Female soccer coach Eileen Wright said her students don't know she is heterosexual because she keeps her sexuality private.
"I'm like a lot of teachers," she said. "If certain people find out we're heterosexual, they'll make life miserable for me, calling me a homophobe and denying me promotions and opportunities. The only reason I got into the college I attended in California is that I pretended to be gay."
Language specialist Rosetta Stone said she has no problem with homosexuals but wonders why students would want to broadcast their sexuality by openly joining a gay-lesbian alliance.
"What they do in private is their business," she said. "They don't need to blab about it."
School librarian Paige Turner said she has been ordering books about homosexuality to satisfy a pent-up demand for information about gays.
"I thought I might run into some opposition for some of the books that I've put on the shelves," she said. "The books that say gays are born that way get checked out once in a while, but the books that say gays are a product of their environment all have turned up missing. I've had to order Overcoming Homosexuality six times because some people just don't like it, I guess."
School landscaper Milan S. Browne said he might come out of the closet regarding his sexuality now that schools in the area have decided to embrace homosexuals.
"Then again, whose business is it?" he asked. "I think I'll ask my wife about it when he gets home."
Isabel Ringer, who is in charge of alarms, clocks and locks at one of the schools, said she doesn't like after-school clubs because she must work more overtime.
"Gay, straight, transgender -- who cares?" she said. "When school's over, let them go somewhere else. I don't want to have to hang around to ring the bells when club hour is over."
A parent of a gay student, Kerr Ryan, said he still can't get over the emotional trauma of discovering that his son wants to live a homosexual lifestyle.
"I've shed a lot of tears since I found a David Hasselhoff poster in his room and pink Nikes in his closet," Ryan said. "I always thought his musical tastes were kind of strange, but when I finally put it all together, I realized why he likes George Michael, Clay Aiken and Boy George."
The locally dominant religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) has seminaries adjacent to all four St. George area campuses. Seminary Principal Duncan A. Lake said he has baptized six or seven openly gay students but advises them to remain celibate to remain in good standing with the church.
Bishop-elect Marv N. Gaye of the local Episcopal Diocese said his church is one of the few Christian sects that ordains gays to church offices, blesses same-sex unions, and performs same-sex marriage.
"If God didn't love gays, he wouldn't create them," Gaye said.
Phoebe Lowe, president of the new clubs, said membership fees will be low and she expects them to disappear altogether after she persuades school officials to pay the costs associated with her group.
"If the school won't pay our way," she said, "we'll hit them upside the head with a big old lawsuit. Either they're going to have to stop paying the expenses of the football and basketball teams, or they're going to have to buy us what we need as well. The first thing we're going to do is take the school bus to San Francisco to attend the Gay Pride parade and see what it's like to live in a city where being gay is not the exception."
Undocument immigrant student Don Quilava of Pine View High School said the creation of gay clubs gives him hope that his predilection for non-humans might become as accepted in the future as homosexuality is today.
"The best way to win an Oscar or an Emmy is to be gay or make a movie or song about gays like Kiss of the Spiderwoman or Brokeback Mountain," he said. "Someday things might change, and what I like will be legal even outside Mexico. I dream of the day when a song like 'I Only Have Eyes for You' could win an Grammy or an Oscar."
