The Center on Halsted has been rightly applauded for organizing a meeting Aug. 30 to discuss issues related to youths on North Halsted Street’s gay bar strip. It’s a subject that’s been simmering all summer, and dealing with it is a perfect example of how our new GLBT community center can be a valuable asset to our community and the city of Chicago.

Some frank thoughts were exchanged at the meeting. While some complained about noise generated by the youths and about what they perceived as their threatening behavior, others who’ve lived in the area for years pointed out that late-night noise is a by-product of living in a neighborhood filled with nightclubs and isn’t something new that’s caused by these youths—as one person said, it’s the people who’ve been drinking all night who get a bit loud and sometimes relieve themselves on her front stoop.

It was fortunate that some of the youths also attended. Their voices, after all, are the ones that most need to be heard in this discussion. If our assertion that we are a diverse community open to everyone is to mean anything at all, then we need to hear these youths and find a way to welcome them with open arms into Chicago’s GLBT community.

The youths said they are coming to Halsted because we invited them—as one explained, when we got the City to put up the rainbow pylons designating North Halsted Street as Chicago’s premier GLBT neighborhood, it didn’t mean that the street was open only to some GLBT people.

The youths also told us that they’re not going to quit coming. What they want, one said, is just to have a place to be—to be happy, to be with others like them, to be who they are, to be gay.

Much of the dialogue was about race. That needs to happen way more in this community. We have a long way to go—in this GLBT community and in this city—before we’ve even come remotely close to having all the conversations we need to have about race. To be blunt, many of the complaints about these GLBT youths on Halsted have more to do with their skin color than anything else, and we need to talk about why, in this day and age, we are still not comfortable living with each other.

Again, this is all a perfect example of how this wonderful new $20-million Center on Halsted can serve to make this community a far better place. It can bring us together—black, white, young, old, rich and poor—to talk with each other, to learn about each other’s desires and to confront and overcome each other’s fears.

And, as we’ve said and as others said last week, the Center gives us a golden opportunity—an opportunity we’ve never had before on Halsted—to give youths such as these a place to belong, to grow and to be gay. It is the perfect place to provide these youths with an anchor—especially late at night—where they can become part of our GLBT community and share their gifts with us.

We all need to step up and ask how we can support the Center to make that happen now.

We’ve become too used to a society and a world in which we expect to be divided. There are so many, after all, who look to make a profit or win an election by highlighting our differences and driving wedges between us. We don’t have to let that happen. We can do better. We can come together and look for the things that we have in common, and at the same time we can share and learn from each other’s uniqueness.

That is what can make us stronger as a community and better as individuals. Let’s not miss this opportunity to reach for those goals.