Gay rights advocates marched on Newark City Hall, calling on Mayor Sharpe James to follow through on a pledge to meet with them about setting up a gay and lesbian counseling center for teens. James made the promise during the May 16 funeral for Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old lesbian Newark teen who was stabbed to death five days earlier. The mayor told the crowd of mourners that his administration would meet with gay and lesbian community members the following week to discuss the parameters of a counseling center.

However, many queer activists believe the administration is moving too slowly on the issue since Gunn's funeral. Joy Black, a mentor for queer teens, said the gay community wants the mayor to be accountable to his promises.

More than 100 people marched in the rain on June 3rd to speak out against homophobic violence and to express their disappointment that no meeting has been held since Gunn's death.

"We don't have a safe place for gay teens to go," Black said. "Everyone should have a safe place. Gay people should have the same rights as straight people." Gunn's mother, Latona Gunn, said she hopes the city finds a space for queer teens so they will have some place to socialize in their own city.

Gunn, a sophomore at West Side High School, was among a group of four other gay friends who were hanging out in Greenwich Village before catching a train back to Newark Penn Station after 3 a.m. When the girls reached Broad and Market streets about 3:30 a.m., Richard McCullough and another unidentified man, who was driving a white station wagon, pulled up, according to Newark police. Police said both men got out of the car to talk with the teens. The driver returned to the car, but McCullough stayed and tried to continue to strike up a conversation. The girls, according to police, rejected McCullough's advances. One of them, the mayor said during a news conference last month, told McCullough, a 29-year-old Newark resident, that they were lesbians. A scuffle broke out, resulting in the fatal stabbing of Gunn. McCullough surrendered to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. McCullough's mother, however, has maintained her son is not homophobic because his grandmother, who helped raise him, was a lesbian.

Since Gunn's death, gay advocates have formed Newark Pride, a coalition of gay and lesbian advocates and supporters, to bring attention to the needs of the gay community, particularly for local youth. The center, they said, would have several components, including HIV social workers, computers and counselors. "The Sakia Gunn incident has just pushed it forward," said the Rev. Elder Jacquelyn D. Holland of Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church of Newark. "This (center) is something that needs to happen." Advocates say queer teens, who are shunned because of their sexual orientation, need a place to meet and access information. They said gay teens go to New York because they don't feel comfortable in Newark.

Meanwhile, some city teens said the Newark school administration is forbidding them to wear rainbow colors that identify them as queer. At West Side Ninth Grade Success Academy, students said they have been instructed to take down pictures of Gunn on a bulletin board and are forbidden to wear their rainbow colors. "If you wear them, you'll get suspended," said Bobby Harris, 16.

Close Window to Return to TBC Web Site