I’m From Jonesboro, GA. I grew up in a very large Southern Baptist Church community. It was a “mega-church” in the south with very wealthy members. My parents taught Sunday school every week, which obviously meant that I went, too. I sang in the children’s and youth choir, I was friends with the popular clique in the church, and was seen as a positive role model for younger kids. Parents would say, “I hope our son grows up like you.” But if they only knew the issue I was dealing with, they would have never said that to me.
I’m From Granville, OH - Featured Artist. I grew up in Granville, Ohio. A small, white, privileged, community whose pretentiousness and/or lack of reality is held in by the cornfields and cookie cutter subdivisions that circumscribe this stepford village. It is in this village that various different experiences have shaped and continue to shape the life and beliefs that now define who I am.
I’m From Buffalo, NY. “But I love Katie Phillips, I can’t be gay.” This was the mantra with which I breathed nearly every breath since puberty.
There is no doubt that I loved, and still love, Katie Phillips. Who wouldn’t love Katie Phillips? Katie Phillips was the hipper, sexier, funnier Kelly Kapowski. And it’s true we were, and still are, best friends. Back in high school, we would spend hours together. No one could, or can, make me laugh like Katie. She is my soul mate.
“But I love Katie Phillips, I can’t be gay. But I love Katie Phillips, I can’t be gay. But I love Katie Phillips, I can’t be gay.” The words were on repeat in the soundtrack of my mind throughout much of my youth.
I’m From Mercer, WI. I knew I was bi when I finally admitted to myself that the reason I had pictures of Kate Pierson from the B52’s on my wall wasn’t because I liked her clothes.
I did, and still do love her clothes. But through my confusing pre-teen and teen years, I couldn’t explain why I cut pictures of cute girls out of magazines with the same furor as I did cute boys.
I’m From Seattle, WA - Video Story. My family lived in Seattle and I went to college in Boston. And I really love my parents so it was more of an experience where I knew I wanted to become more of who I was going to be. That was part of the experience. So I ended up going off to school and I came out literally, like officially, I came out a month after being in college. My father at the time was the VP of a giant telecommunications company. There was a gay and lesbian and transgender organization in his company. So he went to them and said to them, “Hey, my son just came out and I have all these questions, and he’s answering some of them, but I don’t really know.” So he ended up becoming the liason between the LGBT organization that had their own work place issues and the president of the company.
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