The Out in the Silence organization has made its first Award for Youth Activism to OUT NOWÂ Â for its efforts to end bullying, harassment, and discrimination and to promote safe schools and inclusive communities for all.
Founded nearly twenty years ago as a weekly support group for LGBT youth in a Springfield (MA) church basement, the group has become a community-empowerment organization with a wide array of programs including a Drop-In Safe Space, Harm Reduction Education, Art and Performance Workshops, and Youth Leadership Training. Part of OUT NOW’s goal is to help young people understand that LGBT equality is bound to other social justice movements: there can be no justice for LGBT people without justice for people of color, women, workers, those in other nations, etc., because we are one and the same. OUT NOW was among the founders of the Stop the Hate and Homophobia Coalition, a powerful response to the anti-gay extremist Scott Lively, who moved to Springfield in 2008 to “re-Christianize” the city and to establish Abiding Truth Ministries, the launching pad for his international anti-gay campaigns in Africa and Eastern Europe.
