Naptown 13 - July Fireworks - 4. The Article

July Fireworks

A Naptown Tale by Altimexis and David of Hope

The Article

The Fourth of July was just another workday for me. I worked most of the holidays . . . it was one of the ‘perks’ of being an associate team leader, but today was special and like all of the Star’s employees, I’d enjoy the day’s festivities with my family as much as possible - that is unless there was a breaking news story. Thanks to our location, right across from University Park, I’d be able to spend much of the day with my family, and we’d have a great spot for viewing the fireworks at the end of the day. Our catered barbecue would be serving the best food in town, too.

The Fourth dawned a dreary day with a continuous, fine drizzle. Still, it was a welcome change from the weather we’d been having. June had been horrible, with severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and flooding across much of the Midwest. I’d been so worried the Fourth would be a washout, particularly with our special guest appearing in the afternoon. The forecast had called for scattered thunderstorms and, as unpredictable as our weather could be, one never knew what to expect but, fortunately, the worst of the weather had moved off to the east, providing a small ray of hope that the day wouldn’t be a total loss.

The kids didn’t know it yet, but TheStar had made arrangements for a surprise guest star that wasn’t on the program. He might not be hip, or whatever they called it these days, but it wasn’t often that we got a star of such international renown to perform on our stage. I had a feeling the kids would be delighted.

Picking up the final morning edition of The Star, I was very pleased with the layout of the article. It started ‘above the fold’, which was a major coup. Not expecting the article to get even more than an eighth of a column on the front page, I hadn’t bothered to take a photographer with me to any of the interviews, but thank God for my trusty little Lumix. David and Jeremy were so photogenic, and when I saw them together, I just had to get a few shots before I left. There was one shot in particular that was special, and it was featured front and center in today’s paper. The two of them were in their swimsuits, seated at a table and facing each other, but turned toward the camera. Jeremy’s pool could be seen in ‘soft focus’ in the background. Their hands were intertwined and one couldn’t help but see the love between them. That they were both ‘all-American’, stunningly handsome boys made it very hard for the reader to ignore the implications - two ‘boys next door’ who happen to be gay. It was the perfect picture, well worth ‘a thousand words’, and the first thing a casual passer by would see at the newsstands.

I started to read the opening paragraphs of the article, now so familiar to me:

Six months ago, The Star brought you an in-depth view of life for gay teens on the city’s north side. Today, we thought it might be interesting to see what has happened in the lives of some of these teens over the course of the last half-year. Some readers might wonder why we chose six months rather than waiting a full year. For that answer, one need only recall the rapidity of events in their own lives as teenagers. As we’ll see, some lives are very stable, while others are rapidly shifting as if built on quicksand, in some cases tragically so. We particularly wanted to meet up with the seniors we interviewed last December, however, as this may well be the last chance we will have to talk with them again.

This point was driven home when we interviewed Paul Levine, the immediate past president of his high school’s gay-straight alliance (GSA), and his boyfriend, Sam Arnold. Paul took on the responsibility of leading the GSA three years ago, when the organization by his admission, was little more than a club for troubled teens having difficulty dealing with their sexuality. Paul made a concerted effort to bring in straight teens into the alliance, as well as recruiting more gay members. “Critical mass is essential,” Paul said back in December when we first interviewed him. The result today is a thriving organization and a true sense of a gay community centered around the city’s largest high school.

“None of it would have happened without Sam,” Paul made clear when we first caught up with him. He and Sam Arnold met on the first day of sixth grade in middle school, and became instant best friends, and then boyfriends when they realized they were both gay. They have been inseparable ever since. For them the harsh realities of a teenage romance, however, have crashed head-on against their lifelong dreams. Paul plans to study Engineering, and has always wanted to go to MIT, where he has been accepted on a full scholarship. Sam, on the other hand, is a musician and will be going to Indiana University next year. Several times during the course of the interview, Paul brought up going to the University of Rochester together, since it would combine a top music school with an excellent Engineering school, but Sam wouldn’t hear of it. “I love you too much to deprive you of MIT, and that’s why I’ve chosen Indiana, where there ‘ain’t no engineering.’”

Our follow-up interview with Paul and Sam was very poignant, but alas, gay relationships aren’t all that different than straight ones when it comes to graduation from high school. Sometimes it’s just not possible to accommodate both partners’ dreams.

Putting down the paper, I remembered my first love. Her name was Cindy, I think. Yeah, definitely Cindy. Shows how much of an impression she made in my life! I took her to the prom and everything, and now I barely remember her name! I went to IU School of Journalism. She went to Purdue for Agriculture. We were in the same state for cripes sake. We said we’d keep in touch, and that didn’t even last through the first semester. What a crock!

