Writing the Good Write by Abigail

Writing the Good Write by Abigail - November 2019 Scholarship Essay

Picture it: Topeka...1996... I was a young Alexander Hamilton in my prime, writing like I was running out of time. I did not write federalist essays, but rather some of the most hard-hitting high school journalism ever published as the assistant editor of my high school paper, The Totem.
How else, I ask you, would anyone know that the high school orchestra got to rehearse on stage with the San Antonio Symphony and visit the Toilet Seat Museum on their Spring Break trip? Through my work the community also learned that that there was a rash of possibly rabid squirrels attacking cross country runners at the track during a September meet. I scribed our stories as they unfolded-documenting dances, changes to class schedules, severe weather events (we were in Kansas, after all), and reviews to the latest CD releases by No Doubt and Mariah Carey.
As my staff and I were getting the scoop on all the little details of our school days, something bigger than us was happening globally: LBGTQ protections were being hotly debated and legislated world-wide. During that year parts of Eastern Europe decriminalized homosexuality, and South Africa became the first nation to explicitly ban discrimination of gays via their constitution. In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed and the court of appeals declared the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy unconstitutional. Addressing concerns about the rising suicide rates in LBGTQ teens, schools were also offering a club for these students and their allies called the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA). My high school chartered one of these clubs with little comment from anyone except one man: Fred Phelps.
Fred Phelps is the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. A civil rights attorney, Fred Phelps and his followers understood quite well how to protect their rights to spew extremist anti-gay rhetoric all around the country. They picketed LBGTQ supportive organizations and churches with sexually explicit signs warning against the dangers of hell and, most deplorably, they picketed funerals for A.I.D.S. victims and military veterans.
Topeka is a fairly small town with fairly conservative values, but this one man united nearly all of our residents, no matter our orientation or political values, against bigotry and hate speech. In response to establishing our own GSA and advertising it in our school paper, Reverend Phelps sent my high school newspaper staff hateful faxes predicting our fiery deaths and eternal suffering our students would face if they didn’t repent for offering this club.
That year GSA could have just been another innocuous after school club, and our reporters could have kept on the rabid squirrel reporting beat, but we instead found ourselves in a maelstrom of controversy over teen gay rights. Many of us did not have much reason to voice a strong opinion on the subject, but we were outraged at the vitriolic attacks and organized the only way we knew how: fighting their free speech with our own. We spoke out at city council meetings and wrote passionately about the challenges for young people questioning their identities and how best to support those who are feeling marginalized.
I have not thought about that time in my high school career for some years, but the current political climate has brought back to mind some of those memories recently. There is no way of knowing how many, if any, students were helped by the GSA club and the very vocal support they received that year as a result of this controversy. What I do know for sure is that our school responded to malevolence with compassion and acceptance, and that we can do that again as families, friends and communities, especially during a time when bridging differences seems more and more difficult to do.