University Daily Kansan, December 1, 1981
Page 3
oclose
in the
moment
halls,
place.
ity's
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Coming out
From page one
"That lack of tolerance often escalates to violence," he said. "I don't think it's specific to homosexuality; it happens to all minorities. But some differences are more costly than others."
"Because adults keep it hide, he doesn't realize how many teachers, lawyers, politicians and doctors are gay. He thinks he is the only one."
Because social attitudes toward homosexuality are negative, gays tend to hate themselves or have low self-esteem. Stereotypes that a straight society create are the only role models a gay has to follow.
"Since that stereotype only includes panies and sisters who become lonely old men who sit on park benches and accustom young boys, the gay just coming out is scared to death about what kind of lifestyle he'll lead," storms said.
Joe Baldwin, Overland Park freshman, said that was the case when he had a homosexual relationship in high school.
"I was extremely paranoid. I kept thinking; if they find out, people won't like me; they'll want to beat me up; teachers will give me bad grades; my parents will kick me out!" Baldwin said.
"JOHN AND I only had each other. One day we had a fight, so I went to a gay bar for the first time in my life. You don't know what it is like—intimidating. I stood there with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and I was pettified. I was only there for about an hour. But for the first time I realized wasn't the only gay person in the room. I was resting, well, maybe I won't have to hide in the darkness for the rest of my life."
Unfortunately, bars are about the only choice gays have for socializing.
"That's a big question for people just coming out," said a gay person who works at the Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas in the Union. "They call the office and say, 'I'm gay but I don't know where to meet people.'
"I tell them their best bet is to go to "bars in Kansas City or Topeka. Otherwise, there's no place in Lawrence—unless they want to come down to the office and spend some time there."
Budd agreed that there was no place for gays to socialize in Lawrence.
"We can't go to Gammons to meet people or meet other gays in classes, because we can't be aboveboard about it." he said.
"When you see a nice-looking man, you don't just ask him out. They aren't complimented if they're straight. They get violent if they're温柔. I'm straight." They get violent."
Telling parents that he or she is gay is probably one of the most frightening secrets a child can reveal. The prospect of confessing that secret can frighten the triumph that even gays already out in the college community avoid it.
"I've been out to myself since I was 13, but I still haven't told my parents," said Don, a gay who is active in the Gay community. "I don't often speak, and who often speak for the group."
"I'm afraid they wouldn't pay for school anymore. I'm their oldest son. They'd break out. I remember the Gay parade was on the 6'clock news a couple of years ago and my Dad said, 'Oh, isn't that Anita Bryant a wonderful person? Those dang quens, they ought to be shot and killed.'
I was going to DO, THEN TO HOWEVER, DON, who is going to law school next year, said he would like to tell them someday.
"I tell them when I have a job and
"I'm financially independent. That
probably won't be until I'm 30," he said.
Out come to parents is symbolic.
"It's scary for the gay because he's never quite sure what the reaction will be." Dialley said. "It could be, 'I hate you; I'll write you on the will; what did I do to deserve this?'"
Rejection from a friend can be painful, but rejection from a parent can be devastating.
"They accosted me over the phone," said one lesbian who told her parents about two months ago.
"I had gone home the weekend before to tell them but I just never had the right moment. I told my sister and she hinted to my parents. The conversation wasn't even comedic - it was a tide of angry words.
"They were screaming, 'You're a pervert. You're not a woman. Check
"They don't want to see me. They said, 'Don't come home.' They're talking about the next 40 years, not just this Christmas. My very liberal parents can't even transcribe their own words to respect us as a human being."
your hormones.' They think it's their fault.
"I know they love me. I'm still their daughter. I feel they're going to miss me. It may take 40 years, but I think they will."
"The saddest part is they're the only people who have discriminated or harangued me for being gay.
"Do I want them back? You bet I do.
But only if they can accept me as a normal human being. I don't think that's too much to ask."
SUCH EXTREME rejection doesn't happen frequently, however.
"Fear of what will happen is usually worse than what actually does," Dalley said.
"Parents have a tremendous capacity for accepting. They don't often understand, but they seldom reflect."