I continued to read the article:

We asked Paul what advice he had for the new GSA president, and ended up with more than an earful. At the end of the day, it all came down to this, “The most important advice I could give the new president is to lead by listening, letting people think your ideas are theirs, encouraging their enthusiasm and then getting out of the way and letting them do what they’re best at.” Sound advice in anyone’s book.

Unfortunately, we were unable to catch up with the new GSA president, Trevor Austin, who is currently volunteering at a church-run camp for disadvantaged youth. When we last met Trevor, he had been singled out by his pastor and made an example of in an attempt to disband the GSA. Thrust into the limelight, young Trevor has since been very active in the GSA leadership. A self-proclaimed computer geek, he is responsible for the implementation of the GSA’s new website, already considered a top-ten resource for gay teens.

Our readers will undoubtedly recall that Trevor’s pastor was the eminent Sanford DeWitt of the Hope Evangelical Covenant Church, whose fourteen-year-old son, Kurt, very dramatically came out on these very pages six months ago. Reverend DeWitt left the city rather suddenly after our first article appeared. We were also unable to reach Kurt, who is volunteering at the same church-run camp as Trevor.

What I didn’t say, as it wasn’t really relevant to the article, is that the two boys are dating, but somehow I had a feeling a lot of our readers would draw that conclusion, even without my saying so.

I continued skimming through the article, reading it not only for the content, but also for the overall flow of the story. By now I knew the content cold, but the way an article appeared on a computer never quite had the same feel as it did in the actual paper, or on our website, for that matter. In this case, I was more than pleased with the final result.

We ended up having three sidebars in addition to the main story - an unusually high amount. Whereas the main story focused on the changes in the lives of the kids we had interviewed back on December 31, the sidebars looked at issues of common interest to all of the couples interviewed. One sidebar looked at the question of gay marriage and how each of the couples felt about it - whether they felt marriage was a goal for them and whether they wanted to raise a family. It was funny, but gay marriage had not even been one of the original questions on my interview list, but so many of the interviewees came to the question on their own.

The second sidebar focused on the issue of protecting kids from sexual predators. All of our subjects had something to say on the topic and I got a lot of good thoughts on it, so we compiled all their ideas and broke them out into a guide for parents on keeping kids safe - from the viewpoint of kids. I knew a lot of parents who saw the article would be thinking about how dangerous gay teens could be to their kids, and here we were, turning the tables on them. For the third sidebar, we broke out the story of Randy and Altaf as a separate article under the heading, “If Only Peace in the Middle East Were This Easy.” I was particularly fond of this couple, and pleased to see their story receive so much attention.

One story I’d downplayed was the story of Lyle and Carrie. They were mentioned in the article as an offshoot of the story about the Smiths and the Wilsons. I wrote of the value in having support from heterosexual couples in the GSA without ever suggesting that Lyle and Carrie were, in fact, heterosexual, and I never once mentioned Carrie’s brother. By keeping it low key, I reasoned, I left little reason for suspicion. Lyle would make headlines as a basketball player to be sure, and that would only intensify in college. Hopefully by then, Carrie would have learned to play the role of a woman well enough to avoid leaving any clues until they were both ready to come out.

The most difficult story to tell by far was that of Brian Philips. In fact, his story nearly got the entire article spiked at the last minute. Brian’s story was difficult enough to tell back on January 1 . . . when he was still alive. Back then, Brian was very much in the closet, but after his death, his parents couldn’t accept that their only son was gay. There were a lot of things we couldn’t write in the article, about how they had managed to use their influence to hush up news of his suicide in the first place, but when they tried to get the publisher to pull the plug on the story, I could have cried. Jerry and I weren’t going down without a fight, however, and thank God the publisher still believed in a thing called integrity. Sadly, he did bow to pressure in one sense - he asked us to remove Brian’s true identity from the article.

Even still, the Philips’ tried to get an injunction to kill the story, fearing our readers would recognize Brian’s true identity. The judge wouldn’t even hear the case, nor would the appellate judge, nor would the justices of the state supreme court, all of which happened in the course of a day . . . such was the influence of the Phillips’. Money and power could buy a lot of things, but they still couldn’t trump the first amendment.

Not that any of it mattered to poor Brian, a lonely gay kid who apparently rightly knew that his parents could never accept him. I couldn’t help but reread the section of the article dealing with his story, in-depth:

Back in January, we introduced our readers to a fifteen-year-old boy we simply identified as John, as he didn’t want to reveal his true name. He was deeply in the closet, even to his closest friends. His parents are very influential in Republican politics in the state, and major donors to both political parties. Deep down, John knew and accepted he was gay, but was having significant trouble dealing with it and feared his parents could never accept that their only son was gay.

