What same-sex marriage reform could mean for the LGBT youths of America

When Lane Deines was a student at Kearney high school in Nebraska, he never seriously considered coming out.

“I was fearful,” said Deines, now 26. “I would watch what I was doing, how I was holding stuff, to make sure nobody knew.”

Nathan Leach graduated last month from the same high school, located in the center of the US. He came out when he was a freshman and was a member of the school’s gender sexuality alliance club, and he said most people were “very, very fine” with him coming out.

“It warms my heart,” said Deines. “I never thought I’d see the day that Kearney high school had a Gay Straight Alliance.”

Leach is entering adulthood knowing that he can legally marry in 36 states, Washington DC and Guam – though not in his home state of Nebraska, where same-sex marriage is illegal.

Both are waiting for same-sex marriage to be recognized in the state where they were raised. This could happen in the next few days, pending a decision by the supreme court on the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

And even as LGBT people actively campaign for a host of other rights that are arguably more important to LGBT youth, the unexpectedly swift move toward nationwide marriage equality has already improved the lives of many LGBT students.

“All these changes and every moment of victory for the LGBT community has an incredible impact on the lives of LGBT students and in fact all youth,” said Eliza Byard, the executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

Since 1999, GLSEN has released a biennial survey of the climate for LGBT students. It shows that from 2007 to 2013, LGBT students have reported a steady decline of incidents of verbal and physical harassment and of physical assault.

Though this is important progress for LGBT youth, nearly 56% of LGBT students still reported to GLSEN that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexuality or gender identity in 2013. This, alongside data showing 74% of LGBT students were verbally harassed and 56% said that their school had anti-LGBT policies – all of which can result in absences from school and depression.

This is particularly true for middle school students – usually children between the ages of 11 and 13 – who report more incidents of bullying and typically have less access to LGBT-related school resources.

In December, 12-year-old Ronin Shimizu killed himself in Folsom, a suburb of Sacramento, California. His parents had shuttled him through several schools in the area to get him away from the bullying he experienced at each school. A family friend told the Sacramento Bee that the child was persistently taunted as the only male member of a junior-high cheerleading team.

The incident pains Lance Chih, a gay man who isolated himself as much as possible during his first years at Folsom high school because of anxiety about his sexuality.

But during Chih’s sophomore year, a fellow student told him he should be killed for being gay and in another instance, a glass bottle was thrown at him while he was in a bathroom stall. He tried to kill himself three times.

“I was terrified to go to the bathroom, I wouldn’t go to lunches,” he said.

He felt that the school was not responding adequately to his complaints about bullying and, with the help of the ACLU, filed suit against the school, hoping it would push the district to develop a more comprehensive system for LGBT students. “Reading about that [Shimizu’s suicide], knowing that I might have been able to stop that, hurt,” Chih said.

Chih remains a committed LGBT rights activist, and now works in the capitol to push for aid for homeless LGBT youth and to improve transgender rights.

Those battles became easier in June 2013, when same-sex marriage was made legal in California, he said. After years of legal back and forth that saw same-sex marriage made legal, banned and made legal again, a landmark supreme court case finally overturned the state’s ban.

“It means more than what I think a lot of people realize,” said Chih. He is grateful that with the same-sex marriage right taken care of, activists can spend more time dedicated to issues like homelessness.

Campaigning for other LGBT rights issues has become more urgent as activists prepare for the potential backlash if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land.

“Right now we are facing a critical inflection point, because, should there be a victory of this magnitude for LGBT people, you will see an increasingly desperate backlash,” she said. “And at a moment when so many legislatures are in the hands of Republican majorities – and sometimes supermajorities – you see unbelievably unconstitutional action in response.”

Republicans have been pushing for so-called religious freedom bills, which many viewed as authorizing businesses to deny service to LGBT people.

In turn, LGBT activists are pushing harder for expanded discrimination protections to prevent LGBT people from getting kicked out of their homes or fired because of their gender identity or sexuality. This is a prime concern in schools, where students may turn to LGBT teachers, or at the very least, allies, to help them when they may not find support elsewhere.

“It is an incredibly powerful experience, even if it is internal, to know there is someone there for you,” Byard said.

For LGBT students in a very conservative part of the already conservative state of South Carolina, that person was Gloria Talcove, a former Spanish teacher at Irmo high school. “There is a church on every corner, just about,” she said of the Columbia suburb where the school is located.

In 2007, she accepted an offer to become advisor of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance – one of about 8,000 similarly minded clubs that exist in high schools and middle schools. Under federal law, any school that receives money from the federal government cannot block these types of clubs from being created – an impasse that has led to vicious protests, administrators pressuring teachers to not sponsor the club and Irmo’s high school principal to resign.

Talcove, meanwhile, received voicemail messages from people telling her that she should leave South Carolina and go straight to hell. “I don’t know how gay kids survived before,” she said.

The safety of LGBT students became a concern for her when the slang phrase “That’s so gay,” became popular and she saw certain students shirk in their seat whenever other students used it as an insult. “I remember my heart just breaking, seeing kids react this way,” Talcove said. She then began reading up on gay issues, and realized that it was likely that there were LGBT students in each of her classes.

She retired in 2012, but still keeps in touch with the school’s GSA, which is in its eighth year and now easily finds sponsors for its activities. Talcove believes the club’s persistence has “3000%” improved the experience of LGBT Irmo high school students.

“It made it not okay to malign people,” said Talcove.

Research shows that supportive adults like Talcove are essential to a young person’s development. This is especially true for LGBT youth, who may find a supportive atmosphere at school, but not a home.

Kearney high school’s Leach left home his junior year partly because his stepfather was against him being gay. But at school, he said it “wasn’t very hard” to identify as a gay man.

He partially credits this ability to assimilate with being more masculine than the stereotyped image of gay men, a characteristic other people the Guardian spoke with also said made their experience in school easier. “A lot of homophobic comments are targeted to those who are more effeminate,” he said.

Leach also said that it is easy to get lost in a large high school like his, where he would associate with welcoming groups like speech and debate, but avoid sports teams.

He’s headed to the University of Nebraska in the fall to study political science, a subject he practiced in high school while campaigning for expanded LGBT health rights and anti-discrimination laws.

Leach remembers being a sophomore in high school, the year before he moved out, and walking through Nebraska’s state capitol with his boyfriend.

“Just walking through those halls and knowing that we are gay and that our relationship isn’t accepted by the state, was a very powerful, a very powerful sense of disenfranchisement,” he said. “So it’s very amazing talking to people who a year ago would say it might be legal in five years and to know that that decision is going to be made or that a step forward is likely to be made.”

This change is remarkable to Deines, 26, who did not come out until April 2013 and never seriously considered coming out while in high school – where he was constantly afraid that people would figure out that he was gay.

“I was fearful,” Deines said. “I would watch what I was doing, how I was holding stuff, to make sure nobody knew.”