The Washington Post is running a series on gay teens starting in tomorrow’s issue. It’s sad reading about Michael Shackelford, a teen in Oklahoma who’s vision of being gay includes:
“Being gay, you’ll never have that true love like a man and a woman,” Michael says, standing against his truck as Merle Haggard mixes with the backyard whippoorwills. “Hearing all the songs about a man coming home from work to his wife’s loving arms, you never hear of gay couples like that.”
He sets his ratchet down. “Do you?”
There are stories of what his life at school is like.
One day in PE class, a good-looking preppy guy on the bleachers strips off his T-shirt in the hot gymnasium. Before Michael can catch himself, his eyes drift. Stop looking at me, the other boy tells Michael in a voice loud enough to humiliate. This is the turning point at school. His secret is out.
“He was wanting to kick my ass,” Michael later recalls. “I told my dad about it. He said, ‘I’d kick your ass, too, if you were looking at me.’ ” Officially, ass-kicking is not allowed on school grounds since Oklahoma adopted anti-bullying laws. But Michael’s life at Charles Page High turns miserable. He is called a faggot in the hallways. For his own safety, he starts avoiding places where he could be trapped.
While the rest of the country is laughing over “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Michael stops using the restroom during the seven-hour school day.
And his mother’s fear.
She walked around Michael’s room reading passages from the Bible, forcing Michael to listen. She researched Exodus International, the Christian organization that says it can “cure” homosexuals.
Janice wasn’t prepared for what she would experience in the psychiatric world. She called her insurance company and requested the name of a Christian counselor. To her amazement, the Christian counselor didn’t tell Michael that homosexuality was wrong. Janice found a second counselor. This one said that he couldn’t be “pro or con” when it came to homosexuality. She felt as though the mental health industry was against her until someone gave her the book “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth,” which asserts that gay activists successfully pressured the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Suddenly, Janice realized why she’d hit so many roadblocks. “The gay movement had gone into the politics and changed everything,” she says. “Now it’s not even a disease or sickness.”
No one seemed to understand that Michael’s eternal life was at stake. Janice feared that Michael would go to hell and be apart from her in the afterlife. “I’m afraid I won’t see him again,” she says, her voice breaking.
Her ignorant fear.
Janice works on her son every chance she can. Her belief is that homosexuality is a “generational curse” that can be broken.
… One Sunday after church, Janice and Michael go to El Maguey’s as usual. Unavoidably, the subject turns to Michael’s sexuality. On the drive home, he makes a case that being gay is genetic. Janice’s tone is soft. “If you were born a bank robber, would that be okay, too?” she asks.
Michael’s story continues in Monday’s paper with a sad introduction:
Peace came to Michael Shackelford last year inside a psychiatric ward. He was 16 and his mother had just discovered his relationship with another young man. Feeling alone and frightened, and unable to imagine his future as a gay teenager in rural Oklahoma, Michael bought 10 packets of ephedrine-laced powder from the mini-mart and swallowed them all, which is how he landed at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital, his belt and shoelaces confiscated.
His mother struggles with her own beliefs.
During the presidential primary season, the TV at work is tuned to the debates, and Janice feels herself tensing as the candidates are asked to state their positions on same-sex marriage. A co-worker weighs in, definitely against. Janice agrees, but without much conviction. At home later she tells Michael, “It’s almost as if I can’t stand strong for what I used to stand for.”
“Did you stick up for me?” Michael asks.
They both know the answer. The same-sex marriage issue is forcing Janice to choose between her beliefs and her son. Her church is gearing up for the November elections. “I have to agree with the president,” Janice says. “We need to keep the family unit as intended.” And yet her own family unit is not quite as intended. Twice divorced, Janice works two jobs, day and night. Her unmarried 23-year-old daughter has a baby. Now her only son is gay. Janice begins reading the Bible more closely, studying the Scriptures to see if there is any leeway in the interpretation.
The reality for gay people in rural America is violence and hatred.
Charles Page High holds its end-of-the-year awards ceremony in the auditorium, with the usual honors for outstanding academics and the raising of spectacular livestock. On the printed program, near the bottom, one award merits only an acronym. The letters spell PFLAG. There is no explanation of what PFLAG stands for, or that Brent is winning a $1,000 scholarship for starting the Gay-Straight Alliance.
Tim Gillean, a board member of PFLAG’s Tulsa chapter, is here to present the award. Looking at the program, Gillean would later recall, he debates whether he should say the full name out loud. He goes to the microphone. “On behalf of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays,” he begins, to the sound of feet shuffling and murmurs in the crowd.
Brent strides up to the stage. Later that week, someone takes a bat to the windshield of his dad’s car.
