The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 94. Norm Reed "A night at the baths"

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“Christian-addictive behavior”

A farm boy comes out

We last encountered Norm Reed as a teenager wearing his mother’s clothes to do farm work. In an update on his life from the same interview, we learn he threw himself into his church activities, was married for a few years to his girlfriend from high school, came out and experienced discrimination for his orientation.

Much of the experiences relayed here are common to former-church people who have been shunned for being Gay. And Norm speaks with artless elegance on how such hatred is anti-Christian in the extreme.

One day, [my wife and I] received a letter from a friend that we had both known in college. In the letter, he revealed that he was Gay. I think she was kidding when she said, “Norm, since the two of you were such good friends, does this mean you’re ‘a queer’ too?” I looked at her and said, “I didn’t know he was [Gay], but I know I am.”

I wasn’t going to hide anything from her at that point, and she just went nuts. Three years later, we got divorced.

I always tried to be prim and proper in the eyes of people. When the divorce came, she ruined my prestigious endeavors in the large church in Cleveland that she and I had belonged to.

The minister came to me and said, “There’s a law on our books that if behavior like this takes place with any of our members, we have the power to ostracize them.” He was not at all willing to talk it through with me. He saw ‘the Devil’ in me, and if you are a devil, they don’t want anything to do with you. He said, “The only way you can enter our building again is if you present yourself to the deacon and ‘confess your sins’ before us. If we decide to forgive you, and feel that you have made an honest repentance to God for yours ‘sins,’ then you would need to ‘confess your sins’ in front of the congregation and they would vote on whether they still want you in the church.”

It made me so angry, I never went back. I thought, holy shit, why put me through all this just because I’m Gay? To me, being Gay didn’t mean that much. I had already gotten to the point […] where I felt, hey, this is me. Whether it’s right or ‘wrong’ doesn’t matter. It’s nobody else’s concern. The biggest turn-around for me was how angry I was at those hypocritical church-going people whose husbands were cheating on their wives with each other, or whose wives were having their boyfriends in during the day, or whose little kids were screwing in the church parking lot. These were the church ‘leaders,’ religious fanatics who ruined the lives of honest, good people because they have ostracized them or made their lives guilt-ridden by cutting them off.

Eventually, I met some other Gay people [circa 1971], got involved with some of the protest activities downtown, and started going to bars. I’d never been inside a bar. The first Gay March we had in Cleveland, I was right up in front, carrying the banner down Euclid Avenue, screaming for Gay Rights, because it just made me so angry to think that I had given my whole life up to that point – I was twenty-seven – basically to God; to the church. Every time the church lights were on, I had been there, picking up kids for Sunday school; bible school. My whole life had been wrapped around Christian-addictive behavior.

One night at the baths, [before my ex-wife outed me to the congregation,] a very prominent person in our church walked up to me and said, “Well, Norm, don’t be surprised. I’m not.” He and I became very good friends. We spent hours on the phone, sharing experiences and how we felt.

As I was finally coming to terms with being Gay, my younger brother came home from college and lived with me for a while. I could see that he was definitely Gay. “You’re no different than I am,” I said. “You’re Gay and not admitting it.” He said he didn’t think so. I said I’d prove it to him, and that night I took him to the baths. After that, he and I became even closer and were able to discuss things. He didn’t have a hard time accepting being Gay, because he never felt guilty; never liked church; never held much stock in any of that. I don’t think he ever questioned it.

He was so relieved to find out about himself, he was telling everybody. He told my parents and my older sister about himself, and mentioned me in there too. He had a big influence on my being forced to better accept myself. […]

I think Mom always knew I was Gay, but it was never mentioned. In high school I was going through this turmoil; I wondered why, if I’m a Christian and I believe in God, do I feel this way about other guys? There was a number of times I would just stand at the kitchen window and stare out. Mom would come up behind me and say, “Norm, what’s wrong? Talk to me.” But I could never talk to her.

I’ve felt some resentment toward my mom for not telling me that she knew. I feel she should have said, “Norm, I know you prefer being with guys rather than women. There’s nothing wrong with that – there’s lot of people like you. Let’s talk.”

It was up to her to acknowledge to me that she knew, not to just keep asking me, “What’s wrong?” Had I realized I was Gay, I would never have gotten married [to a woman]. […] About a year and a half ago, I told my [then 19 year-old] son I’m Gay. He said he had suspected it for a long time. Then he hugged me real tight and held me, and thanked me for feeling comfortable enough with him to let him know. Now we can talk about anything. […]

I would love to have a partner like my brother has. Maybe ten years ago [circa 1983], I was down at their place, and 5:30 in the morning, I heard all this laughing and giggling going on out in the kitchen. I was still in bed, and I thought, jeez, they’re having a party out there. So I put on my bathrobe and went out and peeked around the corner, and there’s the two of them sitting at the table, just laughing and telling jokes. They’re been doing that kind of thing for the last eighteen years – just like two little magpies.

That’s the kind of companion I’d like to have.

—Norn Reed,

1994 interview concerning

events of 1965-1972

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