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Out October: “Truth Is, I Was Contemplating Suicide.”

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Today’s Out October Project story comes from Phil Reese, writer and contributor for The Bilerico Project and writer for Ameriqueer, who explains that sometimes it isn’t an actual physical bully pushing you over the edge. Sometimes it is you and your own thoughts that torture and torment.

Missed our other coming out stories? Catch up here!

I was never, exactly, an angst-ridden teen growing up. It might be more dramatic to claim I was some brooding introvert before I made good with myself and turned into this sloshing bucket of sunshine that ‘stands’ before you today. However, truth-be-told, I’ve always been the picture next to “Happy-Go-Lucky” in Webster’s New American. Nature over nurture.

When I was growing up someone was really awful, mean and cruel to me, used to torture me, fill me with a sense of doom and shame. It wasn’t mom. Mom could be shrill sometimes, and we fought almost constantly, but it was only because she wanted the best for me, and she could be abrasive and tactless, so when the two clashed with my short Mediterranean temper that I inherited from her (that seemed to ONLY be set off with her, for some reason), it was like throwing an ice cube in a deep-fryer. Things bubbled over quick, and it got very loud.

It wasn’t dad. Dad’s where I got happy-go-lucky from. I always just sort of imagined the inside of my dad’s head must have been a lot like The Yellow Submarine 24/7; only interrupted by my mom and I bickering.

Not my little sister. She worshiped me (still sorta does).

The jerk who secretly made my life a living hell was me. I was a popular kid–Student Government, Homecoming Court, football, baseball (not to mention fencing)–I had a great family, and I had few conflicts with people. However, for a lot of LGBT kids, the bully may not be external. I was one of those.

When I was only in Junior High, I saw a 20/20 special about a doctor in New York who claimed to be able to change queer people to being straight. They showed this guy with a wife and kids who claimed he’d be full-on gaygaygay just a few years before. I wanted that. When my parents were at work one day, I called information and got the Doctor’s phone number. I called his office, hoping he could tell me what I could do, but when his receptionist answered, I freaked out and hung up. I saved his number and planned to try again someday. I’m glad I didn’t.

October of my Junior year, my guidance counselor called my parents to tell them I was on suicide watch. Happy-go-lucky Phil–Sunshine, as some teachers called me–had been writing some really dark stuff, and some friends found it in his locker, and promptly took it to the office out of fear.

Truth is, I was contemplating suicide. I’d been thinking about it for years, and no one knew. I came out my Sophomore year of High School in Catholic School to the biggest “So What” in history. Though my friends had all accepted me, I still hadn’t.

See, I was out, but I didn’t really know any other out gay people. When I’d come out, the only friends that did reject me were those ones who had been in the closet with me. When I threw open those closet doors, they feared being implicated by association. I got shunned. So though everyone loved me, I felt sort of like an island, much like Kurt on Glee. Being the ‘Token,’ is sort of a burden iself.

That year, though, I began staying after school and just chatting with the only openly gay teacher in our school, Mr. Z. Mr. Z told me about coming out and leaving his monestary, being viciously attacked when hired on as Religion teacher at Father Gabriel Richard High School, and staying above the fray and being true to yourself. He helped me reconcile my Catholic upbringing with my realization that despite years and years of frantic tearful prayer, I wasn’t going to be able to change myself. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

That summer, I met my next gay mentor–my gay ‘big brother,’ Christopher. Christopher gave me my first literature on being a gay youth–the original 1 in 10 Teenagers, and some other books about famous gays in history, how to have safe sex, what to do when your family finds out, and where to go to find more people like you.

I also found the internet that year. AOL chat became a huge escape and relief for me. I was even able to do research on the gay-friendliness of my potential colleges, and the existence of any LGBT programming there.

I choose to go to college at Central Michigan University. I got a job in the hall I lived in, I joined the community council, I wrote for the newspaper, and I got involved in the LGBT community. By October I had a huge group of accepting and affirming friends–straight and gay–that helped me dismantle those demons, one by one. By the time I left, I’d made a name for myself nationally for my local LGBT leadership, had become a well-known leader of the local LGBT community, and helped guide hundreds of LGBT youngsters to a stronger, healthier sense of self.

