Santa Rosa Junior College is trying to reach out to gay and lesbian students by offering a support group. Sorry guys, but this misses the mark. A support group sends the wrong message. It gives the Lesbian Gay Bi Transsexual Queer Questioning Intersex (LGBTQQI) students of SRJC the idea that being anything other then straight requires us to seek professional help.

Coming out is hard. Dealing with political agendas that seek to deny you the full rights of citizenship is hard. Not knowing where to find others who are going through the same thing is hard. Being alone is hard.

Being told the way to deal with all this hard stuff is therapy sends the wrong message. The message we need to hear is “You are OK, what you feel is OK. You are not alone.” The place to hear that is from friends; the place to hear it is in their laughter, in a hug as they greet you or their heckling as you tell them about your last date.

A support group has its place. Some have had such a traumatic experience coming out and coming to grips with who they are that they need a quiet, safe place to rest. The problem is when this is the only option for meeting other LGBTQQI people, it says you’re not normal, you are not OK, you are weak and you need special care.

Screw that.

We don’t offer support groups for our straight students, or our Latino students, or even those students who have gone into combat for our country and live with the emotional scars that service during wartime brings. But those gays, they need a special place to meet.

We do not need to be supported, we need to be socialized. Give us a place to meet to see we are not freaks. Give us a place to plan dances to meet each other with out the stigma of meeting in a support group.

We need to build community for those people wrestling with issues of their own sexuality. We need a place where we’ll will feel accepted, not analyzed, welcomed, not counseled. We need a place were we can lose the shame society has told us we should feel.

The campus needs a Gay, Straight Alliance.