Photos by JANA SUMMERS Ronni Sanlo came out
after giving birth to two children.
By Chris Young
Daily Bruin Reporter
Gays, lesbians, homosexuals and transgender people will speak
out today as part of National Coming Out Day ““ a decision
that, for some, has severed their relationships with loved ones but
has also given them freedom to be themselves.
“Coming out means being honest with people (about) who I
am … to honor who I am as a lesbian,” said Ronni Sanlo,
director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Campus
Resource Center at UCLA.
For Sanlo, who came out in 1979 after trying
“desperately” to hide her sexual orientation, being
openly lesbian has affected her profoundly.
“I did everything I could to hide it, to the extreme of
getting married and having children, because I thought that way no
one would be able to tell I was different from everybody
else,” she said.
Sanlo lost custody of her 3-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter
after she told her husband she was a lesbian. She had visitation
rights for six years, and when her children were 9 and 12, she
experienced further prejudice in her family.
“My children were told by their father and grandparents
that because I was a lesbian and worked with people with AIDS, that
I must have AIDS, and if they touch me or kiss me they would get
sick and die,” said Sanlo, who worked for the Centers for
Disease Control in Florida. “My children got petrified of
me.”
In Florida, where Sanlo’s family lived, the age of consent
is 12, so Sanlo’s daughter made the legal decision that she
didn’t want to see Sanlo anymore, and her son followed
suit.
Now Sanlo directs LGBT efforts on campus, teaches in the
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and is a
faculty-in-residence at Dykstra Hall.
“It was the anger of losing my children because of my
sexual orientation that fueled my activism in LGBT rights,”
Sanlo said.
“It is a privilege to do the work I do, because although I
lost my own children, I have the privilege of other people’s
children, to accept them as they are regardless of their sexual
orientation.”
Jim Schultz sees academia as key to fostering
tolerance. During Christmas of 1994, Sanlo’s daughter
e-mailed her ““ their first contact in nine years ““
telling her she was pregnant and wanted to reunite, and soon after,
Sanlo saw her granddaughter born.
“I’ve heard that if you connect with the child
during the first hour of birth, “˜angel time,”
you’ll have them forever,” she said. “I held my
granddaughter the whole angel time.”
Sanlo reunited with her son in 1998 after 13 years.
“He said, “˜I need to find myself, and in order to
find myself I know I have to find you.’ So we
reconnected,” she said.
Jim Schultz, director of the LGBT studies program at UCLA, came
out in the early 1970s when he was attending graduate school at
Princeton University.
He said Princeton was an excellent place to come out because it
had an active gay and lesbian student group that sponsored social
events and a lecture series, he said.
Schultz initially told some friends and his family he was gay
and said they were all supportive of his sexual orientation.
“Coming out is a very difficult step for many
people,” Schultz said. “It was a difficult step for me
even though it was easy in that no horrible things happened
afterward.”
For Schultz, the academic study of LGBT issues is important in
educating the public.
“Plato talked about sexuality,” he said.
“Other disciplines have studied it: theology has studied gay
and lesbian sexuality, only to condemn it; medicine, to cure these
people; psychiatry as well.”
Schultz came to UCLA in 1995 to teach medieval German literature
but made a condition of his contract to do half his teaching in
LGBT studies.
Anne Shisko believes “love is
love,” no matter who it is with.
“Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten hired with
this contract,” Schultz said. “Now it’s actually
something universities are supporting. It’s to UCLA’s
credit they do support this program.”
Today, some students, like second-year music student Anne
Shisko, feel people are more progressive and open about
homosexuality.
“It seems almost uncool to be homophobic,” Shisko
said. “People don’t want to sound like bigots. I think
a lot of people are homophobic, but they keep it to themselves
““ at least on campus.”
Shisko realized she was bisexual as a sophomore in high school,
but didn’t think twice about it. At that time, her older
sister was dating another girl.
“When some girl asked me out, I didn’t think there
was anything abnormal about it,” Shisko said. “I never
went through a denial phase.”
Though Shisko is openly bisexual, her sexuality has remained a
taboo topic with her mother.
“I don’t want to tell her if I’m dating a girl
because that doesn’t make her happy, and I don’t want
to tell her if I’m dating a guy or she’ll think
I’m straight and say “˜hallelujah.'”
“She seems to be coming to terms with it, but we
don’t talk about it and it’s fine,” Shisko said.
“She’s more scared of people not tolerating us because
of it.”
When Shisko was in a Starbucks with her girlfriend, she said
other customers were acting uncomfortably.
“They don’t want to ask, but they stare and never
say anything. People are subtle about it,” Shisko said.
“If they attack me personally, I have a lot of things I
would tell them,” she said. “My philosophy is that love
is love.”