Gay/Straight/Blonde/Brunette/Irish/Chinese/Black/White/Male/Female

I haven’t written anything for a while – been too busy doing costumes for Brighton High School’s awesome production of Legally Blonde, the Musical! costumes which, by the way, were fabulous, if I do say so myself. The length of this post makes up for any lack over the past months!

Before you read any further, if you’re reading, here’s the disclaimer, spoiler, whatever you want to call it. If you are firmly set in your beliefs and don’t want to have to think about anything for fear thinking might cause you to question your faith, stop now. This essay isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you’re comfortable enough in yourself and your beliefs that you’re able to give credence to the opinions, thoughts and feelings of others even if you don't agree with them, please continue and I would love to hear your thoughts.

For the past couple of months I’ve been making notes of stuff I want to write about when I have a little time again, but now that I’m actually writing, it’s not about anything I jotted down.  One thing keeps coming back into my head over and over again the past few days, and that is homosexuality. It’s a controversial topic that stirs up intense emotions.  In general, people are unable to separate emotion from fact when the topic comes up. People are killed and have killed over it. It is stunning to me how much time and energy Americans spend focusing on the sexuality of others, which is a pretty private kind of thing, actually.

 I mean, how many of you would consider asking your boss, mother in law, neighbor, math teacher or minister how often they had sex, or what type of sex they had with their husband, wife or significant other? Or even who they wanted to have sex with? You wouldn’t, right? I mean it’s obviously inappropriate, invasive and rude. Yet there is a segment of society who believe they have not only the right, but a moral obligation to try to dictate the sexual feelings and practices of millions of adults they’ve never even met.

When JC Penney hired Ellen DeGeneres to be their spokesperson, I’m sure they didn’t expect the One Million Mom’s group to attack them and demand they fire her immediately (One Million Mom's is not to be confused with the Million Mom March on Washington that happened to protest handguns several years ago – NOT the same group! This bunch is an offshoot of the extreme right wing American Family Association, which, despite the name, does NOT stand for all American families, only those who fit their parameters, i.e., white, republican and narrow minded).

Why, you may ask, would they care that JC Penney hired a well known comedienne and talk show host to speak for them in commercials? She’s an intelligent, articulate and funny person who makes a living entertaining people and she has a huge following. It’s good business, so why the protest?  Here’s why, Ellen is unabashedly and unapologetically gay. Apparently, these women find her very existence an affront to their families and their moral code, which pretty much specifies that anyone who lives or even thinks in a way that they don’t agree with is evil and going to hell. Needless to say, they believe homosexuality is an evil sin the likes of which Charles Manson couldn’t even achieve. According to them, homosexuals not only are evil, but don’t deserve to be able to earn a living, vote or get married. If this group could arrange a way to stop it, they would also try to stop homosexuals from owning property and breathing communal air.

There is a lot of evil in the world. There are people who hurt and molest children. There are people who have no problem selling other human beings to people who are going to hurt, molest and even kill them. There are people who have no qualms manufacturing and distributing substances that destroy lives and minds for profit. There are millions of children who go to bed not only hungry, but literally starving every night. There are people dying from the lack of clean water and health problems that are easily curable and there are others with the money to help with all of these problems and who choose not to. Personally, I find it offensive that anyone would expend an enormous amount of energy, time, effort and money trying to regulate and vilify the sexual preferences of another group of human beings when there are real problems that need to be solved.

I am not trying to glorify being gay, any more than I would try to glorify someone for having blonde hair or being African American or Caucasian or having a birthmark. I do have and have had in the past friends and acquaintances who fit into just about every category of person there is. I have known nice people and mean people, those who are honest and those who are not. I have known gay people who were just rotten human beings. Not as many as I’ve known straight people who are rotten human beings but that’s probably just because proportionally, there just aren’t as many gay people. You get good ones and bad ones in any group of people, regardless of what section of humanity you’re pulling from and I don't think the proportions change much from group to group. 

There’s plenty of science out there showing that homosexuality is no more of a choice than being born brunette, Chinese or with a cleft palate, but that doesn’t matter. Science is not going to change the minds of those determined to stick to a belief that justifies their hatred and bigotry and nothing I think, write or say about it will either.  Nonetheless, I feel compelled to write about it, to share my background and experiences.

I was raised in an extremely religious, extremely strict family. Blind obedience to the parents and to The Church was the expectation and thinking for yourself was not only discouraged, but violently punished. I was raised to believe that homosexuality is a horrible sin, an aberration that wicked people chose to participate in and those who practice it (because they willfully chose to be a part of such a wicked group) will be cast into outer darkness and really are barely even human. Even though I had absolutely no idea what it was until I was probably fourteen  or fifteen years old, I knew being gay was bad.

