Sam Goodyear, age 19
I was 9 years old, flipping through a magazine article about Spider-Man 3 when I stumbled across a picture of comic book heartthrob Mary Jane Watson.
“I’m in love with Mary Jane Watson,” I told a friend, and I meant it. Kirsten Dunst’s redhaired damsel was the most beautiful woman in the world as far as I was concerned.
“Okay,” said the friend in a hushed tone, before they promptly changed the subject.
That was the first time I felt that now familiar pang of shame. I learned that I should shut up about any feelings I had for girls. This wasn’t the place. And pretty soon I figured out that there wasn’t really any place at all for these types of feelings.
I felt that pang again in middle school, when I saw my friend in just her sports bra and my heart started beating so fast I thought the whole school might hear it. And again it came in high school, when I saw Alyson Hannigan in an episode of How I Met Your Mother and I wished I could marry someone like her. Then it was Pam from The Office and Kate from LOST, and pretty soon I was making my own Tumblr account where I could repost pictures of pretty actresses where no one that I knew could see them.
The first time I told someone I was queer, it was my last year of high school and I was sitting on my best friend’s grandparents’ couch watching Planet Earth. I paused the show to tell her, because I was going to need her full attention when I dropped this bomb. It felt like all of my suppressed feelings had welled up in my chest and I was about to lay them all on her.
“I think I’m bisexual?” I told her, drenched in sweat, my vision starting to tunnel.
She smiled. She said “okay.” And that was it. We kept watching Planet Earth. I asked her about it later, and she explained that it just didn’t change anything for her. She was proud of me, and she loved me, and nothing was different. But somehow, in all the right ways, everything was gloriously different.
I told people like rapid fire in the weeks that followed. My parents, friends, brothers – all the most important people in my life. They listened, and they loved me, just as much as they had before. Being out is amazing, I thought. Everyone seemed cool with it and I was finally embracing a part of me that I’d long kept hidden. I was marching in my own one-woman pride parade!
Okay — not exactly. But it was okay. The people that were important said if they didn’t understand it, they’d learn how to, and that it didn’t matter and they loved me the same. And although there was a little part of me that didn’t quite believe them, I was grateful to be accepted by the people I loved.
And then the summer came. It was time to go back to my traditional Christian summer camp. I’d been working there for years already, I’d been a camper before that, and I was aware of a clause in the staff contract that claimed homosexuality was sinful and not to be endorsed, but I figured if everyone else in my life had come around to the whole queer thing, maybe my camp could too! They’d probably take one look at my rainbow socks and my big ol’ queer smile and they’d forget they’d ever been anything but accepting of the LGBTQ+ community!
However, things did not unfold exactly the way I’d envisioned them. In fact, a few days into my summer, I was sitting across from a trusted friend who was telling me, in essence, that identifying as queer was wrong, and that I could still change if I wanted to. And this was only the beginning.
I cried on a friend’s shoulder that night and asked her in all sincerity if that girl had been right. I asked her if it was true that God was disappointed in me and if it was true that I needed to change. I’d seen it written in Youtube comment sections and on protest signs on the news, but it felt so much more insidious when I was face to face with it. I felt that feeling again – the one I’d felt that day my friend had dismissed my love for Kirsten Dunst like it was our embarrassing little secret. I was suddenly a seventh grader again, hiding magazine cutouts of Selena Gomez in between the pages of my diary. Although my friends at camp assured me that they loved me and that God did too, I’d already lost that part of me that had been so proud and unashamed.
The rest of that summer was difficult and heartbreaking. It turns out that not everyone buys a pride flag bumper sticker and starts watching more of The Ellen Degeneres Show when you tell them you’re queer. It was made clear to me, in the two months I spent at summer camp, that I would not be welcome back again, along with anyone else who identified as LGBTQ+ or disagreed with the camp’s attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community.
I was devastated. My Christian summer camp community had been a place where I’d previously been overcome with the feeling of belonging. I’d learned so much about how God’s love is unconditional, but now I was learning that there was one condition, and it was a big one.
In the past year, I have been untangling the web of negative feelings and self-loathing that comes with a rejection like that. I am learning to unlearn what I had been raised to think about people who are proud of who they are. I am trying to become comfortable in my very queer skin.
I know that I am very lucky. I am lucky to have a family who loves me, friends who will stick their neck out for me, and a school community that is so welcoming. In the next few months, I will take part in different Pride parades around southern Ontario. I will wear my rainbow flag as a sign that I am proud to be confident in who I am. I have been on a journey of learning to accept and love myself, and this Pride Month I will embrace pride – pride for who I am and who I love. I will march for everyone who can’t, and for everyone who feels alone, unwelcome, or unlovable.
I will march, and I will march unashamed.