Some background: While living in SLC and attending the University of Utah, I lived in an old renovated frat house where a young entrepreneur remodeled it for student housing. The landlord and his partner lived there and became a safe place for LGBT students which about half the occupants seemed to fall into that category. It was sometimes referred to as the "White house" as the paint color was rather uniformly white compared to the rest of the neighbors, but more often it was referred to as "the gay house". Even though I didn't fit in with the labeled demographic, I couldn't beat the proximity to campus, and I really enjoyed a number of the residents there. It made life interesting and entertaining. I ended up meeting a great variety of quality people there.
During one of my church ward's activities, a number of us split off to go out and have ice cream. There were about a half dozen new faces and people I had never met before. Two of the girls seemed pretty young and a little flirtatious. I didn't really put much thought into them, since they were likely Freshmen and would likely lose interest with me rapidly after discovering my odd social habits, music preferences, and rather disturbing sense of humor. Several in the group suggested going out to watch a movie. Someone from my house suggested going to see something it at our place. We figured a movie like Boondocks Saints would be a good litmus test to see if anyone there would have similar tastes and perhaps scare-off some of the more sheltered individuals who would quickly become offended by our occasionally twisted forms of entertainment. We all agreed and met at our place where we invited everyone in the house to watch the movie as well, which was pretty normal.
There was lots of socialization during the movie, and I quickly realized I didn't really have any chemistry with the girls that were invited. During a conversation with two of the young girls, it was apparent that one had very staunch traditional and conservative values on the topic of homosexuality. Since one of the characters in the movie was gay, this girl went on a short tirade on how homosexuals aren't "good people" and are inherently bad, thus couldn't be trusted. There was more that was being said, but I tried unsuccessfully to have her refrain from making judgements and politely told her to shut-up. Little did this girl know that about 1/3 the audience in the room was gay, and she then doubled-down on her views about "the gays". The movie was paused, and it got really silent. The girl realized she was now the center of attention and nervously chuckled to herself and tried reinforcing her opinions, but she was quickly interrupted by my landlord who very firmly, yet calmly explained to her that he is gay, and so is his boyfriend, and many in the room. Her blind hurtful opinions were offensive to everyone here, and she was no longer welcome in their home. She was then asked to leave immediately. It was very quiet and awkward, and she briefly looked around at the social group from the church function she came with, and seeing nobody to support or back her up, she sheepishly put her shoes on and departed.
Before the movie was turned back on, a number of people looked at me as if to try and explain her behavior. I suppose since she had been acting a little flirtatious with me early on, several assumed she was my girlfriend, but I was just as shocked as everyone else there. There were a few people under that assumption that expected me to go out and escort her home. I'm not sure if she drove there or had a ride, but I felt that it would provide her some good time to reflect about making homophobic remarks, and that reality isn't always an insulated homogeneous bubble of ignorant church-goers. I did feel a bit guilty that I had invited her and a number of others over having no idea that they were bold enough to expel their hurtful opinions with such confidence.
The whole experience later became the subject of a funny story which was told again and again during movie and/or game nights with great embellishment of course. It got better every time. I hope the girl took that harsh slap of reality to heart and reflected on some of her previous views, and hopefully changed them for the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment