Accepting the Gay Community at Mason

I just got back to my dorm from the 2009 George Mason University drag show. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect as I entered the Johnson Center, techno playing, a crowd congregating around the stage.

I couldn’t even locate a seat on the first floor, so before the second floor too became filled with onlookers I ran up the stairs and reserved a table for my friends and myself overlooking the grand arena of the JC. And what lay ahead is something I can never and shall never forget.

Though I cannot relate to the desire to dress in drag or even perform flamboyantly before an audience, I can however, appreciate and respect the courage—no better yet—the audaciousness of individuals to share a piece of themselves that even today is widely demanded kept in the dark.

As Reann Ballslee received yet another acknowledgement from the D.C. Drag community, commenting on what an inspiration she is to all of the Nation’s Capitol and Northern Virginia, a tear came to my eye. Inversely, while watching this I reflected on what our own Mason students have said about the gay community, specifically, that those individuals who are party to it should be considered mentally ill, which brought more tears to my eyes.

You see, although I do not consider myself a part of the gay community, it’s when hearing such hatred that I think back on my own childhood, remembering the physical abuse suffered at the hands of my older brother; I was his only outlet for anger, confusion and self-content, brought on by those individuals who would choose to judge each other using the very book that says “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God (Romans 15:7).”

My older brother is openly gay, and to argue that he is mentally ill because of this fact, is literally making the case that anything opposite the norm is not just wrong, but should be treated as sickness. Further, the use of statistics to only reflect that scientific establishments have at some point considered homosexuality a mental condition, is not a valid argument in any common-day sense.

A premise that because certain individuals are different from an accepted social norm does not resolve at a conclusion that the scientific establishment is permitted to classify those individuals as animals, as this was the case for enslaving an entire race for hundreds of years. More recently this pseudo-science was used by Europeans during an imperialized Africa in order to segregate an ethnicity, which by the way still has residual effects, one of which includes systematic genocide.

But now, the same argument is being applied to the Gay Community, that because they are not what we consider the social norm, then they must be mentally ill. The problem with such an ideal is that in order to make the claim that anybody is ill, it must be compared to something we consider normal (or healthy as a doctor may call it). A person is classified to have high blood pressure if their systolic over diastolic pressure is higher than normal, or a person is considered to have AIDS if their T-cell count is below the norm.

The concept of illness is nothing but a case by case comparison to the accepted norm. But the problem is that in social behavior no one retains the right to claim one action more normal then another, simply because there is no universal norm across cultures or even in our own society.

For instance, in the Midwest. we say pop, but the East Coast prefers soda. There is no social discourse applicable to all and for anyone to make the claim otherwise has yet to grow out of the ignorant western ideal that everyone else is supposed to be as we are, and that there is no other way.

Well, I saw at the show the first real promise of community since being here at Mason. A community built off the love that each participant shared for each other, one that I can relate to in observing how my own brother grew to accept who he was, and how I had to grow to forgive him for how he had treated me for so long.

I let go of all the “Jarettas,” a play on my name, calling me a little girl, all the way down to the memory of young me kissing the older brother I love on the cheek, and him, in return, pushing me to the ground, I landing in the disgusting evidence that a dog had been where I was just standing.

I too ask for the community to forgive those that have done them so wrong, in so much to have claimed you to be socially inadequate. Instead, today I witnessed love, community, perseverance, but most importantly, the strength to be exactly who you are. And I challenge all of Mason to follow in the footsteps of these leaders, warriors on the social front and champions of survival. They are who we all should want to be, just who they are.

Jared Lewis
Governement & International Politics