Posted on 12/28/2006 10:36:24 AM PST by presidio9
Thanksgiving in Salem at Aunt Teri's house and the family is picking at Sasha Villarreal, asking questions, pushing buttons.
So, are you lesbian? What if you meet a nice boy? One uncle says he'd rather his teenage daughter be pregnant than gay.
It makes Sasha nervous, brings a little flutter to her heart. She's 18. Family is important to her. But she doesn't back down. She comes right back at them, kidding, asking questions of her own.
Well, why do you like girls, Uncle Tony?
Their response? Uncle Tony puts his hands over his ears, like he doesn't want to hear another word. But Grandpa just laughs, and Sasha feels good about that.
She remembers the ride home to Portland that night, rehashing the day with her supportive mom, grateful to pass another milestone in an already momentous year.
Takes on activist role
Sasha's been out for a while. But in 2006, she pushed aside the last vestiges of her fundamentalist upbringing and stepped to the forefront of queer youth activism in Oregon.
She helped organize the Oregon Queer Youth Conference last February. She helped put together the Oregon Gay-Straight Alliance, a school-based group that fights homophobia, and now serves on its board.
In the summer, she traveled to San Francisco for a national gay-straight conference, which inspired her to get even more involved.
"I told myself that it was my job to try and make my school, Portland and eventually the state a better place for queer youth," she says at a Starbucks near her Southeast Portland home.
As always, she's decked out in a cool kid uniform: Six hoop earrings, black Motorhead T-shirt, black pants, tongue stud, lip stud, nose ring and heavy mascara. She's tall, and her hair is chopped short, framing a full, unlined face.
Coming out to her deeply religious extended family started late last year and has continued slowly throughout 2006. Their grudging acceptance was a relief and gave Sasha the confidence to speak out on behalf of herself and other queer teens.
Her mom, Gina Hansen, has noticed a marked difference in recent months as Sasha makes her way toward adulthood.
"This year, she's 100 percent out," Hansen says. "She has no shame at all."
Struggling with confusion
The Sunday school teachers told her homosexuality was disgusting, a sin punishable by eternal damnation.
And Sasha was a kid, so she believed them.
Sasha and her three siblings lived with their grandparents in Salem for several years while their parents were in and out of trouble with the law. Twice a week, grandma and grandpa took them to church, where the teachers hammered home the lessons of conservative faith.
"I remember them telling us that people who were homosexual would go to hell if they didn't cleanse themselves," Sasha says, "that they were disgusting and basically godless, very low people."
When she was 11, Sasha moved to Portland to live with her mother, who is divorced from her father. That's when she started questioning the teachings of her old church.
Hansen, who is now remarried, has a liberal philosophy about sexuality and a wide circle of gay and lesbian friends.
One lesbian couple, in particular, was especially close to the family, coming over for barbecues and movies. Sasha loved them but felt bewildered at the same time.
"It made me really confused as to why these people were so 'disgusting,' " she says. "They seemed like really good people to me."
About the same time, Sasha began questioning her own sexuality. What followed were several years of silent struggle after she realized she had a crush on her best friend. Ultimately, Sasha decided her Sunday school teachers were wrong.
"I wasn't completely positive at first," she says. "It was scary and weird. I still felt like it was so wrong, but my feelings were so strong I thought it couldn't be fake."
Growing more comfortable
Sasha sits in a crowded downtown coffeehouse surrounded by four adults, making plans for the statewide Gay-Straight Alliance convention next spring.
Listening to her hash out the details of a needs assessment questionnaire, watching her pull out an appointment book so she can organize her week, it's easy to forget that she's a baby-faced senior at Cleveland High School who's just now applying to colleges.
But it's true. Her bedroom is cluttered with the detritus of teenhood: porcelain dolls, stuffed animals, makeup, jewelry, posters featuring the Grateful Dead, Slayer, Kurt Cobain, Angelina Jolie, Queen and "Brokeback Mountain."
Half the time, she dresses like a high school kid, circa 1982. One day she wears black-and-red tights, Pat Benatar mascara and a Judas Priest T-shirt.
At the coffeehouse, she's got a camo cap cocked sideways, a pair of purple Chuck Taylor high-tops, striped knickers and a black T-shirt featuring a pink outline of a plump mud-flap model.
She jiggles her leg, fiddles with her hair and hangs back while the grown-ups run through the nitty-gritty for next year's convention.
But the advisers draw her out, asking questions, trying to find out what young people want for entertainment, dancing, etc. And she delivers, providing a much-needed teen-centric perspective.
