Second in a continuing series about LGBTQ issues

Aja Davis (COL ’06) was used to feeling like an outsider. As a lesbian, she had learned to accept that flyers for campus mixers would show a man and a woman, that female singers on the radio would croon about needing a man, that people would forever ask her innocently, “So what’s the name of your boyfriend?”

What she didn’t expect was to feel out of place at Georgetown’s organization for LGBTQ students.

Yet when she first walked into a GU Pride meeting, she found herself a minority once again – not because of her sexual orientation, but because of the color of her skin.

“I felt very lonely when I first came, because it was all white men,” she explains. She adds that initially, the group seemed to address issues that pertained generally to white, middle-class, gay men.

But it was little better among her African-American peers. “I didn’t feel comfortable at BSA [Black Student Association] meetings, because all the events are so heterosexualized,” she says. “The black community is deeply rooted in the church. [Homosexuality] is seen as `the white man’s sickness.'”

A minority in both communities, Davis felt she truly belonged in neither.

Many other students report similar struggles with being both LGBTQ and having another minority identity, especially when that cultural background is not generally tolerant of homosexuality.

Monica Escobar (COL ’07) gradually has become comfortable with being openly lesbian on Georgetown’s campus, and has come out of the closet to her sisters. But when she speaks with her Guatemalan parents, sexual orientation is the last issue any of them will bring up.

“It’s the biggest taboo in Latino culture,” Escobar explains. “[Homosexuality] is still known as the `white man’s disease.’ It’s like, `You sold out your culture, you’re trying to be white.’ So I can’t be as involved in the culture because I’m seen as an outsider.”

She smiles ruefully. “In the process of coming out, you kind of give up your culture.”

Escobar would like to tell her parents – though she suspects they already know and don’t want to mention it – but she is afraid of “aggravating” the situation. “My mom is probably more conservative than the Pope,” she says. “She has this `It’s a chosen path’ bias . So my parents’ support has been lacking.”

Lin Chang (MSB ’05) is also the daughter of immigrants, and her cultural background did not include a ready tolerance of homosexuality. Having moved to the United States from Taiwan when she was 10, Chang realized she was a lesbian in high school, but didn’t come out to her mother until she was a junior in college. By that time, she had told all of her friends at Georgetown and was in a serious relationship with another woman.

It was Christmas break when Chang decided she couldn’t keep hiding her identity at home. Chang’s father was back in Taiwan for business, so she faced her mother alone and wondered how to put the news that was sure to shock her.

“I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth for the longest time,” Chang remembers. “You know how `homosexual’ sort of sounds like a disease in English? Well, it sounds even more like a disease in Chinese.”

She finally blurted out, “I’m gay.”

And then Chang’s Taiwanese, Buddhist mother went into what many LGBTQ students, from experience, wryly term “Catholic other Mode.”

“She freaked out – yelling, crying, telling me, `Get out of the house, I never want to see you again.'”

Chang apologized over and over, and finally went upstairs to her room. In the morning, the air was icy between the two of them, but her mother curtly served her breakfast as usual. “She had to be the good Chinese mom,” Chang laughs. “When she stops making me food, then I’ll start to worry.”

The feeling of being a minority within a minority doesn’t just apply to those LGBTQ students from different ethnic backgrounds. Lesbians, who presumably constitute about half of the homosexual population, also report that popular culture and fellow students sometimes appear more tolerant of gays.

“Gay men aren’t objectified the same way,” says Escobar, explaining how many straight men think of two women together as a sexual turn-on, and don’t take their relationship seriously. “There’s a substantial number of girls who self-identity as bisexual” when they may really be lesbian, she adds.

Kyle Holsinger-Johnson (COL ’06) agrees. “You don’t see many examples [of lesbians] in the Georgetown community,” she says. “Georgetown on the weekends is not a great place for lesbians. You don’t go with your girlfriend to a regular Georgetown party.”

And it’s not much different outside of the college scene, she explains. “There’s a degree of silencing for lesbian women on a national front in general. It’s like you’re already demoted two points because you’re gay and a woman, not just a woman.”

Adds Davis: “Women, I feel in general, are more underground.”

The grievances of women and minorities is something GU Pride is now trying actively to address. As co-president, Escobar says she noticed that the group at first “didn’t really cater to the needs of those who weren’t white and gay.”

But the group is working to organize more social events where LGBTQ students can hang out casually and get to know each other, conduct activities that will appeal more to lesbians (such as a recent “The L Word” premiere screening), and encourage more women and minorities to run for leadership positions.

So far, it appears to be working. At a recent GU Pride meeting, Aja Davis sat in her chair in a seminar room in Healy Hall. Surrounding her were about an equal mix of men and women, with faces that reflected the full spectrum of color. The topic of the moment was the group’s next social event, a dinner at Buca di Beppo followed by a viewing of “The L Word” premiere. After the group formulated plans, Davis raised her hand to change the subject. A particular issue had been weighing on her mind.

“Pride isn’t the `White Boys’ Club’ it used to be,” she says, looking out at the Asian, Black, and Latino faces that meet her gaze. “Does anyone feel underrepresented?”