 I’m not trying to make waves or offend anyone. Through experience I’ve come to believe that arguing about religion, politics or any other deeply held belief doesn’t accomplish anything. Each participant in an argument just leaves more convinced than ever that they are right and a lot of animosity is raised for no reason and without changing anyone's mind.

Gay = Evil. This was something that although I subconsciously absorbed, I never actually gave any thought to. I’m sure I had friends in high school who were gay, but I didn’t know about it. Not just me, no one did. The world was a much less accepting place to gays even as recently as the 1980’s. It wasn’t just the extremely religious who were prejudiced against gays, it was most of society.

If I’d gone to a state school for college I probably would have come up against it sooner, but since I was at a private religious school, confronting the revelation that someone I knew was gay was something I didn’t have to do until I was a sophomore in college.

A few months into the winter semester my sophomore year two good friends of mine who were roommates had a violent falling out. One of them had read the diary of the other. When I first heard the story (from another roommate in their house), this incredible invasion of privacy and betrayal of trust seemed to me like the biggest issue and I thought that's what the fight was about. I was so shocked that Friend A had read Friend B’s diary that I totally missed the "appalling" revelation that followed and had to be guided back to the point of the conversation.

 However, no one else even seemed to think that invasion of privacy was a problem. Apparently the resulting information justified it in many minds.Why? Because Friend A, the snoopy one, had discovered on reading friend B’s diary, that Friend B was gay, something he’d been hiding since he was a child. He revealed in his diary that he had feelings for Friend A that went beyond the guy-buddy thing. Friend A was horrified, disgusted and frightened to learn he’d been sharing a house with a gay man for the past two years and even more horrified to find that this gay man fancied him, even though Friend A had never acted on his feelings. As I mentioned, I was attending a fairly small, private religious university up on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. There were only about 3,000 undergrad students, so most of us knew each other at least by sight.

The revelation that Friend B, Morgan, was gay went through the campus like a hurricane. No one talked about anything else.  Friend A had gone immediately to officials at the University Honor Code Board  to ensure that he, Morgan, was punished - after, apparently, using his fists to show Morgan just how offensive he found this new information. Friend C, their other roommate, told me he hadn't seen Morgan, Friend B, since the morning before it happened because he'd been on campus all day. By the time I was looking for him, my friend Morgan had disappeared.  

Rumor had it he had been expelled for moral turpitude, apparently it was enough that he had the feelings, never mind that he hadn’t acted upon them.  I heard later from friend C that Morgan’s parents had flown him back to San Diego immediately after they were called by university officials and someone from the school had come by the house later and packed up all of his belongings. I’ll be honest, initially I was just as shocked and surprised as everyone else, it was an automatic reaction.Then something happened. I started to think about Morgan, my friend who was gone...

I met Morgan my first day on campus when we were freshmen. We clicked immediately over something I can’t even remember now, but I remember the warm feeling you get when you connect with someone who you know you’re going to be friends with. I also remember feeling consciously surprised that I wasn't attracted to him because he was really cute and I was just a tad boy crazy at that point in time. We had the same dry, sarcastic sense of humor. Then it turned out we had the same creative writing class and we both went to work on the school paper.  We started hanging out more often and a strong friendship developed.  I met his roommates (one of whom I developed a huge crush on over the next year), he met my friends and I spent quite a lot of time at their house, which everyone just called “the A-frame” on the point. It was a fabulous house and a much better place to hang out than my dorm room. It was on a rocky point just off campus and overlooked the ocean. Sometimes we could see whales from their deck.

Morgan and I spent a lot of time together and despite constant questions and innuendo from other friends, it was never a romantic relationship in any way, shape or form on either of our parts. Morgan was like my brother, only a cool, funny brother my own age who also thought I was cool and funny. My girlfriends could never believe there wasn’t anything going on because Morgan was extremely good looking and were were together so much. Plenty of other girls were obsessed with him but he was never interested in any of them. I think on some level I must have known he wasn't into girls, that's why I could be completely open with him. I always knew he was safe, it's one reason we were so close. I just didn't understand why, at least not consciously.

At the time I never really thought anything of it. He always commiserated with me over my erratic love life (did I mention I was slightly boy crazy?!), but we never talked about his. If I asked he just deflected the conversation somewhere else and after a while I stopped asking. In hindsight, there were times I could have pushed and he might have confided. He must have been desperate to tell someone but afraid of rejection. To be honest, if it had happened I don't know how I would have reacted initially, although I like to think I would have handled it well.

Some of his female admirers, and there were quite a few, were less than subtle and we used to have catty, bitchy conversations picking the ones we didn't like apart and laughing hysterically. If I hadn’t been so clueless and lacking in experience I probably would have figured it out and maybe he would have felt he could confide in me, but I had no idea.

