Review of Judy Shepard's The Meaning of Matthew

by Gary Cottle

I can’t recall exactly when I became aware of the brutal attack on Matthew Shepard.  It must have been pretty soon after the story caught on with the media because I can remember seeing a spokesperson on TV from the hospital where Matthew was being treated for severe head injuries giving updates regarding his condition.  I related to Matthew’s story immediately.  He was gay, and, like me, he was from a rural state.  He also chose to continue to live in that state once he became an adult and to go to college there.  I was from West Virginia, and I went to WVU.  A year before he was attacked I had underwent head surgery to have a brain tumor removed.  I was keenly aware of how any kind of trauma to the head could change your life.  I had been cut open by highly trained professionals under general anesthesia, and yet I had to live with pain, facial paralysis, and serious balance and hearing impairments, so I cringed all the more at the idea of being repeatedly struck in the head with the butt of a gun while fully conscious.  And I worried what kind of hell would be in store for Matthew if by some miracle he should happen to live.  But of course he didn’t live.  Several days after he was attacked, Matthew Shepard escaped the clutches of this world, and I hope that he now resides in one free of hate.  

I followed the story closely, so I’ve been aware of certain facts for some time.  I knew that Matthew’s father was in the oil business.  I knew that Dennis Shepard worked in Saudi Arabia.  I knew that Matthew went to high school in Switzerland.  I knew that, while still in high school, he was gang raped when he and several classmates visited Morocco.  I knew his rapists stole his shoes after they had taken their turns violating him.  I knew that, oddly enough, his murderers also stole his shoes the night they assaulted him.  I knew that his murderers, two young men close to Matthew’s age, picked Matthew up in a bar in the college town of Laramie, Wyoming.  I had heard the details of that night laid out may times.  Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney pretended that they were gay, convinced Matthew to leave the bar with them, persuaded him to get into McKinney’s pickup, and then they drove him to a secluded spot, robbed him, and then McKinney became violently abusive.  After Henderson tied Matthew to a fence, McKinney struck Matthew in the head several times with the butt of a gun, and then the two young men left him there to die alone.  Matthew was out there for 19 hours before someone spotted him.  By that time he was in a deep coma from which he never awoke.  His face was covered in blood except for tear tracks under his eyes.  These details have been seared into my brain.

I was taken aback when I saw pictures of Matthew taken before the attack.  He looked like such a sweet and unassuming young man.  I could not imagine why anyone would want to hurt him.  Then I heard how small he was – just 5'2" and not much more than 100 pounds.  Since he had been tied to a fence and left to die, images of Christ sprung to mind.  His face was angelic, and he seemed to have taken on the sins of the society in which he lived without complaint.  It was hard for me not to view him as a martyr.  But Judy Shepard, his mother and author of The Meaning of Matthew, insists that we should not see her son in this light.  According to her, the tragedy of his death does not lie in the fact that a perfect young man was murdered.  She reminds us that Matthew was a flawed human being just like the rest of us but that he was deserving of respect, and he should have been able to live his life without fear of violence.  What happened to him should not happen to anyone, no matter how imperfect they are.  Mrs. Shepard makes a good point.  But I think there’s a part of me that will always see an angel when I run across a picture of Matthew’s pretty face.

Judy Shepard writes of Matthew’s childhood and how she and her family have struggled to come to terms with what happened to him in a straightforward, no nonsense style.  And she does not offer much in the way of intellectual speculation as to why her son was gay or why anyone would hate him.  But the lack of flourish in Mrs. Shepard’s book serves her message well.  She comes across as honest, her words deeply felt and sincere.

I knew the Shepards were from Wyoming, but since Dennis Shepard worked in Saudi Arabia and Matthew attended high school in Europe, I got the impression that this was a well-heeled, globetrotting family.  But Mrs. Shepard lets us know that Matthew spent most of his life in the small town of Casper, Wyoming.  Mr. Shepard didn’t get the job overseas until Matthew was in his mid teens.  So Matthew was a small town boy who had been given a few opportunities that broadened his horizons.  Following his high school career, he returned to the States and lived in the south for a while.  Then he returned to Casper before deciding to move to Denver.  And finally he chose to attend college in Laramie.

Mrs. Shepard suspected her son was gay when he was still very young.  But she kept her thoughts to herself, and she admits to hoping that she was wrong.  She writes of how Matthew called her early one morning while she was in Saudi Arabia and broke the news to her.  Mrs. Shepard responded by asking Matthew why it took him so long to tell her.  He asked her how she knew before he did.  After Matthew’s death, others asked her when she figured it out.  She once claimed that it was when Matthew dressed up as Dolly Parton for Halloween two years in a row.  Some have criticized her comments and claim she was advancing a stereotype.  Mrs. Shepard admits that this answer was pat and that she can’t really pinpoint an exact time when she started to suspect.  But I personally have no problem with her comment.  Of course lots of people like Dolly Parton – gay and straight, as well as young and old – but I’m sure that Mrs. Shepard sensed that Matthew was relating to Dolly in a way that many little boys wouldn’t.  And there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging this.  As strange as it may seem, many gay men are fascinated and drawn to certain female celebrities, such as Dolly Parton.  And this interest often starts in childhood even though gay boys generally grow up in isolation from one another, so it's not merely a matter of being socialized into the gay subculture.

