 Me, March 1966 | Born
in Ohio in 1964, and raised in Central Missouri, I was the
second
son of four siblings; two sisters followed me. In
the early
1970s we moved to Centralia, Missouri. My parents were
interested
in homesteading, being self sufficient, organic gardening and heating
with wood. I enjoyed a wonderfully unorthodox childhood -- we
lived in a tent for a while as our house was being built. On
that
small "homestead" we had most every farm animal and pet
imaginable. Our house was called the "menagerie".
One of my
favorite pets was a pigeon "Gwendolyn" that I raised from a squab,
feeding her Cream Of Wheat through a straw. She
slept in a
box by my bed and walked to the back door every morning to spend the
days outdoors. Every night I called her and she flew to the
door,
walked to her box and hopped in for the night inside. I am
thankful to my parents for raising me immersed in nature and fostering
my love of animals,
plants and the environment.
Nature has always been my solace, and my center. I vacillated between wanting to be a biologist in the Amazon River Basin, an Entomologist, Botanist, Scientist , Archaeologist, writer, horse breeder. I was a voracious reader and delighted in learning about the Natural World. We were allowed to watch very little T.V. as children, and were always admonished to "go outside and do something creative". I think this was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me. I never remember being bored once in my life! I was always too busy discovering the world around me. I was a happy child until the advent of High School, when the social stratification of teenagers occurs. By the age of eleven I had realized I was gay, although I did not have words for it, or know what it meant or that it was an option for me -- I just knew that I had a crush on Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Jaws! |
| By age fourteen I
had words (hate speech) to describe who I was on the inside:
"queer, faggot, homo." I was hated by my peers and hated
myself
for being unable to be straight or "normal".
According to Mental Health America
non heterosexual youth “hear anti-gay slurs such as
“homo”, “faggot” and
“sissy” about
26 times a day or once every 14 minutes.”
I would say that
statistic is correct, and in retrospect I am astounded that the
teachers and parents in my life allowed this to go on.
Throughout
High School I was very much alone in the world. Every day was
like running the gauntlet of verbal and physical abuse. I
lived
to get on my horse and ride until sunset each night. "Be home
before dark" I was always told. These horseback rides were a
transcendent escape from the pain and reality of my life and its
struggles. As I galloped my horse at top speed
through the
countryside I was suspended between the gravity of earth and the
weightlessness of space. This metaphor for the human
existence
has been the central theme for my art and poetry all of my life. Fragment of a poem dated 31 December 1988, the context was ice skating on a bitterly cold winter night. "The
silence of eternity looms in my ears -- the breathing of the stars. The cry of my soul ascends the crystal air. Trees cast their bare arms to the sky longing for the divine embrace, and spill a dark filigree across the opalized lake where I flee these many clamorings. I am an inkblot racing through this excruciating void between frozen earth and the vacuum of the sky." | 
My Appaloosa
mare
"Jody" and I circa 1980 |
 Of the estimated 1.6
million homeless American youth, up to 42 percent identify as lesbian or gay. —National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in collaboration with the National Coalition for the Homeless. PDF | "—Adjust to the fact that you are no longer our son"  |
Painting in Chance Gardens, Centralia Missouri Photo courtesy Centralia Fireside Guard, Tim Flora photographer |
After my miserable High School years I
attended one semester at UMC Columbia as a Pre-Journalism
student. My finances and personal life fell apart, and I
found
myself on my own at eighteen years of age when my parents confronted me
about my sexual orientation. My father told me that
homosexuality
was a “communist plot” to destroy America and that
I had
been brainwashed by T.V.. "Adjust to the fact that you are no
longer our son" were the parting words that would resonate in my heart
for years to come. Being shunned by my siblings and parents
was a
profoundly painful experience, if I could write a story about it the
title would be : On Being Invisible. The low point
of this
period was when I had to pawn my microscope for eight dollars to buy
potatoes, macaroni and butter. I started working in the restaurant business (as I had through High School) and then I paid my way through college working as a waiter. I remember my food budget for the week was twenty dollars. |
| I received an art scholarship from
Columbia College in 1985 and
attended that wonderful institution for four years. In 1987 I
had an
auction of my paintings to finance a trip to Paris, France. I
lived in
the Latin Quarter for one month. During that time I was able
to see
the great impressionist masterpieces, and to visit Monet's home and
garden in Giverny, France. I graduated in 1989 cum laude with a
Bachelor of Fine Arts, emphasis in oil painting. Upon
graduation from
college I raised $500 from sales of my paintings and with that seed
money opened a fine art gallery in downtown Columbia Missouri which I
operated for eleven years. My gallery was very successful and
I
proudly paid off my student loans within four years.
