Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and
Minneapolis have found a new ministry in providing support for
their gay and lesbian students. Several years ago, in a Catholic
high school in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis,
teachers asked seniors in an interdisciplinary honors symposium
to tell about their own experiences, or the experiences of
individuals they knew, as part of a unit on gender. Their task
was to think about all the ways that gender can affect people.
One girl stood at the front of the class and described the life
of her friend Heidi. Heidi, she said, had been beaten, kicked,
and reviled repeatedly by her parents. When she was 14, they
told her she could no longer live at home. Where she went and
with whom she lived were her problem, they said. Heidi moved
from place to place, staying with a succession of friends and
relatives. She was rarely welcomed, and often was barely
tolerated. Heidi attended three different high schools and had
not seen her parents or siblings for