Kevin Jennings and rhe Rabid Right

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

> I also read an article on the Right's response to Kevin Jennings. I
> wonder if Obama will address their concerns.

I hope Obama does not.   It sounds like the conservatives want the
teacher to expose the boy to his family. They treat him to shame and
violate the common sense that the teacher gave him about safety.  The
fact that the boy now man wants to defend the teacher for the wise
counsel speaks volumes. 
 
In 1964 when I was teaching in boarding school, a student came to me
in tears.  "I have just blown my roommate and am so scared."  
 
"Did you enjoy it?" I asked.
 
"Yes," he replied, crying even more vehemently.
 
"Did he enjoy it?" I asked.
 
The student looked at me dumbfounded.  I softly smiled waiting for
his answer.   After a long pause, recovering from his tears, he
replied:
 
"I don't know."
 
"Then aren't you talking to the wrong person?" I asked. 
 
We chatted a bit more and had some tea and cookies.  I told him that
he was not the first, nor would he be the last to tell me of such an
experience.  I encouraged him not to make more nor less of the
experience than it was.  
 
At the time I was not out to anyone.   I doubt the student had any
sense that I was gay.  My experience and my identity were not the
point anyway.  I wanted to give him good counsel.   I did not assume
that he was gay.   He was isolated in a boys boarding school and
horny.  So was his roommate.  
 
Sometimes persons, whether gay or straight, find their first sexual
experience so powerful that they think they have discovered it, that
no one else has had anything happen like this.  Some feel isolated
and alone and frightened, especially if they have had sex that is
severely stigmatized. 
 
For many, sex of any kind is not an unmitigately pleasant experience
because they don't know whether they measured up to an ideal that
they have imagined about it.  For some the first experience was
clumsy, frantic, and far from their ideal, especially if they have
shaped their ideas from reading folks like Hemingway or watched
romantic movies in which the partner always falls into the lover's
arms just right for the camera. 
 
I wanted this 10th grader to address his initiation in the context of
his friendship.  The last thing I wanted him to do was to bring in a
truckload of speculation about how people outside that intimacy would
react to it.   He did not need guilt:  he needed kindness and respect
for his privacy.
 
On our 25th anniversary (1999), Ernest and I renewed our vows in a
service at Grace Church.  Among those present was a 50-year-old man
who had driven several hundred miles to be there.   I had not seen
him since I left the prep school where he had come to my apartment so
scared.  He had grown up straight.   I am honored to have been a
small part in his rites of passage.
 
Louie
Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018
973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary