I Didn't Know Gay People Existed Until I Lived in the South

I sat across the Wrigleyville table from an old friend. Cubs memorabilia and streamers decorated the bar, and it grew louder as we caught up over drinks. Her face was a welcome sight, but misplaced against the backdrop of my new reality. I had known her during my freshman year at college. I attended Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina for one year to play Division I golf.

I hated it. I now tell people, “The South is just… different” when asked about my decision to transfer to DePaul, but moving to red country in the middle of tumultuous gay realizations was an instinctive way to stay closeted.

My friend, Sally, was now visiting Chicago, and wanted to reconnect. I introduced myself to her travel companions, and the night went swimmingly. We agreed to go out to a brewery in a few nights, and I mentioned my girlfriend as I walked them to the train.

“Oh, yeah, bring her to the brewery on Thursday!” Sally exclaimed. I was taken aback, shy about outing myself to someone who had known me before I had even known.

We hugged, parted ways, and I walked to my apartment in Boystown amidst the humid stillness of a Chicago summer night.

It wasn’t that Sally had known me during my embarrassing second puberty, a phenomenon any young gay goes through, it was my own hesitation to mention my current queer relationship.

Sally was born and raised in small-town-South Carolina. The homophobia I witnessed on store signs, in the undertones of conversations, and the preachings from professors in the south had pushed my guard up, even years into the future. I had assumed everyone from the Bible Belt would disprove of my relationship with a woman.

Sally, however, had never been anything but positive, gracious, and kind to me.

I had no real reason to doubt her; I was disappointed in myself. She may have even helped me four years ago had I confided in her. I had assumed her roots would affect her perspective of me.

The reasons behind my apprehension spoke to the larger impact of the homophobia, white supremacy, and misogyny I had seen in the South during my one year stint. Grouping Sally into a larger culture though? That was for the bigots.

I brought my girlfriend to the brewery a few days later, where we bonded as a group of haphazard twenty-somethings. We collectively stressed about the climate, the pandemic, The Handmaid’s Tale, then politics.

Sally shared her up well-informed, well-spoken, and fully formed opinions on the planet, women’s rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, police reform, and gay equality. Her views surprised me as I began to shut my mouth, listening to her evolved rhetoric on leftist issues.

She had been arguing for these fights her entire life. She had had to go up against bigots and racists and homophobes who really thought people like me shouldn’t have rights. She had had to inform, teach, and reshape people who thought opposite of her. She had more of an argument built up for the support of humanitarian equality than I did.

Her life in the South had prepared and taught her how to stand up for herself and others. Spending my one year there had left me with no more ammunition to fight for my rights and the rights of others than scurrying back to the Midwest and its silence.

Her clear, pointed, and understandable rhetoric made me determined to get some of my own talking points for the next conversation. Whether it was up against a raging homophobe, or simply explaining the issues to “neutral” family members, I would need to sound more like Sally and understand all sides of the revolution I said I was fighting for.

She showed me how to phrase what I thought were basic fundamentals to a better world to people who didn’t want to hear it. Understanding how to speak to someone who has shut their mind is a strategy I had underestimated, overlooked, and never even had to use in my shell of a protected upbringing.

She continued, “I grew up hearing that being gay was a sin. Gay people were horrible, they went against religion, and God didn’t love them.”

This stopped me in my tracks.

I had heard that these sayings were preached to people all over the country, even the world, and had expected to hear more of this in South Carolina. It was obviously kept behind closed doors, however. It was taught to young children ingrained in only slightly-conscious humans and taught as a moral to follow into adulthood.

This is what I expected to hear on the soapboxes on the corners of South Carolina. Sally, however, had been hearing about gay people behind closed doors, since she was a kid running through the church aisles. It was always there, always being spoken of, no matter how cynically.

I had never heard these preachings of hatred. In fact, I had not heard anything about being gay. The “neutral” family members whom I thought were so valiant in their lack of hatred had not educated me on issues at all.

I had not seen a gay person until I watched Hayley Kiyoko’s “Sleepover” music video under the covers of my dorm room bed. I was eighteen. I had spent the summer before college struggling to decipher my feelings for my best friend, and pondering whether I would be this desolate for my entire life.

The lack of rhetoric, media examples, or even condemnation of gay people left me with no opinions and no options. I didn’t even know gay people existed. My parents didn’t talk about gay people, there were no gay couples on the TV I watched, and gayness was not mentioned during my twelves years in the northern Illinois school districts.

Sally had been exposed to the teachings that gay people were unacceptable, but at least she knew they existed. Knowing that same sex love was possible could’ve saved me from decades of twisting myself into the heteronormativity I thought was the only way to live.

Silence is complacence, and I was taught this complacence as a crippling way of life, but Sally was given extremely tactful weapons of persuasion by living beside and considering the opposing sides’ arguments.

Sally gave me some invaluable discussion points to explain to homophobes, which I had never even considered creating. I had never argued with a homophobe. I had never known people could be so against a way of life that is based on pure love. I had never known it was out there.

Delving into the other sides’ perspective is a daunting journey. Understanding how to talk to people who are inhibiting the path to freedom and acceptance, however, is the path to a better world. My experiences and lack of exposure made my journey difficult, but uncovered the unseen crevasses that can swallow closeted queer people.

Sally’s life and mine are completely different, but the amount I’ve learned from her in just one year and a few nights of friendship showed me the incalculable value in the differences between people's lives, and the fight for equality that affects us all.