Time Out Youth
Editor's Note: Throughout North Carolina and around the nation, homosexual activists have been forming groups that work with children as young as the age of 13. Tonda Taylor is the leader of such a group in Charlotte. Time Out Youth says it helps gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth. The group works with as many as 300 kids a year, and has an annual budget of about $160,000. Charlotte World editor recently visited her office and asked her about the philosophy of her organization and what she actually teaches kids, some of whom are referred to her group from churches and the local public schools.
Warren Smith: Tell me a little bit about your organization and what it does?
Tonda Taylor: I am a native Charlottean. I grew up here, and I went to Eastover and Myers Park. My father was one of the first allergy specialists in the Southeast. My mother grew up in Hertford, NC, a little bitty town. She wanted to marry a doctor. She went to nursing school and met my father. Mother wanted us to get into the social circles of Charlotte, and we did. We joined Myers Park Country Club and I played tournament tennis when I was in high school and I was an exchange student to Northern Norway.
WS: Does all this relate to what you do now?
TT: Yeah I was raised in Myers Park Methodist. My grandmother had gone to Myers Park Baptist and my Methodist upbringing meant a lot to me. I became a member. But by the time I was a senior I began to realize that the reason that I got bored with boys was because I was different. But then there was no information, except that I knew that homosexuality was wrong.
WS: Your church taught that?
TT: I don't ever remember it specifically being talked about; I had read the Bible from completely from Old Testament to New Testament
WS: So you knew it was wrong from reading the Bible?
TT: Yeah. The Bible and it simply not something talked about which means that something negative is going on here.
WS: During that time, Tonda, do you ever remember making a personal religious commitment? Did you ever allow Jesus in your heart?
TT: Well, I was a part of the Methodist church.
WS: You had been baptized in Methodist church?
TT: Yeah.
WS: How old were you when that happened?
TT: I think I was around 12.
WS: Was there any kind of preparation for being baptized? Was there a confirmation class?
TT: Yeah.
WS: So you basically had to make some sort of affirmation in Christ at that time before you were baptized and for you at that time that was heart felt expression of what you were?
TT: By the 9th grade I think my dream was to marry a missionary and we would go to Congo and be missionaries I think that was my dream in the 9th grade. So I headed off for college and fell in love with a teacher, a woman teacher in college.
WS: Where was this?
TT: Allegheny up in Pennsylvania.
WS: When you say fell in love, you mean you had a romantic physical relationship with her?
TT: Yes, and it was a confirmation of what I had known since the 1st grade, that I was not attracted to boys no matter how hard I tried. Just wasn't who I was. I became suicidal and part of it came from not being able to articulate in life not having anyone to trust or talk to about these issues.
WS: You didn't feel comfortable that you could talk to your parents?
TT: I had tremendous respect for the both of them but I knew this was an issue that was going to be tough, so I came very close to suicide about three times my sophomore year. I had a roommate who was an artist and had liquid lead in her art supplies and I knew that was probably the way I would do it. I think the only thing that prevented my own suicide was that my despair had not gotten to the point that I did not care for my mother. I knew if I killed myself that there would be tremendous damage to her too, especially without any explanation, and that was the one thing that prevented me from committed suicide, so I dropped out of school went home. I got therapy and started work first for my father and then for the Mecklenburg County library and...
WS: I assume that where you are going with this is that you struggled when you were a youth, found no support, and so you wanted to form an organization for kids that were going through the same thing.
TT: I did, a lot of people in my generation did. I planned to not come back to Charlotte to avoid being an embarrassment to my family. So I lived in Boston and Greenwich Village for 20 years and I came back only because my youngest brother was sick with leukemia. When I came back to help the family out I realized that I probably would have not left except for this part of who I was, but by then I had had a chance to do a lot of growing, a lot of therapy, and finally got a sense of who I was. By then the American Psychological Association had realize that this was not a mental illness that this was part of the diversity of the human beings.
Sam died in 1990, and left me some inheritance money as well as my other brother and sister and I was working at Charter Pine Psychiatric hospital then. I had also seen there that adolescents who came on the adolescent unit, where sexual orientation was an issue, got better in the in-patient treatment. Got stronger, more self confident. But when they got out there was no support system. No follow up. It was hard to know where the safe therapists were, the really open minded therapists.
WS: When you say safe and open-minded therapists, you mean therapists who would affirm homosexuality?