The transition from childhood to adult freedoms and responsibilities can be difficult for many young people.  Nevertheless, Matthew had done well in high school, despite having ADD.  And he was a social success.  Matthew was not shy at all, and he had no fear of going up to strangers and starting conversations.  He made friends easily.  But it seems the rape got to Matthew.  He tried to attend college right after graduating, but he soon dropped out.  And he had serious problems with depression and post traumatic stress.  Mrs. Shepard claims that Matthew did not take his medications as prescribed and that he often drank too much.  Relatives visited him in Denver and found him living in a dirty, disheveled apartment, and it seems he had begun to neglect his personal hygiene, too.  Matthew admitted that days would sometimes go by when he would not leave the apartment or talk to anyone.  The boy seemed to want to move forward, but he couldn’t get any traction.  When he decided to attend college in Laramie, his family thought he was at last on the road to recovery.  But then an odd thing happened that made everyone worry about his mental health.  The Shepards came back to the States for a vacation with their sons, and while on the road, they rented out a couple of motel rooms.  Mr. and Mrs. Shepard slept in one, and Matthew and his brother slept in another.  But when the Shepards went to their sons’ room the next morning, Matthew wasn’t there.  They’re younger son informed them that he was at the police station.  Turns out Matthew was so restless he was unable to simply pass the night in that room with his brother.  Instead he went out to a bar, and he ended up leaving the bar with a heterosexual couple and the bartender.  The group went to a remote location, got out, and when the couple started kissing, Matthew tried to get the bartender to go with him to the other side of the vehicle.  Matthew later claimed he only wanted to give the couple some privacy, but the bartender thought Matthew was making a pass, so he punched Matthew.  Apparently he hit the boy hard enough to knock him out for a few seconds, and this somehow triggered a flashback to Matthew’s gang rape in Morocco.  When he came to, he thought he had been raped again.  Later when he got back to the motel room, he was still very upset, still convinced that he had been raped.  He even called the police and told them that he had been raped.  It turned out that he hadn’t, and his family was understandably perplexed by his behavior.  Why couldn’t he just spend the night with his brother?  Why did he insist on drinking so much?  Why did he insist on going out with strangers?  Why would he think he had been raped when he hadn’t?

Since Matthew had such a vivid flashback of what happened to him in Morocco over three years before, and since it was so overwhelming that he was unable to reality test it for several hours, I have a strong suspicion that Matthew was very seriously ill.  I think he was much too ill to be living alone.  Of course I don’t fault the Shepards for going back to Saudi Arabia after this incident.  They had their own lives to lead, and Matthew was nearly twenty-two at this point.  But I think it’s a shame that he was left to his own devices, a young man who had been having trouble for years.  He sometimes couldn’t manage to shower regularly or take his medications daily.  He was experiencing flashbacks that, at least on one occasion, morphed into a delusion.  And he was self-medicating with alcohol.  I’ve had my own problems with depression and post traumatic stress, and I was very ill when I was Matthew’s age.  I know that someone like Matthew can engage in self-destructive behavior that is baffling to others.  Depression and anxiety can cloud your judgement.  Young people have an especially hard time dealing with serious mental illness, such as major depression, because they have little experience to help them put things in perspective.  Depression can rob you of your hope, and if you’ve never went through a full cycle, you have no way of knowing that the pain you feel will come to an end.

While Matthew was being treated for his injuries in Fort Collins, it was revealed that he had contracted HIV.  According to Mrs. Shepard, Matthew’s doctor concluded that he had been infected fairly recently given the large viral load detected in his blood.  Mrs. Shepard reports that she found cold remedied in Matthew’s apartment in Laramie, indicating that the virus may have already started to affect Matthew’s health.  Of course by 1998, HIV wasn’t the death sentence it had been back in the 80's, but if Matthew had lived, he would have had to learn to take his medications in a timely manner, which is something he had trouble with in regards to his antidepressant and antianxity medications.  Mrs. Shepard admits to being puzzled and disappointed by Matthew’s HIV status.  She accepts that her son was a sexual person, but she had hoped he would be more careful.  She says he was very worried about HIV after he was raped and that he got tested regularly for a long time after that.  But I suspect his mental health may have had a role in Matthew contracting HIV.  He may have stopped caring about himself enough to insist his partners wear condoms.  Depression will do that to you.  And given Matthew’s propensity to go out to bars by himself, and for going home with strangers, it’s easy to imagine that he may have been raped again.  I’m not saying there was anything wrong with Matthew’s desire to socialize in bars, or even his willingness to leave those bars with people he had just met.  Young people, both gay and straight, have a strong desire to have a good time and meet new friends, and of course they have sexual appetites, but partying with strangers does carry with it a certain amount of risk.  Given that Matthew was so inclined to talk to strangers, and given that he liked making new friends, I wonder if his rape somehow robbed him of some of the trust he placed in humanity in general.  And I wonder if meeting strangers and going home with them was a way to reassure himself that people could be trusted.

Knowing that Matthew had been struggling for several years makes his untimely death seem all the more sad.  He never got a chance to work through his issues.  We can only guess how far this bright, friendly young man would have gone.  Mrs. Shepard claims he was doing well in Laramie despite his difficulties.  He was going to class and keeping his grades up.  He had also joined an organization for gay students, and he was helping them plan for National Coming Out Day.  When the phone rang early one October morning back in 1998, Mrs. Shepard assumed that it was Matthew.  He often called her in Saudi Arabia without regard to the time difference.  I can only imagine the shock when it turned out to be a doctor informing Mrs. Shepard that her son had been attacked and that he wasn’t expected to survive.

