}
DECEMBER 20, 1996 . . GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
9
SPEAK OUT
It's now possible to truly go home for the holidays
by Kevin Jennings
As a gay man who grew up in WinstonSalem, North Carolina, it came as little surprise to me to learn that the famous epigraph "You can never go home again" was coined by a fellow Tar Heel, Thomas Wolfe. During my holiday trips home from my Yankee exile over the years, I've often
said to myself, "Tom,
if you only knew... I've hated the holidays for nearly two
decades. Not coinci-
dentally, I've been out of the closet for nearly two decades. In a state of drunken oblivion when I was
college I began bringing my partner home for Thanksgiving each year, determined to claim my rightful place at the family table. Things were always civil, but the silence was deafening. I consoled myself by telling myself I was lucky. I'd had friends whose parents had never spoken to them again after they had come out. Com-
I've hated the holidays for nearly two decades. Not coincidentally, I've been out of the closet for nearly two decades.
17, I blurted out to my mom that I was gay—a statement that, once sober, I was shocked and horrified to have made.
You see, my (by-then-deceased) dad had been a Southern Baptist preacher, and my mom a featured gospel singer in our church. My family's and my hometown's views on homosexuality were pretty unmistakable.
Beginning with the morning after my little coming out party, Mom and I began pretending I had never said the words "I'm gay." We'd had good training in this particular coping mechanism: Southern women like my mom lived by the saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," and I followed her example. Given that we didn't view being gay as a particularly nice thing, we didn't say anything at all.
I fled north to attend college the next year, and visits home were thereafter limited to the holiday season. By the end of
pared to this, the strained détente I had achieved with my family seemed pretty fortunate indeed.
But over the years the silence became excruciating, especially as I moved into greater degrees of activ-
ism and finally a position as executive director of a national lesbian and gay rights organization. Not talking became almost impossible, but my family didn't know how to, and I was scared to open up, and perhaps let them hurt me again. Lacking any real trust, we continued to say nothing at all. The holidays were hardly a homecoming, and became more a chore than a celebration.
Eventually, things began to thaw. Prompted by her therapist, my Mom helped start a Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays chapter in Winston-Salem. When my relationship started disintegrating in 1994, I broke down in one of my regular phone calls to her (calls usually focused on the weather) and poured out my depression and sadness.
To my surprise, Mom was there for me. She was helpful and supportive, and I was glad we'd talked. Over the next two years Mom and I grew closer, and I shared more
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about my work with her. As she learned how hard it had been for me to be a gay kid in North Carolina, a new bond of understanding grew between us. I actually started looking forward to going home.
This spring, our new bond was put to the test. For the first time, my hometown of Winston-Salem was going to have a gay pride march, and I was invited home to speak at it. I called Mom to let her know and to tell her that the hometown paper was planning to do a feature on the homosexual prodigal son returned.
I was apprehensive. It was one thing for Mom to support me, but it was quite another for me to out her as the mother of a gay son on the front page of my hometown newspaper. I finished talking and, without missing a beat, Mom replied, "I've been reading about this march and I figured you were coming, so I've already made plans to march with you."
My shock could not have been more complete. After hanging up, I tried to figure out how my mom had come so far. I remembered a basic truth I had learned while teaching high school for ten years: learning takes time. My mom didn't “get it" about my gayness at first, but she had slowly learned and here she was, passing the final exam with flying colors. And a final exam it was to be: my mother is terminally ill, and given that North Carolina Gay Pride rotates among different cities, will most likely not live to see it in Winston-Salem again.
June came, and my mom didn't actually march. Now on oxygen full-time, she was only able to come to the workshop I gave the day before the march. But, for the first time, she heard me speak in public about what has become my life's work-helping lesbian and gay kids escape the bigotry
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with which I grew up. Afterwards, she came up and hugged me, telling me how proud she was of me.
In the most real sense, I had come home again. My mom and my hometown had taken me as I am, instead of asking that I be something I am not-which had been the terms of all previous homecomings. At least for me, it turned out that Thomas Wolfe was wrong.
I don't know if I'll be going home for the holidays this year. I've just returned from a late October visit there, and I am trying to sort out my holiday schedule to balance work, friends, my partner's biological family and my own. I am not too worried about it, though, because I don't have to go home just for the holidays anymore. Thanks to the changes of the last twenty years, I now can go home whenever I want.
Kevin Jennings is the director of the national Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Teachers Network and the author of Becoming Visible: A Reader in Gay and Lesbian History for High School and College Students.
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