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Out October: “I Can Remember Thinking About Men As Early As Kindergarten”

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Today’s Out October Project story comes from Chris Atwood. It is one of hope, courage, and yes, rejection too, but the ability to see beyond rejection to creating a life of love and acceptance of oneself.

Catch up on all the other stories of hope, courage and love here.

I can remember thinking about men as early as kindergarten.

Minus the stint at age four where I was convinced I had to have a suit to marry the little girl next door, I never thought of marrying or loving women. In regard to my childhood stunt, I think I was trying to operate on the fact that most grownups get married, and if you’re a little boy you HAVE to pick a little girl.

I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. In my neighborhood, there was one black couple and the occasional Samoan or Hispanic doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. There really weren’t even many children, which is surprising considering the high volume of Mormons in my neighborhood. I wasn’t raised Mormon, though my grandparents and Uncle were devout followers, because my mother is an ex-Catholic and my father is an ex-Mormon. Odd combination, I know. As a child we rarely went to church, though we have family bonds most of my friends think of as strange or very dependent. To me, it’s just family. I spent time with all four sets of grandparents as a child, and enjoyed everything I could learn from farming to first aid.

I suppose you could say I had a typical upbringing; I had a best friend, Dan for purposes of his anonymity, and we were inseparable. We spent almost every day together for almost five years, starting in kindergarten. We rode bikes, went sledding, watched movies and played video games. To this day I really can’t describe how I felt in regard to our friendship except that it was one of the most important things in my childhood. I’m an only child and never had a brother, except for Dan, and even then only for a time. We even, as young boys are apt to do, examined each other as we grew up, noting changes in our bodies that we weren’t familiar with and only had a vague understanding of.

When we were ten-years old and in the fifth grade, we both entered Boy Scouts. For whatever reason, I was elected to be the Patrol Leader for our “newboys” patrol. The only person who ran against me was Dan. He was also the only person who didn’t vote for me, not that I hold that against him. After that fateful election, everything in our friendship changed. I didn’t understand why at the time, and still don’t, but he became cruel — like something in his soul changed as he spurned me for beating him. (He was a great athlete, but I was always the model student and citizen it seemed).

As we entered sixth grade, changes became apparent to not just me, but to everybody as Dan began to terrorize me. It started with just simple bullying, which being chubby for most of my life, I was honestly equipped to deal with. Both in school and at Boy Scouts, the snide comments about what I was wearing, doing or being involved in became steadily more common. He even divulged my biggest fear to anybody who would listen — that I was really gay — though I am still thankful nobody took him seriously or really understood what he was trying to tell them.

I remember coming home at night and sitting in the bathtub and thinking of what it would take to keep my head under water long enough to make it all stopped. I even, in vain, tried a few times. Luckily the body has built-in mechanisms to protect itself against attempted drowning without weights. It’s crazy the different ways you can contemplate killing yourself, though I was never very creative at coming up with ideas. Going to school and hearing comments from him and his friends used to feel like a rope around my neck or a vice around my chest. It was hard to breathe. It was so difficult to understand how somebody I thought was my best friend could turn so suddenly and wish me such ill.

I felt like I couldn’t tell my parents what he was saying that hurt me so badly because I didn’t know what gay was. I didn’t think it was good, however. Nobody I knew, except girls, liked boys or wanted to know what they looked like. Gay was an insult thrown around on the playground. Whatever it was, it was bad.

Luckily, I had an opportunity that very few had to leave it all behind and start over again. My dad got a job in Texas and asked if we wanted to go there. I knew the capital was some place called Austin, and was told we’d be moving to Houston. I had no perception about what it would be like, whom I would meet, or what would happen to me. I just figured, “whatever it is, how can it be worse than here?”

I moved at age twelve. I thought it was the best thing in my life. Nobody knew my secret, not that I really understood it myself. My second year of middle school I even managed to score a girlfriend, though that lasted for about six weeks and I was just about as much of the “girl” in the relationship as she was. After her, I never really dated a girl again. I really didn’t think of anybody I knew except for my best friend at the time, Joe.

I held out for years, knowing I was at least physically attracted to men, but not really sure if I was attracted to women on any level. I’d never tried after my one girlfriend, but it never seemed right. Now, I can honestly say I loved my straight-best-friend Joe, but I knew it couldn’t be so I tried to bury those feelings as deep as I could. I knew he didn’t feel like I did, he wasn’t different. After trying to deal with my emotions, Joe moved, which helped, and I resigned myself to a life of solitude. I knew I didn’t like women, and didn’t have any idea what to do about men. Life alone was better than life spurned, right? I never let anybody know my secret because I was scared of encountering a Dan-like response of unbridled hate.

When I was seventeen-years old, I was pretty sure I knew who I was. I was able to say the words, “I am gay,” out loud. I made a last-ditch effort to date a girl who I thought was really cool, but she never really seemed interested. Maybe she knew? It was still a really expensive mistake for a seventeen-year old on a budget. It was silly. I knew that even if I got her into bed, I wasn’t sure I could perform. I’d avoided it successfully with a few other girls who were interested in the nerdy, cubbish types. Then I met Ben. He was the kid in high school everybody whispered about. They all thought or perceived him as gay. It turned out they were right, but it’s still sad he was talk of the town. We briefly dated, and through that experience my parents found an e-mail exchange between me and him. So now I was out to my parents, who turned out to be the most loving and accepting parents I could ask for, and their comfort level grew as time went on.

I’m not lying when I say it gets better, because their acceptance gave me the confidence to help restart the Gay Straight Alliance at Texas Tech University, I was the “token gay” columnist for the Daily Toreador, and the only one to write about gay issues plaguing the city of Lubbock, state and country. I went on to have a successful, albeit young, career and own a business. Those are big accomplishments for a kid who thought of drowning himself in the bathtub as a child.

When I came out, it got better. I decided after living so much of my life in fear, that I never wanted to be scared of who I was again. And since then, except on one or two rare occasions, I haven’t.

Life lived in fear isn’t healthy, and it is a curable condition. You have to be brave, even when you are so low you don’t have any idea how you’ll bring yourself up. Just think of what your life can be, and do what you have to do in order to stay safe, sane and alive. You’ll thank yourself for it later, I know I do.

Know it gets better guys and dolls. It’s hard — believe me. I don’t even have the worst stories to tell about the things that have happened to me, and I won’t pretend to. I had a privileged upbringing, was mostly off the radar from physical abuses all but once, and was able to get the acceptance of my immediate family and become a student leader. Regardless of your situation, don’t end it all. Take the time to help others get through their struggles, because if what I went through was hard, I can only begin to imagine what they are going through.

Remember, there are always options.
The Trevor Project: a 24-hour hotline for gay and questioning youth: 866-4-U-TREVOR (488-7386)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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