OUT, PROUD AND VERY YOUNG

By John Cloud

Cabot, a charming village of 1,000 in the heart of northern Vermont's dairy country, is known for its world-famous cheese, not its gay activists. That's one reason why Palmer Legare is so unusual. Earlier this year, he founded Cabot's first and only lesbian and gay group and circulated a petition supporting gay rights. Two weeks ago, he discussed gay issues with the state's Governor, Democrat Howard Dean. The other unusual thing about Legare is that he's just 17, and his group meets at Cabot High School.

Gina De Vries is only 14 and lives a continent away from Legare, in San Francisco, but perhaps not quite a world apart. Having come out to her parents and schoolmates at age 12, she now calls herself "a queer youth activist"--an identification she uses effortlessly, as though she were saying "ninth grader" or "aspiring poet," other terms that describe her. Articulate beyond her years, De Vries' work with a gay youth group led to her appointment to an advisory committee of the city's Human Rights Commission. She is, by more than a decade, the committee's youngest member. Jarringly precocious, she scheduled an interview with TIME for a Saturday morning, sparing enough time to attend a "transgender film festival" later that day.

For a country that had a hard time with the coming-out of a 39-year-old TV actress earlier this year, the whole notion of the boy next door eyeing the boy next door--and talking about it--is startling. The emergence of gay youth like Legare and De Vries is sparking the newest battles in the decades-old brawl over gay rights, which at the local level is more focused than ever on schools. Groups like Legare's have formed in schools (mostly public ones) in 25 states, according to the Gay-Lesbian-Straight Education Network, an advocacy group based in New York City. The organization at one time primarily helped homosexual teachers; these days it employs a 19-year-old to coordinate the student groups, usually called Gay-Straight Alliances (heterosexual students are generally welcome). Executive director Kevin Jennings says just two such alliances existed in 1991, when he founded the network; now there are more than 100.

More broadly, according to Columbia University researcher Joyce Hunter, 3% to 10% of U.S. teens now tell pollsters they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or "questioning" their orientation; in the San Francisco Bay Area, the figure is 18%, according to one recent study. While reliable historical statistics don't exist, Hunter says few teens came out when she began examining gay youth in the early '70s. "The change has been enormous," she says. Lonely gay kids can find solace in two Webzines, dozens of online chat rooms and some 500 community support groups, usually run by social workers not affiliated with local schools.

Some churches are doing more to shepherd gay kids, in part because studies have shown that suicide rates among young gays may be quadruple those of heterosexual teens. In September, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops urged parents of gay children to demonstrate love for their sons and daughters and to recognize that "generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen." The bishops made clear, however, that they believe homosexual sex is wrong. There is, of course, some evidence that homosexuality is something of a fad among young people. On a few college campuses, the term "gay until graduation" is used derisively to describe those who experiment with gay sex. Gay equality has nonetheless become a '90s version of Birkenstock environmentalism for many youths. Even in certain parts of suburbia, gay is becoming more than O.K.; it's cool.

But for most students taking baby steps from the closet, the decision to broadcast homosexual feelings is fraught with the possibility of negative, even violent reaction. The students often dislike lying to classmates but know the consequences of coming out can be dire. After Legare circulated a petition last spring urging Cabot to combat antigay bigotry, some students yelled "faggot" at him. An athlete in four sports, Legare didn't suffer the worst abuse because, he says, "I'm not stereotypically gay." But he was once shoved and kicked. For De Vries, harassment came in the form of vulgarities whispered behind her back.

Once Legare and De Vries spoke up, however, administrators responded. Legare persuaded 34 of Cabot High's 100 students to sign his petition, which led to faculty meetings and his discussion with Governor Dean in a gathering with other gay youths. Since school started, Legare says, he has heard "faggot" just once. Similarly, even at the Catholic school De Vries used to attend, several teachers applauded her for fighting antigay attitudes. She's now enrolled at a private school where everyone knows she's a lesbian.

Others aren't so lucky. According to a 1995 Massachusetts study, 62% of students identifying themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual said they had been in a fight in the previous year, in contrast to 37% of all students. According to the Gay-Lesbian-Straight Network's Jennings, administrators often do little to stop the violence. Some of the stories are harrowing. Jamie Nabozny, who in the early '90s attended high school in Ashland, Wis., says he was kicked in the stomach so many times he required surgery. A group of boys also urinated on him. Robert McDonald, 20, a former student at Jefferson Township High School in southern New Jersey, claims he was spat upon while he rode the bus and beaten up after track practice one day.

Gay bashing is nothing new, but what's unusual is that these students are holding their schools accountable. In 1996 Nabozny brought a groundbreaking federal lawsuit alleging that administrators hadn't done enough to protect him. A jury agreed, and the school district settled for $900,000. Four similar lawsuits have followed--McDonald filed one in October--and the U.S. Department of Education issued guidelines in March barring certain kinds of antigay harassment.

Elsewhere, efforts to form gay-straight alliances have caused a backlash from officials who don't want schools to endorse gay rights. In the most noted case, the state of Utah banned gay school clubs last year after students at Salt Lake City's East High formed such a group. The legislature got involved because the local school board feared that targeting gay clubs could provoke a lawsuit. Indeed, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund has used legal threats to shelter gay-straight alliances at more than 20 schools nationally. Ironically, the fund's primary weapon is the federal Equal Access Act, a 1984 law designed to safeguard religious groups. The act says schools must treat clubs equally, regardless of beliefs. Lambda has found no student willing to bring a suit challenging Utah's statewide ban. Nevertheless, the East High group still meets each Thursday, skirting the ban by paying a fee to rent a classroom.

Last year, school boards in Anchorage and in Niskayuna, N.Y., voted to allow gay-straight alliances after nasty debates. And last month, the Hemet, Calif., school board narrowly approved a measure protecting gay students from harassment. A remarkable feature of these skirmishes is that they have been fought largely as local issues, without national attention. Neither the Christian Coalition nor the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay group, has developed a strategy to deal with the emergence of gay youth. Indeed, most gay organizations have avoided children's issues, apparently fearing the old charge that gays try to "recruit" kids. For conservatives, the appearance of gay teens presents a p.r. challenge, since young local faces can win sympathy and trump charges of outside influence by gay activists.

For the students themselves, coming out is as personal as it is political. After Christopher Humphreys, 18, came out at West Valley High in Hemet, he received death threats. But he held his ground and in May took a friend named Dan to the prom. His date forgot his boutonniere, and other guests hurled dirty looks, but in the end, he and Dan slow-danced to The Lady in Red, one of Humphreys' favorites.