This weekend Chaz Bono will take a break from “Dancing With the Stars” to accept an award from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network — and honored alongside Bono will be a local transgender youth making inroads for LGBT young people in Western Pennsylvania.
GLSEN will present its Student Advocate of the Year award to Emmett Patterson, a 17-year-old senior at Trinity High School in Washington, near Pittsburgh.
Patterson last year helped co-found his school’s gay-straight alliance, the first student GSA in Washington County.
Patterson started the group with classmate James MacKinney and said he was eager for the club to offer a safe haven for other LGBTs and allies at their school.
“We’re both very strong individuals with a good sense of self but we knew that there are other people like us and people who don’t have that strong sense of self and who need a community and that sense of safety in school,” Patterson said. “A lot of students aren’t able to get that outside of school, so we wanted to make sure that we had a safe place for everyone in school.”
Patterson and MacKinney met with members of the administration and the district’s superintendent, and “we must have said something right,” Patterson joked, as the plans were given the go-ahead.
Thirty students turned out for the club’s inaugural meeting, Patterson said, and word of the new group is still circulating throughout the school.
While the primary function of the club is to offer an LGBT-affirming environment, Patterson said he is also drafting policy proposals for the school — including gender-neutral bathrooms and LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination regulations.
In addition to the GSA, Patterson has participated in a number of other extracurricular clubs, including the National Honor Society, debate club and Young Democrats and serves as the chief photo editor of the school’s yearbook.
Patterson is also a cellist and a member of his school’s varsity swimming team and performs in community theater.
He has been active in the Washington County Gay-Straight Alliance for five years, which afforded him the opportunity to participate in a number of LGBT rallies, visit the White House and meet with his local senator to discuss LGBT-rights issues.
Last year, Patterson created an art project focusing on hate crimes for a local teen health fair and is the first high-school student to be named a supervisor at the Common Ground Teen Center.
He is active with Pittsburgh LGBT wellness facility Persad Center and has volunteered at numerous events with the Pittsburgh chapter of GLSEN, which presented him with its 2011 Pioneer Award.
“Emmett is the poster child for a strong advocate of LGBT youth in our country,” said Kathy Cameron, GLSEN Pittsburgh board member. “He has poise, intelligence and compassion for those of diversity. He leads by example, which makes others comfortable enough to speak up and demand equality and respect. He is such a natural leader to those that need it.”
Patterson said his upbringing, including his membership at First Presbyterian Church, which he said is a welcoming and accepting congregation, helped fuel his passion and drive for LGBT equality.
“My parents never said, ‘This is so and so and he’s gay.’ It was more, ‘This is so and so and this is his partner.’ It was small things like that that I grew up with that really helped me,” he said. “And they instilled in me that I have to be independent and strong and fight for myself. I can’t let anybody fight my battles.”
After high school, Patterson hopes to pursue a career in gender psychology — and said he hopes the GLSEN award puts him one step closer to realizing that goal.
“I was shocked when I got this, but it pretty much means everything to me,” he said. “I’ve been having kind of a bad year so having something like this under my belt can really help me in getting a good internship or hopefully a good job someday, because this is the kind of work I want to do and the population I want to work with.”
In addition to Bono and Patterson, the Oct. 21 ceremony will also pay tribute to actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, out former NBA executive Rick Welts and Wells Fargo.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].