Today is the 36th anniversary of the Stonewall riot, the birth of the American gay-rights movement. The Stonewall riot was a moment when the lies that gay men and women had been taught about themselves became unbelievable. While fewer gay women and men fall victim to such deceit today, the greater challenge is helping all of us, both gay and straight, learn the truth about being gay.
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“Please God; send me to a real family.”
Ellie Flores sat on her bed on her first night in the U.S. and prayed.
When our son arrived from Guatemala in 1996, we had hired Ellie to be our nanny. Somehow, the word didn’t get to her that she would be working for a gay family.
“The night I arrived, I kept thinking, where is the mother? I sat in my room and cried for the first week. I was afraid to come out because I knew you guys would be walking around in women’s clothes.” She laughs about it now. “One day while you two were off to work, I went through all of your stuff, your closets, your drawers, looking for women’s clothing. I couldn’t find a single thing.”
Ellie called her sister Teri and asked her where she thought our women’s clothes were. Teri laughed out loud. “They’re gay, not transvestites!”
Over the next two years, Ellie became a daughter to us and a sister to our son. “I realize now that God had answered my prayer,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for a more loving and supportive family.”
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“This fag came on to me once and I beat the s— out of him.” He smiled broadly, showing the class the scars on his knuckles. “He was begging me to stop, his mouth was bleeding. I kept yelling at him ‘Do I look gay to you, faggot?”‘
These are the words of a student of mine, a former military policeman named Dell Foster. Despite his anti-gay anger, Dell was one of those students whom teachers love to have in class: active, interested, bright. But he truly hated gay men. That was, he did until the last day of class.
One of my other students, having noticed my gay pride sticker, asked if I were gay. Dell burst out laughing at the question, figuring that I’d be the last person who’d be gay. When I answered “yes,” he jumped up and shouted, “You can’t be gay – I like you!”
Later, after much soul-searching, Dell would tell me, with tears in his eyes, how sorry he had been for beating up that kid. “I had never met a gay person before you. It took me a while to get my head straight about this gay stuff.” He laughed at his own pun.
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“Do you believe in miracles?”
Her soft voice could have belonged to anyone’s grandmother.
Gayle Bird made her living sewing vestments for the clergy. That was ironic when you consider that she had been thrown out of her Assembly of God church years earlier, for, of all things, getting remarried.
“Our preacher had told us that God was going to kill our children because of our ‘sin.”‘ Gayle decided that God had turned His back on her. “If those were God’s people, He could keep them.”
She continued to show her clerical vestments at trade shows, including the Metropolitan Community Church convention.
“The first time I went, they told me the MCC was a gay church. I didn’t care, but my husband George certainly did. I told George I’d go by myself, but he insisted on going. When we got there, one of the pastors came and shook George’s hand and suddenly George was filled with the Holy Spirit.
“There is no other explanation. George went from being a life-long raving homophobe to the biggest supporter of gay rights in that single moment.”
After that weekend, Gayle wanted to go to the MCC, but was unsure if they’d be accepted as straight people in a “gay” church.
“I was wrong,” she said. “The second we walked into that church, we were surrounded by the love of Jesus.”
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For these three people – a Mexican nanny, a military policeman and a seamstress turned businesswoman – the misconceptions they had about gay people were erased simply by knowing a gay person. In such moments of truth, fallacies about gay life are proven wrong.
Keith Swain is a psychologist, a professor at Front Range Community College and a former Colorado Voices writer..