Soybean Field At Dusk |
Photo courtesy Columbia Daily Tribune
|
| Around the time I began attending Columbia College I became a member of a cult-like fundamentalist group that espoused the belief that I could be "healed" of my homosexuality and only then could I be saved. This is the faith based version of the so-called "reparative therapy" movement. For three years I had lived as a gay man, but desperate for eternal salvation, acceptance and unconditional love I threw myself into their programs. A central part of their teaching was the “ex-gay” lie that I was "healed" of my sexual orientation through faith -- and blind faith can believe or justify anything. When my family heard about my religious conversion and that I was magically healed from being gay I was suddenly welcomed back with open arms and I was “loved” by them once again. I could never believe that, feel it or accept it, as I knew deep down that it would change if I ever fell short of their ideals again. The cult like group I joined taught that if you quit the homosexual behavior and accept Jesus that you are no longer gay, you are “HEALED!” There was no test driving this miracle, you just married someone of the opposite sex and turned a blind eye to the realities of your true self. In 1989 I was married to a wonderful woman. Within months of my wedding I felt that nothing had changed on the inside (my sexual orientation), but I continued to "work at it." When the options presented are change or burn in hell forever, change looks like the best alternative. Divorce was not an option in this faction of the “Kingdom of God” like it was in “the world” so we just had to suck it up and make it work. In 1993 we had a son, who was and will always be the light of my life. Soon after the birth of my son I knew changing my sexual orientation was hopeless, however I was determined to "make it" at least until my son was eighteen. Part of the inhumanity of the ex-gay myth is the way it draws more people into the unreality of the idea that people are “created” universally heterosexual. By this time, the stakes were very high for me to maintain my sham heterosexuality. I was told that if I failed I would destroy three lives -- not just my own. This restarted the long slide into depression which had haunted me since I was fourteen years old. (continued below these links) Pressuring
gays and lesbians to enter heterosexual marriages creates problems for
everyone involved. Here are some excellent
resources for
children and spouses/partners of LGBT people:
COLAGE resources for Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere Straight Spouse Network support for heterosexual spouses/partners in Mixed Orientation Marriages (MOMs) Married Gay.org support for those in mixed orientation marriages, excellent, extensive site. Klein sexual orientation grid/questionnaire I describe my experiences in the transformational ministry movement at these links: Why I Wrote This | The Cult | Evangelical Abuse | Exorcism |
Exorcism -- as frequent as weekly was part of the prescribed "cure" for homosexuality
|
 SELF PORTRAIT, 8 January 2000 16 X 20 inches oil on canvas Collection of the Artist Inscription upper left of painting: People look at a painting (this painting) and say "That doesn't look like him." They forget that, perhaps, that is the point. This is the body that I live in. I am here on the inside -- looking out. |
Queen Elizabeth II called the year 2002 her "annus horribilis", 2004 was mine. This was the year my life fell totally apart and together at the same time. Since High School the words of a Billy Joel song have had special significance to me : "Honesty
is such a lonely word, everyone is so untrue." I have always believed that honesty is the best policy and -- though it has cost me most of the "friends and family" I have ever had -- I still believe in living an honest life. The deep struggle of my life has always been knowing that I would be rejected if the real me was revealed to those around me. I spent twenty years of my life trying to earn the love of others by living the life that was expected of me -- trying to sublimate my sexual identity and to be a heterosexual. I tried everything known to god and man to "change" or to "be fixed". Nothing helped. A doctor-prescribed cocktail of huge doses of four antidepressants did nothing but render me somewhat numb to reality. I was still morbidly depressed, though functional and outwardly "ok". Finally my ability to maintain the well intentioned lie of my life collapsed and I admitted to myself and others that I was gay. The result was another round of catastrophic rejection and shunning. If all the people I loved in my life were radios playing in the night or stars in the sky, suddenly the world was wrapped in stunning silence and the sky went dark. As if the loss of my marriage was not enough, I lost my business partnership, my home, my garden, virtually my entire circle of "friends" my "family". I was devastated financially, socially and spiritually but not destroyed. My father said that I was “worse than an AIDS patient who deliberately poisons the blood supply and kills thousands of people.” Being disassociated from the business partnership that was my brainchild and the culmination of my life's work was particularly cruel. Missouri is a state that offers no protection from this type of discrimination based on sexual orientation, so being disassociated from my own business (because I couldn’t “change”) was a bitter pill I had to swallow. Unfortunately,
that which is legal is not always just.
