When I was a little kid growing up in the conservative Midwest, I had a suspicion that I was gay. I don't know how I knew, and I certainly didn't want the feelings I had to be "true" or "real". I knew from my surroundings and from the people in our community that being a homosexual in the 80s and 90s was not something that was accepted. In the big cities, AIDS was "taking care" of the gay population there, and meanwhile in my state, anyone gay kept it under wraps as best as possible out of fear of rejection, harassment, threats, and bullying.
And it certainly wasn't something talked about in open circles. It was kind of inherently understood that some members of the community were, in fact gay, but they were constantly scrutinized and judged like a magnifying glass over ants. Few gay people in my small Missouri town could be in relationships, and eventually those who were felt taunted and left town. Others, like my middle school music teacher, kept a high profile of musical excellence for our students and school, but that didn't prevent an annual brick being tossed through his front window by a jock with the words: "Die Faggot" written on it.
Luckily for my siblings and I, my mother got us involved in theater at our local community center. There we were introduced to all walks of life, including several gay people.
While she succeeded from hiding us from the brutality of the real world for the most part, we still had to be a part of society. As far back as when I was a little kid playing with the neighborhood boys, we would play a game of touch football called: "Smear the Queer." While we didn't know exactly what the word queer meant, we did know quite clearly that it was an insult. The game was called that to mock gay people and insinuate that gays should be "smeared" and beaten down. Any time anything ever was stupid, ridiculous, weird, or just plain dumb back then, it was referred to as "gay":
"You still like the Chiefs? You're Starter Jacket is gay."
"How gay was that math test? Like we'll ever need to know any of that stuff!"
"You like girl singers? You're so gay!"
Never did it seem that anything gay should ever be looked at in a positive light. It didn't help that I was on a quest for spiritual enlightenment in high school either. I tried Catholic mass and Baptist Sunday school. Both religions were obsessed with bringing up homosexuality and insisting that it was one of the worst abominations against God and Christianity, with a definite sentence to hell in the afterlife as a result of leading this lifestyle. My girl friend and her Charismatic Church and another friend's Mormon church weren't much different with theirs: Anyone who doesn't think like us, believe like us, act like us, or love like us is going to hell and isn't really welcome to the party in the first place. I grew up Lutheran and episcopalian--whose Christian sects were anything but Christ-like in their damnation of gays. The Synagogue was open about stuff and respecting human life, but they closed their doors and left town before my tenth grade year.
I didn't realize it at the time until I moved away after high school, but I grew up in a small, bigoted town in Missouri and they had put stock, trade, and investments in condoned homophobia and gay bashing. While I feel amazed and cheer on every new high school student who comes out of the closet, my heart knew I couldn't come out back then because there was no one, including the homophobic police, who could protect me from harm.
Before I knew I was gay, I used to stay up late crying and praying...no begging...through wailing and sobbing that God would change me and not make me gay. I didn't even know what gay meant, but I knew that my classmates could see through me and knew I was a queer long before I did. I was called the usual repertoire of names gay people get called: "faggot," "girly," "queer," "fag," "cocksucker," "fudge packer," the works. I was shoved into lockers and had food thrown at my head after lunch from freshman year on. Teachers did nothing when students called me "gay", "flamer", or "faggot" inside the classroom right in front of them and in front of the rest of my peers. I was almost beaten up more times than I can count. If I hadn't made up my mind to move to California after graduation, one night solidified that decision in my mind permanently.
One Saturday evening at a house party in the country senior year, I was drinking and chatting away with friends when I was hit in the face, roughed up, shoved to the ground and then strung up by my feet in a tree in front of a crowd: left to hang there or die or God knows what. All because I was gay. "Fucking faggot thinking he can come here," is what they kept yelling at me as they tied my legs together and hung me upside down. I was bloody in the face, and trying to keep from crying while also holding my shirt up to my waist so that no one would see me, while I was dangling there like a lynching victim, my belly, my embarrassment, and my pain.
