8th grade, Election '96. I was one of the few "liberals" in my class. Typical for the conservative area I grew up in. I still remember J's face, looking at me as we headed into government class, unable to understand why I wanted Bill Clinton to win again.
"You know he's gay, right?"
".....What?"
"He supports gay rights. Who else but a gay guy supports gay rights?"
Even then I knew I was gay. I thought President Clinton was straight (and this was before Lewinsky was on everyone's minds), but what if more people thought like J? What if classmates saw my "liberalness" (my nickname at one point was "Mr. Bleeding Heart") and figured I was gay?
It seems so silly now.
10th grade. New school, many of the same friends. J and I still hung out; the kids in the honors classes tended to stick together. No one for a second thought Clinton was gay anymore.
Gays were still the object of ridicule. If you were out at my high school, it was because you came out before you moved there. J in particular was still rather homophobic in his comments. One day he told us before school how all gay guys should just be shipped to Madagascar, away from everyone else.
I looked around, hoping someone would argue with this. Everyone just laughed instead. I quickly added my laugh, before anyone could notice.
It seems so silly now.
Freshman year of college. Before I could come out to my family and friends back home, I came out to my roommate. I panicked when he asked if that meant he had to move out. I grabbed my jacket and started walking. I heard the voices of every hateful comment I'd heard growing up...especially J's. Would these friends of mine still hate me? That's what I assumed. Would my family hate me? That's what I assumed. I considered not going back to the dorm. I considered walking to the bridge instead.
It seems so silly now.
I got back to the dorm 90 minutes later. Talked with my neighbor; she talked with my roommate, then I went back into the room, heart racing. He ignored me as I went to my computer and sent "guess what, I'm gay" e-mails to my family. As I went to bed, my roommate told me the only reason he was staying was because he didn't want to deal with housing services.
I woke up to find e-mails from each family member. Turns out they all knew, and didn't care.
It seems so silly now.
I then sent e-mails to my friends from high school. Of the twenty responses I got, only one was borderline non-accepting.
I saw J responded, and froze. Would this be the hateful diatribe I was expecting?
No. His e-mail was positive.
I read it, and thought back to his comments in 8th and 10th grade. Then to my discussions with him during our senior year. It hit me: were his 8th grade and 10th grade comments his own, or his parents'?
It seems so silly now.
Present day. I haven't talked with J in years, though we may see each other at our upcoming high school reunion. I am his Facebook friend, though. I have watched the past few years as he and his girlfriend traveled the world, and he shared a disgust for what politics has become back home. I had to do a double-take when I saw pictures of him working for Obama's election in 2008. It confirmed what I had thought back in undergrad: the hateful side of J wasn't his own; he just parroted what his parents told him. The real J was different.
It seems so silly now.
I see the results of bullying today, and think back to my experiences as a closeted teen growing up in socially-conservative America. I see the kids who I grew up with, my college roommates, many who said what their parents taught them growing up, identifying themselves as liberals today.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.--1 Corinthians 13:11
What if it's not being gay that's the "phase growing up," but the hateful social conservativism we heard from our classmates?
How much beauty do we miss in the world by giving in to this childish hatred? How many young lives do we have to lose to this homophobia before they grow into adults to find that even those who hurt them the most as kids have grown out of their hate? We're decades away, but we're approaching a time when overt homophobia in our schools becomes as "unbelievable" as overt racism in schools is to those of us who grew up in the '90s and later.
It will seem so silly then.