ajmrowland wrote:Disgusting. And she also jumps completely over the probability of surrogates.
On the plus side, so to speak, almost everyone there clearly thought her views were vile.
Just for fun, and because I didn't find anything like this when quickly trawling through this thread's previous pages, let's discuss coming out stories!
Before I approached the wearisome toils of being a teenager, I had the occasional odd feeling which, in retrospect, may have been signs of burgeoning homosexuality, or perhaps mere indigestion. Like when I was about out 7 or 8 years old, and had a brief play-fight with a boy my age, or when I became particularly attached to an old He-Man action figure.
The point at which I recognised I was most certainly gay was in watching episodes of
Smallville at 13, and seeing Clark Kent regularly get his shirt off. And at that point, I was becoming somewhat attracted to boys in school too. Of course, statistically speaking, virtually all would be heterosexual, and it
seemed (foreshadowing!) that all were. Besides, I was incredibly socially awkward and somewhat lonely, with all the self-esteem George W Bush ought to have. Unsurprisingly then, I tried to become used to the fact that while I would fantasise about such boys, they would be eternally unattainable.
One boy I liked in particular was one I became infatuated with for more than merely shallow reasons; he was, relatively speaking, gorgeous, yet he was also intelligent, knowledgeable, witty, with interests in religion, politics and ethics. He was in the year above me, so I saw him rarely, but I had previously enjoyed the occasional conversation with him, through some happy occurrence or another. As my infatuation grew, as did my information about him. He was openly gay. So, from my perspective, this was bloody Christmas and my birthday together. Even then, I enjoyed talking about religion and philosophy, and the prospect of doing it with a good-looking boy who had the possibility of reciprocating my feelings seemed far, far too good to be true. Nevertheless, with the attractive concept in sight, I began to work towards it. Although I did not see the boy with much frequency, I daily encountered an older girl who knew of him, in a sort-of afterschool club for pupils who had to wait to be picked up by parents. She was rebellious, spoke her mind, bitchy and belligerent. Perhaps in another life I would have fancied such a human being. Instead, she came in handy as a correspondent between the boy and I. Shortly after I finally gained the courage to tell the older girl that I was gay and liked the older boy, I briefly met him one school lunchtime with the knowledge that he knew I liked him. I still mentally swoon at his witticisms and charm at the time, despite there being no sign that he liked me back (however, there was no sign that he did not).
Due to the brevity of the meeting, I did what any atavistic teen would. Lacking a phone or a social network account at the time, I decided to write a love letter. Yes, really.
As further evidence of what I now see as my simultaneous innocence and foolishness, one lesson before the end of the day, I gave the letter to one of the boy's friends, asking her (not the same girl already described) to deliver it to him. And at the end of the day, I saw the aforementioned bitchy-and-belligerent older girl at the afterschool club once again. She now had the letter. Worse, also in the club, for one terrifying night only, were people I knew from my own year. I had previously thought that I could keep any sort of friendship or relationship with the older boy a secret. Apparently, the boy had read the letter, but I haven't the foggiest why he decided to give it to the girl. Seemingly enjoying my terror at being "outed", she threatened to expose the letter to Facebook and the like. Without going into tedious detail, the letter's final paragraph contained some explicit descriptions of feelings and...desires, so to speak. Frightened, I begged her to give the letter back to me. Acknowledging I couldn't bloody well trust myself with it, I did what any other socially awkward gay idiot would do: I told a teacher there to bin it for me, before being picked up.
The following morning at school, I met the older girl and her group of friends, whereupon she suggested that the information - Christ, I'm fucking formal, aren't I? - had still been revealed online. Oh dear. And thus, as I headed to my first class of the day, I was tormented by taunting twits, primarily in my year. The boys wagged tongues in a suggestive manner mockingly, along with various nasty comments, and the girls screeched like hyenas, telling nearby boys to stay away from me. At this point, I was already upset over my embarrassment over the love letter being known, my inference that the boy I liked was responsible, and as the icing on the cake of frustration, I felt ill. But as I headed towards my classroom, I was stopped, by none other than my head of year. He was bald, with more than just a passing resemblance to Voldemort. He called me into his office (bear in mind that this is a Catholic faith school). He revealed he had the love letter which, to reiterate, was a bit sexually explicit and candid about my feelings about the boy. He interrogated me somewhat, although not in an unpleasant or angry way (I had always been a good pupil). Then he pointed to the most explicit parts of the letter, asking what I meant by those words. Awkwardly, I mumbled incoherently that I didn't recall writing those things. It made little to no sense of course, yet I believe he understood perfectly well what I meant by those words.
Subsequently, I tried to put the whole mess out of mind until break-time, when I attempted to confront the boy. In a strange, unclear conversation about matters which he seemed partially ignorant of, what it led to was something that I suppose was a "break-up". Actually, it was more like being dumped by him. Upset and ill, it wasn't long before I ended up in the school's medical room. My dad came to pick me up, complicating things a bit. I essentially said that I could type or write the matter down for him to read. Because I wasn't especially ill, and also because that day was the day that was meant to be the first official day for a "film club" I had created, I remained in school, putting matters out of mind once more, while responding to incessant questions from people about my sexuality by stating that I was bisexual, rather than homosexual, because I presumed boys would be more accepting if I liked the things they liked too.
Unfortunately, I couldn't put the issue out of my mind forever, and when I was picked up by my dad at the end of the day, he revealed that he now had possession of the hot potato in the story. Yes, the love letter. He had had a meeting with Lord Voldemort and another teacher about me. He was not especially intolerant or angry, just a bit dubious and questioning. Upon getting home, my mum was enraged. Not so much over the possibility of having a gay son, but more about the fact that I had written a love letter and inadvertently come out of the closet. A long, awkward conversation that evening culminated in them basically trying to convince me that it was just a passing phase that everyone goes through. They even asked me whether I wanted to have anal sex; at that point I didn't, so they believed that it proved I wasn't gay.
In the aftermath, I backtracked on everything I said about being gay or bisexual. Somehow the older girl ended up in trouble with Voldemort - obviously more was going on behind the scenes than I knew of, but never mind. I never spoke to the boy I liked again. I would rarely but occasionally see me in the school corridors, and greet him nonchalantly. He would not respond, so a part of me then grew to loathe him, while a part of me still bloody loved him.
Two years on: the whole incident had been forgotten by the student body, and I had not mentioned anything to my parents since then. However, while reading various philosophical essays and so forth, one day I became inspired to be open with myself and others, so I properly came out to my parents. First, to my mum, who responded with initial silence and wide eyes. Both my parents simply reiterated their belief it was just a phase I was going through, but in a more subdued manner. This time they made it clear they would still accept and love me if I was gay. They warned me not to try to be open in school again, because they understandably believed it would lead to bullying. I was already a weak, shy and introverted human being who had been bullied previously, and being openly gay wouldn't help matters. I haven't properly discussed it with them since then.
Nonetheless, I had started to gain friends by then, in a way. A few months before turning 16, I told a few of them, while begging them to keep it secret. The process since has been a gradual way of coming out to my peers at school, revealing it to a few people or a group of people at a time, until the majority knew. And, pleasantly surprisingly, everyone was totally tolerant and accepting. At worst, I was called a "queer" once. Unfortunately, alongside this, I had become infatuated with another boy, this one my own age, and one I had known longer than the other. In a way, I'm still rather infatuated with him, although sadly unlike the other boy, he is completely heterosexual.
Oh well.
