NEW YORK, Sept. 8 — The first publicly funded school in the United States for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teen-agers opened in New York Monday as a handful of protesters rallied across the street.
THERE WERE also demonstrations of support for the Harvey Milk High School. In front of the building, people cheered and held up banners such as “God made us Queer” on the first day of classes for the school named after a gay San Francisco politician assassinated in 1978.
The school, which for 20 years was funded privately and had just two classes, is now bankrolled jointly by the city education department and a gay rights youth advocacy group, the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a first for the United States.
When city officials announced in July that the school would open in the new academic year in September along with others for New York’s 1.1 million city-educated children, critics in the United States and overseas said creating a special school would not solve the larger problem of homophobia.
“I am offended because this school is only for a particular sexual orientation,” protester Reuben Israel said Monday. “I say it is discriminating ... these people say ’accept us for who we are’ but don’t accept anybody else.”
Some held up banners like “Sodomy It’s to Die For” and another that said, “Death Penalty for Fags.”
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