My heart is broken.
Last month, six young men decided that death was preferable to being gay. Two were only 13. The oldest a mere 19.
I’m hearing a lot of talk about bullying and intolerance. The focus is on their classmates and the institutions to which we entrust our children.
I’m glad. But that is not the whole problem.
The real bullies are not on the playground. They are not yelling the F word, but they have found a thousand other ways to make us hear it by word and deed.
I heard that awful word most every day of my life from sixth grade through college. Prior to sixth grade I was called queer and sissy, but with puberty came that odious word. I was beaten daily at the bus stop and on the bus. I was harassed and tormented in school. I was sexually assaulted by a group of boys in gym class in the eighth grade.
Such was my childhood.
As a grown man, I was once struck in the head in the first class compartment of a Delta Airlines flight into Columbia, South Carolina by a man who aiming that word at me. Last Christmas guests leaving a neighbor’s party shouted that word at me and pelted me with eggs. The F word is a big part of my life.
I’ve survived. I’m old enough that I can embrace the word without serious injury. I wave at people who yell it out their car window when passing through my oh-so-gay neighborhood. The scar tissue has grown strong on that wound, opened so often, so very long ago.
I’m one of the lucky ones. I lived through it. I matured enough that I can endure the pain of US Senators, local politicians and the President himself, speaking of me as though I was some sort of subspecies.
I am thankful for the debate. But, rising with the tide of change are the number of cruel and hateful things being said in the press by people who only know to hate me because I am gay. Every hurtful thing they say about gay people, they say about me. That’s how it feels.
When Prop H8 passed in my home state, it was hard for me to go out of the house. Which of the people at the grocery store hated me so much that they thought this of me? More than half of the people at the movie theatre thought that I was not entitled to the same rights they would grant a convicted murderer. I will never feel safe in a Christian Church.
I have learned to live with never feeling safe or free. I have endured never being young and in love. I have come to accept that, as bad as this is, it is better than it was just a few years before I was old enough to understand who I was.
I have learned to find joy and take pride in this half-life that is all I am offered.
Six young men didn’t make it, last month. Six children were exposed to the constant, casual bigotry of folks like Senator McCain and the tacit prejudice implicit in the Obama administration’s practiced inaction. Six lives were ended before they’d begun when those boys were unable to see hope for a life worth living. There is no difference between bullying and the hateful rhetoric that has risen in direct proportion to the tiny advances in civil rights for gay people. Those media-amplified taunts are crushing to children. They’re young but they know the code. It’s all the F word.
Every time the President takes cover behind political expediency, I hear the F word being screamed. There is no difference between overt and subtle bigotry. Either you are for equal rights for all Americans, or you’re not. We’re not just whining, we can tell the difference. So can the children.
Asher Brown, from Texas, shot himself, he was only 13 years old. Seth Walsh from California, also 13, hanged himself. Billy Lucas a 15 year old High School Student from Indiana, also hanged himself. Justin Aaberg, a 15 year old from Minnesota thought that hanging himself was his only solution. Raymond Chase, a college student in Providence, Rhode Island hanged himself at 19. And the hideous case of Tyler Clemente 18, a promising student at Rutgers tormented to death by those given permission by the overt hatred of lunatics like Tony Perkins of American Family Research and those hiding their evil behind Christianity and political self-righteousness. And that’s just September. And it’s probably not everybody.
The children are listening.
All of them. Not just the straight ones. The gay ones can hear us, too. Our gay children are being plunged into despair in this growing, anti-gay atmosphere. But we are also educating a new generation of bigots. Nobody is born hating people for the color of their skin, or their faith or the politics they practice, or who they love. You have to learn to be a bigot.
Being a gay kid is especially hard when you are young. You don’t go home to a gay family or a gay neighborhood or a gay church. You are more likely to go home to an anti-gay environment than a gay one. It feels as though you are the only one. The information all around is that who you are, down deep where no one can see, is the worst thing you can be. You believe that you must keep it secret at all costs. If you can get beaten just for being suspected of this “awful thing” how fearful would it be to tell the truth about yourself? What if you really are the F word?
I would beg if I thought it would make any difference. I would give up the fight if I thought it would help.
