De Vries, Gina

Gina DeVries thinks that kids who come out of the closet shouldn’t then find themselves all the way out on the street. But that, she reports, is all too often what happens when families reject their gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender children. DeVries has become a dedicated advocate for these kids, serving as the youngest committee member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transgender Advisory Board, speaking at schools and public forums, writing for magazines, and publishing her own.

Bisexual herself, DeVries does have a supportive family. Says DeVries, "My parents were active in the 60's; they protested the Vietnam War. Now they’re activists again, only now they’re advocating for understanding and supporting young queers.”

Two days before her 12th birthday, DeVries sat her parents down and told them she was a lesbian. Then she declared herself to her peers at her Catholic school. “I was getting really sick of hearing people say ‘faggot’ 50 times a day and not seeing the teachers do anything,” says DeVries. Classmates were not as accepting as her family. Many shunned her. “Some of them asked whether being queer was contagious. And a lot of younger kids became scared of me and would run away whenever I passed them in the school yard,” says De Vries. “I knew they were getting the “child molester” stereotypes from their parents and friends, and that really hurt me.”

DeVries has no regrets though. She says that coming out has given her the opportunity to help a lot of people. In 1996, at the age of 13, Gina DeVries’s testimony about the hostility in schools toward “queer” students prompted the San Francisco Department of Public Schools to provide materials for all students on respecting peers whose sexual orientation or gender identity is different from their own.