Conversations With Ben – A Public Service Announcement: Gay Youth
Astrology in Real Life…
From 2006 – Pedro is a pseudonym.
Ben is a life long friend of mine. 25 years or so. He a Scorpio, and a bi-racial, gay, cello player and teacher. He’s plays with various symphony orchestras and has been the musical director of a school district for more than twenty years. We’re on the phone here.
“Oh, Elsa. I have this one kid. He is such a mess. He’s a terrible mess and his mother doesn’t help. She always saying, wait’ll you get married and have kids, Pedro,” he clucked. “Pedro isn’t going to do that. Pedro is gay!”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Pedro is as gay as he could be and I just don’t know. These kids find out they’re gay and the guilt and the shame is just unfathomable. It’s unbelievably painful. And frightening! You just couldn’t believe how bad it is, Elsa. It’s so bad. And this is the age where kids start committing suicide. (Middle school). Some of of those kids are gay. And they wind up having to kill themselves because they just can’t cope. They just can’t come to terms with who and what they are. They can’t admit they are gay.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah. Well I gave him a cello. I just gave it to him. And I’m going to take it back if he doesn’t… well he just needs to start doing something. He’s not doing anything.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I probably won’t take his cello. I won’t do that to him. It’s just some of these kids don’t make it. And Pedro is one I am very worried about. And I have been working with him. And working with him. And working with him. And then finally he started to crack. It was time to admit something.”
“Yeah?’
“Yes. And he was going to tell me. He was going to admit something to me and I said, Pedro, you don’t have to admit anything to me. You don’t have to tell me a thing. You just need to admit it to yourself and that’s all. Who you are is your business, it’s none of mine…”
Be kind to gay kids, their lives may depend on it.
34 Responses to “Conversations With Ben – A Public Service Announcement: Gay Youth”
Elsa, my family (my kids and I are the family I am referring to) and I extend our love to all of our misfit friends. In fact, once they hang out with us they walk around feeling real regular. We all take pride in that. And some of the normal people we know, well, we open their minds a bit. Kids have it tough enough, I think.
Thank you Elsa. I agree that this is so important.
Lupa, mom to 4 extraordinary kids of various orientations.
i try to be kind to gay kids. oddly enough, i have 2 of ‘em, so i get plenty of opportunity to practice. 
I had a friend in high school that was having problems with being gay. We were in theater and there were lots of openly gay kids in our circle, but for some reason he just couldn’t cope. He died in a one car collision into a overpass pylon, no drugs or alcohol involved. And no one would ever say the word suicide, but I think we all knew that it was. So yeah, I do my best to be compassionate on many levels.
He must be a very special person.. Ben that is.
Be kind to all children so they all may thrive in their environment.
I was good friends as a kid with a boy who knew he was gay at a very young age. By the time he was in high school, he was out and proud. I was proud of him for being who he was in public.. in the early 80′s, that wasnt easy.
That’s soo sad. It’s true. Sometimes society’s, there peers in general, expectations on young people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered is so great that they really do feel like they can’t fit in or don’t feel “normal”. You feel isolated and think that no one would ever be able to understand what you’re going through. Then it’s truly about family. The reason why so many people are afraid to come out is because they fear that they’ll be disowned. It’s hard. Thats how I felt on many occasions. I’m glad to say that I’ve found a group called a GSA(Gay Straight Alliance) helped me and other kids out there, to find support. Such groups are soo important, I can’t put it in to words.
that’s beautiful, so beautiful.
i am absolutely in love with Ben, without ever having met him. he just *gets it* i think.
one of the cards at postsecret this week has to do with the issues around being gay during the holidays, and it really tugged my heart…
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/994/593/1600/501218/gay.jpg
none of us are ‘normal.’ i just wish people would stop pretending that there is such a thing… (heh. how aquarius is that?)
I agree with SF – thanks Elsa.
That gay people cannot be themsevles infuriates me. I’m not gay so I refrain from talking about it because I don’t believe I have a voice in this discussion. My attitude is be yourself no matter what and screw what anyone else thinks; fuck’em if they can’t appreciate you for who you are, all that you are. But that attitude can get you beaten, ostracized or killed… and it just infuriates me.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”
“Mislike me not for my complexion”
Merchant of Venice
“In the end, only kindness matters”
Jewel
re: L.E. (#11) – “I’m not gay so I refrain from talking about it because I don’t believe I have a voice in this discussion.”
The MOST IMPORTANT voice in this issue is perhaps the voice on NON-gays. I have always felt this strongly.
By all means, please do NOT refrain from voicing your beliefs and opinions. Your voice matters. Immensely.
xoxo
A gentle reminder to all – we must ALL speak up:
“In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me –
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
– Martin Niemoller
“I swore never to be silent
whenever and wherever human beings
endure suffering and humiliation.
We must always take sides.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
– Elie Wiesel
“We will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
I think we all have not only the ~right~ to speak up for each other, but an ~obligation~ to do so.
Love, SF
xoxo
Thank you for the quotations and you’re right SF. I communicate what I feel/think to people around me, (Mercury in Aries, I have no problem telling people off 
) but I should expand upon that.
