Drawn Together

I once had a friend of mine ask me how my first girlfriend and I found each other when everyone in the Mormon community is so closeted. I have often wondered how out of all the girls that came to school that year I lived across the hall from the one girl who would say yes. I've never understood it. My answer to him was that I was lucky. Years down the road I would meet other people in USGA only to find that we had been in classes together throughout the years and just never conversed. I've recently found out that at least three out of the six guys I hung out with everyday of freshman year are gay. The nail in the coffin for me was I discovered my best friend from elementary school is also a lesbian.

I often go and speak to classes around campus about my experience of being a gay Mormon at BYU (if you want me to come talk to your class, ask your teacher) and something we always say is that if you are sitting there thinking you don't have any gay friends, the truth is you do and they just haven't trusted you enough to tell you yet. Every time I said this I always thought I was the gay friend. I never thought there was someone waiting to come out to me. I only wish I had trusted more people and talked about it more before now. The guys I knew freshman year have all been best friends and roommates for 5 years (excluding time for missions) and they are just now coming out to each other. I can only imagine the type of support we could have been for each other, and I'm sad we went through it alone instead. I asked one friend why he thought we never talked about and discovered it before now and he simply said, "I wasn't ready to talk". Looking back, I'm not sure if I was or not, but I am glad I had these guys as friends. Somewhere inside they understood me, whether I realized just how much or not. Even knowing my childhood friend is a lesbian makes me realize I was never truly as alone as I thought. I like to think that had I not moved away we would have been the support the other was looking for. After twelve years we finally are.

I have a friend back home who is not gay, but she seems to be a magnet of sorts. We joke that she's really a gay man at heart, because gay men love her and vice versa. Every boy she started to like in high school would come out to her soon there after. For a long time she had a crush on my brother and was afraid to tell him because she was afraid he would turn gay. I used to tease her that she even came all the way to BYU and somehow found all the gay boys out here. Little did I know I would one day add myself to her list of gays. When I came out to her I remember her saying "WHAT! Are you serious? Why me!?" She doesn't have an issue with my being lesbian. It was more of a joking commentary of the thought "well, here's another one". I think there is just something about her, something felt but not seen, that lets us to know she is a good person and safe place.

As a scientist I have been taught that the universe is ever expanding and entropy is always increasing. So how is it that in this chaotic world, against all the odds, the gay Mormons find each other? Is it that we can sense each other somehow? A sixth sense perhaps, like a subconscious gaydar? What is it we sense in each other?

What ever it is, I truly believe that there is something fundamentally different about gay people, specifically LDS gays. We are, after all, a peculiar people within a peculiar people. We have grown up seeing the world in a different way and that has helped shape who we are. We sense that in each other, and others can too, even if they don't quite know what it is. What ever the answer is, my hope is that we continue to find each other and together create that safe haven we're all searching for.

~Bridey J