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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyApril 1st, 2007
I didn’t come out until sometime around my fortieth birthday. So I must admit a certain amount of envy when I read stories like this one from today’s New York Times.
Zach O’Connor knew early on that he was gay, even before he knew there was a word for it. He also knew that his classmates would’t consider this to be “normal,” which was a huge source of conflict for him. The pressure built until he could no longer contain it.
Then, for reasons he can’t wholly explain beyond pure desperation, …he told a female friend. By day’s end it was all over school. The psychologist called him in. “I burst into tears,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ Every piece of depression came pouring out. It was such a mess.”
That night, when his mother got home from work, she stuck her head in his room to say hi. “I said, ‘Ma, I need to talk to you about something, I’m gay.’ She said, ‘O.K., anything else?’ ‘No, but I just told you I’m gay.’ ‘O.K., that’s fine, we still love you.’ I said, ‘That’s it?’ I was preparing for this really dramatic moment.”
Ms. O’Connor recalls, “He said, ‘Mom, aren’t you going to freak out?’ I said: ‘It’s up to you to decide who to love. I have your father, and you have to figure out what’s best for you.’ He said, ‘Don’t tell Dad.’ ”
“Of course I told him,” Ms. O’Connor says.
Zach is very lucky to have such wonderful parents. He was also fortunate that his school system had a gay/straight alliance that he could attend. Now, he’s a seventeen-years-old high school junior and no longer needs the support he found in that club. What’s more, his grades are up, his self-confidence has skyrocketed, and he has a wide circle of male friends for the first time in his life.
I think it’s wonderful that more young people are growing up in an environment where there’s less stigma attached to being gay than when I was growing up. Like I said, Zach is very lucky. But even today, not all kids are as lucky as Zach. There are no accurate figures available, but according to one estimate some 20-40% of homeless youth are LGBT youth.
It’s important for all kids like Zach to know that their lives are valued, and they can receive support wherever and whenever they need it. When I was growing up, I never thought it was possible to live a well-balanced and fulfilling life as a gay man. Unfortunately, I’m a slow learner. Zach’s story is different. Maybe someday examples like his won’t be so remarkable.
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Cooner
April 1st, 2007
Jim,
Been watching your site for a few weeks now; nice stuff. This is a terrific story about Zach. Likewise, I didn’t come out (in stages) until my early to mid-30s; fortunately, my parents, whose feelings I still respected even if I was no longer dependent on them, proved as loving and accepting as I could have hoped.
Anyway, this is the kind of effect that people either don’t realize or willfully ignore when they cry about “gay recruiting,” or wish to expunge any and all reference to homosexuality from education or popular culture, or try to push a “keep it in the bedroom, but I don’t want to hear about it in polite conversation” mentality about things.
The biggest and most obvious reason for making sure homosexuality is an open topic of discussion and making sure information is freely available, is to make sure that more kids like Zach will be able to accept who they are and have more chance to become happy, healthy, well-adjusted individuals, without the unnecessary heartache and confusion that all-to-often leads to depression, drug use, family tension, suicide, and a number of other serious problems. Isn’t that compassion?
Roger
April 1st, 2007
yes, I’m a bit envious. It would have been dangerous for me to come out when I was in high school and I denied my feelings so much that I didn’t accept my orientation until my mid-thirties. My mother was dead by then, but my dad accepted me as I was. And then I found out that the therapist that I though I’d been taken to in order to figure out my I.Q. (when I was about five) was actually there because my parents thought I might be a ‘pre-homosexual child’ and wanted to help me grow up straight.
That best advice may have helped in forging a good relationship with my parents, but sure didn’t make me anything but gay.
Liadan
April 1st, 2007
Excuse me, Zach 1? May I borrow your parents to see if I can isolate whatever element is missing from mine?
Lynn David
April 1st, 2007
I did not come out until well into my 40s. I don’t know if time was a key or if my mother would have been as supportive in my teens as she was 30 years later. Silly me for not finding out, eh?
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And…. As I was reading this story over my morning herbal tea, it just struck me that the opposite of being gay is not ex-gay…. the true opposite is indeed being miserably unhappy about who you are.
And that is the behind the entirety of the socio-political underpinnings of the ex-gay/change philosophy. It’s not that 1.6% to 33% of gays can change (change meaning a difference which lasts for at least 6 months), it’s that 1.6% to 33% of gays who can be shamed into believing they are evil and must then change (change meaning a difference which lasts for at least 6 months).
The number of people that they can change, not necessarily the percentage increase but simply the number that might change (for however short a time), is dependant upon the absolute number which may be shamed enough by societal and relgious pressures. The religous/faith-based pressure has always been there in society.
The political pressure which ex-gay groups tacitly approve is now necessary in that egalitarian society which Christianity envisioned. Thus democracy then is no longer that means to an egalitarian society, but that means by which to impart societal pressure.
All of which is meant to shame the individual into not accepting himself. Thus their numbers may be increase even though their percentage of success may plummet.
John Holm
April 2nd, 2007
What a heartwarming and encouraging story! Like most of the folks who have posted before me, I came out later in life, although not as late as some. I came out last year, at the age of 25. It seems my story is somewhere in between Jim’s story (out in his 40s) and Zach’s (out in his teens). I hope this is a trend that continues.
I really got a kick out of this line in the NYTimes article: “One kid followed me class to class calling me ‘faggot,’ †he says. “After a month I turned and punched him in the face. He got quiet and walked away. I said, ‘You got beat up by a faggot.’ †:-) Man, I wish I had had the balls to do that to my high school bullies!
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