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> D. Patrick Bynum
 Ozark
Seventh Grader Takes on School Board to Make School Safe for Gay
Youth
As
early as second grade, D. Patrick Bynum remembers being taunted
and called a "fag" and a "queer" by his classmates.
The verbal violence escalated as he got older while teachers continued
to look the other way. Finally, things came to a head in seventh
grade when another student kicked Patrick and punched him in the
mouth.
"School
is very difficult because the people there are close-minded,"
says Patrick, who came out to his parents when he was twelve. "I
never came out in school even though I wanted to because my parents
advised against it. Even though I wasn't out, I was perceived as
being gay and it was common knowledge."
Determined
not to take the abuse lying down, Patrick took his story to the
school board, not once but twice. Backed by his parents and his
friends, he told the board, "You do have gay students in your
district and they have horror stories like mine. The only difference
is that some harassed kids just quietly disappear and I'm not willing
to do that."
"My
principal at the time, his face was very red," Patrick recalls
of the meeting. "There were people who cried. It was nerve
wracking. They seemed sympathetic at first and made promises but
nothing really happened. There were people on the board who genuinely
wanted to help us, but they were outnumbered."
Despite
repeated lobbying by Patrick's parents, the school board never acted
on his concerns. His family eventually filed a complaint with the
Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. At their last
school board meeting, Patrick was told by the board president, "You
have to remember...some groups of people just aren't accepted here."
Because
school is no longer a safe place for him to be, since November Patrick
has been home-schooled by his mother, who took time off from her
job as a teacher's aide. "It's horrible," Patrick says.
"It's really isolating. I'm a very social person and I'm in
my house all the time." Next year, Patrick hopes to attend
a public school in Springfield where some of his friends from a
local gay and lesbian youth group are enrolled.
In
the meantime, Patrick writes short stories and poetry and dreams
of becoming a professional comedian. He volunteers at the AIDS Project
of the Ozarks in Springfield and answers the phone for the local
chapter of PFLAG. Recently he took a call from another young gay
person from a neighboring town even smaller than Ozark.
"He
had never spoken to a real live gay person before," says Patrick,
who assured the caller that "he's not the only person like
himself" and introduced him to the youth group at the Gay and
Lesbian Center of the Ozarks (GLO) in Springfield. "Things
will get better," he encouraged.
"He
is a proud gay youth at an age when most people have no idea yet
who they are," according to Jim House, president of GLO, who
nominated Patrick for the Colin Higgins Foundation's Courage Award.
"The courageous voice of this proud young man promises us hope
for the future. With Patrick on our side, things will get better."
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