TT: They would help them find out what their real sexual orientation was – whether it is was heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual. They would not come into the therapy with a bias.
So I quit my job there. I had worked in nonprofit most of my life, so I had an idea how you go about creating a nonprofit. That was in 1991, so I started an organization that I knew would have made a tremendous difference if it had been here in Charlotte when I was growing up.
WS: How many kids do you work with?
TT: Between 20-40 come to our weekly support groups. Some come one time and some come 6-7 years.
WS: What are the ages of the kids?
TT: We are open to 13 year olds through 23. A broad age range, because a lot of college age youth don't want to go to their groups on campus they are worrying about being seen. More kids are being “outted” in middle school.
WS: So most of the kids who come to your group are they closer to 13 or closer 23 or are they all ranges?
TT: There are all ranges, but kids who are 13, 14, 15 -- they don't have a driver's license. They have to trust someone to bring them to the group. They have to confide in somebody or they will be able to come two or three times, make up a story about where they are, then after that it's harder for them to get here. Most of the kids that are active with us are 17, 18, 19, 20, that's the major age range.
WS: Do most of them come with their parent's knowledge and affirmation, or without?
TT: Most are not “out” to their parents, for the same reason that I wasn't. They know that their parents are ignorant about homosexuality. For many for the parents this would be the worst thing they would tell their parents.
WS: Would you ever counsel these 16, 17,18 year old kids to be involved in some sort of therapy that would help them overcome their questioning about homosexuality. If a kid is questioning, not sure, would you ever send them to an Exodus International affiliated organization?
TT: Never, absolutely never.
WS: Why not?
TT: Because those are based on assumptions that homosexuality is wrong and that it is a choice.
WS: Well, I think that you agree with me that there is a difference between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior, and even as a heterosexual man I can choose not to engage in heterosexual relations for whatever reasons.
TT: You could choose to be celibate?
WS: I could choose to be celibate. Exactly. There are many folks involved in reparative therapy ministries who will affirm the possibility of a homosexual orientation but also say that homosexual behavior is nonetheless morally wrong and in those cases celibacy is a viable option.
TT: The message to all the kids that come here is that we want to help them have a safe place to meet other kids who have a lot of the same questions and are dealing with a lot the same harassment, confusion, and negativity coming from a heterosexist culture. There is a tremendously high rate of suicide among gay kids.
WS: And your implication is that a heterosexist culture is creating pressures on these kids that drive them to depression and suicide.
TT: Enormous pressure.
WS: You do not accept even the possibility that homosexual behaviors, and the guilt associated with that, could be creating this depression?
TT: No, I don't.
WS: You don't believe that?
TT: No.
WS: You don't think that is even a possibility?
TT: No, no. I don't think it's any more a moral issue than discovering at age three that you're left-handed rather than right handed. And they used to tie kid's hands behind their backs, you know.
WS: Well, I happen to be left-handed, so I have some experience on that topic. It's true that the world is oriented toward right-handedness, but I don't remember ever being suicidal or even depressed because the world was oriented toward right-handedness. I am having trouble of making a connection between gay adolescents being depressed and committing suicide and your conclusion that this is necessarily caused by some sort of oppressive heterosexist culture. There have been oppressive cultures throughout history and the oppressed people did not necessarily have higher rates of self-destructive behavior. But it seems to me that homosexuals do have a higher rate of self-destructive behavior. On the other hand, if what you are saying is true, why wouldn't a more open culture – as we have today – result in less, not more, self-destructive behavior among homosexuals? Lower suicide rates, lower rates of depression, lower rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases? Indeed, just the opposite is true. The data do not seem to support your theory that an oppressive heterosexist culture is creating these problems.
TT: A homosexual kid has no one to run to. No minister to go to. No doctor to go to. Their whole world looks totally threatening. That's one explanation.
WS: Going back what do you actually teach the kid. So a 17-year-old kid comes and he's questioning and while you say you would celebrate his heterosexuality if that came out, is that really what happens? You're a lesbian and the other leadership of the group is homosexual, I would speculate. Is that accurate?
TT: The facilitators in our support group are the people who lead our outdoor trips and go to our alternative prom. They are both straight and gay. We might have 60%, 70% that are gay and lesbian. There are a number of straight people.
WS: I guess what I am struggling with is that your organization is really a recruiting organization for homosexuality rather than a support group for questioning kids.
TT: How do we recruit?
