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Michael's agenda
Being gay - and socially aware - compels a Brandon High School student to fight intolerance. No matter what anybody thinks.
By RODNEY THRASH
Published March 12, 2006
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[Times photos: Brian Cassella]
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Michael Freincle, 18, wanders among the vendor booths with friends at February’s Winter Pride rally at Lowry Park in Tampa. The high school senior, in his role as president of the Brandon High Gay-Straight Alliance, gave a speech at the event.
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BRANDON - Just after 7 on a gray Saturday morning, and Michael Freincle is out of bed. He has already dressed and gelled his hair. Now he stands in front of his bathroom mirror, brushing his teeth. From Michael's bedroom down the hall, Beethoven's Für Elise plays softly. Buddy, the family dog, races back and forth, sniffing everything and barking. "Stop smelling," Michael tells him. "Go to bed!" The day ahead is jam-packed. He has yet another college admissions exam to take; this time it's the ACT. He wants to attend a gay rights rally at Lowry Park. He has to plan the next Gay-Straight Alliance meeting at his school, Brandon High. And like any 18-year-old, he wants to squeeze in some fun. Michael cracks his older brother's bedroom door and pokes his head through the opening. "Can I borrow a pair of socks?" he asks in a low whisper. His brother is sleeping, and not happy to be disturbed. "You son-of-a-b----," he snaps. "How many pair do I have left?" Michael, unfazed, gets the socks and returns to his own room. He pats his pockets. "I'm missing something," he says. He doesn't know what the something is. He scans the floor, which is littered with dirty clothes, scattered sheets of notebook paper and a black binder filled with minutes from past GSA meetings at his school. "My big gay folder," he calls it. He grabs his car keys. He turns off the lights. The room fades to black. Michael Freincle has big plans. He wants to go to college, major in political science, maybe practice law. He wants to become a senator, even president. He wants to reshape the world. But first he has to survive high school. Michael remembers what his life used to be like, before he acknowledged the truth about his sexuality and founded Brandon High's Gay-Straight Alliance. This was three years ago, when he was a freshman. Every morning he came to school wearing a mask. It was easier to pretend. "I'll admit it," he says. "I was one of those people who was going around saying, 'Oh, you're so gay,' or 'He's a faggot' just as a cutdown." Inside, Michael yearned to take off the mask and find people who wouldn't call him names or look at him funny. That's why he started the school's GSA. He wanted to promote tolerance. He wanted someone to talk to. "I figured if I'm going to have to live with this, I'm freaking gonna get somebody else to live it right with me," he says. Michael founded the GSA in 2003. Six people - Michael and five friends he dragged with him - came to the first meeting. At this year's first meeting, there were 87. Now he and the rest of the organization find themselves in the middle of a countywide controversy. Last fall, parents from another high school began circulating a petition to ban GSA chapters from Hillsborough schools. In December, more than 1,000 signed copies of the petition were wrapped in red Christmas ribbon and delivered to the School Board in a child's wagon. The GSA chapters, say the parents, have no place in the schools. They insist that they are not protesting homosexuality; instead they say that such organizations are too adult-oriented for a group of teenagers. The School Board has appointed a task force to consider the parents' objections and to consider guidelines for student clubs and organizations. On the task force are teachers, principals and some of the parents who are objecting to the GSAs. And Michael. "Wow," he remembers thinking when he first heard about the protest. "These parents are so retarded." * * * On his way to the ACT exam, Michael pulls his gold Saturn into a McDonald's drive-thru. "Could I get a No. 4 with an orange juice?" Usually he doesn't do fast food, he says. But this morning, a sausage and egg biscuit and a hash brown will have to do. The ACT - and his future - are calling. "These tests are pretty ridiculous," he says. "You're only being tested on what you know during one Saturday morning." Michael doesn't stay up cramming for these kinds of tests. When you're 18, there are better things to do on a Friday night. He scored a 1,280 out of 1,600 on the old version of the SAT. He makes straight A's. He's a member of the National Honor Society, student government and the Key Club, captain of the swim team and the founding president of the GSA. That resume alone should guarantee him admission to Hillsborough Community College, where he plans to take a couple years of classes before transferring to a bigger school. He's not in a big hurry to leave home. He'll be happy any place he can study politics. He's sick of officials who feel that public office is their birthright. They're out of touch with issues that affect ordinary Americans like him, he says. "I like America a lot and it could be a great country," he says. "We could go back to being a great country, respected around the world. The problems we have are not easy to fix, but they could be fixed." The GSA was supposed to be an antidote to the intolerance he encountered daily in the school hallway. He was a freshman when he was, as he puts it, "pushed" out of the closet. He says he first realized he was gay when he was 7 or 8 years old. His older brother would bring girlfriends home and Michael wouldn't feel the emotions other boys experience. His heart wouldn't sputter. He wouldn't get that tingling feeling inside. He told a friend he thought he could trust. Before school resumed in January 2003, all of Brandon High knew Michael's secret. It was, he now says, liberating. But at the time, it didn't feel that way. He was called everything but his name. * * * Alice Wilkinson, one of the parents leading the effort to ban