Of course the Shepards returned to the States as soon as possible, but before going on to Fort Collins, they first had to pick up their younger son who was attending high school in another city.  Mrs. Shepard writes that it was while they were in the airport meeting Matthew’s younger brother that she saw newspaper headlines about what happened to Matthew.  And in the days that followed the attention from the media and well-wishers from across the country and around the world only grew.  It would have been hard enough to deal with the fact that a loved one had been so gravely injured by thugs, but it’s difficult to imagine what it was like for them to become household names at the exact same time.  We have all seen the media focus singular attention on a particular person or family, pluck them from relative obscurity and make them the center of a national discussion.  Mrs. Shepard, in her book, helps us see this process from the other side.  She admits that she doesn’t know why Matthew’s case became such a huge story.  Of course what happened to Matthew was of the utmost importance to her and her family, but why would people who had never met Matthew be so interested in him?  Mrs. Shepard speculates that maybe the news media simply was in need of a good story, and Matthew filled a vacuum.  Whatever the reason, I’m not sure I would have been able to handle the stress as well as the Shepards did.  The fact that a loved one had been bludgeoned and was in a coma would have been hard enough for me to process, but if I suddenly started getting phone calls from the President of the United States at the same time, I might conclude I had lost my mind.

We all know that the media attention attracted Fred Phelps who attempted to capitalize on Matthew’s death by coming to town with his God Hates Fags signs.  Mrs. Shepard states in her book that she had never heard of anyone protesting a funeral before.  I’m pretty sure I had never heard of such a thing either.  But aside from that nasty surprise coming on top of an already excruciatingly painful event, more bad news was coming.  Mrs. Shepard informs us that Matthew’s death lead to two other deaths in a round about way.  His elderly great uncle drove through a snow storm in order to attend Matthew’s funeral, and he had a heart attack and died while in the church.  And then three weeks later, Matthew’s grandfather died.  Seems he had cancer, and the stress of coming to terms with the attack on his grandson, the hospital vigil, the media attention, and helping clean out Matthew’s apartment pushed the man over the edge.  How sad.

The Shepards caught a break when Russell Henderson decided to accept a plea bargain the following spring, so they didn’t have to deal with a trial until that fall.  But then the shit hit the fan.  Aaron McKinney did not deny that he killed Matthew, but his lawyers decided to put up the most insulting defense imaginable -- gay panic.  They tried to argue that McKinney’s violent assault on Matthew was at least in part understandable because Matthew had made sexual advances.  They also tried to paint Matthew as a sexual predator.  The bartender who socked Matthew the summer before he started college in Laramie was called to the stand.  And another young man who was in the bar the night Matthew was attacked also testified.  He claimed that Matthew had made him uncomfortable by sitting down at his table, flirting with him by luridly licking his lips, and then saying something about head before leaving.  Like Mrs. Shepard, I find this bar patron’s account hard to swallow.  He made it sound like Matthew was some silly, overbearing tart.  I think it’s much more likely that he suspected Matthew was gay and then read all kinds of suggestive things into his mannerisms and actions.  And he readily admitted that he didn’t catch everything Matthew had said when he heard the word “head.”  He just assumed Matthew was offering sexual favors.  But so what if Matthew had been flirty and direct?  What’s wrong with simply saying “no thank you” or even “fuck off” to an advance?  I don’t think punching someone who weighs no more than 110 pounds is warranted.  I certainly don’t think murder is justified.  McKinney claims Matthew put his hands on his leg while he, Matthew and Henderson were in the truck.  So what if he had?  Henderson and McKinney admitted that they tricked Matthew into thinking they were gay.  Maybe Matthew got the impression that these boys were interested in him.  I don’t see anything wrong with a 21-year-old man hoping to have a little adult fun with a fellow consenting adult.  The problem with the “gay panic” defense is that it implies gay men should never make a pass at anyone unless they know beforehand that such a pass will be welcome, and it attempts to validate violent reactions to unwelcome passes from gay men.  The “gay panic” defense sends a clear signal: gay men should remain in the closet and know their place, and if one reveals himself to a straight man, that straight man has a right to kill him.  What insane bullshit.

I’m glad that the jury didn’t fall for this nonsense, but it’s too bad that the Shepards had to listen to such blather about their murdered son.  But it seems Mrs. Shepard held it together pretty well throughout the trial.  She claims that the only time she lost it was when they brought out Matthew’s clothes tacked to a display board.  It was understandably hard for her to maintain emotional distance because the clothes made everything personal.  She had seen Matthew wearing those clothes.

Mrs. Shepard admits that it was hard for her to understand why anyone would want to hurt Matthew, let along kill him, or protest his funeral.  The level of hate directed at her kind and loving son was unfathomable.  But it seems she also had a hard time understanding the extraordinary sympathy of strangers.  On the one hand, she did appreciate it, but on the other, it was puzzling.  And I get the sense that in the beginning she was more than a little suspicious of it.  She writes of attending one of the vigils for Matthew outside the hospital.  This was before her face had been plastered all over the news, so she was able to go incognito.  When one of the speakers mentioned something about a political issue that was of importance to the local gay community, she felt that Matthew was being used.  Of course since she was Matthew’s mother, and since he was still in a coma at that point, the only thing she wanted to hear about was Matthew.  But as time passed, she began to see things differently.  She says that eventually she came to accept that even though the thousands who showed an interest in Matthew’s case didn’t know her son as she did, they were relating, at least in part, to the person Matthew had been in life.  I wonder if she started to see the bigger picture when she began reading the notes and emails sent to her from parents wanting advice on how to come to terms with their gay child or young gay people who just needed to tell someone about coming out to their parents and getting kicked out of the house.

