So I was just watching a programme on KPTS about the Dockum Sit-in. About how those people, teenage Wichita High School East students, stood up for themselves by sitting down. They put their reputations, their honor, and likely their lives on the line to fight for what they believed in, peacefully. They secured their rights and the rights of so many others like them by ordering a Coke.
It makes me feel both proud and guilty. Proud that my high school was a second home to such great people. But also guilty, because that should be me. Why aren't my fellow East students and I out there winning our rights to marry, and serve openly in the military, and start a family? If they could do it, why can't I?
One reason springs to mind immediately: support. In the programme they spoke of how their parents, siblings, cousins, neighbors helped them do what they did simply by giving their approval and moral support. But I don't have that. If this were an "us vs. them," which I sorely hope it isn't, my family would be squarely "them" with my friends and I being "us." If I were to come out I would be lectured, berated, and likely kicked out. I'm fifteen. I have no way of supporting myself. And it really sucks, really really sucks, that I have to be this damn independent. No familial support for me. Which is likely why I consider East my home despite the fact that I don't sleep there.
East will let me walk the halls, will let me learn from the teachers and associate with my peers no matter my sexuality. Really, a family is only a family when it has unconditional love. My "family" loves me if I'm straight. And I love them if they accept me. But East, wonderfully diverse, unique, accepting (mostly), East, lets me be an Ace and be who I am.
Where was I going with this?
Anyways, I really wish I had the courage to stand up and do a sit-in at a chapel or recruitment office or something. But I'm too afraid. I'm afraid of the consequences, of how it would affect my education, my address, my life. The stakes were higher in some ways for the Dockum Sit-In kids; I doubt the police would threaten us for being gay and in the "wrong" place. But in others they're higher for us. Their parents weren't exactly going to shun them for being black.
In conclusion: I'm gay. I'm proud. But I'm scared.
