Creating safe spaces: Palm Springs facility offers refuge, support for LGBTQ+ teens facing bullying and other challenges

For gay teens, life at school can be a living hell. Sara Yoshida knows this first-hand.

After being outed at her school, the 14-year-old endured bullying and threats to her safety. “The boys told me if I went out with them, they could change me,” she said. “One boy said if I didn’t go out with him, he would kill my whole family.”

School officials eventually intervened, prohibiting the boy from contacting Sara for the remainder of the year. But the scars remain for Sara, who currently serves as president of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance.

Gay and lesbian teens like Sara often face increased anxiety, depression, and attention deficit disorder. Following her ordeal, Sara began carrying a stuffed fox for comfort.

The CDC notes that LGBTQ youth are over twice as likely to attempt suicide, and hostile environments exacerbate mental and physical health risks. From 2015 to 2021, the percentage of high school students identifying as LGBTQ rose from 11% to 26%.

In response to these challenges, the Marsha P. Johnson LGBTQ+ Youth Drop-in Center was inaugurated on Sunday in Palm Springs. The center, named after the late gay liberation activist, offers a refuge for LGBTQ teens age 13 to 18 like Sara.

“I wish more parents would support their kids instead of rejecting them for just being themselves,” Sara’s mother, Bethanie, said. “The first pillar of support begins at home, and parents need to drop their kids off at the Center.”

The center collaborates with Palm Springs High School, and hopes to work with other schools in Coachella Valley in the future. It provides mentoring, crisis intervention, support groups, and mental health therapy free of charge.

“We plan to expand our youth programs with writing and art classes, scholarships, and outings like hiking,” said Renae Punzalan, the center’s outreach director. “Families can be part of it as well.”

Prior to efforts such as the drop-in center, the internet was often the only resource for today’s LGBTQ youth. While it offers information and social networking opportunities that were unavailable to older generations, it can’t replace personal attention that experts can give.

Still, many LGBTQ+ youth are grateful for any guidance as they move from their teens to adulthood.

Samuel Turley, a 26-year-old civic engagement associate for Equality California, found solace online.

“The Internet helped me research about my sexuality, reading about other peoples’ experiences and their coming out stories,” he said.

Turley, who grew up in Idaho and spent the last two years of high school at La Quinta High School, felt like an outsider, and struggled with his Catholic upbringing.

“I was told that if you were gay, you could be gay, but you needed to control it and not act on it,” he recalled. He witnessed the bullying of openly gay students and the harmful effects of such an environment.

After coming out five years ago, inspired by positive portrayals of gay individuals in movies, Turley appreciates the progress made by previous generations in establishing gay rights.

However, all is not perfect. Over the past few years, Punzalan has found herself worried by the increasing moves by social conservatives against LGBTQ people. Proposals of anti-LGBTQ legislation by various states (more than a hundred passed into law), laws against drag performances, book bans, boycotts, and conspiracy theories about grooming do not make for a comfortable existence for teens identifying as gay or bisexual.

The Palm Springs Center aims to mitigate these problems, and to assist these teens whose mental and physical health is at risk.

When asked to reflect on the impact such services could have had on him as a youth, local hair stylist Ken Love remarked, “I wonder if these services had been available to me when I was growing up if I would have been different. I have scars, deep scars.”

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More information: To learn more about the Center and its services, visit www.trans.health or email info@trans.health. 

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