Some of the people who sent notes also included donations that were meant to help cover Matthew’s medical expenses.  These donations amounted to nearly one hundred thousand dollars.  Since the Shepards didn’t need the money, they decided that it should be used for a good cause that Matthew would have approved of, and that’s how the Matthew Shepard Foundation came to be.

Mrs. Shepard spells out three primary goals of the organization – stop the hate, work toward legal equality for gay people, and help educate the public on the needs of gay youth.  I greatly appreciate the work the organization is doing, and I especially appreciate the focus on gay youth.  I’m afraid that once gay people escape their childhoods and establish their independence, they often never look back, at least not with the intention of trying to figure out how things could have been done differently.  But my interest in psychology long ago lead me to believe that the gay community will never be whole until the majority of us comes from supportive, nurturing families.
 
Judy Shepard writes that she never imagined that she would become a public speaker, but in the years since Matthew’s death, she has spent a huge amount of her time traveling the country telling audiences about her son.  She also states that she still hangs Matthew’s stocking up during the Christmas season.  That made me cry.  I cried many times while reading Mrs. Shepard’s book.  But I found the experience richly rewarding.  I feel like I know and understand Matthew in a way I didn’t before.  I’m sure I would have liked him if I had ever gotten the chance to know him.  I admire his mother a great deal.  She says that she still has not gotten over losing her son and the only way she can cope is by not picturing or imagining the pain and suffering he went through the night he was assaulted.  But despite this, Mrs. Shepard has found a way of turning her personal grief into something positive.

The Meaning of Matthew by Judy Shepard at Amazon

You Almost Killed Me With Your Religion

by Gary Cottle

All of my life I have regularly encountered people who use scripture and dogma like weapons. Whenever my grandparents, whom I love and miss, would get into arguments, it was only a matter of time before the scripture quoting and the claims of righteousness would commence. And, of course, they were not the only adults I encountered who would do this. It turned my stomach from the very start, and I’ve never been interested in memorizing the Bible so that I could pick out verses at will and hurl them at people like darts.

I don’t claim to be all sunshine and smiles. I readily admit that I have a temper, and I’m not above telling people off when I get mad. In fact, I’ve been told that I’m rather good at it. But what I don’t do is claim to have any kind of Godly or supernatural authority backing me up. I let people know how I feel and what I think, and sometimes I’m not very diplomatic about it, but I never tell anyone that God is displeased with them or that they are in danger of divine retribution.

I learned very early the value of humility, and that’s not only because I witnessed well-meaning and sincere people, such as my grandparents, slip in moments of anger and use supposed spiritual insights as a means to rip into a fellow human being. In addition to that lesson, I learned that our minds can mislead us as to the nature of reality by watching what happened to my mother who happened to be very seriously mentally ill. Eventually she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Her illness caused her to believe quite a lot of unusual things. When I was a toddler, I was often at home alone with my mother during the day because my father worked and my sister had already started school. I can recall sitting beside her on our sofa in the living room and listening to her tell the most fantastic stories imaginable. I had a picture book filled with artists’ renditions of various Biblical characters, and when I was alone with my mother, we would often go through it, and she would tell me about the people in the pictures. I can assure you that most of what she said wasn’t orthodox. For instance, she would often tell me that the painting that represented Mary, Jesus’ mother, was actually a painting of her. She also used to tell me that I was the twin of our minister’s son and that we were special because we were born in the same way Jesus was born. I now realize that she was talking about immaculate conception.

My father was a country boy without much formal education, so he didn’t know exactly how to handle the situation, and rather than consulting a doctor, my father decided to confide in our minister, and our minister hatched a plan to remedy the situation. One day, out of the blue, when my mother and I were home alone, my father, our minister, and several men from our church showed up unannounced. And right there in front of me, these men hauled my mother off kicking and screaming. They basically kidnapped her as I stood witness. Not one of these men, not even my father, paid the slightest bit of attention to me. Not one tried to console me. After they literally dragged my mother outside, shoved her in a car and drove away, I was left alone in the house for several minutes.

Eventually my grandmother showed up. She came into the house and proceeded to make me lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich, without assuring me that my mother was alright or offering a word of explanation.

I didn’t see my mother again for a couple of weeks, and when I did, her condition had not changed. It wasn’t until years later that I learned she had been taken to a Christian based counseling center. My father told me that the “doctors” there informed him that they couldn’t help my mother because she refused to cooperate with them. By that, they meant that Mother was unwilling to pray to God and ask to be delivered of her affliction per their instructions. So long before I ever heard of “pray the gay away” therapy, my mother was subjected to “pray the schizophrenia away” therapy.

For many years after this, my father buried his head in the sand in regards to my mother’s illness. He didn’t do anything about it, and he stayed away from the house as much as possible, and when he was home, he often retreated to his room complaining of what he termed “sick headaches”. I learned that I couldn’t rely on my parents for much in the way of emotional support, and I learned to keep my mouth shut because God only knew what kind of irrational response I would get if I said anything about a problem or a concern.

My mother finally began receiving proper care for her condition just a few months before I went away to college. And when I got away from home, one of the first things I did was seek out the services of a psychologist. Much to my amazement, my counselor informed me that treatment for schizophrenia wasn’t new. It turns out antipsychotic medication has been around since before I was born. So we suffered needlessly all those years.

