Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [78]
The parallel with Bobby was not exact, but it was close enough to be impressive. Rob, too, had been estranged from his parents, and in fact still was. He told Mary how he went on to art college in Atlanta, still unresolved about his homosexuality. He started popping pills and on one bleary, self-pitying night tried again to do himself in. “Being gay and hating myself combined with alcohol and pills was a deadly combination. Then I met someone, my first partner. He gave me an ultimatum to stop drinking. With my low self-esteem I didn’t think I could do it. But I did, and I suddenly realized I wanted to live. I really wanted to live! We ended up staying together three years, and I never went back to my old ways.”
It occurred to Rob that if Bobby had given himself more time, he, too, might have made it through. He wondered how some of us make it and others do not. He himself had come so close to dying; if Bobby had only held on, he might have discovered that it is possible to live a life of dignity and promise as a gay person.
He shared the thought with Mary. A shadow passed across her face. Then she said, “That’s why we’re out here, Rob. We need to buy time for these kids so they can see that they have as much right to life as anyone.”
Mary was right, Rob thought. He took one arm from the wheel and placed it warmly around her shoulder. In a way they had assumed surrogate roles for one another; she the loving mother he longed for and he the gay son she could not keep.
Buying time for gay kids in the schools would not be easy. Gay and lesbian issues had never been raised at all in most of the schools of the county. Administrators knew they would be asking for trouble with suburban and rural parents if the incendiary issue of same-gender sexuality were to surface in their schools. Gay and lesbian students remained invisible and fearful. Those who could not hide were often brutally harassed.
In one district they visited, Mary made her case to the district superintendent. “I truly believe my son would be alive today if his school had let him know that it was okay to be gay,” she told him. “Whether it be through counseling or books in the library. Whatever. There are other Bobbys in your schools right this moment. They are silently crying out for help.”
The superintendent leaned back in his chair and asked, “What would you suggest I tell parents who ask, ‘What is your justification for teaching about this’—in their words—‘perverted behavior?’”
Rob wondered whether this man might have asked the same question if the subject had been racial minority studies. Fifteen years ago, probably so. Rob replied, “I would tell them that even though they may disagree with the issue, all kids, gay and straight, need this orientation. First of all, because lives may be at stake. Second of all, because gay baiting and harassment are epidemic in our schools, and they’re based on ignorance and misinformation. Educators have an obligation to fight ignorance; at least that’s what they told us when I was a student. That’s what I’d suggest you say.” They rose to leave.
They received more cordial receptions in other districts. By early 1989 they could report back to BANGLE that they had met with superintendents in nearly half the county’s eighteen school districts. One district had agreed to reevaluate its non-discrimination policies and revise its contract language to refer to sexual orientation. Another assured them that it would include homosexuality in its revised curriculum. Only one district flatly refused to meet with them.
Encouraged, Rob and BANGLE sent letters to all eighteen