Greenwich High students hear from LGBTQ adults for diversity week

Jacob Griffith Gardner speaks beside fellow LGBT activists Bernie Kettle and Barbara Curry at the Stonewall Speakers presentation as part of Diversity Week at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn. Monday, Feb. 27, 2017. Gardner, Kettle and Curry spoke about their lives in the LGBT community and paths to self-discovery and acceptance. less Jacob Griffith Gardner speaks beside fellow LGBT activists Bernie Kettle and Barbara Curry at the Stonewall Speakers presentation as part of Diversity Week at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn. Monday, ... more Photo: Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Greenwich High students hear from LGBTQ adults for diversity week 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

GREENWICH — Barbara Curry has an app on her phone that tells her where it is safe to pee. When she is not in Connecticut, she checks it before any trip to a public bathroom.

That’s because in many states, which door she chooses — men’s or women’s — could lead to her arrest.

“I’ve had to deal with a lot of situations where I walk into something not knowing what the risks are,” she said, “both professionally and individually.”

Curry is transgender. She presents as a tall, broad shouldered woman with shiny, brown hair.

On Monday, Curry was one of three guests invited to speak to Greenwich High students as part of the school’s Diversity Awareness Week.

Curry has been a member of the Connecticut-based LGBT activist group Stonewall Speakers for 20 years. She was joined by two other Stonewall Speakers, Stamford resident and business consultant Bernie Kettle and UConn student Jacob Griffith Gardner, both gay men, to share their stories, answer student questions and discuss the impact of the Trump administration on the LGBT community.

To an audience of more than 100, Curry, who was born male, explained that her identification as a woman was something innate.

“Since the day I was born and my parents were handed a baby boy, I wanted a second opinion," she said. “By the age of 5, I knew I was different but I didn't have a vocabulary; I had no way to tell people what it was about me that was different from everybody else."

As a young boy growing up in Fairfield, Conn., Curry wanted to wear dresses and regularly tried on her sister and mother’s clothing.

"Even time I did it, I had this moment of euphoria and then immediately would get a tidal wave of guilt and shame," she said.

Curry kept her gender questioning under wraps through high school and college, presenting as a “the most normative white straight guy that anybody could ever expect” until after she graduated.

In her 20s, Curry felt compelled to come out to a girl she was dating. In a three-hour conversation, struggling to find words to sum up what she had felt for so long, she explained she was a male who identified as female and was sexually attracted to women. Her date was accepting. The pair have been married for more than 35 years.

Curry said since that time, some things have gotten easier.

“I never thought I would have a U.S. court make a ruling that says I am entitled to use the bathroom of least astonishment," she said. "I didn’t think there would be executive orders from the White House saying transgender kids should be allowed to use the bathrooms they want.”

But some of the advances that the LGBT community has won are disappearing under the Trump presidency, she said.

Just last week, the President revoked Obama-era guidelines to public schools that let transgender students use the bathroom of their choice, leaving it up to states to decide whether students must use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificate.

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old transgender student from Virginia who sued his school board for a policy that required students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their biological sex or a separate single-stall restroom.

“Change doesn’t necessarily have to be drastic, but it has to be justifiable and equal," said Curry.

At Greenwich High, students may use a bathroom of the gender they identify with, said Headmaster Chris Winters. The school also have single occupancy bathrooms for students wishing that accommodation.

The Stonewall Speakers, Curry, Griffith Gardner and Kettle, said that some of the hope they felt during the presidency of Barack Obama is now gone.

“The people who have been appointed to positions lately are people that stand very vehemently and strongly against our community and have pledged to do things like re-recognize on a federal level conversion therapy, which is basically ... a form of torture trying to break people down so much that they are OK with not recognizing a part of who they are," said Griffith Gardner. “That is something that our current Vice President supports. That’s something that takes a lot of hope away.”

Neither the Office of the Vice President nor the White House Press Corps responded for comment by press time.

The LGBT community battles hundreds of years of mistrust of “sexual variance” stemming back to the time when men were burned at the stake for sodomy, Griffith Gardner said.

Prejudice against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer people finds its roots in history, he said.

Explaining his own journey with sexual orientation, Griffith Gardner emphasized the “sheer terror” he felt when coming out even to his best friend.

“I wasn’t comfortable coming out to them simply because of all of the negative things that have been said about the gay community around me," he said.

Griffith Gardner was assaulted three times during middle and high school in Madison, Conn., by students who called him a “faggot” for being gay. Last year at the Univeristy of Connecticut, he gave some male students a ride home from a party and when they arrived at their destination, they harassed him, hit his car and prevented him from driving away until Griffith Gardner called the police.

Griffith Gardener felt scared to leave his room for the next few days and when he eventually tried to go to class, the sight of cars gave him a panic attack that left him crying and unresponsive on the floor. He was hospitalized and took a semester-long leave of absence from the school, he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a nationally representative study of adolescents in grades seven to 12 found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers.

Griffith Gardner said more than three quarters of his LGBT friends in high school had attempted self-harm.

Griffith Gardner, Curry and Kettle highlighted the importance of being an ally, a straight person supporting an LGBT person or community, for struggling LGBT people, particularly under the new administration.

“There is a lot of work to be done,” said Griffith Gardner. “It is something that requires the allies to help us get through it."

Monday’s panel of Stonewall Speakers was part of the school’s annual Diversity Awareness Week, which brings speakers and presentations surrounding the theme of inclusion to GHS.

Winters said the school has held Diversity Awareness Week for more than a decade.

“We have a mission to respect and celebrate our differences and to support an inclusive and tolerant environment,” he said. “Diversity Week challenges our thinking and assumptions. It makes us ask questions of ourselves and our school community. I believe it is an essential part of the GHS experience.“

Garfield Charles, English teacher and assistant dean for Cantor House, organized Diversity Awareness Week this year.

“Especially this year, in terms of everything that is happening around us, I think there is this need to really respect individuals around us and know that we each have a voice,” said Charles. “I think kids are recognizing the importance of that as a community.”

emunson@greenwichtime.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson