Crush it!

I read something on Facebook this morning that will not leave my brain: an article posted by a former student that condemns gay marriage, saying there is no evidence that gay couples can raise children in a healthy way and therefore the institution of marriage, as a heterosexual one, ought to be protected.

I fundamentally disagree with this on so very many levels. Family comes in many, many forms and what I believe children need above all else is love. Everyone knows how to love, no matter your sexual preference. If churches want to decide not to marry people, I have no beef with that. But I believe from the depths of my soul that our governments, both state and local, have a responsibility to provide equal rights and protection to all citizens. That is somewhat fundamental to our constitution.

The kicker in the article is this: the student who posted it is, I'm fairly certain, gay and very, very closeted. When he was first my student, I simply assumed he was gay (trust me, after enough years in this industry you just come to know when such things are the case). He set my gaydar off from his mannerisms, his speech, his projection of himself. He managed the Stars on Ice event on campus his senior year and bounded into his lesson the week after proclaiming that he'd gotten Paul Wylie's phone number....Then, as I got to know him he would often talk about how girls in church would throw themselves at him. He always expressed it in such a way that he sounded rather uncomfortable with their advances and I sometimes wondered if he was asking me for help in a backwards kind of way. Then I learned that this was not just any church that he attended. It was the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. Yup. He's a Mormon. From a big, Mormon family with a dad who is a prominent business man and professor in Boston and a slew of older brothers who all excelled at sports and business. This young man loved music and singing and wanted to be an architect. He participated in an organization on campus that was a haven for so many gay young men finding their way through a world that was not always gay friendly. Maybe I was wrong in my assessment of him, but my gut tells me I'm not.

I've seen him periodically in the years since he graduated and at each encounter I've seen him move more into the hetero sphere and often felt saddened for him as his religion and his family would so likely reject him if he were to embrace his true self.

His posting of the article today just seems one more move towards distancing himself from a world he might really want to embrace. To lead a life of repression and denial, where, as the character in Book of Mormon says about his homosexual tendencies, you take your feelings and "turn it off like a light switch" and "find a box that's gay and crush it!" makes my heart break for him, his future wife and any children he might have.

He's taken a lashing from friends on Facebook over the article and I wonder if any of them see the person I saw those years ago and might want to approach him in a loving way to support his own right to embrace his true self.