During this horrible period I had back to back meetings with my attorney, the first dealing with the disassociation from my own business and the second with my divorce and losing my son. All in the context of having lost my entire social support network, and all simply because of my sexual orientation. Fundamentalists love to say that gay people choose their sexual orientation. In my opinion only a masochist would choose to be gay in our heterocentric, gay adverse culture. I
look forward to a day when our society is informed by science and not mythology. |
Even with the wholesale loss and rejection I have experienced I feel deep happiness, peace and contentment for the first time in my life. I can even look with compassion on those who abused and rejected me for I have been set free from punishing love and small minds. I have been set free from the prison of having to pretend to be straight to be accepted. I'm not ashamed of who I am -- I am authentic. No longer dying of self hatred, I have accepted the right to live life rather than to endure it. I am now truly happy without being overmedicated and very happily married to a wonderful man (as married as two men can be in Missouri...) and we are co-parenting four children. It cost me everything I had to be here. I'm proud of the courage, the strength and the endurance it took to be authentic. Although the price I had to pay for true love was unjust and cruel I do not regret paying it. Exercising my human right to have a spouse of the same sex cost me everything and price equates value. It was worth it. I am not a victim, I am a
survivor -- and I will spend the rest of my life advocating for the
rights of my people. --Brian Mahieu October 2006 "Injustice
anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere." Freedom to Marry-- Martin Luther King Jr. Why Marriage Matters America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry Read reviews! Purchase a copy--now available in paperback! The definitive book on why we should end discrimination in marriage.  Brian & Tom, September 2006 | Your heaven, my hell Gays decry ‘reorientation’ threatening condemnation.  Nick
King photo
By ANNIE NELSON of the Tribune’s staff Published Saturday, November 17, 2007 DOMA act is one of cruelty
|
| questioning and allied) or the parent, friend, family member, spouse or child of a gay or lesbian person I offer the below links to help you understand their journey and to help you in yours: Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays Resources for Questioning Youth: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual COLAGE resources for Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere Straight Spouse Network support for heterosexual spouses/partners in Mixed Orientation Marriages (MOMs) Box Turtle Bulletin balanced information on gay/lesbian/bisexual issues. American Academy of Pediatrics Sexual Orientation and Adolescents American
Psychological Association’s primer
Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation & Youth download pdf "Can't you just change yourself??" American Psychological Association answers questions on sexual orientation Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in K-12 and insuring safe schools across the USA by working with and in schools. We Are Family based in Charleston, SC "works for acceptance of gays and lesbians within the hetrosexual world by means of education." Safe School Coalition on homeless LGBT youth Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists A favorite book of mine: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality
and Natural Diversity YouTube Video from Sexplorations TV show segment featuring Bruce Bagemihl talking about the above book with excellent footage biological exuberance in nature. View video within this page below: | Jeffry G. Ford, MA,
Licensed Psychologist, former leader in ex-gay ministries Beyond Ex-Gay is an on-line community and resource for those of us who have survived ex-gay experiences. Religious Tolerance.Org INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE THAT SEXUAL ORIENTATION CHANGE EFFORTS WORK, SAYS APA Truth Wins Out The truth about ex-gay ministries GLADD: The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation National Gay / Lesbian Task Force Ex-Gay Watch A web blog that provides analysis of all things ex-gay. Freedom From Religion Foundation Emotional and Psychological Trauma: Causes, Symptoms, Effects and Treatment. Married Gay.org support for those in mixed orientation marriages, excellent, extensive site. Klein sexual orientation grid/questionnaire Beyond Homophobia blog by Gregory M. Herek, Ph.D. Disturbing video of a gay exorcism at Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn. Followup video Tyra Banks Show: The young man in the above video admitting that his sexual desire for men has not changed. I describe my experiences in the transformational ministry movement at these links: Why I Wrote This | The Cult | Evangelical Abuse | Exorcism  Bonobos are the “make love not war” chimpanzees! Pansexual, Bonobos have amazingly rich sex lives. Scientists who study the Bonobo are known to use “bonobo” as a verb: "Let’s Bonobo!" |
