What will people say?

On a Sunday morning, before heading out for the Church’s afternoon service, I was sitting in the living room with my mother and stepfather. Bible study right before church? That’s the family I grew up in. By my late teens I’d read the Bible (and the accompanying scholarly analysis) end to end about 14 times. I was reading my section out loud - then I stopped. I lost my breath, and simply could not continue. 

It wasn’t that the Bible passage I was reading was particularly special. There wasn’t anything of significance I’d experienced that week that made me want to come out, and it certainly wasn’t planned. It just happened - I said what I needed to say. 

Well, that isn’t completely accurate. At 17 years old, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words “I’m gay” to my parents. My older brother, whom I’d come out to a year earlier, had to say the words for me. He stood tall, and he hugged me as he told our parents. I said what I needed to say to my brother, and then my brother said what he needed to say to my parents. 

“You’re disgusting”, “How could you do this to me?”, “You’re going to get AIDS” - those were some of the things that still echo in my mind when I think back to that Sunday morning. Those were the things my parents felt they needed to say. They decided we would still go to church, and that I needed to speak to the Elders (the Church leaders) and confess my sin. In the same breath they asked of me and (of themselves) “what will people say?”

After the church service, the Elders pulled me into a room. “Are you the boy or the girl?”, “How many times have you had sex?”, “What sexual positions have you engaged in?”.  The grotesque line of questioning aside, being told I was “not normal” devastated me. I’m probably most upset about the things the Elders needed to say. 

The funny thing about “normal” is that it doesn't exist. What does exist is “visibility” - the more visible something is, the more society deems it “normal” because “normal” is simply shorthand for “familiar.” There were no gay role models I could look up to growing up - none that I was aware of anyway. And so I agreed: “I am not normal, and I am going to hell”. I am also upset about the things I said to myself.

The funny thing about “time” is that it doesn’t make things better. What makes things better is our “perspective” on life, and time is simply shorthand for “perspective” on the heels of our life experiences. At the risk of sounding cliche, it does get better. For those of us who are fortunate enough to be on the “better” side of our stories, we have a responsibility to change the narrative, and change the things we wish had been different for us in order to change how others perceive their own experiences.

I did not grow up with gay role models, and perhaps my coming out story would have been easier if I did. I’d like to believe that at the very least I would have been easier on myself. I also did not grow up with professional gay role models. I’d like to believe that I would have been less fearful of being myself in the corporate world if I’d seen more of them wearing their identities with pride. 

The world has changed for the better in so many ways, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We need to increase our visibility to inspire the next generation of LGBTQI+ children, to elevate our extended queer famility into positions of power, and perhaps heal our own traumas along the way.

Perhaps my parents asked me the right question the day I came out to them. As I look to my own future I want to know that I made a difference, that I helped make someone’s life just slightly easier, and that I accepted my gay identity (personally and professionally) unapologetically. That’s my answer to “what will people say?”.