SmokeAndMirrors
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I want to know why people believe this.
I'll preface it with a little story about the first person who came out to me.
I had a friend in high school who came out to me, and then his parents, when we were 14 or 15.
This was a guy that wanted to save himself until marriage, and not even for religious reasons. Mostly just because he was an interminable romantic.
He wasn't into drinking, or drugs, or even partying really. He was an extremely motivated student. Volunteered at the library, knitted, babysat. He was the furthest possible thing from a crazy teenager.
Shortly after he came out to his parents, his mother was driving me home after we'd been hanging out at their place.
She had done her best to be supportive when he came out. And somewhere inside her rational self, she knew it changed nothing about him. He'd always been gay. The only thing that had changed is now she knew it.
But when we got to the front of my apartment building, she stopped, and started crying.
I asked her what was wrong.
"I'm so worried about him now." And then she went on to talking about how she was concerned he would get into party drugs, screw around, and wind up with AIDS.
I said to her, "Why would you be worried about that? You know he isn't into any of that stuff. He hasn't changed."
She couldn't give me a real answer that didn't sound judgmental, because the real answer was that she was worried about it because that is what she believed happened to gay people.
She was so convinced of it that it had completely overruled everything she knew about her son. It overruled her knowledge that he wasn't that kind of boy at all. That there was absolutely nothing about him that suggested he would ever go down that kind of path.
Do I think she was a bad person? No. I think she was just a product of an older generation, and she had never been faced with really having to look at a gay person and realize they are just another person, and they could be all kinds of different things, just like straight people can. She was intellectually supportive of gay people, but she had never had to deal with the issue so close to home.
My teenage brain managed to get to the end of this train of thought, and come up with the most helpful thing it could as she sat in the drivers seat sobbing. "You know, I think people do that because they hate themselves. So maybe the best thing we can do is just keep loving him. Because he loves himself. And as long as he does, he's going to keep being who he is. He wouldn't do that to his life."
"You're right." She took a deep breath, and told me to have a nice weekend. I got out of the car, and we never talked about it again. As far as I know, he's still pretty much the same guy he was then. Last I heard, he was working on a book of poetry.
Minneapolis is apparently one of the gayest cities in the country. I know tons of gay people, just from happenstance. The majority of them are pretty ordinary people. A lot are in committed relationships. Some aren't. Some don't want to be. But I can't say that I know any who have gone down the meth-fueled party route.
I don't actually know any gay people like that. And I don't think I ever have, in any city.
Even the professional gay drag queen I once interviewed -- from all appearances, the height of flamboyant gayness -- lived in a nice condo with his partner, and seemed to be a pretty steady guy.
The only gay person I know who I think is at risk of hurting his life is my cousin, who was raised in a Roman Catholic family that is struggling to accept his sexuality. They are trying, but they aren't doing a very good job.
I think it's interesting that he is the only gay person I know who seems at risk, and he also happens to be the only one I know who doesn't entirely love himself. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Why do some people believe that being gay negates everything about their personality? As if there's some universal gay personality that includes being crazy and self-destructive, and as soon as everyone knows they're gay, this will overwhelm everything else about them?
What if, in reality, this is simply a possible risk of how they might react to hatred when they come out?
And of course, that's a risk that can happen to anyone who is hated, bullied, or cast out, for any reason. For their weight, or color, from trauma, or simply from having a really bad childhood. That can happen to anyone.
I am not as well-acquainted with the older generation of gay people. Perhaps more of them were like this. It would make sense. They got more hate than the current crop have.
What is it about being gay that makes people believe everything about them will be overwhelmed by some pressing desire to do drugs and have unsafe sex?
And why is it that we fail to recognize our own place, as part of society, in making that a reality or not?
I'll preface it with a little story about the first person who came out to me.
I had a friend in high school who came out to me, and then his parents, when we were 14 or 15.
This was a guy that wanted to save himself until marriage, and not even for religious reasons. Mostly just because he was an interminable romantic.
He wasn't into drinking, or drugs, or even partying really. He was an extremely motivated student. Volunteered at the library, knitted, babysat. He was the furthest possible thing from a crazy teenager.
Shortly after he came out to his parents, his mother was driving me home after we'd been hanging out at their place.
She had done her best to be supportive when he came out. And somewhere inside her rational self, she knew it changed nothing about him. He'd always been gay. The only thing that had changed is now she knew it.
But when we got to the front of my apartment building, she stopped, and started crying.
I asked her what was wrong.
"I'm so worried about him now." And then she went on to talking about how she was concerned he would get into party drugs, screw around, and wind up with AIDS.
I said to her, "Why would you be worried about that? You know he isn't into any of that stuff. He hasn't changed."
She couldn't give me a real answer that didn't sound judgmental, because the real answer was that she was worried about it because that is what she believed happened to gay people.
She was so convinced of it that it had completely overruled everything she knew about her son. It overruled her knowledge that he wasn't that kind of boy at all. That there was absolutely nothing about him that suggested he would ever go down that kind of path.
Do I think she was a bad person? No. I think she was just a product of an older generation, and she had never been faced with really having to look at a gay person and realize they are just another person, and they could be all kinds of different things, just like straight people can. She was intellectually supportive of gay people, but she had never had to deal with the issue so close to home.
My teenage brain managed to get to the end of this train of thought, and come up with the most helpful thing it could as she sat in the drivers seat sobbing. "You know, I think people do that because they hate themselves. So maybe the best thing we can do is just keep loving him. Because he loves himself. And as long as he does, he's going to keep being who he is. He wouldn't do that to his life."
"You're right." She took a deep breath, and told me to have a nice weekend. I got out of the car, and we never talked about it again. As far as I know, he's still pretty much the same guy he was then. Last I heard, he was working on a book of poetry.
Minneapolis is apparently one of the gayest cities in the country. I know tons of gay people, just from happenstance. The majority of them are pretty ordinary people. A lot are in committed relationships. Some aren't. Some don't want to be. But I can't say that I know any who have gone down the meth-fueled party route.
I don't actually know any gay people like that. And I don't think I ever have, in any city.
Even the professional gay drag queen I once interviewed -- from all appearances, the height of flamboyant gayness -- lived in a nice condo with his partner, and seemed to be a pretty steady guy.
The only gay person I know who I think is at risk of hurting his life is my cousin, who was raised in a Roman Catholic family that is struggling to accept his sexuality. They are trying, but they aren't doing a very good job.
I think it's interesting that he is the only gay person I know who seems at risk, and he also happens to be the only one I know who doesn't entirely love himself. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Why do some people believe that being gay negates everything about their personality? As if there's some universal gay personality that includes being crazy and self-destructive, and as soon as everyone knows they're gay, this will overwhelm everything else about them?
What if, in reality, this is simply a possible risk of how they might react to hatred when they come out?
And of course, that's a risk that can happen to anyone who is hated, bullied, or cast out, for any reason. For their weight, or color, from trauma, or simply from having a really bad childhood. That can happen to anyone.
I am not as well-acquainted with the older generation of gay people. Perhaps more of them were like this. It would make sense. They got more hate than the current crop have.
What is it about being gay that makes people believe everything about them will be overwhelmed by some pressing desire to do drugs and have unsafe sex?
And why is it that we fail to recognize our own place, as part of society, in making that a reality or not?