Stranger in a strange land

What is it like growing up and knowing that you are gay? Well, did you read "Stranger in a Strange Land"? You feel alienated from everyone from the very beginning. Many remember having crushes as early as 3rd grade. Oh, we knew we were not thinking like we were "supposed" to think. We learn the word QUEER very early. Remember the song from South Pacific titled "You've got to be carefully taught"? We are taught from an early age what is acceptable and unacceptable and to hate that which is unacceptable. Queer is unacceptable. And if you are queer, you do the best you can to deny or disclaim any such feelings to yourself and to others. Here is one such experience:
I did have my crushes in junior high school and I did have a lover in high school. So imagine going out on dates with the opposite sex on one night and having a best friend sleep over on the next night. That was how those years went. I knew I was in love with my best friend but it was never spoken. We(my friend) pretended that it was someone of the opposite sex. Yea, really! Oh, yes denial, denial, denial.
In college, I dated and was miserable. Oh, I met a lot of wonderful people of the opposite sex but I was never in love. I only fall in love with my same sex. I took all the psychology I could to find out what was wrong with me, to try to undo it. I could not undo it. I love the other gender. I have great friends of the opposite gender. I have a wonderful relationship with both parents. I even tried having sex with the opposite sex- many times. Now for those of you that thinks that that is all there is to it, think again. Trust me. You can have sex with anyone if you choose but with whom do you fall in love? It was never to be. Thank God I spared some poor soul a short marriage with me. So I graduated college and started working.

I met my second lover that next year. We stayed together for 20 years even though it was all but over after that first two years. There was no way to meet gay people in the small town I came from so we stayed together. We might have broken up much earlier but who would we have lived with?

The life of the average young person who is gay is normally very traumatic. This is because while most teenagers test the waters of independence during these years, most gay teenagers either announce their gayness or they withdraw and get depressed. Many of the ones that tell their parents get thrown out or hijacked to some religious clinic that will supposedly will fix them. Some of the ones that get depressed commit suicide. Some tuck it in and deny, deny, deny. Some marry to avoid the "awful" truth only to find that it just doesn't go away.

Why do you think that you see so much "acting out" from the gay community? Could it be that there is a little hostility about all this abuse? And I mean ABUSE. You betcha!

Now I ask you is this a good thing? Hasn't this gone just far enough? What if there had been no hate for gays? What if it was understood that just like some people are born that are different from the norm in other ways as in unusual blood types some people are gay?

Can we never learn?