WATERVILLE — Sitting with students at Waterville High School Monday, Clare Byarugaba, an activist for gay rights, said she would never be allowed into a high school in her home country.

“People would think I am here to recruit all you guys into homosexuality,” said Byarugaba, 27, a lesbian who faced discrimination after she was publicly outed in her own country and is in Waterville through a fellowship at Colby College.

“It’s interesting that you guys have such a diverse group, and I would be interested in hearing about how it has worked for the high school,” she told the gathering of students. “We hardly have anything like this back home, although there is so much persecution of kids who have gay tendencies.”

Monday marked the first day of Ally Week, a national movement of young people to be allies against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — LGBT — discrimination. The week of awareness was organized by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, a group that works to educate students from kindergarten through 12th grade about sexual orientation and encourages respect of sexual and gender expression. Most of the students at Monday’s after-school meeting belonged to a group called STAND, an acronym for Students Taking Action Negotiating Diversity and an alliance between gay and straight students at the high school.

“Having Clare here was a fantastic way to educate people on new things,” said Avery Isbell, 18, co-chairman of STAND. Isbell is a senior who identifies as bisexual and said that while he feels safe in the Waterville community, “there are real issues around homosexuality in other places in the world and a need to make those places safe.”

Byarugaba is the 2014 Oak Human Rights Fellow at Colby College, a program that each year sponsors the work of a human rights activist in the Waterville community. She is also the co-founder of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a Ugandan group that works to fight efforts to criminalize homosexuality in the country. She said her activism started after Ugandan officials introduced an anti-homosexuality law in 2009.

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She grew up in Kabale, a city in western Uganda, the only girl in a family of eight children, and her first crush was on a female English teacher in school. While a student at Makerere University in Buganda, Byarugaba joined an LGBT group and came out as a lesbian to her friends, but then was publicly outed by a tabloid newspaper.

She described some of the challenges she faced living as an outed lesbian and gay rights activist in Uganda, where she said she has trouble finding a job, keeping an apartment or even walking on the street alone, knowing that she could be attacked if people identified her as a lesbian.

“One day in church a petition was passed around in support of the anti-homosexuality bill, which included the death penalty as punishment for same-sex relations,” she said. “It was as if the community were basically accepting homophobia and saying it’s okay.

“After that experience, I felt like I had to do something to speak out against the violence and persecution already happening to the LGBT community.”

She said it’s an eye-opener to talk to groups such as STAND.

“I was so excited to see people like me, who were going through the same things I was,” she said. “I was so excited to listen to what other people were going through, and being able to relate to them was very important for me.”

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About 25 students — some who identified themselves as belonging to the LGBT community and others who did not — listened attentively to Byarugaba. They spoke with her about some of the things Waterville High School and the larger community have done to promote tolerance. During Ally Week this week, they will be organizing activities and games to challenge stereotypes and will designate Friday as color day, asking students to wear the colors of the rainbow in support of non-discrimination against members of the LGBT community.

“The idea that it’s okay to be gay already exists in our community, but there are still things we do to bring more acceptance where it is not so firmly accepted,” said Alexandria Lacone, an 8th grader at Waterville Middle School who described a play that was recently put on by Outed & Allied Youth Theater. The group is part of the Waterville Inclusive Community Project, which works to create a safe community for LGBT youth in Central Maine.

“It really moved me that even though there is so much pressure on her to stop, she’s willing to do what she does,” said Lacone, who described herself as an “ally” to the LGBT community.

“The situation here is not nearly as bad as it is in Uganda, but there are parallels,” said Sam Minot, a sophomore who described himself as pansexual. “I would say that being homophobic is in the minority here, and that if there are instances of homophobia, there is definitely punishment for it and support against it.”

The students also talked about activism through social media and literature — things that Byarugaba said were inspiring to her as she prepares to return to Uganda to continue her activism there in December. At the end of the discussion, they presented her with two books and a T-shirt.

“I just love being here,” she said. “It’s very different and interesting to me to be in a place where what I’m saying is considered valuable. It’s also very inspirational because it gives me hope that one day LGBT people in Uganda can experience the freedom I see here.”

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

rohm@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @rachel_ohm


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