Government aid for young and gay

By Clara Henning BOSTON (AP) She has known of her homosexuality since she was 5, she says, but she can't tell her parents and dares not tell her school friends.

"Straight people think I don't exist," she says, "and adult gays see me as a child. And yet, all of us kids want to be accepted so much.

Now, at 17, Maria is one of thousands of America's teen-agers receiving counseling from homosexuals andi bisexuals who work through organizations funded by state and federal tax dollars.

"The need for human relationship and love is so great, even one-night stands will do," she says.

and attends a co-educational high school. Occasionally he dates girls, but he says it is never romantic, and adds he is most interested in older men.

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"They look on teen-agers as sex objects. And then there are many who are afraid to take up with a young kid because of the law," he says.

Like Paul, Jonathan is 17 and living a homosexual life. Talking about it, his voictatens to break into a tearful cry.

"It's been hell," he says. "My father and cousins keep dragging.me to go-go bars where I'm supposed to leer at undressed women.”

Maria, Jonathan and Paul are among 35 teen-agers enrolled at

ing service for homosexual children established almost four years ago under the Massachusetts Youth Activities Commission.

According to the National Gay Task Force, there are 1,100 organizations around the country that provide at least telephone counseling for gay youngsters. The Task Force, a New York group that disseminates` material on homosexual concerns, says many of these organizations have formal programs designed exclusively for the young homosexual.

At Lambda in Boston, Randolph Gibson, 50, counsels young gays like Maria. Gibson is an ordaired minister in the Unitarian Church and a father of four children. He describes himself as "mostly heterosexual."

Paul, too, says he is gay. He is 17 Boston's Lambda Project, a counsel-Homosexual boys and girls can

rarely approach an older homosexual

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in the home," he says. "These kids die a strange internal death Society seems to think it's all right to say children are murderers, or thieves, or dumb, but you can't say they are gay or have sex."

The most generous source of funds for gay counseling is the federal Youth Development Bureau, which helps to support 127 groups across the country through its National Youth Alternatives Project. Not all of these groups serve gays.

Raymond Manello, director of the Youth Development Bureau, says any organization that serves runaway youths may apply for a minimum grant of $75,000.

"It just so happens that many runaways, or kids who are thinking about it, are homosexual," he said.