All of us can take the time to ‘send a voice’ for those who are considered to be the least among us.
Thanks for the reminder, Elsa, and for this beautifully written post.
A little tiny bit of kindness and support can go a very long way.
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
Think about how true this is, how it might apply to different situations. It will give you chills.
This is so very important. We must be accepting of gay youth and hold them up as much as possible! Support is needed and I know from the front lines! This is a very important post and I am grateful for it.
Who says you’re not going to have kids if you’re gay?!
They have managed to reproduce up to this point, have they not?
Biologically speaking, if gay people couldn’t do so, the tendency would have bred out quite a while back.
We could get my FIL on the line. He’s a scientist and likes to talk about this, especially around fundamentalists.
Seriously, gay people can adopt children. There’s also the sperm donor route and so on.
In my humble opinion they make wonderful, dedicated parents.
We have a set of gay men living down the road here, and their daughter has the most wonderful wardrobe.
Both kids are lively, normal and happy.
Let me just weigh in here. I personally have a problem with those who are intolerant of others. Because of their race, religion, sexual or any other condition that might make them stand out from the crowd. I think it is important for the parents of those teens who are discovering they have a same sex preference be understanding. Intolerance is huge and it seems as time wears on people are becoming way more intolerant than ever.
mercingemini: right! That’s not ruled out these days any more.
But poor kid: realizing this in middle school and he’s got so many more years to go before he can move out. Sigh.
“Who says you’re not going to have kids if you’re gay?!”
I think the point was, this kid’s mother is speaking of her child’s life of going in a certain direction, a hegemonic path so to speak, which is a culturally accepted. A given. To deny the reality of the challenges gay people face–yes in this day and age– is to do a disservice to their lived reality.
More like: listen mama, your kid is hiding in plain sight and is suffering because of your assumption. Wake up. That’s how I read that.
when my little brother and I were in high school, my parents took in 2 kids that were gay – after their parents kicked them out of the house. :/
I suposse Ben read this blog so my message is for him and for those Pedros around… I have a friend, he is an scorpio and psychollogist. He told one occasion a child in a juvenile detention center, walking beside him said: -You know I killed someone? This scorpio-Sadge, which is very brave, without disturbing a hair of his beard said: Oh yeah? and what have you done valuable in your life and worth knowing?, that would interest me more.
The Pedro’s preferences are not a crime, although for many people in this society yes it is. However I don’t care which sex motivates or arouse him, nor so much that eating Pedro’s preferences…. So I could ask Pedro what do you want to be? What do you dream to be? Surely he haves some interest… Don’t feel sorry for him, and trust him, trust his capacity to cope, surely he will perceive this more than a extensive discourse. That means not forgive its flaws, I could treat him just as any kid….
Beautiful story. It is the biggest gift you can give a child to accept himself or herself as they are.
I’ve seen arguments from Catholic fundamentalists that argue that homosexuals can change their preferences. I don’t believe that. I have a cousin who’s gay, and I know that he didn’t choose it.
The Church says that homosexuals do not have to deny their preference and deserve to be treated fairly and with compassion, but they should remain celibate.
Now for anyone who doesn’t know the whole Church position, heterosexuals are also supposed to remain celibate before and even during marriage. I admit that this is overlooked in the media, which focuses on gay sex and not on “straight” sexual sins.
So to say that to someone who is struggling with their issues is nothing short of cruel to me. Have some compassion.
My first real boyfriend, at university, struggled with exactly this all his life, until well into adulthood. He was the last in the male line of two very high profile Middle Eastern families, and his father and also to a large extent his mother put enormous pressure on him to conform to the traditional idea of masculinity. This guy was ultra sensitive, an artist of huge talent and a great writer. He pretended to all the world he was wasn’t gay until well into his twenties – this was the mid/late 60s, and homosexuality wasn’t even legalised in the UK til 1966.
I was in a sense his victim in this; but far more importantly the unbearable tensions in his life totally destroyed him in subtle ways: they destroyed his sense of himself and he never recovered form those deep divisions.
A friend of mine was a drama teacher in the East End of London in the 70s. He was openly gay and quite camp, and his kids all adored him – he was not just a brilliant teacher but able to help many gay boys accept their sexuality in what’s a quite macho part of the city. It was very sad for such troubled kids when the authorities in the 80s decided schools didn’t need drama teachers, and he emigrated to Thailand.
Really appreciate what crazy-moon has to say on the subject. Understanding the kid is amazing. Feeling bad for him is not because it confirms what he feels about himself.
I agree that raising his strong points and making him feel valuable is the way to go. He is so so so not alone.
Ben is awesome.
Ben IS awesome.
Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project comes to mind here too. Every little bit (or big bit).
Thanks WaitWhat, that’s the idea
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Thanks for this ‘public service announcement’ Elsa.
We’ve come a long way, but we have a hell of a long way to go yet. Every little bit helps.
You are doing your part and it is immensely helpful.
May many join you (us) and take up the torch.
(This time of year is especially difficult for gays.)