Factors That Shape High School Student LGBTQA Advocacy: A Qualitative Study

Background and purpose: School-based civic engagement programs seek to promote youth-led efforts to improve school climate, with the purpose of promoting youth civic development, policy improvements, and school climate benefits for all students. Youth leadership programs position youth as experience experts and interventionists, yet facilitators and barriers to youth-led advocacy have been largely unexamined. This study links social justice youth development (SJYD) literature with implementation research to examine student-reported factors that shape LGBTQA advocacy in schools in Los Angeles.

Methods: Students (n=39) at three Los Angeles regional public high schools enrolled in an SJYD school-based intervention, Make Space, participated in focus group discussions (FGDs) to discuss facilitators and barriers to their LGBTQA school advocacy. All students had attended Make Space and were actively engaged in LGBTQA-supportive advocacy on campus. Two to three one-hour FGDs occurred at each campus during school hours. Audio recordings were transcribed via an online service, scrubbed for identifiers, and thematically analyzed by two nonbinary doctoral student co-coders.

Results: Students at the three schools prioritized advocacy for campus awareness events, name change procedure improvements, gender neutral restroom access, sexual health education, and access to non-mandated reporter mental health supports. Five key themes emerged that shaped student-led LGBTQA advocacy: 1) intra-group dynamics, 2) adult relationships and support, 3) hostile school climate and backlash, 4) use and misuse of administrative power, and 5) sociopolitical awareness development. Youth spoke of their reliance upon specific staff known to be supportive, but that reliance upon these individuals resulted in lapsed support when those adults took sick leave or left for other jobs. Youth advocacy for LGBTQA education rights met with backlash, including red herring excuses by school administrators for not meeting youth demands and on one campus, a rainbow flag burning by peers. Even as youth gained greater sociopolitical awareness, they identified challenges to participation in civic action, such as the normalized use of slurs by peers, deadnaming and non-intervention in bullying by staff, and fears for how their civic engagement may risk outing them to unsupportive parents.

Conclusion and implications: SJYD and other youth-led advocacy interventions can promote youth civic leadership. Planning for LGBTQA youth-led advocacy interventions, in particular, should account for some youth lacking parental support and the potential for community backlash, and provide opportunities for youth to determine for themselves how they want to engage in civics safely. Moreover, youth advocacy initiatives focused on LGBTQA rights must account for the risks youth face in being openly LGBTQA, including risks of family rejection and hostile backlash to advocacy.