(Jewish Group) Lacking Pride clubs at their schools, LGBT Orthodox teens in NYC for community

[Behind the Aegis]

Lacking Pride clubs at their schools, LGBT Orthodox teens in NYC come here for community

During his senior year, Yitzi Halberstam was one of the only out students at his Orthodox high school, Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in Manhattan.

He came out as bisexual last summer, and as he puts it, “The second I figured out I was bisexual, I wanted to tell everyone. I wasn’t going to miss out on an opportunity to piss people in power off.”

Halberstam was half-joking, and he admitted that the boys and rabbis at his school were mostly accepting of his identity — at worst, he said, freshmen would come up to him and ask inappropriate questions. At best, underclassmen have stopped him in the hallways to thank him for his advocacy.

Halberstam and his friends wanted to start a Pride Club for queer-identifying students. According to him, that idea was barred, though administrators compromised to allow a general advocacy club, which wouldn’t specify that the members were queer-identifying. But when Halberstam adorned his booth with a Pride Flag to recruit members at the high school’s annual club fair, he says the administration once again got cold feet.

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