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> Anthony Colín
 Tough
beginnings to Tough Action
Meet
Colin Higgins Courage Award Winner Anthony Colín
Anthony
gained national prominence in 1998-at 15 years old-when he sued
the Orange County School District for barring him from starting
a Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school. "When Matthew Shephard
was murdered, I was afraid to leave my house for a week, and I was
completely terrified in school-always looking over my shoulder-for
a whole year. Then I started to get angry: how could those men kill
another young man just because he was gay? But I realized
that if anger isn't used to do something constructive it leads to
hate, and hate leads to violence."
Anthony
came out at school when he was only eleven years old. "I didn't
know what gay meant then," he says. "I just knew I liked
the boys." He was thirteen when he came out to his family,
and the next several years were the hardest of his young life. He
even ran away from home, surviving on the streets of Los Angeles
for a month. "It wasn't easy for my parents to come to terms
with my sexuality, but they've grown so much over the past four
years. We are so close now," he says.
School
had never been a welcoming place for Anthony, but it became nearly
unbearable. "I sank so low then, I felt like I was just surviving
from day to day. But at some point I decided that things weren't
going to be like this for me forever," he says. He decided
to take action to promote tolerance in his own high school. He decided
to start a Gay-Straight Alliance.
It
wasn't an easy task. He put in an application to form a club, but
his principal repeatedly tabled it, claiming that she hadn't looked
at it yet or that the school board was still deciding whether a
Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) was "appropriate" for El Modena
High School. When the school board tried to hold a closed meeting
to rule on the GSA, the Orange County Register, the local
newspaper, got wind of it and printed a scathing story, forcing
the board to cancel their meeting and hold open sessions to decide
the fate of Anthony's GSA. Even with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight
Education Network) of Orange County and a cohort of supportive family
and friends rallying behind him, the school board ultimately denied
the GSA equal access to club status at El Modena High School. "My
mother always told me that whatever is worth having is worth fighting
for,
so there was no question about whether to fight for the GSA. I had
to do it," Anthony says.
Colín
and other students filed a lawsuit. They won a preliminary injunction,
marking the first time school officials were judicially rebuked
for trying to silence a GSA.
The
El Modena High School Gay-Straight Alliance was the first in Orange
County. Since its inception, Anthony has helped start GSAs in other
high schools in his conservative county.
Anthony
was thrust into the media spotlight as a result of his successful
activism. He now speaks regularly at LGBT functions and has won
several awards for his work. "Sometimes teens are intimidated
and reluctant to ask me questions or share their experiences with
me. But just to have one young person come up to me and tell me
that I've made a difference in their lives makes it all worth it,"
Anthony says.
Some
people he credits as role models include Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Ghandi, and John F. Kennedy, for "promoting change through
nonviolence." Bessie Smith, an openly-gay jazz singer in the
1920s, is another of his role models. Anthony is a singer himself,
something he hopes to pursue seriously in the future. "My voice
is my weapon and my instrument," he says. "I feel most
at peace when I sing."
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