- November 18, 2024
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His name was Jesse. I can’t write his full name, because I couldn’t track him down for permission to use it. But his name was Jesse, and he sat across from me in Ms. Akremi’s fourth-grade class back in Montclair, Va.
Jesse wore colorful scarfs and talked differently than my friends did. His go-to winter accouterment was a purple turtleneck.
One day in class, I lashed out at him. I don’t remember the exact words, but I’m pretty sure I said something like, “Why don’t you go back and play dolls with your mommy!” The situation escalated. Quickly. He screamed back at me, and I probably backpedalled (my MO in any conflict), until the teacher separated us.
I didn't understand why Jesse wasn't trying to play the societal role I was so adamant on auditioning for. I knew I didn't like it. What I didn’t comprehend at the time, was that, at the age of 10, Jesse was gay.
Derrick Gordon — a basketball player at the University of Massachusetts — came out on Wednesday. He did so publicly in an eight-minute, 31-second interview with ESPN’s Kate Fagan. The admission makes Gordon the first openly-gay Division I men’s basketball player.
If my choice of the word admission (like he copped to murdering someone) didn’t trip you up, well, then you’re part of the problem.
I used to think homosexuality was wrong, unnatural — a sin. I thought so because of how I was raised: Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent for four years, pontificating Dominican nuns (nice ladies, really), and an old-school dad.
As I grew up, my mind changed for the same reasons. My viewpoint shifted as I sat in the LoMonaco family room with my dad, watching grainy, black-and-white 8mm film clips of German tanks blitzing through Poland in World War II. The voiceover on the History Channel broadcast told me that Hitler and the Nazis rounded up the Jews, the disabled and — homosexuals.
Then, another voice — one that I respect much more — commanded my attention.
Dad stared me down as he told me, “Joey, all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Flagler Palm Coast High School has an enrollment of nearly 2,400 students. About 600 student-athletes participate in a wide range of sports, from bowling to basketball to baseball.
The overwhelming odds are that a few, a handful — fifty — boys and girls wearing Bulldog uniforms are gay.
Let’s make a world where they don’t have to go on national television, making a spectacle under bright lights just to say who they are. And say it proudly.