We ended up working together on the School Newspaper. I was the Fine Arts Editor and Morgan was one of the Fine Arts reporters. We went to the beach together, talked for hours over coffee at McDonalds and gorged on ice cream occasionally. I ended up sleeping on their couch many a night when we didn't slow down until early morning. We used to take the bus into Waikiki to go shopping and make fun of tourists or up around the north shore to Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach to watch the surfing competitions. Of course, at that time I had no idea that Morgan was lusting over the hot surfer guys just as much as I was, but it didn’t matter, we always had a blast.

It was the day after this chain of events had rocked our small campus that I was sitting in the car talking to the editor of the school paper, Laura, who was also a good friend. I had up until then managed to avoid facing the situation (not only was I a little shell-shocked, but one thing I learned growing up - just avoid feelings whenever possible - was a lesson I learned well!), but I was feeling the loss of my friend. We’d been somewhere covering an event for the paper, I have no idea what, and once we arrived back on campus ended up sitting in her car continuing the conversation we’d started while driving.

We talked about Morgan. Laura was distraught about the whole situation and seemed to feel that he had personally betrayed her, on purpose, by being gay. Somehow, to her, his being gay was a direct attack on her beliefs, her friendship and everything that she stood for in life. She was obviously feeling hurt and torn up about it and was also confused.

Up until then, I'd been more than a little confused myself. Sitting there, listening to her was when I realized that I didn’t believe any of the stuff I’d been indoctrinated with about homosexuality growing up. It wasn’t anything I’d ever actually thought about before, because I'd never had to, but listening to her and thinking about Morgan I realized it was ridiculous. Morgan was a good person and one of my dearest friends. I knew that there was no way he was evil and that he would never “choose” to be gay just to rebel against The Church. I knew at that point that the fact that he was gay made absolutely no difference in how I felt about Morgan. It just didn’t matter.

 I remember at some point asking her, “Laura, did you like Morgan last week?”

“Of course,” she answered, “you know I did.”

“Well,” I said, “he’s exactly the same person today that he was last week, you just know something about him now that you didn’t know then.”

I remember she was silent for a while, we both were. Then eventually we started talking again. I don’t remember how long we sat in the car, but I do know that by the time we got out it was dark and Laura had made some kind of peace with the way things were. Knowing I was instrumental in helping her to look past the label and realize she still cared about the person just as much as she had before remains one of my proudest achievements ever.  I know this because she told me, years later that our conversation had made her think and thus changed her entire outlook on people being good, bad and gay.

By the time we left the car, I had more than made peace with Morgan being gay. If anything, it made me admire him more for his strength and hurt for him because of the hurt I knew he had to be feeling. I was determined to be there for him. Unfortunately, I never got that chance.

Of course, this all affected my relationship with Friend A and Friend C, with whom I’d become pretty close to over the past year and a half.  Friend A (the one I had a crush on) and I were on the verge of “something,” before this happened. After the whole incident, I didn’t even want to be in the same room with him. I couldn’t speak to him I was so disgusted by what he’d done. In my mind, he was the wicked one, not Morgan. I still feel that way. Friend C and I stayed friendly, but were never as close again. I didn't spend any more time at their house.

I wish I could say that Morgan and I were still friends, but unfortunately we’re not. That is, I would love to be his friend, but I’ve never been able to contact him since he left Hawaii and I’ve tried, especially in the days and weeks after he left. I called his house repeatedly, I sent him letter after letter, but I never was able to talk to him. I was desperately worried about him. I prayed for him (not that he would see the light and change, but that he would be ok.). I even tracked down his house when I was staying with another friend in the LA area before flying back to Hawaii the next fall (well, I found the development. It was a gated community and they wouldn't let me in. I left a note with the gate guard.). Remember, this was back in the days before email, Facebook and cell phones. It was like he'd dropped off the face of the earth.

 His family was every bit as religious and strict as mine was, plus extremely wealthy. He did not have a good relationship with either of his parents, I knew. He’d been brought up with the same violent suppression at any hint of individuality, thinking out of the box or straying from the straight and narrow path that I had, one of the things we discussed frequently and bonded over. His Dad was fairly high up in The Church hierarchy and I have no doubt that his parents were horrified and embarrassed by the entire situation. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn they’d committed him to some sort of “deprogramming” facility or even a mental facility. I hope that’s not what happened, but I’ll probably never know.

I don’t know what happened after he left Hawaii. I don’t know if he ignored my calls and letters because he just assumed my reaction would be like everyone else, or if he never even knew I was trying to contact him. He never came back to school and I've not heard from him since. I still hope and pray that he’s alive and well. I can only imagine how horrible life must have been after his inadvertent “outing” and feeling completely alone was probably the least of it.

