Caffeinated Politics

I was reminded this week of a truism. Gay people are a part of every family. One of the chief bullies from my high school years has a gay brother in a long-term committed relationship with his partner. Good for the brother. That fact intersects with my life, and to be honest, I hope that sitting down on this chilly and now rainy afternoon and writing will allow for some inner feelings to be explored about a painful chapter of my life with an ironic component.

As a teenager, I was continuously bullied, primarily by five farm boys who felt entitled to act like complete unadulterated jackasses. I was not out as a gay person, but the anti-gay onslaught was as if I were leading a Pride parade in their taxpayer-subsidized fields. They were from Hancock and Plainfield, so you might infer how I felt to learn about one of those bullies and his gay brother.

Having lived through the high school years of cruelty, I can assure my readers this is not a column of abstractions. I can still vividly see the hallways, lockers, the locker room, and the boys who thought emotional trauma and punching were entertainment. They laughed at their actions. This week, upon learning the bitter irony of a gay brother suddenly showcased that the “otherness” they willfully and ignorantly mocked wasn’t ‘other’ at all. It was already in this guy’s own home.

That’s the truth anti-gay bigotry tries hardest to hide. Gay folks aren’t rare exceptions or distant strangers. They are woven into every family tree. Sometimes proudly, sometimes quietly, sometimes in ways a family refuses to see until it becomes impossible to ignore. The idea that gay people are “out there somewhere” collapses the moment you realize they were sitting across from you at Thanksgiving, or sharing a bathroom with you in high school, or sleeping in the next bedroom down the hall.

And that’s why the remembrance of the cruelty sits oddly alongside the all-too-rich irony that one of the prime bullies was living in a family with a gay brother. My heart goes out to that brother, who, it can be easily assumed, had a hell of a rocky road in life, too.

Decades ago, I sought out someone to professionally talk with to put in context the abuse and my array of feelings. I didn’t want to give the bullies any leeway for their actions. Because, in truth, there is none to give. But I was able to see that these farm boys were not only mean, but were, in large part, performing a script handed to them by a culture that tells people like them that empathy is a weakness and being different is somehow very dangerous. I get it from a cultural and social perspective that they lashed out because it was easier than questioning what they’d been taught. Or had never learned. Mocking what they did not understand, or being unable to deal with their fears, and what it might reflect about themselves or the people closest to them, made Todd and me their easy targets.

I have thought about that gay brother this week. What must have taken place decades ago when the bully discovered that his brother was gay? All of a sudden, that script of bigotry broke apart. Suddenly, the anti-gay slurs landed on someone in the family. And that’s the moment bigotry reveals itself for what it always was, ignorance wearing the mask of certainty.

I have said since I was in my early twenties and starting to step into advocacy, and also dealing with my siblings, that we must recognize that every time someone mocks or marginalizes gay people, they are almost certainly hurting someone in their own family. One of the reasons I have been a staunch supporter of help for gay youth in Wisconsin is that I am aware some teenagers are in the same place I was in my high school years. I know there is someone who is carrying the same fears I had in school hallways.

What this story again proves is that bigotry doesn’t just wound strangers. It wounds nieces and nephews, siblings and cousins, children and grandchildren. It wounds the very people bigots claim to love. That is the painful lesson learned by this one bully.

Gay people are already woven into the fabric of every family. So it is incumbent on each of us to speak up when prejudice surfaces.