All I can do is what saved me. I can live a life that offers hope to those children being beaten at the bus stop. I can use the talents and abilities that I have to try to get word to those who I’ve never met that there is hope. I can try to be the change I hope to see in the world. I can appeal to those on both side who would use the issue of rights for gay American as a political ploy to activate the bigot vote — consider the cost to the only truly precious and irreplaceable resource that this country produces – our children.
We’re six short.
Eric Shaw Quinn 
I’m sure some people in my life suspected that I was gay when I was in grammar school. Certainly some did when I was in high school, but I was very smart, ambitious, social and actually dated. I even got married and had two wonderful daughters. But it was not until 25 years into my marriage, that I met a man I fell in love with. Since that time I have tried to live the open, creative, substantial life that could, if not inspire others, at least let them know that I am not ashamed of the man I am today and always was. God knows I’ve not always lived up to my own hopes for my conduct, but I will never go back to being ashamed of who I am. Thanks, Eric, for articulating so beautifully what needs to be said.
Bob
POWERFUL WORDS. Wow, bringing back some memories that had been buried.
We seem to be waging our own internal war on our own soil. It just doesn’t make sense. And, our government really isn’t helping this problem, I feel it only feeds the fire.
If it matters, I was ambushed at E.L. Wright by a bunch of radical boys trying to peek into the girls lockeroom. Ambushed as in put in a postition where they caught me leaving the girls shower after gym class with only a towel and no where to run. I was beat up in the 9th grade by about 100 unhappy black folks while walking to my bus on the last day of school after someone yelled out the “N” word and I just happened to be the first white person they saw.
I have to admit I felt their pain as I was being beaten. For me the pain did not linger as a negotive but a positive helping me understand how hateful name calling is.
While my situation has not been a lifetime, it helped me become more compassionate. I hurt inside when I read about how people treated you and to think many of them I walked side by side then and didn’t know how mean they were.
As I have said before, my parents loved everyone and were conservative with a bit of hippie in their blood. Many a halloween our gay neighbors dressed my father up as a woman. those were the days my friend… and keep in mind, there was a Catholic Father as a neighbor sharing his scotch with everyone. He did not care about your sexual preference…mmmm… but let’s look at Father Hickey as a true man of God by loving all of his children. I had a strange but enlightening childhood. I could write a book about growing up in Lakeshore Apts. lol..
I had no idea how hard it was for you back then but I have a greater appreciation for you after reading your words. (is your blog your Journal? I used to keep one for my sanity!)
Eric, I can’t relate to gay hatred.
But, I am sorry for the pain gay hatred constantly causes. gay=happy to me…:)
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me.”
There’s an old saying that rings hollow in this day when media of all kinds suffers hate speech in general. Right-wing radio (corporate-owned and subsidized,) television, personal on-line networks, social media and so on. The reputation and the soul of this country is damaged by the hatred running rampant across our airwaves, workplaces and schoolyards. We have freedom of speech but how are we using it? As it pertains to school-aged children, where are the outraged school administrators and more importantly, the parents in demanding that, student by student, hate speech will not be tolerated? These bullies, cowards are tolerated by the strong, confident students as well. Where are the student leaders who can tear a chunk out of this hatred with their outspoken kindness? “You want a piece of (name of harrassed student?) Go through me, first.” Cowards, bullies will back down only if they are confronted.
We must confront them. And their parents, too, if necessary. They are emboldened by our silence.
Dear Eric-
Thank you for sharing your personal,painful, yet uplifting words.
I wanted to let you know that there is hope, tolerance, and compassion with my students.
The other day I overheard a conversation between two eighth graders in my class. One is Jewish and the other is Muslim. My muslim student said he hated gay people. My jewish student patiently and meticulously explained his scientific and biological opinions.(They continued to work all throughout this conversation.)
I don’t know how their conversation ended, but I am proud to teach in a school where diversity still means something.
with hope in my heart-
Tamra
You are a very brave person who is loved by many. We must do every thing we can to change the world for our children and children’s children. We all need to be part of the solution.