Not only was he betrayed and rejected by someone he’d considered his best friend, he was abandoned and vilified by almost his entire peer group. Since he left so fast he probably thought it was everyone. It turned out I wasn't the only one who changed their views when faced with the reality of someone they knew and cared about being the "evil homosexual." I know he wasn't supported by his family or his religion, instead, both were convinced he was choosing to be wicked.

I still think about Morgan once in a while. I hope and pray that he was able to recover from what must have been an incredibly horrible, traumatizing experience. I hope that he is alive. I hope that he emerged stronger and more of who he was, able to stop living a lie and overcome the bitterness of his experience. I hope that he’s found love and that he’s happy. I hope I get to see him again some day.

This incident was another straw in the load that eventually broke the back of my allegiance to a religion that was incorporated into my consciousness and part of my identity since childhood. I had rebelled as a teenager for a while, but it was done strictly as a way of asserting my independence from my family, not because I had spent any time thinking about what I believed and why. I was drawn back “into the fold” in college and tried very hard to stay there for nearly ten years after that.

It wasn’t until my early thirties that I looked at my life, realized I was miserable and really started analyzing why. I found at that time that the religion I was allowing to dictate the terms of my life was not in agreement with most of my views and beliefs. I’m not knocking The Church, as it is known to those who are members (true of any large organized religion, regardless of denomination). There are a lot of good things about it and I know and love many people who are active and faithful members. I’m happy for them and more than willing to let them live their lives however they see fit and I really wish that they would allow me the same courtesy, but, I also understand why they don’t, they are trying to "save" me. 

At any rate, I digress. This isn’t about my schism with the faith I grew up in, it’s about tolerance, love and homosexuality. I do believe in God. I did spend a lot of years in The Church and hundreds of hours studying doctrine and scripture. I know it pretty well and the God I learned about is all about love, which supersedes everything else.This makes it hard for me to understand how anyone can try to justify their persecution of those who are different in any way, including sexual orientation, by claiming they speak for God. Not my God, they don't.

The gay rights movement and the opposing factions are just repeating battles that have taken place over and over again throughout the history of mankind and especially here in the United States. The parallels between Gay rights, Women’s rights and the rights of African Americans, Indian Americans and many other minorities are so obvious it seems anyone who refuses to acknowledge this is being willfully obtuse.

I believe it’s about fear. Human beings in general tend to fear that which they do not understand. We all do it to different degrees, we don’t like or trust people who are different from us and we gravitate towards those we are like. I’ve heard people trying to justify denying basic human rights to gays claim that there is a “gay agenda,” the goal of which is to try to turn all the children gay. I’ve heard them claim all gay people are a danger to children, in spite of the multitudes of evidence that the vast majority of child molesters are straight.

No, I’m not gay and frankly, I don’t get it. I'm not attracted to women, any woman, no matter how beautiful she is and the idea of being physically intimate with a woman doesn't make me uncomfortable, it's just kind of "eew." Not for me. However, I feel the same way about men female friends over my lifetime have dated and married. Just because someone is male does not mean I will find him attractive, in fact, quite the contrary, and I’m far from alone. The chemistry involved in sexual attraction is the point of multiple studies and incredible amounts of research over the past decades.

 I find it no more difficult to believe that one man could be attracted to another, or a woman attracted to another woman than it is to believe that a woman can be attracted to a man I find physically repellant. I don't get it, but I accept that they do. It’s chemistry. In no way do I find it threatening.

I know heterosexual couples who espouse behaviors and political views that I find appalling, and yet when they marry it in no way affects my marriage. Why on earth would two people who love each other getting married affect my marriage just because they happen to be the same sex?  In an era where celebrities change marriage partners like some people change their socks, how can gay people who are in a monogamous relationship and want to get married if they are both of legal age be looked at as a challenge to the sanctimony of marriage?

I have known many straight people throughout my life in terrible relationships. They are married to or with insensitive, unfaithful or sometimes abusive partners. Children who grow up in these homes are damaged. I know and have known far too many children who are neglected and abused, both physically and emotionally. I also know straight people in wonderful, loving and supportive relationships. I have known Gay people in bad relationships and Gay people in good relationships. I’ve known Gay people who are promiscuous and I’ve known straight people who are promiscuous. I have Gay friends I would trust with my own children over members of my family. It’s not the sexual orientation that makes the difference, it’s the type of person they are.

So, bottom line? Even though I’ve really never shopped there in the past, I will now go out of my way to shop at JC Penny, because they are refusing to bow to the pressure of a bunch of bigoted, hate and fear filled extremists and fire Ellen DeGeneres because she’s gay.  I have no doubt that their decision stems from a business rather than moral point of view, but in my mind that’s a good thing. That enough people don't care about the sexual orientation of someone else gives me hope for the future of humanity.