At the front of the room, grasping a piece of chalk in one hand, Escobar nods in support. Nobody says anything. A few people begin murmuring, “No.”

Davis’s face breaks into a wide grin.

Closeted Students: `The Silent inority’

Tom Huddleston (SFS ’05) is not an ethnic minority, but for a long time he didn’t feel like part of the LGBTQ community at Georgetown, either. The tall, redheaded Regional and Comparative Studies major hails from the liberal enclave of Newton, ass., and he knew his family and friends would be supportive of his homosexuality. But he was planning to come out of the closet officially in college.

Once he came to Georgetown, however, “I encountered a culture of homophobia,” Huddleston recalls. “I heard all these homophobic remarks, like `That is so gay,’ or `So-and-so is such a fag.’ Most people were silent and inactive. Most people tolerated this speech.”

So, for much of his freshman year, Huddleston became part of the “silent minority” of Georgetown’s LGBTQ population: students who are still in the closet.

He looks back on that time now, having found the strength to accept his sexuality openly later his freshman year. But he was troubled by experiences he had along the way, with students who shut themselves in the closet and locked the door.

“I knew a kid in one of my freshman classes who I thought might be gay,” Huddleston remembers. Huddleston was looking for emotional support at the time because of his own sexual identity issues. So after weeks of watching and waiting for hints about the student’s orientation, Huddleston finally felt confident enough to invite him to dinner.

“I asked him where he saw himself in the next 10 years, and he said something about living in a nice Southern plantation house with a wife and kids and lots of cars.” Huddleston pauses, and his eyes widen in disbelief just at the memory of it. He grins. “Needless to say, our dinner date at Pizzeria Uno’s continues very awkwardly.”

The student later told Huddleston that he was “attracted to men, and wasn’t attracted to women, but he wasn’t gay.”

Over the next few years, Huddleston would watch his friend continue to struggle with his homosexuality, worry about his friends’ and family’s reaction, and come out of the closet briefly only to re-enter it shortly afterwards.

It’s a phenomenon with which Kevin Miniter (COL ’05) is all too familiar. He was once dating a student whose inability to accept his own homosexuality prevented the relationship from progressing further. After one of their dates, Miniter says, the student told him, “`Oh Kevin, this is so great. If only you were a woman.'”

Miniter shakes his head. “He’s going to hide it for the rest of his life.”

These men represent a much larger phenomenon at Georgetown, say openly LGBTQ students. “The most frustrating thing I found about Georgetown is the number of people who are still in the closet,” Miniter says. “Everyone here at Georgetown is just so goal-oriented. They know exactly what their life is going to be, and then they start getting these [homosexual] feelings . They have this conception that their whole life will end if they come out. They have this prison set up for themselves. And it hurts, just to see that.”

Matthew Fleming, a counselor at Georgetown’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services, says that students seeking help at CAPS for coming out issues is “not uncommon” at Georgetown.

“Being in the closet may contribute to feeling safer from judgment and prejudice, and may seem to be preserving certain important relationships,” he says

But there can also be negative psychological consequences to suppressing one’s LGBTQ identity, Fleming adds, such as “a sense of isolation, alienation, anxiety, depression, shame and the sense that one is living inauthentically.”

The pressure to keep one’s LGBTQ status in the closet can be especially acute at an institution like Georgetown, which is officially Catholic and attracts many students from Catholic backgrounds.

“I’ve seen kids coming out of Mass saying they think they’re going to Hell,” says Huddleston. “There’s just a lot of self-loathing. If you see your sexuality as something perverse and evil, you’re going to pursue self-destructive behavior.”

Alex Lacey (SFS ’07) is Roman Catholic, and struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with his religious beliefs. “In catechism class, we’re told that sin is something you freely choose to do,” he says. “[Being gay] wasn’t my choice. So I feel at peace with my spirituality there.”

To help their classmates with coming out issues, Georgetown students run a group called “Outspoken,” which meets weekly in confidential sessions. It is less like GU Pride and more like a support group, where students who are questioning their sexual identity can have a safe place to discuss these issues with their peers.

Liam Stack (COL ’05) has been a facilitator of the group since the beginning of his sophomore year. “There’s no real agenda,” he says.

People come to talk about a variety of issues: whether or not they are homosexual; if so, how to tell others the news; how to deal with ex-boyfriends or girlfriends of the opposite sex; how to reconcile their religious beliefs with their homosexuality, etc. Some people even decide they are straight after attending Outspoken, Stack says.

But for students who do believe they aren’t heterosexual, LGBTQ students overflow with advice, much of it born from hard experience.

“You first have to be comfortable with the fact yourself,” Lacey says. “Find someone you know who you can trust, and tell them . Find that little circle, and then a bigger circle when you’re comfortable and then a bigger circle, and work outwards. But you should never feel obligated to tell anyone.”

Huddleston agrees. “If you’re worried that someone won’t accept you, then clearly they’re not really your friend,” he says. He suggests making friendships with other LGBTQ students and seeking psychological counseling if necessary.

“If you have a negative experience, don’t run back into the closet,” Monica Escobar says. “You’re going to be much happier when you’re out.”