When pondering North Carolina’s beautiful western mountains, most people will conjure up images of grand rolling hills, breathtaking views and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Almost no one will think of these vistas as places to encounter a rowdy crowd of openly gay teens. But, in the first decade of the 21st century, there they are.
Kirk, Brandon, Michael and Damien forged their friendship through MySpace.com. |
Brandon, Michael, Kirk, Damien and Brian range in age from 15 to 21. Together, they are not social outcasts, but best friends, free from the daily struggles imposed upon them by their rural surroundings. With the help of one another, along with their families and other friends, they have created a safe space for support, growth and love.
Over the past two decades, there has been immense growth in the acceptance of gays and lesbians in metropolitan America. Although this change has taken longer to seep into rural areas, there are certainly small rays of hope.
Brandon, who recently came out to his family, says that even though it took his mother and father some time to deal with the issue, they continue to learn and grow.
“I had the chance to come out,” he says. “It was going to be a lot easier for me to move out after that, but my dad eventually accepted it and I moved back in. My mom still deals with it.”
For some of the boys, living with adopted or foster parents has been a blessing. They feel their birth families might not have been as accepting as their second families.
For the most part, school seems to be the biggest struggle for these gay teens — many of them are now home-schooled or attend non-traditional high schools.
“My guidance counselor told me that my ‘lifestyle’ was becoming a distraction to other students,” says Michael. “I was struggling with being gay and someone found out and told others. I went to talk to her about it and she said, ‘If you weren’t gay, there wouldn’t be any problems.’
“Every time someone is a little bit strange, our schools find ways to suspend them and keep them out. That’s why when I came out, my dad took me out of public schools.”
Michael, left, says gay and transgender youth often face discrimination and harassment in rural schools. |
Michael adds that transgender youth face even more obstacles. “They are thrown out of school until they change their clothing.” He says the schools there have even come down hard on those male students identifying as “emo” or skater kids who wear tighter, more feminine-appearing clothing.
Brandon says he wanted to do something after hearing a fellow student say that all gays could “burn like the Jews,” but he knew the support wouldn’t be there.
“I wanted to try starting a gay straight alliance, but I know a lot of the teachers won’t accept it.”
Kirk agrees that creating a social or support group in school would be a tough undertaking. “Even if they had a club like that, a lot of people, or the ones who really needed it wouldn’t go at all.”
The feelings of invisibility and stigma in school are sustained by an official silence on the important issues that need to be taught to gay teens. Sex and health education classes mention homosexuality only in connection with the spread of HIV/AIDS. It’s no surprise to hear that the references are most often very negative.
Of course, the silence from administrators and teachers doesn’t stop students from talking — in the form of daily harassment. When Michael began middle school and had to start changing for gym class, the harassment “got so bad, I started to change in the bathroom stalls, just to get away from it.”
Brian, who isn’t out to his family and requested that his name be changed for this story, attends a non-traditional high school with a mixture of both high school and college-aged students. There, he is out and doesn’t have any problems with the other students.
“When I was talking to my guidance counselor and finally came out to her, that made us have a better relationship,” he says. “It was easier for me to talk about it to people at school. It made me feel better that someone there like a guidance counselor was accepting of me.”
The boys say they first met through the social networking website MySpace.com. Some of them chatted online for years — starting as young as 13 — before meeting face-to-face. Perhaps one of the primary reasons why rural gay youth are becoming more visible is due to the freedom the internet affords them.
More than a decade ago, the opportunity to connect with other gay teens through the internet was extremely limited. But with the overwhelming success of social networking sites like MySpace.com, Glee.com, Facebook.com and others, queer teens can create close and lasting friendships with their peers with relative ease.
“Without the internet there wouldn’t really be any social interaction,” Kirk says. “Michael and I talked online for three years before we met.”
When the two finally got together, they found they had more connections than they originally thought. “I told my dad I wanted to meet my friend from MySpace,” says Michael. It turned out that Michael’s father and Kirk’s father had once worked together.
Being out to each other is a source of fun and camaraderie for the guys. Navigating the response from the community, however, is a little tougher.
Michael says he is constantly called “faggot” when he’s shopping or out doing other activities. He says being with others sometimes lessens the reaction. “When you are in a big group of people it isn’t much of a problem when you are out in town.”
Old stereotypes plague their interactions with neighbors and peers. “People up here think that just because I’m gay, that I automatically want to have sex with them,” Michael says. “People in a small town don’t really see that people can be different.”
All the boys wish they had some sort of official support or social group. Damien says that while there are some supportive institutions — like his gay-friendly Unifour Christian Fellowship Church in Newton, N.C. — more support would be welcomed.
“I think having a group like Charlotte’s Time Out Youth would help. I’ve been talking to the lesbians at my school and telling them that I want to start something,” Brandon says. “It is fun to go to Charlotte and meet people but we want to be able to know people here in our own area.”
Until more support finds its way to their rural area, Michael says he and the guys will continue encouraging each other. “We are just a close group. If we do anything here, we do it together.” |
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