Good thread topic
 

I feel very strongly about this thread topic so I'd like to add my two cents: I spent two and a half years down South and in an area where GLBT youth were incredibly closeted and terrified to tell their parents about who they really were, mostly for what they said were religious reasons.

I worked in a grocery store with some of these young kids and several of them came out to me. I was moved to tears by a particular young gay man who told me he would probably just get married to a woman and live a lie. He broke my heart. I gave him the biggest hug. He really looked up to me and cried when I left abruptly to move back up North. I felt responsible for him. I did my best to encourage him to be himself.

No matter where you live; more conservative parts of the South, more liberal parts of the North or anywhere in between or beyond, I believe the 30 and over crowd is in part responsible for GLBT youth. I offer as much encouragement as I can because so many young GLBT people commit suicide every day.

And I want to make a side note here in case I offend any Southerners: I'm not saying that all Southerners are homophobic at all. My then-partner and I just happened to live in a particularly non-accepting area. Not making judgement at all against any one group of people. (I'm not that kind of "Yankee" ;).)

Wonderful thread! I am on faculty at a rural community college in an overall very conservative county. As far as I know I was the first out employee (talking openly about my then-spouse, applying for the few domestic partnership benefits that we actually did have) but we only last month were able to finally start a GSA -- for years when I tried to start one, I was told that only a student could start a club, but the climate in this area was just so oppressive that no student was willing to go forward and do so. Finally a coworker who is president of the local PFLAG group fought hard and won the right for us to start the GSA.

So I'm now one of the faculty advisors for the GSA, and it's just amazing to me to watch the students come forward with this look of freedom that they just haven't had before. It gave me the courage to take it a step further and put a LGBT Safe Space sign on my office door, plus an HRC sticker on my office window. As a femme, I don't have the ability to be out to my students just from my appearance and demeanor; if I want them to recognize that I am one of them -- and from that allow them to see that they can live a life that is honest and open even as a gay person -- I have to be more deliberate about it. Fortunately my new boss is a very strong supporter of the LGBT community.

So I really don't know if what I'm doing could be considered mentoring in the sense that I normally mean it. I'm not directly taking anyone under my wing, though if an LGBT student came to me and asked me for advice and assistance I would certainly not turn them away - though it would have to be to some degree with in the boundaries of what we are supposed to do in general in terms of trying to help our students directly with any kind of personal problem.

Oh and YAY for science/physics geeks! I'm a computer geek with roots in engineering, and would have loved to have gone to MIT! In fact, my very first butch lover was an MIT student... ;)