By Barrett White
“It gets better” is more than a tired saying that gets tossed around by advocacy groups and celebrities on National Coming Out Day. “It got better” is my personal truth, and I believe that many other young LGBTQ people in the South have also found their “better” by persevering in the face of a cultural climate that has traditionally worked against us. Despite what others may think, we do thrive here.
I was born and raised in the Houston area, with most of my childhood spent in Katy—a Houston suburb west of the city. Katy, like many other southern suburbs, is a favorite of the religious right. It’s also home to one of Houston’s largest churches—Second Baptist—where my family began attending when I was 16.
To give you a little background on my religious heritage, my paternal grandparents are Catholic. My dad, for most of my life, was not a very religious man. My birth mother left when I was two, and my step-mom and dad, after being together since I was four, finally bought a house and moved in together when I was 10. For the first time, I had a real, live-in mother figure and two brothers. My step-mom—whom I only ever refer to as “mom”—was a horse of a different color. A confident Tejana, she was a practicing amateur Pagan and introduced me to the light brujeria that had been practiced by the women of the family for generations. “Do no harm, but take no shit,” was the actual mantra we lived by during this simple time in my life (though I admit, we did not use such vulgar terminology). She showed me the tarot for the first time and introduced me to the simple “spells” children could master. My older brother and I didn’t get our first pentacle until we could recite what the points represented.
When I was a junior in high school, we made the religious change into the Baptist faith after being invited to a Mother’s Day sermon with family friends. My younger brother was drawn to the church, and my dad—who was raised Catholic—recognized this. Despite her previous affiliations, my mom was also close to Catholicism from various parts of her upbringing, so we began the transition into the church. A month in, we were baptized.
As I mentioned, Second Baptist is one of Houston’s largest churches, and is sometimes referred to as a televangelist mega-church. Let’s just say—in a time before marriage equality when the evangelists were actively preaching against homosexuality—it wasn’t the most welcoming atmosphere to reveal my truth. As protests erupted across the country and circuit courts wavered, the pastor preached archaic AIDS statistics from the 1980s, warning that gay people wouldn’t live past their mid-forties. He was really just trying to save us, right? I decided my short-lived stint with the Baptist faith was over.
I graduated high school at 17, and by the time I was 18, the fear of what was to come was overwhelming. I craved assurance that I was going lead a fulfilling life, and it became obvious that to do so, I had to stand up for myself. A sleepless night left me searching Google for some comfort at a time when I still didn’t think coming out was an option. I stumbled upon a musical called Yank! about a young gay reporter during WWII. I contacted the creators asking where I could find the soundtrack, as it was a new musical and only a demo existed. They sent me a copy, and what I thought would simply be good listening turned into a strikingly heavy storyline. The songs made me wonder if I could ever be as brave as the real men whose stories had been compiled to write the musical. Granted, the American climate of the 1940s was vastly different than 2011 Texas, but it was through this story that I made the decision to come out to my friends and family.
My friends were easy. I snuck out with my closest friends from high school after work one night. We sped down Interstate 10 in Jennifer’s red pick-up that she’d named Gary. She screamed and told me she loved me. Trevor said something that was overwhelmed by Jennifer’s scream.
At home, things were not as simple, and I entered a depressive state that would overflow into my twenties. The climate in my home ended my first relationship and, mentally, drove me further downward. Normally, I would glaze over the details of this time period in my life as though everything came out peachy—but that’s not the truth. Someone out there—especially those coming from potentially volatile communities—may need to hear that I was not afraid to seek low-cost professional counseling at my local LGBT community center to help get myself into a healthier mental state. I surrounded myself with impressive, inspiring people who showed me what it means to be strong and to move forward. I celebrated my fourth anniversary with a guy who loves me no matter if I’m holed up inside my head or enjoying life outside of it. My family and I may not see eye-to-eye on many issues, but we’re healing. It gets better. It really, really does.
In his work, Refugees in Amerika: A Gay Manifesto, Carl Wittman talks about “gay refugees,” who seek refuge in more tolerant large cities—specifically San Francisco. Houston is no San Fran, but it is without a doubt a solid blue dot in the sea of red that is conservative Texas. Like many before me, I found myself living in Montrose, Houston’s most predominantly LGBT district, taking in the sights, the art, the people, and the atmosphere that told me—for the first time in my adult life—that it was okay to be me. I spent way too much money at pop-up art shops and went to so many drag shows, familiarizing myself with the pioneers of our culture in the eccentric district I called my new home.
This is what being a gay man in Houston, and consequently the South, is to me. It can be tough—like when a customer at the café where I worked told me not to prepare her food because she didn’t want a “fag” touching it, or when I was verbally harassed at a gas station two days after Trump’s election. But it is also uplifting—like watching Beaumont, Texas hold its first-ever Pride parade; celebrating the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision with record-breaking numbers of Houston Pride goers; or having Houston’s LGBTQIA+ community come together following the shooting in Orlando.
My first boyfriend and I once spoke about the trepidations we had about being gays in Texas. Without flinching, he told me, “There’s some level of pride we all need to have, some level of visibility—for those who can’t.” That’s never left me. Yes, this is the South. But we are neither silent nor passive. We don’t all flee to the East or West Coast. We’re here on the “Third Coast,” too. We exist with passion, community, and strength—and we all have stories to tell.
