also, the social media helps kids isolate and never come out

of their room.

They can only have online friends

and never actually have a real, skin-to-skin person

relationship.

And so I think social media has seriously

complicated growing up for any kid,

whether they're gay or straight.

And depending on the personality of the kid,

it can be really, really damaging.

EVELYN BAILEY: You brought us to the twenty-first century.

There are certainly more laws on the books--

Dignity for All, Students Act, SONDA,

Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act.

But my question is, given all of those legislative changes,

given all the ways in which society

has tried to do the right thing, what's the real impact on kids?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, I think it's

like any other legislative change.

It begins to make change.

But the 1954 integration ruling didn't immediately

integrate the schools.

And so there are some schools that are really progressive,

depending on who's the principal and how

are the teachers organized.

And some schools are really great,

and other schools are really still pretty bad.

When I left the city school district five years ago,

there was still significant influence of religion.

There was very little separation of church and state

in the inner city school.

And so when you have sentries calling kids faggots

and telling girls that they're going

to go to hell if they have an abortion,

and nobody stops them because that's what God told them

to do, that's not always a very welcoming environment

for gay kids.

But it's not a very welcoming environment for pregnant kids

either, or whatever.

It's not just about being gay.

So it's very individual in terms of--

there are some things that are clearly better.

Just the fact that there are more kids, other kids that

are accepting because of media and all of that,

that's certainly better.

Almost anywhere, a gay kid can find a few supportive people,

no matter where--

whether they're living in Hilton or they're

living in Seneca Falls, or whether they're

living in Rochester, they're going

to be able to find a few people that they

can tell are going to be supportive,

which probably wasn't true twenty

years ago in every school.

And there are legal--

they do have legal things that they can do now

with Dignity for All.

If there is a problem, a really big problem,

they can seek legal action.

So those things are certainly good.

But any social change takes time and is

going to be gradual and dependent

on the individual players.

EVELYN BAILEY: Two more questions.

You've had this experience before.

But if a young woman or man, sixteen, seventeen,

were sitting in front of you, what would you tell them?

KITTY WOLFSONG: About what?

EVELYN BAILEY: About how to negotiate the life being gay.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, first, I'd find out

a little bit about the kid's own individual situation.

Do they have any supportive people in their lives,

and is it safe to be out at home?

Generally, I do tell kids that if you really

feel like it's going to be unsafe to be

out within your family, don't do that until you

can support yourself.

Because kids get thrown out.

But even as I might tell them that,

I would say this is temporary.

It's not going to be the rest of your life.

You don't have to hide forever.

And you don't have to hide your light under a basket forever.

If it's not safe for you to be out yet, it's OK not to be out.

And then I would talk to them about where

they could get support.

Can they get support online?

Can they get support going to the Gay Alliance?

Where can they get some support safely?

I think those are the main things--

and that it gets better.

And that once you're an adult and you

can make your own choices, you can create whatever life

you want to create.

You can surround yourself with supportive people,

and they don't all have to be gay in order to be supportive.

You can find wonderful, eclectic, wonderful friends

that will love you just the way you are.

And the world is a friendly place

once you get out into it if they don't

know that from their families.

And I would talk to them about career choices, too.

What do you want to do as a career, something

where you can be yourself and you don't

have to worry about hiding?

And I also think that--

oh, I'm so sorry.

He is crazy.

You OK?

For myself, what I have found is that if you go into a job

situation without telling them ahead of time,

then you're always worrying about

are they going to find out.

But if you just go into every job situation being yourself

from the start, then you never have

to worry about being outed.

And that's how I feel about--

once you're safely an adult and you're supporting yourself,

don't walk around hiding anymore.

Don't pretend to be something that you're not.

Sometimes when you're a kid--

even kids who aren't gay sometimes can't fully

be themselves until they're adult and able to support

themselves and live on their own.

And I hate to have to give a kid that kind of advice,

but it depends on who their parents are.

Some parents are wonderful and supportive and would be great.

But if they know Mom and Dad are seriously homophobic,

I don't really want to counsel the kid

to do something that's going to get him beat up or thrown out

or whatever.

EVELYN BAILEY: What are you most proud of in terms

of your work with young people?

KITTY WOLFSONG: Well, that story I told you before.

And I have a lot of young people that come back to me

later for counseling as adults, or will find to me

and talk to me.

So the fact that I think I have had a positive influence

on a fair number of kids, I guess

that's the thing I'm most proud of.

EVELYN BAILEY: One more question.

What do you think needs to change in order for kids

to feel more safe in the environments in which they

live and go to school?

KITTY WOLFSONG: You don't want to hear the answer to that one.

I think what needs to change is the whole paradigm of power

over and hierarchy.

But that's a whole different thing.

I think that a lot of kids don't feel safe, whether they're

gay or straight.

As long as we continue to live the old paradigm of power over,

you still have a situation in which women, gay kids,

straight kids, whatever can feel unsafe.

When I started working at Franklin,

I became very aware of the word "respect."

Because it's thrown around at Franklin like a football.

It's a constant.

The word "respect," I must have heard it twenty times a day.

And what I realized is that for many people,

whether it's inner city gang kids or adults,

or whoever it is, the word "respect"

is synonymous with fear and obedience.

And that's not what respect is.

And respect is namaste, honoring the god within,

honoring each other in our truest light.

That's respect.

Power over and obedience are not respect.

And so until we get rid of the notion

that respect and fear are synonymous,

there's always going to be fear.

There is always going to be kids that don't feel

safe to be who they really are.

You weren't looking for that answer, were you?

EVELYN BAILEY: I wasn't looking for any answer

(Wolfsong laughs).

I was open to hear what you had to say.

Because I find it a somewhat daunting

question to answer, and an overwhelming question

to have to go there and try to work with and do something

about.

KITTY WOLFSONG: I'm reading a book right now that is called

While the World Watched.

It's about a woman who--

four of her best friends were killed in the Birmingham

bombing of the church.

So it's about the Civil Rights Movement, obviously.

And she mentioned a Martin Luther King

quote that says that the only way someone can ride your back

is if you're bent over.

And so although I am opposed to the notion

of blaming the victim or requiring only those that

are oppressed to have to make any change-- certainly

the oppressor needs to make some changes as well.

But as the oppressed, we need to stop allowing it.

And when you are fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,

you don't necessarily have the power to stop allowing it.

But when you become an adult, you

do have the power to stop allowing it.

You have the power to no longer hide and to no longer allow

internalized homophobia to control your life,

and to basically live your life with pride and dignity.

And when I say pride, I don't mean false pride.

I mean a sense of integrity and being.

EVELYN BAILEY: And goodness.

KITTY WOLFSONG: Yes, exactly.

And what I found when I was working

at Franklin is that the first couple of years

that I worked at Franklin--

and I actually have told this story

as part of the GLSEN training that I did in the city school

district.

The first couple of years that I worked at Franklin,

I was out to my employer threshold.

But I didn't feel that I needed to announce it

to people at Franklin.

When I was married to a man, I didn't walk up to people

and say, hello, I'm Kitty, and I'm a heterosexual.

So I don't walk up to people now and say, hi, I'm Kitty,

and I'm a lesbian.

But I realized that I was monitoring my gender words.

And if I was talking about spending time with Debbie,

I would call her my spouse and avoid using her

or him, whatever.

Because I didn't necessarily want