I do have regrets, and I have my resentments, but I don’t blame my parents. They did the best they could. I don’t even blame them for whipping me when I was young because the Bible says “spare the rod, spoil the child.” My mother used to hit my sister and me with her hairbrush, and Dad used to take down our pants and hit us with his belt or with a switch. I can still remember the sting. I remember how my soft, smooth baby flesh would turn bright red. I remember the blood blisters and welts. And I remember that these whippings often occurred on Sunday because I found it difficult to sit through Sunday school and two church services without becoming restless. But my parents had been taught that you should drill religious dogma into the heads of children at a young age, and they were taught that you should beat children when they disobeyed. But to their credit, they abandoned the whippings by the time I was about seven. Neither one ever hit me again after that. And because my mother couldn’t be trusted not to espouse her unusual beliefs in church, we stopped going on a regular basis by the time I was seven.

That isn’t to say I escaped fundamentalist indoctrination. Unfortunately I was subjected to the ravings of televangelists almost daily. The only one who seemed truly loving and caring was Billy Graham. All the rest were scripture quoting, dart throwing meanies. And their condemnation for anyone and everyone who didn’t follow (their interpretation of) The Word, stung all the more when I realized I was gay at age eleven. There I was a kid going through puberty. I had just discovered that I liked boys, and my mother was talking to invisible people, my father was so stressed out by this point, it seemed that he would explode at any moment--eventually he did have a massive heart attach--and there was Jimmy Swaggart screaming stuff about "homosexshials” and pantywaisted boys from the TV.

I had already learned by this point not to share much with my parents, and once my sexuality hit into high gear, I buckled down and guarded my inner thoughts and feelings as if my life depended on it. For seven long years I never told a soul about what was going on inside me, and you know how long seven years is to a young person.

It was like torture, and school didn’t provide much of a break either. The kids were generally homophobic and a number of them had noticed that I was just a little different. Although I certainly wasn’t given the worst of it, I was bullied regularly, and I never truly felt safe anywhere, certainly not at school. And the thing I longed for the most, I couldn’t have. I didn’t even allow myself to hope for a boyfriend. The only thing that seemed possible at that point were quick encounters in the dark sometime in the future.

These experiences have left their emotional scares. Depression, sharp mood swings, anxiety and suicidal ideation plagued me after I escaped home, and eventually I was diagnosed with post traumatic stress and labeled an adult survivor of childhood abuse.

After all of that, I have very little patience for people who claim they know what God “wants” with absolute certainty. I don’t care how much of the Bible you’ve committed to memory or how clear you think your understanding is. To me, to claim with absolute certainly that you know anything at all about God is insane. I have little patience for those who get bent out of shape when schools attempt to address homophobic bullying. They don’t know what it’s like to be a gay kid in school and to be afraid someone is going to find out your secret. I have little patience for those who scream bloody murder if a teacher even mentions anything about homosexuality or LGBT people. They don’t know what it’s like to be so starved for even a small crumb of affirmation. I have very little patience for those who take to the streets, or the internet, or the TV or the radio to shout that people like me are diseased, disgusting, and a threat to the family, religious liberty and civilization. I have little patience for those who march to the poles to vote me down and petition their elected representatives to step on my hopes of being recognized as an equal. I’m tired of these people, beat down and sick of them.

I know that not all Christians are alike. I know many, maybe even most, know they don’t know everything no matter how careful their study of their scripture or dogma may be. I know these people are capable of being sincere in their faith and serious in their efforts to adhere to their beliefs while remaining open to different perspectives and respectful of others who may see things differently. But for those who insist that they are right about everything and I must surrender to their directives which they equate, quite unashamedly, with the wishes of God, I say this: You have your own life. You can’t have mine. I have my own beliefs. I don’t want yours. So please stop trying to force me to follow you, and please stop demonizing me when I refuse.

I have long realized that one of the brightest and most wonderful aspects of my life is my desire and admiration of men. Even back in high school when I couldn’t tell a living soul about my desires, I relished them. I can remember vividly crushing on so many of the boys I went to school with. Of course it hurt that none of the feelings I had for these boys, to my knowledge, was returned. But I felt alive and in the moment when I longed for those boys. I remember the way certain actors made me feel when I watched them in a movie. I absolutely fell in love with C. Thomas Howell and his character Ponyboy in the film The Outsiders. Deep down, I wanted a boyfriend like Ponyboy more than anything, even though back then I didn’t even give myself permission to dream of a boyfriend. I just watched that movie over and over again with quiet longing. Of course I was sexually attracted to Ponyboy, but it was so much more than that. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to share my thoughts with him in quiet moments. I wanted him to tell me his secrets. I wanted to joke with him and giggle with him. I wanted to kiss him and lay my head against him. I wanted to hold his hand.

My sexual and romantic attraction to men is one of the things that sustains me. Right above my desk is a calendar with a large picture of two nude, slim young men. They are standing outside with woods behind them, and sunlight is streaming down. They are smiling, and the one on the left is affectionately touching the stomach of his friend. The beauty of their bodies, the brightness of their eyes and the warm of their smiles sparks in me a sense of hope and appreciation for life every time I look up. I know this feeling well, for many beautiful young men cause me to light up in this way. I cherish the experience.

I never found a boyfriend. I’m way too shutdown and withdrawn for that, I guess. But there are those who even object to my appreciation of men, and they would take it away from me if they could. And they would tell me and themselves that they’re doing it for my own good. Well, I have news those people, I have never liked your kind. Even before I knew anything about my sexuality, I didn’t like those who pounded on their Bibles and insisted they are right about everything. It is because people like you that I associate religion with pain. It is because of people like you that I have no desire to attend church. It is because of people like you that I am cautious around anyone who claims to be religious until I know they are not like you. I find you repellant, and I do wish you would shut up and leave me and people like me alone.