Like, don't invite so many adult chaperones to the dance this time. It makes the kids uncomfortable.
And how about a smaller room? More kids will dance if they're not standing in the middle of a cavernous dance floor.
OK, what about the music?
"In general," she says, "techno is the queer beat for kids."
In the past year, Sasha has grown more comfortable speaking to groups and communicating her ideas about activism, says Austin Lea, one of the adult advisers for the Oregon Gay-Straight Alliance.
Planning events and working with other kids, he says, "has really been empowering for her."
In addition to conferences, Sasha also is planning for her future. She hopes to study criminology at Southern Oregon University next year and wants to continue her advocacy for queer youth.
All of which makes her mother proud.
"She's turning out to be a very smart, powerful and beautiful woman," Hansen says.
But for now, Sasha's got homework to do, conferences to plan, college applications to finish.
Then there's her extended family. They love her but still think homosexuality is a sin.
Which is all right with Sasha. She understands how difficult it is to overcome church teachings. And she realizes the teasing and the questions might continue. She's willing to take it. Up to a point.
"I'm OK," Sasha says, "as long as they don't call me a fag."
Stephen Beaven: 503-294-7663; stevebeaven@news.oregonian.com
That's one thing that made me a little doubtful about her story, though: that she went to a Sunday School "where the teachers hammered home the lessons of conservative faith. ...that [people with same-sex attraction] were disgusting and basically godless, very low people"?
It just doesn't seem likely. Not that they would deny the danger of truly losing your soul, but most of the conservative churches would use words like damaged rather than damned -- and they'd be calling, not for hell, but for healing.
I wonder if this reporter would follow up and say, "What church? What pastor?"
Nah. That's too much like actual reporting, i.e. work, and not just presenting Miss Civic Role Model with a print bouquet.
The Lord will judge your soul. Men will judge your actions. Thus it has ever been.
She doesn't want to be called a fag but identifies herself as a queer.
Its like a black person not wanting to be called "nigger" but its ok to be a "coon!"
Weird logic.
Some might say that "job" might not pay a lot but as we've seen full-time whining and PC hackdom pays fairly well in certain parts of the country.
I don't see the whole "LUG"syndrome making any sense.Is there a similiar trend among college men?
I just can't see some 20 year old guy saying to himself"Gee,gays seem pretty cool.I was always straight but I think I'll let Barry,Tom and Dick bang me from the rear and then after graduation I'll go back to liking girls again"
I mean,really!
Sasha and her three siblings lived with their grandparents in Salem for several years while their parents were in and out of trouble with the law.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here it is. Abuse. Isn't this a common thread among homosexuals.
I just can't imagine experimenting with the same sex. The thought just really grosses me out. I lived in a sorority for 3 years in college (and an all female dorm my freshman year) and the thought of playing with girls never entered my mind. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Give me a strong conservative man and I'll die happy. (of course, at this point I can't be too picky. If it moves that's ok too).
I tend to agree with you in that someone else's sexuality isn't any of my business and as long as they aren't in your face with it (no pun intended), I don't give a darn.
As for the name-calling, it is usually a front for a weak or non-existent line of reasoning. It has become pretty normal here on FR, and it's sad.
Hear that John?????
For me, it took an incident years ago where people talked about me in very brutal and defamatory terms to teach me the lesson that harsh words tear a person apart. It happened to me.
Does anyone remember the Simpson's show where the bully Nelson looks at himself in the mirror and laughs, then says to himself, "Hey, that hurts."???
This is sick. What is this "Oregonian", a gay activist paper?
Yep. That about nails it.
Awesome post, thanks!
I think part of the motivation for the college females comes from the fact that heterosexuality under the prevailing conditions works out so poorly for women.
Back in the paleolithic days of, oh, say, the 1970's, the guy had to invest something in the relationship other than his ornament. He generally had to be your pal for awhile, and if not possibly saying "I love you," he had to notice if you cried.
Now the norm seems so detached as to be almost dismembered. If the author of Unprotected is telling it like it is, the college women are being hit with the expectation that they're going to be treated like sexual spittoons AND that they're supposed to like it, like the house niggas who were expected to slave AND to sing and dance.
All that and gonorrhea of the throat? Wow.
No wonder the American college campus is the Land of Lesbian Opportunity.
People who have to go around justifying what they do are trying to convince themselves first.
Sounds like a potential job candidate in the hardware section at Home Depot..............
OK, you dyke!
Wow. A real toughie. Bet she can lick all the girls at school!
Whatta they do,call the local paper and say hey, I'm a radical lesbian, want to do a story on me???????//
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