By the time he turned sixteen, John had seen more counselors and therapists than most of us would see in a lifetime, all in the interest of dealing with severe depression and school difficulties, without his parents ever knowing the true reason for his problems. As John told us in December, he had contemplated suicide many times and had even made an unsuccessful attempt at the age of thirteen. He told us there was scarcely a day that went by when he didn’t think about suicide, and he didn’t see a way that he could ever be happy. We discussed options with John that might allow him to be removed from his family, but John made it clear that these were options his family would never allow and that made legal remedies irrelevant.

We would like to say that there has been a happy outcome for John, but sadly John did find his escape, taking his own life three months ago. He left behind a very public accounting of his life and the reasons behind his suicide in the form of a blog on blogspot.com. His family, however, insists that this is a forgery and that their son was not gay. We at The Star take such allegations seriously and have taken the liberty of having the blog analyzed thoroughly by independent computer experts, who were able to confirm with certainty that all blog entries originated from within John’s residence. Additional review of the details of the blog entries by his closest friends, indicates that some entries could have only been made by John himself, as only he could have known some of the more intimate items contained therein. We are therefore convinced of the blog’s authenticity.

In deference to the parents’ concerns, however, we are withholding John’s true identity, and will not print a direct link to the blog itself. This does not mean, however, that we doubt in any way that John was gay, nor that we in any way trivialize his suicide. Teenage suicide remains a very serious problem in this country, particularly among gay teens. It has been estimated that approximately 50% of all teens who attempt suicide are gay, but the actual numbers can never be known. Gay teens often have trouble accepting their sexuality, and they often fear rejection by their families. In John’s case, it was a little of both. What is particularly troubling is that John was surrounded by one of the mostaccepting groups of peers in the state. Not only was he a member of an active gay-straight alliance, but his high school fostered an environment of tolerance, and there were both peer and adult counselors available to provide help if he’d only asked for it.

Were there any warning signs? Was there anything that could have been done? Amazingly, for a troubled teen who’d had school problems and who’d even had a past suicide attempt, John seemed so ordinary. Other than attending meetings and events sponsored by the GSA, there wasn’t even a hint that his sexuality was an issue, and even then, he never once hinted that he was gay. He had dated girls numerous times and his closest friends had always assumed he was straight, his membership in the GSA not withstanding. He was neither an exceptional nor a failing student, and he wasn’t a part of the sports scene. He was just one of those kids who had his own circle of friends and blended in, like so many other kids.

Reading his blog, however, portrays an entirely different John. The real John was a very lonely boy who went through daily life craving something he desperately wanted to have, but fundamentally thought was wrong. He didn’t think homosexuality was wrong on religious grounds as so many do, but he saw it as a lifestyle choice that was incompatible with the goals set out by his parents - and by himself. His parents had special aspirations for him in public service - in the Statehouse, perhaps eventually as governor, or eventually as a congressman or senator, and maybe eventually even in the White House. These things are things he could not do as a gay man - at least not as he saw it.

John did not live long enough to witness the election of a gay sophomore class president at his high school. If he had, he might have realized that things are changing. His generation is growing up with different attitudes, chief among them being one of acceptance. Although we do not claim that all youth are as accepting as those of the city’s north side, we believe the fact that a gay class president could be elected by a landslide in what is otherwise a conservative region is telling of the shifting foundation of politics, even here in the Midwest. It is sad that young John and his parents did not have the faith and the foresight to hang on and give his peers the benefit of the doubt.

For all the negativity that has been written of late about Generation Y, we atThe Star would like to express our optimism. Over the course of the last six months, we have observed a group of gay and straight teens on our city’s north side. We have watched them grow and seen them make life-long decisions - some of them wise and some of them tragic. From what we have seen, we have every reason to believe they will carry on the legacy we inherited from our parents and our grandparents in ways of which they could have never conceived, and all of this in just six months. We look forward to seeing what the next six months will bring.

I set the paper down, tears still in my eyes as I thought again of the tragedy of Brian Philips. I imagined The Philips’ were right about one thing - there were probably a fair number of people who would figure out Brian’s true identity in spite of our efforts to keep his identity secret - such was the power of Internet search engines. But that wasn’t my problem any more.

Clasping my hands together, I thought about the work to be done in advance of the day’s festivities as the skeletal holiday crew started to show up for work. There would be a very brief meeting of the MetroBiz team to go over the day’s assignments. Trouble was, even though today was a holiday, tomorrow we’d be publishing a regular edition, so we had to be ready. The saving grace was that unless something major happened, it would be a very slow news day, with most things being predictable . . . the governor would give his usual speech and so on . . . so we didn’t need many people to cover it. The bulk of tomorrow’s edition would be canned material from National, andthat didn’t concern MetroBiz.

True to form, we’d finished our part of tomorrow’s July 5 edition of The Star before most people had had their first cup of coffee. Once that was done and with some time to kill before the actual festivities got underway, I decided to head outdoors for a change and check on preparations.

Discuss the Story

⇐ Previous Chapter

Naptown Index

Next Chapter ⇒