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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday March 15, 2008 - 3 HOPE for gay teens I t was a secret Amanda had kept for more than a year. She knew the feelings she had made her different from the majority of her classmates. Still, even telling her closest friends she was bi-sexual wasn't going to be easy. "Think of the most difficult thing you've ever had to do. Now SPECIAL REPORT In the final installment of a three-part series, reporter Herb Garbutt examines the efforts of one group to provide support for gay teens. multiply the fear and awkward factor by about 100. That's how difficult it was," she said. "The reason being that your sexuality, that you have no control over, may just well isolate you from the people whom you love, trust, and depend on, on a daily basis. That's why coming out is so difficult." She had searched for support groups online, hoping to find somewhere to turn "just in case I needed an emergency place," just in case things didn't go as well as she hoped. She also hoped to find out that maybe she wasn't as different as she believed. "I thought that even though Burlington is such a homogenous, heterosexual, upper-middle-class, Caucasian suburbia, there had to be someone else out there who was going through the same things I was." Amanda would discover she wasn't alone when she found the Halton Organization for Pride and Education (HOPE). It was there, with the support of her peers, she got the courage to tell her friends about the part of herself she had been hiding. "It's just easier going through each day without feeling like I'm carrying some sort of huge secret inside me," she said. "I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders." HOPE's executive director, Marcus Logan said most gay teenagers feel very isolated. "When you're coming out at a young age, you think you are the only one. You feel very different." It is that feeling of loneliness that HOPE was trying to eliminate when it started its youth group, Colouring Outside the Lines. The group meets once a month in Oakville and Milton. It's proven to be so popular that Logan said students have asked him to increase the frequency of the meetings. Logan said he lets the students set the direction of meetings based on what is important to them. Some nights the students discuss issues that range from coming out safely, to faith and religion to how to deal with homophobia. The group members also will help one another through certain situations based on their own experience. "Some youths are very comfortable and very out there and there are a number who are trying to figure out how to tell their dad and mom. It does range and that's what helps," Logan said. "Coming out can be a very isolating experience and that peer to peer support is mostly what they want. Once you do come out, you become a teacher and others start asking, `What's it like to come out?'" Of course sometimes teenagers just want to be teenagers and the group will talk about their favourite music, movies or the sale at the mall. The group also holds social nights where the students will watch movies or play mini putt. "Before I started going to Marcus's youth group I had never met another gay person my age," said Sarah, a Burlington high school student. "It's so great to know you're not alone and some people understand." Amanda says "getting to meet and actually make friends with people who were going through more or less the same thing I was, "It's so great to know you're not alone and some people understand." Sarah, a Burlington High School student See Gay/Straight page 4 LIESA KORTMANN / OAKVILLE BEAVER CALIFORNIA & PLANTATION SHUTTERS Shop at Home Service FREE SHUTTERS ETC.