After the article in the Daily Universe outed me as a "gay student" at BYU, I received a friend request on facebook from someone I didn't recognize and with whom I shared no mutual friends. One look at his profile and I knew he was "family." I wrote back asking why he had added me in an attempt to stimulate dialog, but he responded that he was embarrassed and just saw the article and I thought I sounded like a neat person. That was the end of that conversation- I guess he wasn't ready for open dialog yet.
Last night I was at a party at one of my good gay friend's houses, and there was the said person. We talked briefly, and he said that reading about me in the newspaper was the first time that he had heard of a BYU student accepting the title "gay." He didn't know you could go to BYU and consider yourself gay. Long story short, several weeks later he is coming out to his best friend/girl friend (they are still dating) and meeting other local gays.
If just that one person was able to come that much closer to accepting himself because of something I did, I will feel like it was all worth it. I didn't get Utah to give gays any rights or even concessions of decency. I didn't get BYU to change it's policies. I didn't get the student body at BYU to act more compassionate towards homosexuals. But if I did get one person to treat himself more decently and honestly, then maybe that's enough. Maybe that's all I am supposed to do. Romulus and Remus did it for me, and now I am trying desperately to do it for anyone else who will hear me.
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4 comments:
Good for you! This is great.
That's an amazing accomplishment, you should be very proud. If I'd known just ONE gay mormon growing up, I probably would have saved myself YEARS of anguish and self-loathing.
You can add one more to your list :) This photo exhibit is what started the whole ball rolling for me, and I am so grateful for it.
I'm so glad that I was able to be there for you! It was such an interesting time in both of our lives! I still remember getting to my car and screaming in delight after you told me!
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