Gay student offered special scholarships...

[Confrontational]

Ummmmmmmm, notice the last name and wann-a-be profession... [img]/images/graemlins/laughing.gif[/img]






(09-13) 17:00 PDT BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) --

Alyn Libman won a $15,000-a-year scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley with a resume that showed more than just Libman's athletic achievement and academic potential.

It also showed years of ridicule, beatings and threats, along with Libman's decision to become a boy in 11th grade.

"It felt amazing to actually be embraced by someone who didn't just dismiss me for being different," said Libman, a 19-year-old aspiring civil rights lawyer and the first transgendered person to win a scholarship from The Point Foundation, a Chicago nonprofit organization that has awarded more than $1 million to college-bound gays since 2002.

For those seeking financial aid to attend college, it doesn't necessarily hurt to be gay or transgender. An increasing number of charities, professional groups and universities offer scholarships on the basis of sexual orientation.

More than 50 such scholarships are available nationwide -- from the $1,000 scholarships that Zami, an advocacy group in Atlanta, is giving to 21 black gays this year, to the $2,000 awards the United Church of Christ distributed to gay seminarians, and the $3,000 fellowships George Washington University administers so gays can spend a semester studying politics in the nation's capital.

Many of these organizations recognize that youngsters who come out of closet are sometimes cut off by their families and suffer financially because of it.