Luckily for me, one of the quarterbacks from our football team shoved those thugs out of the way and cut me down from hanging in that tree. He shoved the guys who assaulted me and scolded them, but that was it. A lot of my classmates saw the entire scene, and I was left to wipe the blood from my face and tears from my eyes by myself. My friend Jill offered to ride home with me after that, and her request and being in the car with me is probably the only thing that stopped me from driving my car off a cliff or into an overpass. The only times I have ever debated suicide was when I felt like I had no way out of that town.
It wasn't just that fateful night in that cornfield: I grew up for nearly a decade being called the usual repertoire of labels gay people get called: faggot, girly, queer, fag, cocksucker, fudge packer, the works. These were words meant to hurt me and were thrown at me to make me fully realize that I was never going to be accepted in that town.
Fortunately for me, I escaped two weeks after high school and fled to California. It was easy to fit in within a land of immigrants, but I never did quite shake off the way growing up gay felt. I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. I didn't think "it get's better." I grew up with the ideology that gay people were gross deviants and second class citizens whose moral depravity resulted in a first class ticket to hell: Meant to be shunned and ridiculed. Why I let this belief system overcome me and suppress who I was, I may never know. I probably wasn't brave enough. I most certainly wasn't courageous during those times.
Living in the Golden State helped open my eyes to the plethora of people on this planet as well as the different variations us humanoids come in. Here, gay people lived by the thousands. Everyone knew somebody who was gay and being "out" seemed like a cake walk. The first time I uttered the words: "I am gay," to my best friend Janet at the time was one of the most liberating moments of my life up until that point. I knew I would be ok when I asked her, through a waterfall of tears, if she still wanted to be my friend.
To which she laughed and simply responded: "Of course we can still be friends. I care about you, Koelen, and I've know you were probably gay the first day I met you."
Maybe it didn't matter that I am a man that likes men. I certainly didn't ask to be gay. And who would? Why would anyone growing up in the time that I did wish being gay on anyone knowing the bigotry, harassment, psychological impact, hardships, and difficulties placed upon minorities and especially queer ones? No one would. Choosing to be different is the last thing on any kids' mind when going through puberty and being gay is something I wouldn't have cursed my worst enemy with.
The flame that eventually woke this sleeping dragon to make a call to arms happened right here in my new home state. When California's Supreme Court ruled that gay people had a right to wed in the early months of 2008, I was overjoyed. I didn't need to have a boyfriend or love interest at the time to realize it was the new Summer of Love and gay people were finally being treated like real people with valid relationships.
I personally didn't really push for any of my friends to vote against Proposition 8 when it came up for a vote because I didn't honestly believe the liberal citizens of California would ever pass such a law. But when Barak Obama won the presidency that November 4, at the same time the voters of California enshrined in their constitution bigotry against the LGBT community, I was embarrassed. Not hurt, at first. Not angry, at first. But embarrassed. It was a slap in the face to myself, our community, and the reputation of my state as being a champion of progression and equal rights.
"Here we have the most liberal, progressive state in America and we just amended our constitution for the first time since statehood to segregate two people who love one another," I thought. How embarrassing, indeed, when all these couples were asking for was the same rights and legal protections as guaranteed in the constitution.
Then I got upset. Then I got angry. The day after election and for days following, we started here in Los Angeles what some have called The H8 Protests: a series of marches, protests, sit-ins, and rallies in the weeks and months following Prop 8's passing. We realized pretty quickly that to suffer another defeat at the hands of the voters against marriage equality would be too high of a risk for our cause, so our fate would have to lie in waiting until a court picked our case up and let us be free again. But I personally needed to do more to make it up to myself for being so lackluster prior to its passage. I had simply just reached a point where I was sick and fucking tired of being treated like a second class citizen for being who I am and I was not going to lie down and take it anymore.
The country's first National Equality March since 2000 (And the last one since) happened on October 10, 2009. I flew in for the March and we gays were there in DC "to cause a scene, be seen, and help our unseen President Obama see that we were more than just displeased." Marching in solidarity with 500,000 people from every state and countries all over the world to the U.S. Capitol building is one of my most favorite and cherished memories. It filled me with so much hope and joy for the future seeing straight people and lgbtqia people from all walks of life unwilling to sit by as a scrutinized minority remained without equal rights.
