My high school was a gay kid's oasis.
I do not say that lightly. After going to college and meeting all sorts of people with all sorts of coming out stories, I realized that I indeed went to a gay kid's perfect high school. I usually describe it as "something you would see in a queer indie film about what high school would look like if homophobia were not a thing."
I consider myself very lucky that this was my coming out environment, because I feel a twinge of survivor's guilt when I ponder what kind of school I could have had instead.
Madison, Wisconsin, is the state capital and home of the flagship University of Wisconsin campus. The town is referred to as "75 square miles surrounded by reality," for the liberal stronghold there around the university and the conservative culture found in the rest of Wisconsin, with the exception of Milwaukee. The LGBTQ community is visible in Madison to the point of being ubiquitous; being gay there is almost anticlimactic.
The four public high schools and alternative high school have thriving LGBTQ student populations, and apparently my school, Madison West, was/is the "gayest" of the four regular curriculum schools - and I believe it.
Wonderfully, West already had a long-standing and active Gay/Straight Alliance by the time I was a freshman there. Several teachers were out lesbians, and the sex-ed classes gave equal air time to heterosexual and homosexual-specific topics. Students with visibly queer gender expressions were commonplace and sometimes early adapters of the various fashion trends that circulated among the student body. Uniqueness was a coveted prize, and the gayest looking kids competed with each other for it.
In 2006, when the state legislature put forth a same-sex marriage ban bill to the voters for referendum, many students including myself became involved in the opposition and canvassed/marched for No Votes on the vaguely-worded bill that would have stripped non-married couples of such personal rights as hospital visitation rights. The bill unfortunately passed, and the anger in Madison was palpable.
As of now, certain components of the law, including hospital visitation rights, have been amended to be less harsh. But at the time, the collective rage of Madison's LGBTQ community was celebrated in the papers and at my school; the anger was righteous.
It was absolutely the most perfect time and place to come out, so I did. But first I had to come out to myself.
I first became aware of a chronic inner doubt of my heterosexuality when I was in seventh grade, and ignored it. I continued to ignore it in eighth grade, even dated a boy, but quickly learned that the hetero thing wasn't for me.
By freshman year, I was hanging out with a nice gay posse and even exploring things like GSA. At some point I had a hazy little thought that I could be a lesbian, but I ignored that as well. Sophomore year, however, was a watershed year. After some deep soul-searching I came to the conclusion that I was in some way or another attracted to other girls and that I needed to be at peace with it.
I wrestled with this truth, as well as sudden awareness that I was staring at other girls' chests (oops), for the first half of sophomore year, and tried to disregard some feelings developing for a good friend of mine, who identified as bisexual. By the second half of sophomore year I had come out tentatively as bisexual and then definitively as a lesbian, but that's because I personally never was bisexual (this is not always the case! Bisexuality is real and biphobia is a no-no. Don't be mean.)
At no point was I ashamed of being homosexual, however I was in the process of being Confirmed in the Catholic Church, and obviously the Catholic part of me had to take a backseat to the gay part of me while I was just starting to grasp its reality. I took a five-year long hiatus from the Church, and although I have resumed some Catholic practices in my spirituality I remain un-Confirmed. My parents were very supportive of my decision to drop out of the Confirmation race so I could learn how to be gay and okay with it, and I learned this quickly.
In my friend circle, the coolest thing possible was to actually be gay.
If you were an exclusive homosexual, you reigned supreme, but this also meant that people wanted to experiment with you. "Bi-curious," which I don't give much credence to after what I have experienced of it, was the label adopted by previously-straight friends of the gay kids at my school, adopted only after the gay kids came out. Several of my friends were "bi-curious" enough to experiment with me and each other, but they always emerged straight in the end and I did not.
This was 8 years ago and I still do not understand the bi-curious business. Teenagers are curious about all things sexual, so why was this anything special?It was at my school, because the gay kids were the cool kids and people wanted to be us. Like just another trend, only there was acknowledgement that orientation is not a choice for the actual homosexuals. For everyone else it was an opportunity to explore fleeting homoerotic feelings. Even students outside of the various gay cliques showed their respect.
Tragically, when there was homophobic bullying at my school, it usually was directed at middle-class white gay students from lower-class minority students, who in turn were mocked by straight white students for being poor, ignorant, "ghetto," etc. A common and immature complaint in GSA meetings and some classes was about how "black and Hispanic people are homophobes." In other words the student population was a sociologists' nightmare with all of its bizarre class/race/orientation dynamics.
I feel very lucky to have had the coming out experience that I did, despite my school's quirks, since later on I would make friends from other places who had unpleasant coming out experiences and were still dealing with the effects of them long after graduation. I would like to think that sharing my story can provide an alternative message to all the doom and gloom without minimizing the challenges of coming out in any high school.
I too struggled with denial and fear that my extended family would not accept me (largely unfounded). I also chose my higher education carefully so I could go to a large, diverse university in Chicago, which may as well be the queer capital of the Midwest. Looking back, I can say that I have very good memories of being a gay high schooler in Madison, learning about myself and others and the world around me, and developing a healthy pride in being different living in a relative rainbow paradise.