Now, October means a lot to me. It’s not just a celebration of LGBT history, its a celebration of my own history, and coming out of the pain and suffering of self-inflicted violence and hatred to an awesome place of love and affirmation. Use this October to start building your October love this year. Embrace all those awesome things about yourself, all your awesome talents and qualities, and fall in love with yourself and your journey.

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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News

Election Denialism Embraced by ‘Large Proportion’ of Trump’s Followers: Report

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13 hours ago

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May 2, 2024

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Since at least 2012 Donald Trump has been engaging in election denialism. Now, a tenet of the Republican Party, the refusal to accept official election results they don’t like is ingrained in a large number of his followers.

“I think that the powers that be on the Democratic side have figured out a way to circumvent democracy,” Darlene Anastas, 69, of Middleborough, Massachusetts, told NBC News. The network “spoke to more than 50 Trump supporters, most of whom said they don’t believe Biden can win legitimately in November.”

“Poll after poll,” NBC also reported, “has found that a large proportion of the Republican electorate believes the only reasons Joe Biden is president are voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks, buying into former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.”

NBC spoke with 72-year old George Crosby, from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, who said, Democrats “cheat like crazy” (video below).

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“I think they cheated before, and I think they’re going to try to do it again, because they’re a bunch of communists,” Fitzwilliam added.

38-year old James Russon of Eagle Mountain, Utah told NBC, “There’s no way Biden could legally … win without unfair means.”

“He added that the only way Biden could prevail would be through ‘cheating’ or ‘a lot of deceased people voting.'”

62-year old Randall Minicola of Las Vegas said it would be “impossible” for Biden to win. “I don’t think he’s got a following. I mean, you look who’s behind him — the only thing he’s got is ghosts behind him. That’s what I believe. Where’s the supporters then? Are they in the basement with him? I don’t think so.”

NBC News did not report on where these particular GOP voters got their information or how they came to believe these claims, but it did note the “possibility of another election in which large numbers of Republicans refuse to accept a Biden victory has also been stoked by influential conservatives.”

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Trump’s election denialism is so strong that in 2020 CNN published “A list of the times Trump has said he won’t accept the election results or leave office if he loses.”

Election denialism continues to be spread throughout the right.

“A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world unless there’s fraud,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in March, NBC noted. Carlson, a purveyor of conspiracy theories, has spoken very positively about Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, and against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Numerous studies and fact checks have found mail-in voting to be safe and secure, with little opportunity for fraud, yet just last week Carlson, like Trump, was claiming massive election fraud. Undermining Americans’ faith in democracy was a main goal of Russian President Putin’s 2016 attack on the U.S. elections, according to a 2017 report issued by a group of U.S. Intelligence agencies.

But just last week Carlson claimed, “About one in five mail-in ballots in the last election was fraudulent, handing Biden the presidency. We know this because the people who committed the fraud have admitted it in a new poll.”

A portion of NBC’s report from Thursday also appears in this January 2024 NBC News video.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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News

Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won

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17 hours ago

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May 2, 2024

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Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.

In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.

The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”

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“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.

In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.

“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”

Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.

“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”

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In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”

He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.

Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.

After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”

“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter

One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.

Watch the video above or at this link.

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‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

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20 hours ago

on

May 2, 2024

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President Joe Biden made rare, unscheduled remarks from the White House Thursday morning, denouncing the recent violent protests on college campuses, and telling Americans there is “no place” for antisemitism anywhere across the nation. He also denounced “hate speech” and “racism,” while declaring his support for the right to peacefully protest.

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” President Biden declared. “There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said strongly. “Peaceful protest is.”

Stressing “the right to free speech,” and the people’s right “to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard,” President Biden also declared the importance of “the rule of law.”

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“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” the President also said, praising the ideal of peaceful protests, which he said are in the “best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.”

“But,” he added, “neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society and order must prevail.”

America is a “big, diverse, free thinking and freedom-loving nation,” Biden said, denouncing those “who rush in to score political points.”

“This isn’t a moment for politics, it’s a moment for clarity.”

“It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he warned. “Threatening people, intimidating people. instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish a semester and their college education.”

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“Look. It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions in America. We respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence. Without destruction, without hate, and within the law. And I’ll make no mistake. As President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you the American people. My obligation to the Constitution.”

The President also responded to reporters’ questions, including saying he saw no need to call up the National Guard.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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