Bay Windows - April 21, 2005
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com.

Grace Sterling Stowell has been with BAGLY from the beginning, firs as an adult advisor and now as executive director.

Today's incarnation of the Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY) runs like a well-oiled nonprofit, with paid staff, a board of directors, and a fundraising infrastructure, but 25 years ago it began as an act of youthful rebellion. As founding member Ben Klein remembers it, the kids attending the weekly meetings of BAGLY's precursor, the Committee for Gay Youth (CGY), back in early 1980 were getting fed up with the group's adult leadership. Klein, now the director of the AIDS Law Project for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), was a 19-year-old college student when he first started going to CGY in early 1980, which at the time was the only group for gay youth in the Boston area.

"There were a few people from that group who started BAGLY because it was felt there was really a need for a youth-led group and that the adults at CGY were heavy handed and not responsive to needs of youth," said Klein.

Working with Mayor Kevin White's advisor to the gay community, Robin McCormack, a group of youth dissatisfied with CGY, including Klein, George Smith, the former youth liaison to the adults leading CGY, Jack Friedman and Gary Greenbaum, broke away from CGY and held a fundraising auction at the Boylston Street bar Buddies in the spring of 1980. They used the funds to launch BAGLY, formally incorporated in July of that year, and they quickly began drawing crowds of between 40 and 60 GLBT youth to their weekly Wednesday meetings.

At a time when there was no such thing as a gay/straight alliance or a Safe Schools program or a Day of Silence, the notion of a youth-led gay group was unprecedented, but in the early years of the organization the youth called all the shots. In addition to electing their own youth steering committee, the group recruited two adult advisors, Kevin Cranston and Sterling Stowell (who later transitioned and became Grace Sterling Stowell), and rented their own meeting space on Tremont Street across from Boston Common. Even the term "adult advisor" was used rather loosely; both Stowell and Cranston were just one year past the 22-year-old cutoff for youth membership to BAGLY.

"I was an adult at 23," joked Cranston, who now serves as director of the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Cranston, along with Greater Boston Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) will be honored April 28 at a celebration of BAGLY's 25th anniversary held at the Bernard Toale Gallery.

From its founding until the early '90s the organization functioned as an all-volunteer group, and it survived financially through fundraisers at bars, private donations and special events like a youth-run carnival. Both Klein, who was the group's first elected president, and Stowell, who has been BAGLY's executive director since 1995, remember that in the early days, the young people who attended BAGLY's meetings came from incredibly diverse backgrounds.

"One of the things that is really extraordinary about BAGLY is that BAGLY in 1980 was the most diverse group of people I've ever been involved with anywhere in every sense. It was diverse racially, it was diverse in terms of class, it was diverse in the general range of life experiences that people had," said Klein. He said those experiences ranged from college and high school students to runaways, hustlers and drag queens who lived on the street.

That diversity made for some interesting discussions at the group's Wednesday meetings. Klein said during a discussion on hustling and prostitution, members of the group who were hustlers shared their own firsthand experiences with the other youth. The discussions could also get quite heated. Defrocked Catholic priest Paul Shanley, who was convicted in February of raping an altar boy, came to a meeting to discuss sexuality and religion. The priest, who had built a reputation of ministering to sexual minority youth, did not receive a warm welcome from the BAGLY youth.

"He was attacked by the kids. People were all over him," recalled Klein. "They kept asking him, 'Are you gay? Are you gay,' and he said, 'I refuse to answer that.'"

The group had major successes and major setbacks in the early days. By the end of 1981 BAGLY was unable to afford the rent at its Tremont Street space, and it moved to its present location at St. John the Evangelist Church in March 1982.Yet one of its early successes was holding the first BAGLY prom in the summer of 1981. According to Stowell, the prom was the brainchild of youth steering committee member Michael Pumphret, a South Boston youth who passed away during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

"It was Michael's idea to have a prom that would be for us, for GLBT youth, because most could not go as openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender to their high school prom, or [they] certainly could not bring a same-sex date," said Stowell. She added that the first prom, held in the basement of Arlington Street Church, drew between 50 and 75 kids, and it became a yearly event that continues to this day.

Another early success was BAGLY's response to the AIDS crisis.

"I remember very vividly the BAGLY meeting in the summer of 1981.... A young person, one of the youth came into the Wednesday meeting saying, 'Did you hear, did you hear about the gay cancer?'" said Stowell. BAGLY's membership was hit hard by the epidemic. Stowell said the first youth affiliated with BAGLY died of AIDS in 1986.

"Unfortunately the first of many," said Stowell.

In 1983, before schools were doing AIDS education, BAGLY brought in speakers from the newly formed AIDS Action Committee to talk to them about safe sex and prevention.

