Gay pride in high school.

Gay and Lesbian Pride, proclaims a banner in the showcase at Fairfax High School. The banner and other symbols of gay and lesbian life went up in the high school's main hallway during gay-pride week in June 1994. When the next school year started, the banner was still on prominent display. Project 10, a group of gay and lesbian youth at Fairfax High, and the group's adviser, Virginia Uribe, are responsible for the display, and for the increased support for gay and lesbian students at the school.

Uribe, who has taught life science at Fairfax for thirty years, started Project 10 a decade ago. The plight of one particular student prompted her to take action. An openly gay African-American teenager named Chris came to Fairfax in the mid-1980s, after transferring from school to school because of harassment and persecution. At Fairfax, he began to have the same dreary experience all over again. But for once, the staff at the school reacted with anger. A group of teachers started an effort to prevent it from happening to others. Uribe, supported by other concerned faculty, came up with the idea for Project 10. The name came from the statistic 10 percent - the homosexual portion of the U.S. population, according to the Kinsey studies of the late 1930s and 1940s.

Beginning with rap sessions during lunch hour, students began to explore their identities, the dynamics of a hostile society, and prospects for improving their lives. "Nothing had been done in this area," says Uribe. "We were pioneers in trying to meet this tremendous need."

The project spread to thirty of the other fifty high schools in the Los Angeles Unified Schools District, and is now being replicated in districts around the country.

Project 10's objectives are to foster self-understanding and acceptance among gay and lesbian teens, reduce verbal and physical abuse from the heterosexual majority, prevent suicide, and provide accurate information on AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Teachers, counselors, and administrators have participated in program workshops.

Thanks in part to its success and visibility, Project 10 has made some enemies in Southern California. The Traditional Values Coalition, run by the Reverend Lou Sheldon, has attacked Project 10 for presenting the idea that being gay is a legitimate way of life. Sheldon implies that the Project is an effort to recruit teenagers into being gay. Newton Russell, the Republican state legislator from Glendale, has also condemned Project 10.

Both critics appear in "Who's Afraid of Project 10," a video produced by the group's supporters, Friends of Project 10, that debunks its detractors' claims.

Some parents also worry that homosexuality is "catching," says Uribe. "Most parents are in denial, with the attitude that their child's gayness will go away if it is just ignored."

The main thing students get out of Project 10, Uribe believes, is "their realization that they are not alone. The sense of isolation is gone. Then there is the counseling they give each other."

"Project 10 has been invaluable," says Mitzi Henderson, president of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. "It has raised awareness of how issues confronting gay and lesbian students lead to high risk for truancy, dropping out, substance abuse, and suicide."

Greg Cartwright, a 1988 graduate of Fairfax High, told the school in his graduation address, "Being associated with Project 10 has given me the chance to articulate the needs of a silent minority. . . . I no longer consider myself stigmatized or different from other students."

For more information, write to Virginia Uribe, Fairfax High School, 7850 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90046.