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I 6 AUGUST 23.2008 •QNotes
YOUTH
Youths’ ‘springboard to
the community’
New non-profit hopes to create .
virtual community of support
by Matt Comer . Q-Notes staff
CHARLOTTE — The history of the LGBT
movement is replete with examples of queer
men and women who turned their difficult,
youthful experiences into a drive to create a
better world for themselves and others. Josh
Starnes is aiming to do the same.
With the help of his friend Ashley Larson,
Starnes has taken his difficult past and redi
rected his pent-up energy into creating Seeds
of Purpose, a non-profit organization that will
head up the development of the forth-coming
GayandOK.com.
Starnes and Larson describe the website as
a one-stop shop of resources and support for
LGBT or questioning youth.
“What we want to do is help kids to create
a vision for what they want in their life... and
help them create a roadmap of where they are
now, where they want to go and how they are
going to get there,” Starnes told Q-Notes.
Larson, who first got involved with the
project after meeting Starnes, said she was
shocked at just how incomplete resources
and support are for LGBT youth.
“In the heterosexual com
munity you have no clue what ^ A‘^ A A tr .— e
gay people are going through.
It just doesn’t occur to you,”
said Larson, who is straight. “As I got to know
Josh more and started to know more about his
experience, I realized and was sickened by the
complete lack of resources that were out there.”
Starnes said his coming out experiences as
a youth in a small, rural North Carolina com
munity were painful and difficult. “I ended up
trying to live someone else’s life or trying to
numb myself from the negative backlash,” he
said. “There was no road map or mentor for
me, trying to figure out who I was and how to
come out.”
Larson and Starnes believe their work
will most benefit kids like Starnes once was.
For many youth, especially in rural areas,
finding resources and support organizations
can be difficult. Even if resources exist — as
they did in Starnes’ experience — taking
advantage of them sometimes seems too
dangerous or visible.
“The gay just spilled out of me,” Starnes
said of his coming out experience, comparing
it to a breaking dam. “There’s a more con
structive way of achieving that and coming
out of the closet, becoming okay with it your
self and then letting your parents become
okay with it. I was absolutely blind to the fact
that it would be painful for my parents too.”
Because he had no mentor and no road
map, and certainly no positive, openly gay role
models, Starnes experiences taught him that
he had only three life options — become a
hairdresser, die of AIDS or become a drug
addict — and that he could only live as an
openly gay man in cities like New York, San
Francisco and Los Angeles.
After moving to South Beach and living .
what he described as a “circuit party lifestyle,”
Starnes said he realized he didn’t have to live a
life that wasn’t his. His sexuality didn’t have to
control his life or desires. Being a rural.
North Carolina farm boy and an openly
gay man weren’t mutually exclusive,
after all.
“T love you’was something I
really needed to hear in my coming
out process,” Starnes said.
“These youth are a demographic
that’s completely
ignored,” Larson said. .
“It brings about a
vicious, self-perpetu
ating cycle. It’s trial by fire and only if you’re
lucky, you get through it unscathed. As these
generations of youth get to be adults, this
becomes a problem.”
Starnes and Larson hope that
GayandOK.com will offer the encouragement,
support and resources for youth who see no
other options for their lives. “I love you” will be
a focal point of their support, they said.
The organization’s first website phase will
feature a single resource with helpful links to
community organizations and other websites.
Describing the initial site as a “springboard to
the community,” Starnes and Larson said
GayandOK.com will eventually develop a blog,
chat forum, online membership capabilities
and a sizeable, archived library of LGBT
resources, news and other writings. The site
has a tentative launch date of Sept. 1. >
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