Julie Bananitis, the mother of a KU student from Chicago, said that her initial response to her daughter's shock, but that she soon accepted it.
"She told me just a few hours before she left," she said. "I was so shocked. I was driving her to the airport. She still doesn't know just how shocked I was. As I saw that plane take off, I thought, 'I just can't believe it.'
"On the way home I pulled over to the side of the road and I just screamed at the top of my lungs. I just sat there and cried and cried. I had to get that knot out of my heart before I went home.
"My other daughter and I talked it over on the phone. I started to cry. She said, 'What's the difference, mom?' I said, 'You're right. What's the difference.'
"I used to be afraid of gay people, I didn't even know there was such a thing until I was 24. I would have never met a same room with a person like that."
"A after few hours it was all over. I thought, 'This is not the first time and she is not the first person.'
BANAITIS SAID that although she had accepted her daughter's homosexuality, she did not want any of her relatives to know about it.
"I don't want them to know because they'll treat her differently. My cousin, the policeman, would make it hard for her. I'm sad for her because gay people are persecuted. I just don't want her to get hurt.
"When you hear another person baring her soul on you like that, you to have admire her. She took a chance in dressing. I don't ever want to see you again."
Some gays don't tell their parents because they think their parents already know.
"They know that I know that they know" is how Baldwin describes his relationship with his parents.
"We have a non-verbal agreement, but the love is there," he said.
Some gay students who have bared their souls to parents felt a burden lifted but continue to feel a void in their relationship.
"When I go home we sit at the dinner table and my parents ask my sister all about her boyfriend," said a KU senior who is a lesbian.
"Then they look at me with a blank face. They skip over me. I feel like a zero sometimes. They accuse me of being happy, but it's their fault I'm不愉快的."
FOR A FORTUNATE few, parents accept their children from the moment of coming out and continue to provide them unconditional love.
“This is just one small part of a whole personality,” said a Kansas City mother of her lesbian daughter. “It’s like a part of a jigsaw puzzle. It’s important, so important that we recognize the individual that has been there all the time.”
"Certainly I'm worried about how others will react to her. You always want to protect your children. But you can't do that without an open my generation. Thank God."
"I don't care what the relatives' reaction is. My bank balance isn't their affair either. Whatever lifestyle she chooses is her affair, not mine. If she's comfortable with it, if she's happy, that's all that's important."
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Grad student gets first Sheets award
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THE KINSAS UNION FOOD SERVICE
By MARK ZIEMAN Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Ten years of determination,
motivation and a great deal of work
have finally paid off for Colleen
MacLennan.
MacLeann, Albuquerque, N.M., graduate student, yesterday became the first recipient of the Doris L. Hull scholarship for a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the KU psychology department.
RECOGNITION for MacLeanman's four years of graduate work is not scarse in the psychology department.
The $400 award, which was presented at a ceremony in Fraser Hall, came as a pleasant tribute to MacLennan, who uses a wheelchair because of quadriplegia resulting from a spinal cord injury ten years ago.
In a speech prepared for the afternoon ceremony, Beatrice Wright, professor of psychology, praised the 25-year-old woman's "indomitable spirit" in surmounting difficulties to become a potential scholar,
"I'm very pleased that they're recognizing that I have been doing a lot of work to get where am I," she said. "The money is very nice also."
Mackleman said she planned to graduate in three more years and hoped to enter clinical practice with emphasis on hypnosis, guided imagery, sexuality and rehabilitation.
professional worker and a model for others in the field of psychology."
The award came at a good time, she said.
She is not "confined," nor has she "suffered" from her accident, she said. As a matter of fact, she hates those words.
"I'm at that middle hump where it's very nice to have any motivation to help get me over," she said.
However, MacLennan has had relatively little trouble getting through the four years, despite some people would label, confining
"I don't think of my wheelchair as confinement. I think of it as freedom—it gives me mobility," she said with determination.
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"After 10 years, you either get used to it or you give it up," she said, smiling.
"It's the thing that gets me around. I think of it as my friend." MacLennan said that she was "one of the most well-adjusted" handicapped people she knew. She was also a graduate scholarship to pay for new batteries for her wheelchair and perhaps a new pair of glasses.
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