From: Gabo3@aol.com
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 15:15:37 -0400
Subject: Rotello column - gay pride

New York Newsday - Thursday, June 22, 1995
ANSWERING THE AMENS OF HATE WITH GAY PRIDE
by Gabriel Rotello

	New York - Every year around this time I get antsy about the term "gay
pride."  
	This third week in June is, if anybody needs reminding, "lesbian and gay
pride week." It is marked by "pride" festivals where people wear "pride"
T-shirts and buy "pride" souvenirs and go to "pride" parties and "pride"
dances. The whole thing culminates on Sunday - called "Lesbian and Gay Pride
Day" in most places - when "pride" committees put on "pride" marches where we
carry our "pride" flags and...well, you get the idea.  
	As a cynical New Yorker living in the shame and sleaze capital of the world,
all this seems a bit much. But just when my lip begins to curl and I start
insinuating darkly to anyone who'll listen that pride surely goeth before a
you-know-what, along comes a book like "Prayers for Bobby" to put me in my
place. "Prayers for Bobby," (HarperCollins) by veteran journalist Leroy
Aarons, is about a young gay man without pride, and the Christian
fundamentalist mom who helped make him that way. 
	Bobby Griffith was fully aware of his sexuality at an early age, and his
self awareness filled him with shame. His suburban California family, unaware
of his secret, wasn't much help. "They've said they hate gays," he wrote in
his diary at fifteen, "and even God hates gays, too. It really scares me when
they talk that way because they are talking about me." 
	A short time later Bobby came out to his family, and for the next five years
his mother worked tirelessly to change him. Mary Griffith prayed for Bobby,
shamed him, nagged him, degraded him, and helped convince him that he was
despicable. "I will kill the evil force inside me," Bobby pledged to his
diary at one point. But pray as he might, he could not kill that force - his
god given capacity to love. So at age twenty, Bobby threw himself under a
tractor-trailer, killing himself.
	This happens all the time in America. A government report a few years ago
indicated that up to 35 per cent of all gay kids attempt suicide at least
once, and far too many succeed: three out of ten youth suicides, it said,
involve gay and lesbian adolescents. We almost never hear about them, but in
this case Bobby left an eloquent diary detailing his inner turmoil, which his
fundamentalist mom read. Mary Griffith eventually realized that neither Satan
nor homosexuality had killed her son. He was slain by a profound lack of self
love that she had helped foster. 
	In short, a lack of gay pride. 
	A good woman, Mary became active in gay causes. Her first speech as an
activist was before a local city council meeting crammed with her old
fundamentalist colleagues.
	"When the clergy condemns a homosexual person to hell and eternal
damnation," she told the hostile crowd in her flat, restrained voice, "we the
congregation echo 'Amen.' I did not know that each time I echoed
'Amen'...each time I referred to Bobby as sick, perverted, and a danger to
our children, his self esteem and personal worth were being destroyed.
	"There are children like Bobby sitting in your congregations. Unknown to
you, they will be listening to your 'Amen's as they silently cry out to God
in their hearts. Before you echo 'Amen' in your home and place of worship,
think and remember. A child is listening."
	Lesbian and gay kids are indeed listening. But each June, when the airwaves
and newspapers are filled with stories of "gay and lesbian pride," some may
be listening to that as well. As long as the amens of hate echo in the homes
and schools and churches of America, searing the souls of gay youth, "gay
pride" must, and will, echo back. Not as an empty slogan, not as
cheerleading, but as a necessary antidote to shame. 

Copyright 1995 - Gabriel Rotello
(Gabriel's column appears every Thursday in New York Newsday. His email
address is gabo3@aol.com)