Out October: How Was It Being Gay In Bible-Belt Missouri?
Today’s Out October Project post comes from New York-based freelance photographer Charles Ludeke. He shares his process of coming to terms with his sexuality and he also adds a note to all. “Life is what you make it.”
It’s easy to stereotype things you don’t know. Being new to New York, a lot of people are in awe of the fact that I’m from Missouri. Most know nothing of it, let alone where it is. Then when I tell people I’m gay, they’re equally shocked.
“How was it being gay in Missouri?” I frequently get asked.
A fair question.
I grew up in Springfield, which is the buckle of the Bible Belt. And I mean it– the BUCKLE. The Assembly of God denomination has its headquarters there (for those unfamiliar, Southern Baptists call them crazy, but they’re not quite fundamentalists.) I’d say at least ninety-five percent of the town is white. For a town of 200,000, it was very white, very conservative, very Christian and very middle-class. My family and I would joke that when a new building was built, it was either a church, a bank or a restaurant. It was a town many people flocked to in search of The American Dream. Maybe for them it was, but for a closeted, non-Christian, non-conservative teenager? Springfield was something else.
Surprisingly enough, when I did decide to come out in my senior year of high school, I had a fairly easy time. Well, besides the typical inner turmoils we endure when finally being honest with others about who we really are.
“You told them?!?!” I remember being so angry at a friend for telling people that I was gay. In my mind, I told that person because I felt a certain sense of trust. I guess in their mind (it happened with more than one friend), it wasn’t that big of a deal. They also didn’t have to live it.
I started realizing I was attracted to men when I was twelve. I had the next five years to wrack my brain over being gay. I struggled with the sexual desires that my classmates certainly wouldn’t relate to. I didn’t talk about how great some girl’s tits were. I also grappled with trying to find some semblance of normalcy (like every other teenager.) In a school of 1,500 students, I’d say less than five were out. At the time, I didn’t feel that I was like the guy who straightened his hair and wore mascara. I was in the top eight at the state swimming championships on multiple occasions, I was on the principal’s honor roll, I was in yearbook. In my mind, I was a lot like any other kid. So being gay, and having only stereotypical associations of what was gay, fucked with my head. But like I said, it’s easy to stereotype what we don’t know. And I didn’t know anything about being gay.
So when my friends told other friends that I was gay, I freaked out. I was livid. Something that I had internally wrestled with for so long, they shared it with others like talking about what they had for lunch. It was hard not to be upset. Thankfully, none of my friends reacted negatively. None. Having grown up in such a conservative and Christian town, I feared the worst (isn’t everything the worst in our minds?) One of my teammates even called me one afternoon because he had heard people saying I was gay and he wanted to hear it from me, he didn’t want people talking badly about me if I wasn’t. When I told him I was, he said he had my back! People can really surprise me. I had so many friends that were there for me. No one harassed me. My friends were still my friends. No one cared. It was all in my mind. I was very, very lucky.
When college started a few months later, I stayed in Springfield so I could swim. During the first week or two, I met some guys that I thought I wanted to be friends with. But I reverted back to my closeted self. They talked about chicks, tits and had bad senses of humor. I even put up a poster of some bikini-clad girl on my dorm room wall! How pathetic. Luckily, I regained my sensibilities quickly. I knew this was regressing the progress I had made when high school ended and over the summer. So I found new friends. That’s when I met Will. He changed my life forever.
For Will, being gay was a non-issue. He was just himself. Like it or leave it. He didn’t try to impress. He just did his own thing. I had an incredible amount of respect for him. I was in awe of his confidence, the love he had for himself and his overall aura. It was contagious. I started being more comfortable with my sexuality, more confident in who I was and I finally shared interests with a friend. No more talking about having sex with women! What a relief. I didn’t have to sit there and act like I cared. Because when we hung out, I did care.
Besides learning to be more appreciative and loving of myself, Will introduced me to gay social outings. We went to some house parties with the small gay community from our school, I joined the LGBT group on campus and I went to my first gay club — S4 in Dallas. I even had my first boyfriend that year! College was such a 180 from high school. It was so freeing.
But I didn’t just hang out with Will and our other gay friends. I was on the swim team, and these were the people I spent most of my time with. We practiced together 20 hours a week, ate our meals together and lived together. Like the friends I shortly spent time with at the beginning of school and with my friends in high school, being with these guys was like being in some weird hyper-masculine fraternity. Guys, particularly athletic guys, are in a constant drive to prove their manliness. Besides their endless talks of women, the stuff they talked about and were interested in didn’t phase me. They were boring. For the first month, I didn’t tell anyone on the team but a few girls. We had our team initiation at the end of September and the guys put us through the team’s silly rituals. At the end of the night, we were in one big circle and the new swimmers had to say who on the girls’ team we would have sex with.
“Oh God,” I thought.
I was last. When they turned to me, I balked in embarrassment. A few encouraged me by saying that they didn’t care. So I pointed to one of the guys and said him. They all laughed. So that was it. I outed myself (kind of.) Another surprising night, none of them gave me shit for it. They just asked how hot I thought they were, and what number they were on my “sleep with” list. Typical guys. I was just glad it went well.
Another unexpected response happened that year (and has occurred since.) One of the guys from that first group of friends I made at school (we were still friends, just didn’t hang out regularly) told me that he was really glad he met me. He explained that before he knew me, he had stereotypical ideas of what gay people were. But, he told me, I was “normal.”
It’s kind of a funny thing to say, and I imagine other people would’ve responded with “What does that mean?” But I understood. It brought me back to my closeted days trying to figure out myself. I remembered not feeling like the other out gay guys at my high school. I felt more mainstream. My friends saw in me what I saw in myself. I do exhibit a fair amount of stereotypes in my own right (my music taste, anyone?), but I am a fairly middle-of-the-road kind of guy. I appreciated his compliment. I was glad I could make a difference just by being myself. Simple enough, right?
Since then, I’ve made it a point to let people know I’m gay. It’s not a matter of “flaunting my sexuality.” I merely want people to get to know a gay person different than what they see portrayed on TV. My sexuality is as different as someone’s skin tone or hair color. It’s a part of us. This is my activism. I’m not a marcher. I don’t hand out fliers. I don’t lobby. I build relationships. I make connections. People will change quicker than laws. It’s easy for people to stereotype and make negative assumptions of gay people when they don’t know any. But when more of us are willing to come out and speak up, then more people will be able to have positive associations with gay people that know and that they care for. It’s up to individuals to make a change.
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Addendum: I wrote this in mid September, before the recent upswing in teen suicides and the subsequent “It Gets Better” campaign. The phrase is slightly misleading. For those who aren’t out, or are out and still struggling: life doesn’t simply “get better.” You have to make it better.
In high school, I had a pretty rough time. I didn’t like or understand my sexuality, I was constantly condescending to people and I had a negative attitude. That’s what made me miserable. So I changed myself. I began to accept the fact that I was gay, I started treating people with respect and I tried my best to find the positivity in every situation. I love to laugh and smile; it completely changed my mood.
Life got better because I put in the effort to make my life better. I found the things in my life that I love and surrounded myself with them. I found the things that weighed me down and rid myself of those. I love my life, but I wouldn’t if I hadn’t taken steps and time to make it the way it is. Like Ru Paul says, “If you don’t love yourself, then how the hell will anyone else?” It’s true. I learned to love myself, now plenty of people love me too. If you want your life to be better, make it better. You’re the only one who can do it.
You can follow Charles on Twitter.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