It may be too late for me to find love. After all these years of being so independent, I might be incapable of letting anyone in. But I want things to be different for young LGBT people. I want them to grow up in supportive homes. I don’t want them to be afraid of telling their parents or their classmates. I want them to be able to talk to their parents about their feelings. I want them to be able to talk to their parents about their boyfriends and girlfriends. I want them to be able to bring their boyfriends and girlfriends home. I want them to go through life open and free. I want them to be able to get married and raise kids if that’s what they want. I want it all. …if not for me, then for them.

Being Gay Can Drive You Crazy by Gary Cottle

Back when I was a student at WVU, I took a psychology class taught by a brilliant educator and psychotherapist by the name of Phillip Comer. I can remember vividly how Dr. Comer would tell us the barrier that separates rational thought from psychosis is paper thin. He told us that, if we lacked moral integrity and conscience, we could very quickly, and with very little effort, drive one of our fellow classmates over the edge. To illustrate his point, he asked us to imagine that a student had come to class a few minutes late, and he asked us to imagine that before he got there, we had decided to play a little trick on him. The game would go like this: Dr. Comer would continue with his lecture, but he would pepper his speech with a key word or phrase, and when those of us who were in on the joke heard this word or phrase, we would laugh hysterically, even though nothing funny had been said, but only for a minute, and then we would abruptly stop. Every time Dr. Comer repeated this word or phrase, we were to do this. He said that the person who was being subjected to this experiment would at first be confused, and after he witnessed us laughing for reasons that escaped him a couple of times, he would most likely ask a neighbor why everyone laughed. This neighbor was supposed to simply say with a poker face, “No one laughed.” This would most likely cause our unfortunate classmate’s confusion to blossom into full-blown paranoia, and he would most likely begin to panic. He would probably ask others what was going on, and they were to simply tell him that no one laughed. Dr. Comer told us that by the end of class, this person could be so disturbed hospitalization may be in order. All it takes is a few inexplicable experiences and we could be ready for a straightjacket.

I have often thought of what I learned in Dr. Comer’s class when I have considered the layers of stress that come along with being gay in a straight world, and I have concluded that it’s a miracle that we’re not all stark raving mad.

By and large, we are raised by straight parents, and most of our other relatives are usually straight--grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. And we are raised with the expectation that we will be straight, too. Generally speaking, no one tells us that we might at some point begin to experience homosexual desires. Instead, we are regularly and routinely told in a thousand different ways that one day the opposite sex will turn us on. So we wait for it to happen. Sometimes we even try to force it to happen. The concept of homosexual desire is so foreign to many that they don’t even recognize what’s happening when puberty hits and the “wrong” sex begins to draw their eye. Many find that they’re attracted to classmates and friends of the same sex, but because that’s so unexpected, they don’t even realize that they’re attracted. This leads to confusion and bewilderment.

Puberty is a difficult adjustment for everybody, but there are structures in place to help heterosexual kids make the transition. There are sex education classes, talks with parents and adults, dances sponsored by schools and churches, and teenagers are permitted to date members of the opposite sex, usually with adult supervision at first. And kids are bombarded with examples of heterosexual courtships, couplings, and unions. Movies, books, magazines, TV shows, and songs often depict heterosexual romance. But when I was growing up, gay kids had very little in the way of guidance, and the situation hasn’t really improved all that much. Even now, gay kids are usually left to figure themselves out on their own, and then they have to figure out how to find a mate on their own.

Most gay people end up hiding their attractions, at least for a while. In the beginning, they hardly understand themselves, so it would take too much effort to try to explain what they’re feeling to others. But hiding isn’t always an option. For many gay people, if not most, being gay is more involved than simply being attracted to their own sex. Gay people often tend to be just a little bit different from their peers in a number of ways. They have different tastes, different interests, different inclinations. And this is a serious issue when you’re young because teenage culture is often incredibly conformist. All teens have to deal with peer pressure, but when you’re constantly being told that you don’t walk right, talk right, dress right, act right, it’s hard not to think that something about you is essentially wrong.

Being different can draw unwanted attention. And this attention can come in the form of hazing that can range from mild to severe…everything from a few jabs and taunts, to belittlement and ostracism, to outright physical attacks resulting in a bloody nose, a busted lip, a black eye, or a broken bone, or more serious injuries, or even death. Many young gay people, if not most, feel vulnerable to harassment even if they have never been attacked. This effects them in many subtle ways. And young gay people don’t simply fear being judged by other teenagers. They get signals from the greater world that they’re not really welcome. They hear about straight people angrily resisting gay rights. They’re told that same-sex marriage could destroy civilization as we know it. They’re told that they can’t participate in the Boy Scouts because their kind can’t be trusted around little boys. And many religious leaders proclaim that gay sex, gay desire, gay love is a sin.

Aside from psychology, I also studied religion and philosophy while in school, and I focused a lot of attention on the writings of the German-American philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich said that we live in a state of estrangement from the Ground of Being--God. And he said that we long to overcome this estrangement, and that this longing is the root of love in all it’s forms: family love, the love of friends, and erotic love, as well as agape, which is the perfect love of God. He broadly defined love as the urge toward the reunion of the separated. When we have sex, we are literally coming together, and when there is deeper emotional connections involved, the reunion is amplified exponentially. Through our attachment, affection, loyalty, commitment, and sexual expressions, we experience instances where we overcome the limitations of the nature of our existence. There is a spark of the divine in our love for one another. So imagine being told by a person thought to have some authority in the matter--a minister, a priest, or the Pope--that the very thing that can bring you closer to God, to spiritual enlightenment is evil. Talk about driving someone crazy.

