Out on MySpace, then out the door: think that no one will discover you're gay on MySpace? Think twice, say a growing number of gay students.

When Matthew James changed his MySpace.com profile in early 2005 to say he was gay, he knew it was a risk. "Some of my friends said I should take 'gay' off of my profile," he says. "But I didn't think it would ever come to this."

Indeed, James was asked to leave Lee University--a small Christian liberal arts institution in Cleveland, Tenn.--in May 2005 after a fellow student alerted school administrators to his profile. "Ever since this happened, my life has been hell," says James, 22.

At least two other students have recently been targeted for harassment and expelled from their universities after coming out on popular social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com, and Live-Journal.com. In January, Michael Guinn was kicked out of John Brown University, a Christian school in Arkansas, for talking about his boyfriend and posting photos of himself in drag on Facebook.com. In April, Jason Johnson was expelled from the University of the Cumberlands, a Baptist school in Kentucky, for revealing that he is gay on MySpace.com.

James knew that Lee University's standard of conduct listed "homosexual behavior' as a serious offense. But the Atlanta native decided to enroll anyway. "The school's got 4,000 students; a small town feeling," he says. "The people there care if you do well or not."

After viewing his MySpace profile school officials searched James's dorm room and found gay movies and magazines. A short time later he was told to leave. "I was scared and I was angry," he says. "I just went there for an education, and one little word, 'gay,' got me kicked out."

Some queer youths have paid an even higher price for being honest about themselves online. Ty Ryan, now 22, began keeping a diary at LiveJournal.com when she was 16 in which she discussed her girlfriend and her Clovis, Calif., high school's gay-straight alliance. After being tipped off to the diary two years later, her parents called a family meeting. "My parents went off about how they couldn't stand me and couldn't even look at me," Ryan says.

Then they gave her a choice: "Give up" being queer or move out. Ryan moved in with her girlfriend. "I unloaded my stuff in my new room and sat in the middle of the floor and just cried," she recalls.

MySpace.com which beasts more than 72 million members--has become so popular so quickly that LGBT youth organizations are starting to take note. To address online privacy issues, Carlos Sosa, executive director of CITY x1, a youth organization in West Hollywood, Calif., created the workshop "MySpace.com: A Place to Meet Friends or Just a Bunch of Drama?"

"MySpace right now is the trend and the cool thing to do," Sosa says. He wants queer youths to be themselves, but he also wants them to be cautious: "Be careful and conscious about what information you're posting. There's a real loss of privacy on MySpace."

James, who is currently looking for another university, agrees. "If you feel uncomfortable about putting 'gay' on your profile, then don't," he says. "As much as you think you're immune to it, you're really not, because it can be a witch hunt."

Ryan, who still has almost no contact with her family, is even more adamant. "Just because it's the cool thing and you think no one will find out," she says, "it may cost you everything in the end."