Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [90]
Gay Youth tells parallel stories that dramatize the differing outcomes for two young people, one accepted and the other not. Bobby’s history, recounted by Mary against a backdrop of photos and spoken quotes from his diary, unfolds in counterpoint to that of Gina Gutierrez, a California high school girl. Gina, a vivacious teenager, is seen in the context of a warm, nonjudgmental family that obviously holds her in high esteem. Gina’s being a lesbian is not entirely easy for them, but it is depicted as a natural and minor part of the daily pulse of a busy, happy suburban household.
A high point of the film is a long scene showing Gina and her girlfriend getting ready for the senior prom with the help of Gina’s sister and her boyfriend. Gina’s parents then give the radiant couple a send-off at the door. The contrast with Bobby’s story is powerful.
Gay Youth was a success, selling to schools, colleges, and nonprofit groups around the country with an accompanying study guide. PBS stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Denver, and Kansas City ran the film. It was used on behalf of gay teen reforms in Massachusetts and other states. The Griffith scholarship fund realized two thousand dollars in royalties.
Another opportunity surfaced when the Advocate, a national gay newsmagazine, ran a cover story on teen suicide in the fall of 1991, prominently featuring the Griffiths, with a separate article on the government’s behavior in quashing the HHS report. The piece again fanned the interest of the mainstream media, which watched the Advocate as a bellwether of important trends in the gay community.
The Advocate article convinced David Sloan, a producer at ABC’s “20/20,” that the issue of gay teen suicide was ready for prime time. Sloan and reporter John Stossel traveled with a crew to Walnut Creek in spring 1992 to interview Mary for a segment that would range from Bobby’s story to that of a group of gay teens in Indiana and of a fundamentalist mother in Virginia. The twenty-minute segment, a frankly sympathetic account of the price of rejection of gay young people, aired in early May.
Barbara Walters, in her introduction, called it “an incredible and tragic irony” that suicidal gay teens “are pushed over the edge by the most important people in their lives.” Mary told Stossel the tale of her son’s tragic journey, to the poignant strains of piano accompaniment, while some 25 to 30 million viewers watched across the country. “What Bobby needed was for me to say, ‘You’re okay just the way you are.’ How simple it would have been just to tell Bobby that we loved him and want to understand.”
In contrast, Stossel interviewed the Virginia mother, Ellen Shepherd, who had pulled her child out of school when a class on homosexuality was introduced. She argued coolly that rather than “recruit” homosexuals and “then try to keep them from killing themselves,” people should be working to prevent homosexuality in the first place. Besides, she added, there were “very few gay children out there.”
Stossel told her of Mary’s conviction that she had made a mistake with her son, that she should have accepted him.
“That’s her choice,” Shepherd said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
A portion of the segment focused on gay youngsters at the Indianapolis Youth Group, a tiny agency that provided telephone and on-site reassurance to lesbian and gay youth. In the course of panning, the camera paused briefly on a flyer listing the group’s hot-line number. Within minutes after the close of the program,