Gay people also have to contend with those who wish to believe that homosexual desire doesn’t even exist, or if it does, it’s so rare as to be inconsequential. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, proclaimed a few years ago that there were no gay people in his country. This was, of course, laughable, but when you yourself happen to be gay, it can be deeply disturbing to hear another human being question your very existence. Although most would not go so far as Ahmadinejad, gay people are often told in a number of ways that they don’t really matter. When I was young, we often didn’t see ourselves represented in movies and TV shows, and even though we’re not nearly as invisible as we used to be, we’re still underrepresented. For instance, the hugely popular Twilight series, both the books and the movies, take us into a world were simply no one is gay. Not one soul. People generally don’t talk about being gay. And when people do discuss the matter, they often do so with an air of hostility and contention. This can cause a gay person to feel isolated, marginalized, defensive, and lonely. And if this weren’t enough, there are others who tell gay people that they aren’t really gay…they’re just confused, or they just got turned around some way. Being subjected to such things can cause mental illness. You don’t exist. Well, you might exist, but you’re so insignificant we don’t have to worry about you. Besides, you’re not really attracted to your own sex. You just think you are. Gee, this is starting to sound more and more like Dr. Comer’s hypothetical experiment all the time.

It’s a wonder that any of us can come to terms with being anything other than heterosexual, but imagine that you, as a gay person, are able to figure yourself out. And imagine that you accept and embrace who you are. Imagine that you find the will to reject societal disapproval. Then you have to decide if you want to come out. This can be a very traumatic process even for those who are happy with their sexuality. I have heard stories of people who have had to take a lot of heat even from supposedly liberal parents. Back in my student days at WVU, I was a member of BiGLM--bisexual, gay, and lesbian Mountaineers. During one meeting, our featured speaker was a woman from the Pflag organization--parents, friends and family of lesbians and gays. This woman had a gay son who had come out to her and her husband several years before, and she tried to explain to us what we might expect if we came out to our parents. She talked about how most parents of gay people raise their children with the expectation that they’ll lead straight lives. And she said that it’s more than a mere shock when a parent finds out that their child is not straight. Many parents of gay people have to go through a mourning process when they find out the truth. The person they thought their child was has to be laid to rest. It’s like this imagined person, this person they projected onto their child, has died, and letting go of that imagined individual is every bit as painful as burying a real flesh and blood child. She talked about how she could burst into tears at any moment for months after her son came out to her. She talked about not being able to sleep, or eat, and how it felt like her son had been taken away from her and replaced with a stranger.

I appreciated this woman’s honesty. I was impressed that she had went through all of that and had become a dedicated member of Pflag, and she had been inspired to become a public speaker, too. After she left, we all huddled together and talked about how we wished our own parents were as reasonable and understanding. I accept the truth of what this woman said. And I accept it as simply one of the ways of the world. But on another level, hearing this woman’s story was profoundly disturbing. I thought of how by coming out to straight people who want to pretend that you are just like they are, especially to close family members such a parent, you are, in a way, committing murder. You are killing the person they thought you were. After hearing this woman talk, it became clear to me why some straight people act as if you are causing them pain when you come out. Not even parents have the right to project a false identity onto their children, but, nevertheless, they do. And so you as a gay person are faced with a dilemma: you can either continue to lie to your parents, and thus spare their feelings, or you can come clean and allow them to know the real you, even though you know that by doing so, you will be killing off the baby they thought they had, that imagined heterosexual baby that exists in their head. If you do come out, you can only pray that they will eventually come to realize that knowing the real you is better than holding onto a phantom.

Gay people are often thrilled when they finally learn that they are part of a community. There’s nothing like going to a bar, or a club, or an organization and for the first time in your life finding that you are among the majority. That is empowering. But it’s a bitter disappointment to discover that the stress of growing up gay in a straight world has left many in your community seriously damaged. It might seem counterintuitive, but the gay community is riddled with homophobia. People want to feel like they belong, and gay people are no different. So they often want to cast themselves as being more “normal” than their gay peers. It’s as if they’re still back in high school, and they’re afraid that someone will notice that they carry their books in a funny way. Even though they’re happy to find a group that they can belong to, finally, they can be more than a little paranoid to find themselves among people others--such close family members and friends--despise. So they become hypercritical of what they see, and they make fun and belittle what they think of as “too gay.” Gay people are often still trying to survive on their own in a hostile environment, even when they’re in a group of other gay people. They often simply don’t know how to give one another support. And since they generally hide their sexuality through middle school and high school, young gay adults tend to have no dating skills. When I was young, many of us didn’t even try to relate to one another on a deeper level. We simply come together for the purpose of using the body of a fellow gay person for quick sexual release so we could disappear again into the straight world. And when committed relationships were forged, they were often very short-lived.

One of the major reasons gay relationships often fail, I think--aside from the simple fact the people involved lack the know-how to make the relationship work because they were given little instruction and raised without many role models--is the external pressure. It goes back to what that woman from Pflag said about expectations. When you fail to live up to certain expectations, you upset people. When straight people come together, their unions are generally celebrated. But for gays, finding someone special can also mean trouble. That’s because if you’re a guy, it’s hard to go on pretending to be straight if you have a boyfriend. Finding a partner means there’s this other person who will often be with you, a person that wasn’t there before, a person others will notice, a person that will eventually have to be explained. Even if your close friends and family know you’re gay, there’s nothing like seeing you with a guy to make it inescapably real to them. Doing things like bring your boyfriend home for Thanksgiving for the first time can be extremely awkward. There will sometimes be tension in the air, if not blatant hostility. Gay people sometimes worry about how their employers will react if they find out they have a lover of the same sex. And it often doesn’t matter that the employer is liberal and accepting. You still have to come out, because you are generally assumed to be straight, or at least treated as if you are straight, until you say you’re not. Many don’t feel the need to come out until they have a significant other, so that means when you find someone to love, you have just found someone who is going to stir things up, at least temporarily. And many wonder if they need the aggravation.

