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The night she was killed three months ago, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn and her lesbian friends had been hanging out in New York City's Greenwich Village, a place they knew they could find acceptance.

Their train ride home to Newark was all of 30 minutes, but residents in their working-class neighborhoods say in some ways, the two places are worlds apart.

While waiting there for a bus, the teenagers were approached by a man who tried to pick up some of the girls, and when they told him they were lesbians, he grabbed Sakia, witnesses said. The high school sophomore broke loose, but he lunged and stabbed her in the chest, the witnesses said. A suspect, Richard McCullough, 29, has pleaded innocent to murder.

About 2,500 people attended Sakia's funeral, an event that gay rights advocates said revealed the numbers and commitment of Newark's young gay and lesbian community. But people working for gay rights in this predominantly black community say they're handicapped by an especially strong anti-gay bias.

While friends of Sakia put together a support group for young lesbians, several students at West Side High School said Principal Fernand Williams refused their request for a moment of silence. School district spokeswoman Michelle Baldwin said she referred a request for interviews to Williams and other school officials, who did not respond.

Mayor Sharpe James attended Sakia's funeral, and her mother LaTona Gunn said he approached her there to pledge support for a community center aimed at gay and lesbian youth. But after three months they have yet to schedule a meeting, she said. City officials declined to be interviewed.

Laquetta Nelson, who co-founded the Newark Pride Alliance after Sakia's death, faults the church in part for the attitudes she says led to the May 11 killing.
``Preaching hatred from the pulpit has contributed to the homophobia toward the gay and lesbian community,'' she said.

Religious groups, including the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey and the Archdiocese of Newark, either did not return calls or declined to comment.
Some in the gay community say Sakia's background as a black female from a working-class neighborhood also factors into how the nation reacted.

While outraged lesbians and gays held rallies in Newark and other East Coast cities, critics said Sakia's death didn't generate as much visible attention among mainstream gay rights groups or media organizations as the killings of two other youths, Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 1998 and Teena Brandon the subject of the film ``Boys Don't Cry'' in Nebraska in 1993.

``I was shocked at the lack of response, the lack of support,'' said Amy Goodman, host of ``Democracy Now'' news hour on New York's WBAI-FM.

The Gay City News, a New York City-based weekly newspaper focusing on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender _ or LGBT _ community, ran an editorial about the killing headlined, ``Where is the Outrage?''

``I think there's racism in the LGBT community, and no doubt there's classism,'' said Mick Meenan, the paper's assistant editor, in an interview. ``Whatever attitudes that occur within the community at large occur within the LGBT community.''

Calls to groups including the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the New Jersey Lesbian & Gay Coalition were not returned.

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