Thread by @byuandme

PLEASE READ:

hey it’s time to tell a story because i need to put this on the internet and why not this account amirite !

so my freshman year at byu, my roommate kind of figured out that i liked girls. she didn’t tell me she knew, but she secretly told everyone she could that i was a lesbian. she told my other roommates, ward members, her family, and friends from home.

i found out she did this because one of our other roommates was accepting and so i felt comfortable being honest with her. she told me that our other roommate had already known and was telling people. so naturally i was panicked.

a few weeks later, my roommate was having a friend from home stay over for about a week. i did not want to be there for any period i didn’t have to. i knew she had outed me to this friend and the thought of spending a week in a cramped, helaman halls bedroom made me want to cry.

so i called my mom and asked if i could come home for the weekend. initially, she said no. they were going to be out of town and she saw no need for me to come home when i was going to be at the house alone. i didn’t want to tell her why i needed to come home, so i just begged.

my mom didn’t relent. finally, in desperation, i told her that my roommate was telling people i was gay and i didn’t want to deal with it this weekend. my mom expressed an immediate and intense reaction.

she started getting very emotional and angry at my roommate for saying something “so disgusting” about me. i told my mom i didn’t care if people thought i was gay, i just didn’t want people treating me different. my mom asked me why i wouldn’t be upset someone thought that.

i told her that i didn’t think being gay was shameful, and my mom suddenly got very angry and hung up on me. i was floored. she called back a few minutes later, cooled down. she joked with me, “i’m sorry i hung up. i thought you were trying to tell me you were ACTUALLY gay.”

so, coming out basically makes me feel sick now. i know how my mom would react because of that phone call, and i know how angry and upset she was. it makes everything so much worse.

the worst part after that of course was that i had never told my roommate i was gay. i never told her i was a lesbian, or that i was bisexual. she had assumed that because of slang i used (??) and because i hadn’t talked about boys very often.

to throw her off, one of my best friends who was a boy pretended to be my boyfriend. my. entire. freshman. year. just so i wouldn’t be socially ostracized at my own university.
and of course—i was still ostracized. once the ward found out, no one wanted to be my friend.

no one wanted to be around me. i couldn’t go to ward activities without being entirely alone. once we attended temple lights as a group, and after walking around alone for an hour i just sat at the top of the joseph smith building waiting until it was time to go home.

these things are still happening right now at byu. people like me are still being. ostracized for being gay, even though i had never actually confirmed it or had ever broken the honor code. i was ostracized because of an assumption. that’s all it took.

please be kind. please try and be open minded. please, please love people. most of all: if you think someone is gay, or if someone tells you, don’t tell other people. it might not seem like a big deal. but it often is. it can ruin someone’s life.

anyway. that’s all. thanks for listening i guess

i want to just add: this was less than a year ago. these people are still at byu. PLEASE check on your lgbt friends