I clearly remember the day, back in 1972, when I started dressing unlike anyone else in my school. Well, except my art teacher and music teacher, but since I was a guy, I had to improvise accordingly. Plaid Bell-bottoms, platform shoes, Naf-Naf shirts, big wooden necklaces, you name it—if it screamed seventies, I either had it or coveted it. Fortunately, due to my summer job surreptitiously hawking beer from a golf cart at my Dad’s country club, I had the finances to support my flights of fashion fancy. I loved those clothes. Deeply. I spent hours studying Gentleman’s Quarterly (now “GQ”) prior to making my next purchase. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just the clothes that were interesting me. The chiselled faces and broad shoulders of the models weren’t exactly tough on my eyes either….The reality is, I was acting like a straight guy who says he gets Playboy for the articles. But I hadn’t let myself think about that yet….at least while I was awake.
I have a vivid memory of the day that it was determined by some of the other boys in my class that they were going to take their anger at GQ out on me. While I was still deep in denial about my sexuality, apparently that was not the case with my peers. They knew I wasn’t like them, and in the great tradition that started in Sodom and continues to this day, they were determined to beat the gay right out of me. Not that they worded it that way, but the subtext in “You freak, we are going to kick your ass after school” was fairly clear.
Sitting at my desk, watching the clock approach 3pm, when we’d be set free from school for the day and I’d be sent to my first good face pounding, I sweated it out in my Naf-Naf shirt. The bell rang, sending me skidding into the hallway, where I struggled to figure out an escape route. Then I stalled, pretending to be getting things out of my locker while the rest of the kids shuffled out of the school. I stared into that open locker for ages, as though a solution could be found somewhere in its crumpled paper and gym socks. Then I leaned my forehead against the cold metal of the door for a while, eyes closed, mind racing. Finally, I opened them, only to find David Bowie staring at me alluringly–from the postcard of him I had scotch-taped up in my locker. He gave me comfort, but no advice. If only life were a teen movie….anyway, lacking both a dream sequence and a better solution to my dilemma, I slipped out the back door of the school, skirted the parameter of the football field, and jogged into the adjacent cemetery, which I exited on the opposite side, two blocks from my home. This route enabled me too avoiding the front grounds of the school where I assumed the style-haters were awaiting me, plus it allowed for the added melodrama of trotting over graves while I contemplated my own mortality. My plan worked… until the following day. I will report that although the fists hurt, the “gay” that they were trying to eviscerate from my body remained firmly in place—which I guess is a victory of sorts.
michael tonello~
This made me cry like a baby. I am so sorry and want you to know that I love you just like you are and support you and all LGBT people. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
I realize this is personal for you, Eric, but to me, a straight woman, I see just more evidence of overwhelming intolerance for anyone who can have a label pinned on them. I have been in an ongoing argument recently about someone’s use of the word “retard” in jest with his friends and family. He says “Oh, no disrespect to anyone who’s actually ‘mentally challenged’, we just say it in fun.” I see the use of any word like faggot, nigger, retard or cunt to be another example of hatred and feelings of superiority that end up creating violence, either against another person or self-inflicted as in the case of these boys.
I have also recently seen some controversy about calling them “six gay boys” and I wondered what that was all about. The details of the stories don’t matter…whether they were gay or just perceived as such and taunted. Anytime bullying is tolerated – in public or in private – those of us who allow it to happen, in the guise of not causing a scene or “taking a joke” put another nail in the coffin of this society. Unless we stop the use of these terms anytime we hear them, the ugliness will continue.
Thanks for your blog; it is beautiful.
Eric,
You are so right on and you are letting me know that I’m doing the right thing. I just don’t know if I’m doing enough. Speaking as a freshman at high school, every single day I hear the casual exchange of “That’s so gay” and “He’s such a fag”. Even though I’m not gay, I know and love people who are, and every time I hear it, I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
I’ve recently joined my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance club- I’m SO glad they even have one- and intend to write an article in the school paper on this very subject as soon as possible. Thank you so much, Eric, for your constant inspiration. Hopefully I’ll meet you some day and get to thank you personally.
Love,
Brit-El
13 year old burgeoning activist
My disappointment with Obama du jour:
Why hasn’t the President taken a minute of air time to address the abuse, bullying and generally accepted homophobia in this country as it pertains to the suicides of these young men?
Where is the man I voted for?
He is afraid for some reason to go that route.
He is not a man of his word at times.
Or why does he not addresst he third world living conditions in West Va.? To me, that is a national tragedy also.
I Have No hate in my heart for Gays and Lesbians, just respect.