New generation, out and out loud.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

High school student Sarah Ramstead has plenty to say - she just won't be saying it at school on Wednesday.

That's because Ramstead, a senior at Sheldon High, is among dozens of students who plan to show up with red tape over their mouths - a symbolic gesture intended to represent the silence they say is faced every day by students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans- gender.

Nationally, the 10th annual Day of Silence is expected to draw a half-million students from about 4,000 high schools, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN. Locally, this is at least the third year with some local participation, but it's also a first in a couple of ways - thanks to Ramstead.

For one thing, students at Sheldon - the last high school in the Eugene, Bethel and Springfield school districts to form a Gay Straight Alliance student club - plan to participate. Ramstead was the force that helped the club win official status last fall.

This year's activities, culminating with a Night of Noise gathering at the University of Oregon, are sponsored by Queer Line, a newly formed coalition of youth activists who meet twice a month at Lane Community College. Among the leaders who formed the coalition: Ramstead.

The 17-year-old is direct in explaining her passion for activism.

"After finally coming out and accepting yourself, you realize that what's going on is not right and no one should have to deal with the harassment and alienation," she says. "I'm looking for ways to change that."

Ramstead's and other students' efforts come at what may be a paradoxical time: More gay teens are coming out, and at earlier ages - even as bullying, harassment and name-calling persist.

Sheldon, for example, has joined at least 3,000 high schools across the country that now have Gay Straight Alliance clubs - compared with 100 in 1987. A Pew Research Center study released last month, meanwhile, found growing support for gay marriage, gay adoptions and gays in the military - especially among younger Americans.

However, more than 84 percent of nonheterosexual students reported being verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation, and nearly 40 percent said they were physically harassed, according to a national survey conducted by GLSEN in 2003. More than 90 percent said they hear anti-gay comments at school.

In the Eugene School District, "sexual orientation" was students' most cited explanation for harassment and discrimination during the 2004-05 and 2003-04 school years - accounting for nearly a quarter of all complaints. "Racial" was the second-most cited reason both years.

Elise Self, co-chairwoman of the local chapter of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays, notes that students, not staff, drive most of the effort to support gay students in schools.

"There's very little initiative on the part of administrators and teachers to really talk about this and learn about this," she says. More than anything else, students tell Self they wish teachers and other school officials would speak up when they hear an anti-gay slur, or a phrase such as "that's so gay," typically understood to mean "that's so stupid."

While progress has been made, students "aren't focused on comparing today to the past," says Laura Philips, in her ninth year as coordinator of a local gay and lesbian youth support group. "They're comparing how they're treated now to what would actually be fair."

Philips says she delights in hearing high-schoolers describe the angst of coming out as something that happened "a long time ago in middle school," and who now view their sexual orientation as a facet, but not the central fact, of their daily lives.

"But there are still a lot of kids who keep this as a big secret, and who experience all the negative actions - the drinking or drugs or thoughts of suicide - that can come with stress and depression."

Not everyone thinks students' embrace of homosexuality is a good idea, though organized opposition appears limited. For example, Exodus International, a Christian group that views homosexuality as a choice that can be changed through faith and prayer, used to have a Eugene presence, but no longer.

Jason Thompson, executive director of the Exodus International chapter in Portland, says Lane County residents occasionally drive to Portland to attend the group's meetings. He says the group is less about outreach and more about being there for people "who are uncomfortable with their homosexuality and want an alternative to the alternative."

At Sheldon, Ramstead says the only counter-literature she's received are church pamphlets from "well-intentioned" adults.

Joan Cavin, the Gay Straight Alliance club adviser at Sheldon, says she encounters students wrestling with when and if to come out, and who are subjected to verbal harassment.

"A lot of it happens where adults don't see it - that's part of the game, to not get caught," says Cavin, an art teacher at Sheldon since 1992.

About 15 students - out of a student body of around 1,600 - typically attend the club's weekly meetings, Cavin says. Many view their participation as a human rights and school safety issue, and the club may have more straight than gay members, she says.

Cavin says she doesn't know if the Sheldon neighborhood's politically conservative makeup explains why the high school was the last in the metro area to form such a club. What's certain, she says, is that it's the result of student initiative, Ramstead's in particular.

Ramstead's Queer Line colleagues include Aspen Koch, a sophomore at South Eugene High School. Koch says it was difficult to come out at age 13 in middle school, and that she was thrilled when she got to high school and discovered its Gay Straight Alliance.

Like Ramstead, Koch says she is motivated to educate people and spur change.

"I used to think I didn't really want to be an activist, if people were going to assume that when you're queer you have to be activist," she says. "Now I just like it because of the people I get to meet and because I feel like I'm making a difference, as corny as that sounds."

CAPTION(S):

Sarah Ramstead, 17, (left) and Aspen Koch, 16, are among area students who have organized Gay Straight Alliance clubs at local high schools.