Ahead of their class: high school students across the nation are not just coming out in big numbers; they're competing for traditional leadership roles.

When openly gay high school junior Jarred Gamwell ran for student body president in April, it wasn't the school bullies who tried to trash his campaign. It was the principal at James B. Hunt Jr. High in Wilson, N.C., who tore down his campaign posters, which read GAY GUYS KNOW EVERYTHING and QUEER EYE FOR HUNT HIGH. The school even canceled his campaign speech.

Gamwell lost the election, but that's OK, he says. "If you can do something big for everybody, that's what's important. That's why I feel like I won."

Immediately following the principal's action, some students at the high school made up stickers featuring Gamwell's queer slogans and wore them around campus. Faculty members and community leaders rallied behind him, and the American Civil Liberties Union mounted a free-speech court challenge to have the posters replaced. Gamwell got letters of support from all over the country and the world, including one from Australia. And he received a call from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Ted Allen. "He said all the guys were behind me," Gamwell says.

Support for openly gay and lesbian high school students has been increasing nationwide. They're coming out in large numbers, and many of them are running for student government offices. "When I went to high school [in New Jersey], no one ever dared to be out," says Leslie Cooper, 36, a staff attorney for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights project who represented Gamwell. "Now it's happening not just in places like San Francisco or Los Angeles. This is a small town in North Carolina. The fact that so many kids are refusing to hide just shows us that the future is ours. And they're teaching their peers that there's nothing tenable about being gay."

Kelly Coughlin is doing just that: The 18-year-old senior at Gray-New Gloucester High School in Gray, Maine, was appointed school vice president earlier this academic year after she let everybody know that she is proud to be a lesbian. After transferring to the school last year she immediately went around wearing gay pride paraphernalia, and she soon started the school's first gay-straight alliance. "I was quickly identiffed as the person to go to for GLBT resources," Coughlin says. "A lot of queer people see me and feel like they can talk to me. That's great."

Coughlin, who plans to attend college in California this fall and hopes to work in queer activism one day, also started working with the school's student council. "We had a meeting, and [the council] decided they wanted me to be the vice president," she says. "What's really important is that my queer identity hasn't overshadowed my activities at the school. It was nice to know that people don't just see me as 'the lesbian,' but they see me as a good leader and a scholar."

Similarly, since being elected class president at Brighton High School in Medford, Mass., a suburb of Boston, openly gay senior Morgan Jennatton says he has become the go-to guy on gay issues and he has helped to change the school's climate. "People who are very religious have seen that I'm just like them, and now they tell me they support gay marriage," he says. "They were very homophobic, but they didn't know any gay people. When I got here I heard the word faggot everywhere. But this year, I have not heard it once."

Jennatton, who will study English on a full scholarship to Boston University this fall, didn't run an overtly gay campaign like Gamwell, but because he is president of the school's gay-straight alliance, everyone knew he was gay, he says. "When I first thought about it, I thought, I'm not going to win, but I'll do it for fun," he says. "There was one girl in particular who was very adamant about how I wouldn't be representative of the school. But I'm just like any other person who ran for office. And I won. Ten years ago this would never have happened."

Indeed, a lot has changed in 10 years, says Kevin Jennings, executive director for the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, but we've still got a way to go before gay students are treated fairly. "This is really the first generation of young people who are coming out in large numbers, and they're saying, 'I want to do the things that everybody else is doing,'" be says. "We're just at the beginning of this trend. Studies now show that the median age they come out is between 15 and 17."

Unfortunately, they're coming out in school systems that aren't prepared to deal with them, Jennings adds. The words sexual orientation are absent from school policies in 42 states, and administrators aren't getting the training they need. "What happened in North Carolina was a classic case of a principal who probably never imagined he would have to deal with this," Jennings says. "We need to ask ourselves why he didn't know what to do."

A 2003 GLSEN study of 887 openly gay middle and high school students found that about four out of five reported being verbally, sexually, or physically abused at school because of their sexual orientation, and about 83% said that faculty members rarely or never intervened when present. And in the absence of a school policy protecting them from harassment, gay students were nearly 40% more likely than straights to skip school altogether.

There are 10 to 15 openly gay students at Gamwell's school of about 1,000, and all of them, he says, have had to endure routine teasing, ridicule, and physical violence. "For me it has been a little easier because I have a strong character," he says. "People will say things like 'Hey, faggot,' and I will turn around and say, "That's Mr. Faggot to you.' You need to fight bigotry with cynicism. It shows them that you're proud of yourself and you're not intimidated."

This fall Gamwell will combat the hostility at his school by starting a gay-straight alliance, joining more than 2,100 other GSAs launched at schools in all 50 states. "There are people here in North Carolina who are willing to donate money for this because they're really concerned," he says. "There are even churches that are really supportive."

After graduating and attending college, Gamwell hopes to continue to help others. "I've always wanted to be an English teacher," he says. "But I've also always wanted to go into some type of organization that supports gay people. When you put yourself through harassment, you start to ask what you can do. I hope all this attention gives me the opportunity to give people the support they need."