GSAs, says she likes Michael. After working with him on the task force, she describes him as smart and articulate. She speaks of him respectfully. Still, Wilkinson believes that he and other students are pawns, being used by GSA's parent organization, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, GLSEN. She learned about the organization last fall when her daughter, a sophomore at Newsome High in Lithia, came home one day talking about the GSA chapter forming at her school. "My kid had already had an opportunity to sign up for this club and as a parent, as with anything, she's my daughter," she says. "If she's gonna go to a movie, I like to know what the movie is going to be about." She Googled "GSA" and didn't like what she saw. "It became very evident that the GLSEN is in the fact the main resource to all Gay-Straight Alliances," she says. "They admittedly distribute information to all GSAs. How are we allowing this major adult organization to have access to minors during the school day on school campus?" Wilkinson says she takes issue with the club's name. "The name GSA or the name Amnesty International Club or the name Green Party Club or Young Democrats, Young Republicans, those names in and of themselves are directly connected to adult activist organizations. No child needs to be proselytized by any adult activist organization." If the mission of the club is to promote tolerance, she says, call it the Tolerance Club. "We are not a group of parents who are intolerant of anything," Wilkinson says. "We are not a group of parents who are right-wing loonies. We are a group of parents who see our schools being tested." * * * Shortly before 1, Michael finishes the ACT and climbs back in his car to pick up his friend, a girl named Marietta. They're late for a rally at Lowry Park. The event is sponsored by Dont-Amend Tampa Bay, a gay advocacy group that is fighting to kill the Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment denies gay and lesbian couples rights afforded to heterosexuals. When Michael and Marietta arrive, they find that the rally hardly qualifies as such. There are only six other people in attendance. There are no speakers, no decorations and no music, unless you count We Are Family, which plays over and over. After an hour, Michael leaves, ranting to Marietta. He's angry that more people haven't shown up. He knows they're busy, but so is he. If anything's going to change, he says, people have to stop complaining and get involved. He and Marietta drive away, the car stereo blasting. Time to head home. Michael's hungry again. He has $7. Mom's leftover lasagna will have to do. Back at his house, they find the kitchen a mess. The sink is full of dishes. The trash has not been emptied. And Michael's hamster, Jack, sits in his cage atop the stove. Marietta heats the lasagna. "You should try it with white bread," Michael tells her. He makes green tea, then drinks from the pitcher. For the next hour, the two of them eat and plan the agenda for their school's next GSA meeting. There's a lot to discuss: the Valentine's Day dance on the 18th, the Winter Pride rally on the 25th, the Florida AIDS Walk on the 26th. Michael also wants to conduct a school climate survey to assess how tolerant Brandon High has become. Recently, a classmate whose online alias is "Bodacious Billy" started an antigay MySpace Web page, "Peers Against Queers." When the group started on Feb. 8, there were 40 members. At last count, there were more than 200. The telephone rings. Michael's mother says she's on her way home. Michael looks at the mess around him, flips into high gear. He grabs the hamster's cage, puts it back in his room and begins a rapid-fire cleaning of the house. * * * Lee Johnson always suspected that Michael, her younger boy, was gay. All of his friends were girls. Some of his mannerisms were effeminate. And he was particular about his clothes and just about everything else. When he was in high school, she asked him point-blank. "Are you? Let me know." She inquired again, as late as the week before Michael came out. "No, Mom," he shot back. "I'm not talking about it." When he was ready to discuss the subject, he confided in his stepfather instead of telling her. Johnson says she was hurt and angry that her son didn't come to her first. She didn't mind Michael's sexuality. "That was just God's plan," she says. Her son still doesn't open up to her about his personal life. He's always been private, she says, especially when it comes to his feelings and relationships. "Michael, will you please bring your boyfriend home so I can meet him?" she asked him recently. "I don't have a boyfriend, mom," Michael said. "When you do have one, will you bring him home?" Michael rolled his eyes and with an exasperated sigh said, "Yes." Johnson says she wants her son to be happy. He has found happiness, in part, because of the GSA. That's why she can't understand why some parents would want to do away with the club. "How can you be so against my child?" she says. * * * Once the house is clean, Michael finally relaxes. He and Marietta want to go to a parade in Ybor, but it's raining, so they change their mind. They pick up another friend, a freshman boy, and head for Dairy Queen to spend Michael's $7. As they eat their ice cream, Michael and his friends barely utter a word. They look and grin at one another, as if they have an unspoken language between them. "What are we going to do next?" Michael asks, breaking the silence. "Go to the mall," says the freshman. "I hate the mall," Michael says. "Real friends know this." Still, that is exactly where they end up. They roam through Westfield Brandon mall, browsing through the aisles at Hot Topic and Spencer Gifts. They run into other kids from school and trade the latest gossip. For just a moment, Michael forgets about the task force, and the petitions, and politics, and the master plan of saving the world. They head out into the rain and take the freshman home. "Bye, guys," says the kid. Michael drives away. At the light, he turns to Marietta. "Now what?" he asks. - Rodney Thrash can be reached at 727 893-8352 or rthrash@sptimes.com.
[Last modified March 10, 2006, 11:58:56]
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