"I remember [AIDS Action Founding Executive Director] Larry [Kessler] coming with a man who was HIV infected and talking about the experience," said Cranston. "It was the only AIDS education any kids were getting. BAGLY was ahead of the curve by three or four years."

BAGLY continued operating as a grassroots group through the mid-'90s, and young people who came to the meetings were impressed by the group's commitment to youth leadership.

"[I remember] thinking it was incredible that this place was run by youth, that youth were in charge," said Jessica Flaherty, one of BAGLY's program directors, who first got involved at age 17 as a youth member back in 1991. She said back then the youth relied on each other as a support system because there were no other resources to meet their needs.

"It was really us taking care of each other without foundation money and grants," explained Flaherty.

All that changed in the mid-'90s, when Stowell said a confluence of events shined the spotlight in the gay community on GLBT youth. A 1989 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that gay and lesbian youth accounted for a disproportionate number of youth suicides. In 1992 Mass. Governor William Weld formed the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth to address the issue of GLBT youth suicide, and in 1993 the state passed a gay and lesbian student rights law.

These changes prompted BAGLY to reinvent itself at a time when it was suddenly resources available to deal with GLBT issues. In 1993 BAGLY created a board of directors, made up of young people and adults, and in 1995 the organization hired Stowell as a part time executive director (she was hired on full time in 1997). The youth steering committee maintained full control over the Wednesday night meetings, but the board took over the financial management of BAGLY, as well as hiring the organization's first paid staff. In 1995 BAGLY received its first major state funding for both HIV prevention and suicide prevention work.

The reinvention represented a major shift in culture for a group where the youth had once been responsible for managing every aspect of the organization. Only two of the board's 12 seats are reserved for young people, and they are occupied by the youth steering committee's president and vice president. At certain points more youth have served on the board, but currently there are only the required two. Yet Stowell said the change was necessary to create an infrastructure that would help BAGLY stay afloat as individual youth leaders and adult advisors came and went.

"The pros have far outweighed the cons," said Stowell. "We have a solid infrastructure in place that will continue long after I'm gone."

Beyond that, the program has grown. Starting in 1996, the BAGLY prom moved from Arlington Street Church to City Hall, and the date was changed to coincide with the annual youth Pride march. Attendance skyrocketed from 300 youth in 1997 to 1000 youth in 1999, and in the last couple of years attendance has hovered around 1500.

"It was exciting and a little overwhelming," admitted Stowell.

From the perspective of the youth, BAGLY still represents a space where they can address their own issues. Charlotte Park, a 16-year-old member who lives in Hyde Park, said she has appreciated the support provided by the youth and the staff.

"What keeps me coming back is that BAGLY has been supportive and I know I can go to the office any day of the week and do homework or talk to people.... It's like family, it's a sense of community you can't always get," said Park.

Not long after joining the group two years ago, Park became a meeting facilitator for six months for the women's group, which meets each Wednesday night before the general meeting. She planned meetings featuring everything from discussions of lesbian identity to group showings of The L-Word.

"I thought it was a lot of fun. Sometimes it can be overwhelming if you've never done it before, but it was great to be able to create meetings for my friends about what they're interested in and to be there as a peer leader if they need someone to talk to," said Park.

Trevor Wright, 20, the current youth president, said despite the adult staff and board members, the youth still have a major leadership role.

"The staff, they make it a level playing field in terms of how they interact with the youth. There's a big focus on making sure that no one feels discrimination because of how young they are," said Wright. "The program is designed by the youth, and the issues we bring up are the issues that affect us."

Those issues are one of the few constants in the group's 25-year history. Stowell said each year youth have been dealing with everything from family issues to health and addiction issues to issues around school safety, and BAGLY has always done its best to address them. "The core issues have not changed," said Stowell. "What changed is the options certainly now, with legal protections, with political support, with a much stronger, larger out community, with more resources...there's just far more public awareness [about GLBT youth issues]."

Klein said despite the success of BAGLY and other groups, the community is a long way from solving problems facing GLBT youth. "I think we as a community have to keep in mind that the number of teenagers who come out into a safe and supportive environment today are a minute percentage of LGBT young people in Massachusetts and the country, and for almost all young LGBT people today the world is not a safe or welcoming place, and our community needs to do more."

BAGLY's 25th anniversary fundraiser will be held Thurs., April 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Bernard Toale Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave., Boston. Tickets $50. On May 21, BAGLY will hold its 25th anniversary prom from 7 to 11 p.m. at Boston City Hall. Tickets $10. For information about both events, call 617.227.4313 or visit www.bagly.org.

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