I just wanted to thank you and Terry for taking the initiative to reach out to those who are struggling with their sexuality and with the way they are being treated. I am not gay/lesbian, but can appreciate the time you have taken to send a message of love and understanding with the It Gets Better Project.
One disturbing concern I have with your video is your mention of how you and Terry met in the bar. While it’s wonderful to share and celebrate your story and how strong your relationship is, I don’t think it’s necessary or respectful that students should listen to sexually explicit language such as the sexual innuendo you mentioned. It’s wrong to assume students should be okay in hearing such information especially from an adult. Would you want your son, DJ, to hear what you said?Donna
There have been a few emails like this, and I’m not trying to pick on Donna here—whose heart is clearly in the right place—but… my response after the jump.
Terry and I met in a bar. Lots of people in stable, loving relationships—gay, straight, bi, whatever—met their BFs, GFs, squeezes, spouses, partners, etc., in bars. People go to bars to drink, dance, flirt, and sometimes they say silly, dirty things to strangers they meet in bars. And sometimes they wind up having one-night stands as a result of saying silly, dirty shit to the strangers they meet in bars. And sometimes those one-night stands blossom into stable, loving relationships that stand the test of time.
It’s wrong to assume that children—particularly middle- and high-school age children—need to be protected from that sort of information. They already know it. They’re children, Donna; they’re not idiots.
So, yeah, my son knows that his dads met in a bar and he’s known for years. And we originally told him—long before we recorded that video—because he asked. “How did you and mommy/daddy meet?” is a question most parents have to answer long before their kids start grade school.
And most “students”—particularly LGBT students—are just fine after “hearing such information.” The news that adults sometimes drink and flirt in bars isn’t a carcinogen, Donna, it doesn’t cause childhood leukemia. And stories about drinking and flirting and dancing are entirely appropriate to the IGBP. Going out to bars, having a few drinks, and swapping innuendos with someone you want in you end-o—those are all ways in which “it gets better” for everybody. Get through those awkward and awful teen years and you’ll get to meet people, you’ll get to flirt, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to fall in love.
And, finally, high school students know what oral sex is. And they know that adults have oral sex. They even know that some adults have a sense of humor about it. And being eaten by people with pretty mouths is definitely one of the ways in which it gets better.
I remember not all that long ago when it was vaguely embarrassing to have met one’s significant other online, too. But frankly, at this point plenty of people have done it, so I suspect the stigma’s probably gone.
But of course, there’s lots of completely unearned stigmas floating around out there for things that everybody does and no one in their right mind actually considers abnormal.
To add to that, in many areas and for several decades, gay bars were the only safe places to encounter or rendezvous with new gay people. You didn’t openly meet new people at church, the social hall, organized community dances, the workplace, etc. The bar was where you could be yourself and safely chat up somebody else.
In some of ways, the Internet has supplanted bars, but not entirely. Meeting new potentially-compatible people in the physical world still happens quite a lot in gay bars.