WS: Well just by the very nature of what you are doing. You take a questioning kid – and perhaps a troubled kid who is not getting love and acceptance at home -- who is highly influenceable -- and you provide hospitality and you provide homosexual role models and out of that context you tell them that homosexuality is OK.
TT: But you are assuming that sexual orientation is a choice.
WS: I am not assuming that sexual orientation is a choice, but I am assuming that sexual behavior is a choice and it strikes me that in affirming a very young kid's homosexual orientation that you are not necessarily encouraging homosexual behavior among very young kids.
TT: We encourage them to be whoever they are, whatever their sexual orientation.
WS: So, again, a simple question: a 16-year-old kid who is questioning whether he is gay or not comes to your group. Would you encourage that kid towards celibacy or would you consider that into a homosexual experience?
TT: Why would we encourage them into celibacy?
WS: Because it's safer. Because it's moral. Because a 16-year-old does not have the emotional and spiritual tools to be engaged in a sexual relationship. For all these reason and a whole lot more.
TT: Well what they learn with us is that we encourage them to wait to become sexually active until they find a truly meaningful relationship.
WS: How would you encourage them to wait, and what do you mean by meaningful relationship?
TT: We would teach about safer sex, knowing that kids, many of them, are not going to wait until they have a more permanent partnership.
WS: I am looking at one of the brochures that you pass out, presumably you would give this to a 13- or 14-year-old kid who came in here and was inquiring about safer sex guidelines for gay men.
TT: If they picked it up. They have it to read.
WS: But it's here. It's a part of your literature.
TT: Yeah.
WS: Let me read you a portion: “When you're getting [expletive deleted] or [expletive deleted], use a latex condom, a rubber. This is the only way to make [expletive deleted] safer.” It also doesn't mention the possibility of abstinence. I guess my question is....
TT: That is from the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center in New York.
WS: But it's part of the literature available here. It's coming from you.
TT: Do you ever get on the Internet and see what's on the Internet?
WS: Well, I know it's on the Internet. But what's on the Internet is on the Internet and what's in my hand – this brochure -- comes from you.
TT: Well, our kids have to deal with real world so we give them information about the real world and if they don't get it from us they are going to get it from other places and we want them to talk about it.
WS: Speaking of the real world, and giving complete information, and inclusiveness. Let me ask you this: if a formerly gay man wanted to come and speak to your group and talk about how he was gay as a young man and through whatever experiences he had – therapy, religious experience, religious counseling, whatever -- came out of the homosexual lifestyle, and he was not judgmental or speaking for anyone else but himself, if was just sharing his own personal experience with homosexuality – would you let him speak to your group?
TT: Probably we would have him with someone else, with a local therapist, who had a very different view.
WS: In the entire history of your organization, have you ever had someone with that kind of perspective come to your group?
TT: No.
WS: To shift gears a bit. You said you had about 30 to 40 kinds involved in your group now. Over the course of a year, how many kids do you work with?
TT: Probably about 250-300. We do a lot of public speaking to churches, universities.
WS: In the Charlotte area you have spoken to UNCC recently. Where have you spoken recently?
TT: UNCC, Winthrop University, Johnson C. Smith University. The Park Road YMCA
WS: What about Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools?
TT: We have been to several private schools. Charlotte Latin. Country Day. With public schools it's mostly been a part of training or monthly meetings outside of the school with social workers and school counselors.
WS: So you meet with the school counselors and the public school to make them aware of your organization?
TT: Yeah, to let them know we are here as a referral resource. We have one middle school principal on our board, Joann Pughsley of McClintock Middle School.
WS: To change gears again, because we're about out of time, I'd like to ask if there is anything at all you'd like to say.
TT: Well, you know, being interviewed by you and seeing the stats you have in your paper, I feel like a mother being very protective of her children. I feel like you are a part of what we and our kids have to deal with everyday and the negativity I feel is undeserved and tremendously destructive.
WS: So you see no possibility that it is not I but homosexuality itself that is destructive, and that these statistics we publish, about incidence of sexually transmitted disease, and HIV death rates, and all the rest, are not related to homosexual behavior?
TT: Not about homosexuality, no.
WS: Since we started out talking about your background, let me ask you one last question: what is your religious faith today?
TT: I am a humanitarian. Spirituality, I believe there is a spirit of good that's here in life and will be, whether we are reincarnated or wherever. Our spirits go on after this life.
WS: So you have rejected your Methodist upbringing.
TT: Yes, because it doesn't welcome homosexual people.