When in DC, I signed up for some phone banking for marriage rights in other states other than Cali. I told myself I wouldn't sit by and watch another region pass a discriminatory marriage ban. Since then, I've phone banked for 12 states to help them gain the right to marriage. In the 6 years since, only one state that I rallied for--North Carolina--further enshrined into their constitution hate rhetoric and anti-lgbt legislation. The other 11 states now enjoy marriage equality today. Did I make that happen? Yes and no. I didn't do anything profound, but in most of these states, it took me and a few thousand squeaky wheels to get the job done. One of the results of using our combined voices was that we forced congress' and the president's hand and to have Don't Ask Don't Tell struck down.
Two states I'm most proud of to have worked for, Maryland and Maine, became the first jurisdictions in the world to allow for Marriage Equality by a popular vote. When the announcement was made, I knew that my phone banking, harassing congress people, posting, tweeting, calling, and flyering had paid off. I cried tears of joy at the realization that the time had passed where gay people had to ever grow up feeling ashamed of who they are because here was the majority of two populations recognizing the validity of their relationship.
Now, a few more years later, 37 states in America have marriage equality. 70%+ now live in states with marriage equality. Ireland just became the first nation to vote in marriage equality by a popular vote that turned out to be a landslide. 60,000 Irish expats flew back home to cast their vote in support of equality. In this conservative little nation whose a church has long held a strong hold, the people spoke and said that everyone should be treated equally under the law.
Mexico just legalized marriage. Guam, Greenland, and the Pitcairn Islands as well. Greece now has civil partnerships and Slovenia is introducing them. Federally in America, thanks to the defeat of section five of the Defense of Marriage Act by the Supreme Court, all gay people enjoy some of the same rights and legal protections. So it seems we have come a very far way.
Sometime in the next four days, Notorious RBG and her band of 8 lackeys at #SCOTUS will decide whether not states enjoy the right to be able to ban gay people from marrying. I'm thinking it will be a victory on our side: how can the Court undo 50 some odd lower court rulings siding with gay couples? What is really the big deal?
That's the question I've asked myself this whole time:
"What's the big deal? Why am I so concerned with the rights of others?"
The reality is I do not care to serve in the military. I'm a single gay man who is a product of divorce, so the chances of me getting married anytime soon are slim and none. I don't even know if I want to get married. But I've become proud of who and what I am because they are my truths and my reality. Now I'm willing to come out, stand up, and be heard.
I realized a long time ago that when you ban somebody or a group of people from doing something just because of the way they look or how they were born, it impacts not just that person, but the community around them. When you tell a gay kid she cannot marry the person she loves or serve in the military or be who they want to be, you are stunting not just that girl, but an entire generation from achieving their full potential.
How much pain have these laws caused? How divisive has this issue made our states and great nation? How many people have died feeling like they were lesser than or died without the opportunity given to them to be with the person they love and have it legally recognized?
At the end of it all, us gay people just want a chance. We are just like you. We have sex and love and feelings just like you. In fact, the differences between gay couples and straight couples are few and far between, with love being the agent that keeps them together. Why would we ever want to stop two people who love one another from being together? After all, love and family are the foundation of our communities, our states, and our country.
Marriage equality will hopefully be the law of the land in all 50 states by week's end. But there is still so much to do: being gay in more than 30 U.S. States can get you fired. LGBTQIA people are still three times as likely to suffer from depression. Gay men cannot donate blood unless they haven't had sex for a year. Kyrgyzstan just introduced horrible legislation that makes Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws look like child play. 10 trans people have been murdered in America in the first 6 months of 2015. And in many countries today, being gay is an unlawful offense punishable by death.
So we have our work cut out for us. Marriage Equality is a huge step and a massive victory for gay people. But the fight isn't over. In my eyes, as long as there is that scared little kid in Missouri still hiding in the closet for fear of his life, safety, and happiness, then I still have something to fight for. Even if I couldn't give two shits about getting married, myself. It's about telling kids that we are all equal and that everyone, no matter who you are, has a right to love, be loved, and share their love.
