From NY Times: Room in Catholic High School for Gay-Straight Alliance

I have to admit: this one surprised me a bit. ( i.e. Pleasantly.)
NYT Sat. Sept. 19, 2015

Anyone wants to repost this to LGBT Forum or Religion.... be my guest.

>>>One afternoon during the first week of classes this week at Xavier High School in Manhattan, as the various student clubs reconvened, Joseph Papeo walked into Alexander Lavy’s physics classroom. On the walls hung a crucifix and posters of Einstein and Homer Simpson. Two flags flanked the door. One was the American standard, while the other was the rainbow banner of gay pride.

Mr. Papeo, 17, was in the classroom for a meeting of Xavier’s Gay-Straight Alliance. A senior and the club’s co-president, Mr. Papeo positioned himself at a dry-erase board, preparing to write a list of the recent milestones for gay rights at Xavier and in the rest of the world.



Mr. Lavy, one of three faculty advisers, called for ideas from the 14 students in the room. He did so partly as an icebreaker to coax newcomers past their initial nerves. Yet as the board filled with events of the last year — same-sex marriage allowed by the Supreme Court, Irish voters enacting it in that largely Catholic country, the rainbow flag hanging in Xavier’s hallway during Pride Month in June — something profound was being tallied.

The mere existence of a Gay-Straight Alliance in a Roman Catholic high school counted as part of the transformation of both secular and religious attitudes toward gays. During the last three academic years, Xavier’s alliance had functioned as a sanctioned school activity, no more or less marginal than the engineering club or the track team. The alliance sponsors activities and events that engage hundreds of the school’s 1,100 students.

“It’s a place where you can feel welcome, feel it’s just me and my fellow human beings,” Mr. Papeo said of the alliance. “Above all else, there’s a sense of safety and familiarity.>>>>>>
lots more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/us/room-in-catholic-school-for-gay-straight-alliance.html