Boston LGBT alliance set to mark 32 years

This May, the average prom-related spending will surpass the $1,000 mark for each American teenager, according to a recent Visa survey – but the Boston-area gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community may not have to worry about such a hefty prom price tag.

The Boston Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth will host its 32nd annual prom, open to any under-22-year-olds, on May 19.

The BAGLY Prom is the oldest and largest prom for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth in the country, according to the BAGLY website, and has attracted more than 1,000 youth each year since the 1990s.

BAGLY itself has roots extending as far back as the late 1970s, back when “nobody was saying ‘LGBT,’” when “it was just ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian,’” said BAGLY Executive Director Grace Sterling Stowell, who said she has been with the organization for 32 years.

The nonprofit organization is a youth-led and adult-backed social support group that commits itself to social justice and to supporting the LGBT youth community, according to its website.

“It was set up from the beginning as a social support group, but it also did some of the earliest community education and advocacy in outreach work,” Sterling Stowell said.

The organization grew out of a primarily adult-led group, then the youth members involved at the time decided they would rather have a more active voice in decision-making, she said.

The result, BAGLY, was founded in the summer of 1980 and was youth-centric and community-involved from the outset, she said.

“Young people appeared on radio programs, young people were activists in the community, so it was never just a weekly support group, although we did that too,” Sterling Stowell said, referring to the series of support meetings BAGLY now holds on Wednesday evenings.

Since the 1980s, the organization – which welcomes all youth under 22 and older youth leaders and volunteers – has grown in both size and scope, Sterling Stowell said.

BAGLY aims to provide “youth leadership development programming where people are trained in leadership, organizing and advocacy skills . . . health promotion programming, encouraging and supporting young people in healthy decision making . . . traditional support programming [and] quarterly dances,” she said.

As a part of its health-centric programming, she said, BAGLY introduced The Clinic @ 620 located on Beacon Street, “a free, comprehensive health services clinic that we opened up just a couple of months ago.”

The clinic, in collaboration with the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center, provides free HIV and sexually transmitted infections screenings, testing, counseling and referrals for anyone 29 years and under, she said.

BAGLY also offers many social programming activities, often in coalition with other Massachusetts LGBT communities on city and statewide levels.

The organization often collaborates with The Theatre Offensive, a Boston-based theatre group that puts on shows that “present the diverse realities of queer lives” and engages the community in “vibrant discussion about the realities of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” according to its website.

The Theatre Offensive has worked with BAGLY since 1996, said Allison Francis, the communications associate for the theatre group, with BAGLY-involved youth working with The Theatre Offensive and vice-versa.

“Our executive artistic director Abe Rybeck was actually a BAGLY youth back in 1982, so that was kind of our unofficial tie with BAGLY,” Francis said. “It’s certainly a beneficial relationship where a lot of our youths end up coming from BAGLY programs.”

In addition to BAGLY helping out at The Theatre Offensive, Francis said, some of the organization’s programs come in handy to members of The Theater Offensive, which cannot offer the same services BAGLY does.

“They kind of provide the social services for our youth that the theater troupe can’t provide . . . like counseling and testing and stuff like that,” she said. “So they’ve been great allies as far as that goes.”

Gunner Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, said BAGLY has worked with the MTPC since its founding in 2001.

MTPC and BAGLY work together to put on the Trans Youth Summit, Scott said, “a very successful event” that “provide[s] a space for trans[gender] youth to come together and build relationships, even if they didn’t live in the same town.”

“BAGLY has a long history of doing these leadership, development types of programming,” Scott said.

He said BAGLY and MTPC team up in the development of policies and approaches to legislative issues that involve LGBT youth, “so we work with them bringing the trans[gender] perspective as far as policy and legislative work [go].”