August 18, 2004

 Today marks twenty years since I wrote this in my journal as a terrified fifteen-year-old:

"For a while I've wondered if I was gay."

I talked about this journal entry in my coming-out post and in my anniversary post. At fifteen, I thought it was horrible and tragic for me to be gay. So I thought I would reflect on some of the context of the world in 2004 that would lead me to think it was such a terrible thing.

At Church

Of course, I received many anti-gay messages at church. It wasn't until 2005 that I heard of a distinction between gay and same-gender attraction. It was in the 2000s that I first heard the concept that "being gay is not a sin but acting on it is." I have, shall we say, significant reservations with that concept now, but I didn't even get that message growing up. And what I have read tends to back up my memories of my lived experience: it was only really in the 2000s that they began to make these kinds of distinctions.

As I have read old general conference talks, I have seen how obsessed certain Church leaders were with criticizing and condemning queer people. (Some have died, some have pulled back on the topic, and one is still just as obsessed.) No wonder I got the message that I was inherently bad!

Since that time, BYU students began the USGA group (which started while I was there), the Church lost the battle against same-sex marriage, and Deseret Book has started publishing books about the gay Latter-day Saint experience. So why should I believe that where they are right now is where they should be, since so much has changed in my lifetime, and even in my adult lifetime?

In Society

But church wasn't the only place. Society in general was less accepting. Same-sex marriage was being debated and was not legal in most places. Family members who are now fierce allies spoke of gay people with a certain level of revulsion. The first gay person I knew was a jerk, and the first trans person I knew was really weird.

Pop culture even reduced gay people to jokes and stereotypes. For example, I grew up watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and recently I've been rewatching it. (We gays love our campy witches.) In one episode, Sabrina has to make two people fall in love, and she asks Harvey, "Do you know if that guy's dating anyone?" To which Harvey responds, slightly disgusted, "Yeah, I think he's dating that guy." Cue laugh track. Even The Simpsons, that hallmark of 1990s subversiveness, treated gay people as a joke. It was a throwaway gag that Smithers liked "It's Raining Men."

And I think about my school experiences. I had the same teacher for fourth and sixth grade, and he was gay, but we didn't know that. (He did portray the Sugar Plum Fairy at the school Christmas assembly in sixth grade, however.) In seventh grade, some of my classmates told me they saw him on the news talking about being gay (because that was newsworthy back then). We were all kind of disgusted, sadly. I didn't know anyone at school who was out until high school, and even then there were only two or three. There was a set of twins in my graduating class, and one of them was out. When I was standing in line at graduation, I heard some guys around me talking about those twins. One of the guys had asked the closeted twin if he was gay, and he said, "No, but I support my brother." But it turns out both twins were actually gay. One of the twins did not feel ready to come out at that time, even though he was supportive of his out brother! After graduation, someone from my graduating class said, "There were two gay guys in our grade." And of course, in reality, there were more than that—including the guy who made that claim! (And everyone knew it—he showed up on everyone's gaydar.) 

Anyway, I don't really have anything profound to say about this, I just wanted to mark the anniversary. There was never anything wrong with me. There was only something wrong with the people who said there was something wrong with me.