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October 17, 2005 —
The fourth annual "Growing Up Gay" forum on Tuesday presented the stories of four gay students on campus, and their struggles in coming out to their parents, friends, and the campus community. Aaron Brown, president of the Gay-Straight Alliance, served as the microphone coordinator for the event.
All four speakers stated that prevailing conditions in their communities affected their decision on whether or not they would come out before attending college.
The first speaker, Steve, focused his speech on telling his mother that he was gay. His mother asked him why he was spending so much time with a friend, and Steve ended up telling her that this "friend" was actually his boyfriend. Upon telling his mother, she immediately asked why he did not like girls, and that he should try harder to be heterosexual, for maybe he simply had not found the right girl yet.
Steve said his mother ignored his burgeoning depression and the subject altogether while suppressing her emotions in baking cookies. Although his mother is beginning to accept that he is gay, Steve still has not told his father yet, since he will likely not accept it.
The second speaker, Megan, presented a more positive story about coming out to others.
A tomboy growing up, Megan began her speech telling some of the major events in her life, both personal and nationally gay-related, including the 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard.
Upon realizing she was gay, Megan went through the stages of denial, but a supportive mother made it much easier to come out to everyone. Megan said she went through most of high school looking for fights with people regarding her sexuality, but the fights never came, and this allowed her to lower her walls to others, and be much more open.
The third speaker, Nick, is openly gay on campus but is still not open to his parents and his community at home, because he does not want to "kill his grandparents."
Growing up in a traditional, Republican Catholic family, Nick said he fears he will not be welcome at home, and is waiting until he is self-sufficient to come out to his family. Nick has not told his high school friends yet, which has caused him to drift away from them, and now admits he rarely visits home.
He said the campus has been relatively supportive of him at SVSU. He has had some derogatory comments yelled at him on campus, but those have been turned into positive experiences.
The fourth speaker, Kayleen, told the audience that her first boyfriend turned out to be gay, and that a teacher's comment turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As she became more open with her sexual orientation, she used this friend as a crutch to confide in. When a middle school substitute teacher innocuously referred to a friend as a "girlfriend," it led to two years of ostracizing in high school. She was once asked what it was like to be gay by a male, and she told him she had the same physical attraction to women that heterosexual men did.
Kayleen still has not come out to her parents, only to her sister, for her father told her she did not win Homecoming Queen because so many people thought she was a lesbian.