Dan Davis, ACLU of Missouri Board Member
I have known that I was gay since third grade when I asked a girl to be my Valentine because I thought I was supposed to. Deep inside, I really wanted to ask a boy but as I looked around my little Southwest Missouri world I didn’t see any same-sex couples. I ‘knew’ that a boy was supposed to be with a girl, and I thought there was something wrong with me. That was the beginning of a battle; a battle with self-doubt and self-loathing that continues to this day.
In college I worked in university athletics. A job I took because I knew I was good at it based on three years’ experience in high school and the recommendation of every coach I’d worked for, but I knew that there was no way a gay person would be chosen for the job that I had. So, as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t gay. If the emotions got too hard to repress I’d go on a bender to not feel anything anymore.
The summer between my senior and master’s years a group of friends and I made a trip to Omaha for the College World Series of Baseball. During that trip one of my closest friends and I got into an argument and the combination of some beers and my burning desire to be the smartest man in the room led to me declaring I was gay to win the debate. At that moment we both stopped talking and stared at each other. I guess I won?
Once I said those words out loud, and repeated them via text and out loud again and the world didn’t end and everyone I loved didn’t turn on me, I finally began to be able to undo the damage that years of self-loathing had done.
Now, some six years later I am much more confident in who I am and of my values. Which probably leads a rational person to say “That’s great for you, Dan, but why are you saying all of this? Wouldn’t it be better unsaid?” To a point I agree that it would be easier to just keep on working my little heart out and ignore all this stuff.
But I can’t stay silent knowing that extremists in the Missouri Legislature are forcing through pro-discrimination measures like Senate Joint Resolution 39 (SJR39) that would make life harder for me – and kids growing up in tiny towns like I did.
In Missouri, it is already entirely legal to kick someone out of a restaurant, deny them a room at a hotel, and fire them for being LGBT (hi any current employers please don’t fire me), but some lawmakers are trying to take it one step further.
During debate on SJR39, I heard a member of the majority equate homosexuality to incest and deride funding for AIDS research by equating victims of AIDS with amorality. Those comments from a sitting Senator in my state brought all those feelings of self-loathing back. All the hatred that I internalized for years flooded my mind as I fought back tears and for the slightest fraction of a moment I wished I were straight or dead.
I am lucky enough to have the tools and support network necessary to take care of myself in these situations – but what about that sixteen year old kid in Southwest Missouri that doesn’t have the tools? That kid that sees signs at the local donut shop saying the equivalent of “no gays allowed” (true story)? That child that hears words like ‘fag’ and ‘homo’ and ‘dyke’ tossed around at school and at home? That little, innocent child that feels different and can only see different as bad? Will they be as lucky as I have been? Will they have the family and the friends that will love them no matter who they are? Because I’ve been very lucky to have those things, but many LGBT+ kids are not. If some ‘throw away’ phrase by some state senator can make a successful and stable nearly thirty-something take the first step down that old self-loathing spiral, what chance does a child with no support network have?
That is why this matters to me – I see myself in the face of every LGBT+ child dead from suicide because by all rights it could have been me.
When we politicize an individual’s sexuality to score points based on some folks’ fear of what they don’t understand we are saying that those scared children out there are worth less to us than unfounded fear. When we categorize LGBT+ people as ‘the others’ and not our brothers we are reinforcing the view that they are less than straight people. When we ensconce in our state constitution that LGBT+ people have fewer rights than others we are ensconcing in innocent children’s minds that they are different and that different is bad.
Senate Joint Resolution 39 does not provide protections to religious organizations that are not already provided by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. What Senate Joint Resolution 39 does is perpetuate the hatred and misunderstanding that nearly cost me my life, and that is why I cannot rest until we stop letting our rhetoric and our hate drive kids like me off the ledge.
That is why I ask you to stand with me and many of our fellow Missourians to loudly declare that hate is not a Missouri Value.
Dan Davis is a board member for the ACLU of Missouri who finds his home in Kanas City, Missouri. He holds graduate degrees from both the University of Kansas and the University of Iowa, and enjoys rooting for the Jayhawks and Hawkeyes respectively. He is a proud Missourian - born in Columbia and raised in Joplin.