Inheritance of Change

SJSU LGBT community receives surprising support

 

Imagine home as the most terrifying place on Earth. Imagine extending arms to parents who hesitate, back away and then turn away their children — turned away for not fitting a mold within a culture that fears difference. A culture that forces those outside the mold to earn affection and approval by pretending to be something they are not.

The only solution, the safest solution, was to remain hidden.

Larry Arzie found himself hidden at SJSU in the early ’60s.

Arzie and his partner, David Stonesifer, will leave $1 million for the SJSU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center after they pass away.

San Jose and SJSU were a different places in the ’60s for LGBT individuals.

“San Jose is still somewhat of a backwater community,” Arzie said.

He said the police paddy wagon would park outside gay bars in San Jose to intimidate patrons.

It was a time when psychologists declared non-heterosexual behaviors as a mental illness. When monotheists threatened eternal damnation. When the police offered no protection and often profited from threats to oust LGBT members. When landlords barred residency. And when families assured themselves with denial, and those who could not turned their LGBT sons and daughters away.

The LGBT community was hidden. Members would find one another and support through secret code.

“What we get out of this [$1 million donation] is the knowledge that young people don’t have to go through what we went through,” Arzie said.

There are 1,888 identified LGBT students at SJSU, according to the American College Health Association.

“It is really great that they [Arzie and Stonesifer] are supporting LGBT at SJSU,” said advertising major Timothy Winfred. “It’s like they’re shedding some light on the LGBT community.”

Winfred, known as “Tim” or “Tiny Tim,” is an SJSU Zeta Iota member of the Sigma Nu fraternity and identifies himself as gay.

Winfred was self-imprisoned in his own home, trapped in the mountains of Tuolumne, Calif. before he exposed himself as gay to his friends and family. To reveal such a secret proved so painful that he could not tell them to their faces.

Winfred pleaded with his younger brother to unveil what he could not to their parents. When his parents discovered his secret, his mother opened her arms and his father turned the other way.

In a 2009 research report by the Equality Challenge Unit, it found that 12 percent of students who reported as LGBT were refused financial support from their parents to attend higher education courses.

The same study found that 12.2 percent of LGBT students are estranged from their parents.

Winfred came to SJSU in 2007 and once again felt isolated. In search of support, fate found him in the form of pizza. Free pizza, actually, at the Sigma Nu pizza night social.

He kept his secret for the first semester by choice.

“I mean, it wasn’t hard to deny it,” Winfred said. “It got harder when people asked me if I was going to bone a girl I was just trying to talk to. I guess, sometimes, it was easier to be by myself.”

Winfred wanted people to know him before they knew him as gay and all the stereotypes interwoven with that title.

For Arzie, keeping his secret was not a choice. The only place SJSU LGBT students could turn to was “Building K,” the psychology building.

“Counselors would tell you things like, ‘You’re not gay, you’re using it as a crutch,’” Arzie said.

Arzie has watched the tides of change barely reach the Bay Area over the past 30 years.

Despite the delayed timing, change has trickled into SJSU.

Although scars may be present, the heart of the LGBT community is alive and flowing beyond the barriers of campus with the help of Arzie, Stonesifer and students like Winfred.

 

Jill Abell