Sexually Marginalized Youth in the South: Narration Strategies and Discourse Coalitions in Newspaper Coverage of a Southern High School Gay-Straight Alliance Club Controversy

Abstract

LGBT youth groups, some in conjunction with support or encouragement from straight youth allies and adults, have been active in communities and schools across the United States (Cohen 2005; Russell et al. 2009). From disconnected and scattered early grassroots efforts in the 1960s and 1970s (Cohen 2005), today the movement has successfully mobilized youth supporters and increased momentum within schools through gay-straight alliance clubs (GSAs) (Mayberry 2006; Fetner and Kush 2008; Mayberry 2006). Various school, community and nationally based groups have used social movement tactics including the formation of newsletters, other print and electronic media, to incite public discourses about issues faced by sexually marginalized youth such as discrimination (Cohen 2005). Together these individuals and groups seek ‘to counter isolation, achieve personal or political change, and define sexual identities’ (Cohen 2005, p. 81; Miceli 2005). Thus, sexually marginalized youth organizing in schools ‘marks a moment in which young people are stepping forward to claim support for lesbian and gay rights on their own terms’ (Fetner and Kush 2008, p. 118).