Is it any wonder that many gay relationships fail? Or that there is such a high rate of suicide among gays? And that a large number of gay people suffer from a long laundry list of psychological disorders--everything from depression to obsession to drug abuse to anorexia? All of it stems from the stress of being gay in a straight world. The ironic thing is those who denounce homosexuality often point to our alcohol and drug addiction, our suicide rate, our failed relationships, and our sexual recklessness that can lead to HIV and other STDs as proof that being gay is bad news.

It’s a thousand wonders we’re not all crazy. But we’re not. And somehow most of us do manage to make friends, and sometimes love does blossom in our midst. As I said, it’s a miracle. Maybe we were just meant to be here. Maybe we were meant to be a part of the human race. And maybe the crazy ones are those who would have us disappear so they wouldn’t have to think for five minutes and deal with us.

AFA: Gay sex is like using a screwdriver to open a paint can, and that's just wrong

Excert from a recent American Family Association Report:

ED Vitagliano: Our perspective here at AFA has been not only a biblical one, we've made this point numerous times, but it is also a physiological, a biological, a natural law perspective. And that perceptive is humankind is divided into male and female and the male and female have different - you know, I don't want to make this a biology lesson - but different organs that are designed for, well, intercourse. And so the fact of the matter is homosexuals can only imitate that and this is the primary reason why the sexually transmitted disease rates and infection rates are so high in, especially, the gay male community. They are abusing their body and they are abusing the nature of the design of the human body.

And so you don't even have to be a Christian or an orthodox Jew or a Muslim to argue against the unnaturalness of homosexual activity. We're not saying that people should be beaten up because they're gay or persecuted because they're homosexual, we're just simply saying that our society should not develop as a worldview that this is a natural and normal and healthy activity, because it's not.

Jeremy Wiggins: When you look at the standards for the paste or the crayons that go into a classroom, how stringent the government is on the materials that a child can use because of health and safety regulations, but they want to teach a child that it's okay to be gay even though you can catch something that will kill you in a most horrific way that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

And also, when you use something - just to piggyback off of Ed - when you use something that it's not designed for, bad things happen. Why do you think they tell you don't use your screwdriver to open up paint can lids? It wasn't designed for that. It could break. And that's what we're seeing. You go against the unnatural [sic] state of things and things break down.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/afa-gays-are-abusing-nature-design-human-body

There's a term for the inability to imagine using something in an untraditional way--functional fixedness. It's an indication of a lack of creativity. Functional fixedness slows a person's ability to adapt to a changing environment and limits their choices when trying to solve problems.

I think it's also worth noting that gays don't really do anything sexually that straight people don't do. Straight people have oral sex. Straight people have anal sex. Even straight men sometimes bottom for their girlfriends and wives. It's called pegging. And isn't it interesting that because of the position of the prostate, many men--gay and straight--find receptive anal sex pleasurable? Men have a g-spot just like women, except ours is in our butts. :P

As for STDs...I covered that one recently already.  How many of these professional homophobes have medical problems?  How many have medical problems caused or made worse by personal behavior--drinking, smoking, overeating, lack of exercise, reckless driving...  Since when has a person's health status justified discrimination and bigotry?

It's true that far too many gay men contract HIV, and possibly other STDs, but the majority of gay men and the majority of LGBT people as a whole aren't HIV positive.  Safer sex practices work.  We should do more to encourage gay men to follow safer sex guidelines if they choose to be sexually active.  We should encourage them to value their lives and to take care of themselves. 

Marginalizing and demonizing LGBT people won't help, but the professional homophobes aren't really interesting in helping.  They're interested in using the fact that most people in the U.S. with HIV are gay men as an excuse for their bigotry, which is an indication of their depravity.

Why Don't We Have Straight Pride Parades?

That question implies we don't have Straight Pride parades, and we do.  Isn't the whole world one great big straight pride parade?

Straight Pride

Time: All the time
Place: Everywhere







It's beautiful.  No one is knocking it.  But I get sick and tired of hearing people say that gays don't need Gay Pride parades. 

"What's there to be proud of?" 

The fact that we're here, and that our experience and our unique contributions are important, that we have our own identity, and that we may contribute a verse to the power play that Whitman spoke of...that's what we have to be proud of. 

I get sick and tired of people saying that gays make fools of themselves at Gay Pride parades because some dress in funny costumes. 

Hey, it's a parade.  It's supposed to be fun.  And straight people have been known to wear funny costumes when they're our partying. 

I get sick and tired of hearing how Gay Pride parades are too overtly sexual. 

If anybody is unaware of the fact that straight people put their sexuality on display all the time, then they're not paying attention.

Gay people, even out and proud gay people, have to be careful of when and where they are demonstrative, so it's nice to get the chance to let your hair down in public now and then without worrying.  But some begrudge us for this and claim that the skimpy costumes--which everyone does not wear, by the way--is a sign that we're all about sex and that love, friendship and relationships aren't important to us.  What bullshit.  Bigots who say things like that are just looking for reasons to excuse their hate.