In State College, An Attitudinal Evolution over Gay Rights

‘HISTORY!’ the New York Daily News shouted on Saturday, its front page an unabashed celebration of progress.

The big civil-rights news from Albany this weekend was very much a New York story, an expression of politics gone right in a state where it too often goes wrong.

While the national headlines centered heavily on the Empire State and its Greenwich Village reactions, though, my thoughts kept returning here — to a Happy Valley that’s too often been unhappy for gays.

I thought of the locker-room thrashing I witnessed at State High in the late 1990s. A classmate thought to be gay was slammed into the South Building boys’ lockers after gym class one day.

I thought of the devastating and endless taunts endured by another gay State High classmate, one who went on to escape State College as soon as he could.

I thought of the homophobic epithets that became routine in high school; the less-than-subtle snickers heard occasionally outside Chumley’s downtown; the all-too-common use of ‘That’s gay’ as a derogatory phrase.

And I thought, of course, of the allegations of callous anti-gay discrimination filed against former Penn State women’s basketball Coach Rene Portland.

How could I not?

For much too long, these crushing circumstances were among the largely unaddressed realities of being gay in Happy Valley. And sometimes, to our collective shame, such identity-based personal destruction still lingers in our midst.

But no more does it go wholly unaddressed.

Through court cases and student activism, institutional introspection and steady cultural evolution, our community’s once-unguarded disdain for homosexuality has slowly waned.

Not to say it’s gone. No, not by any reality-based estimate.

And to be sure — to be fully honest here — we in the local news media have fallen incredibly short in chronicling and illuminating the social realities of being gay in central Pennsylvania.

We’ve done OK in identifying some flash points: the federal litigation and reaction against Portland; the once-controversial local legislative changes to undermine anti-gay discrimination; and most recently, the federal complaint filed against the State College school district, seeking equal treatment for same-gender domestic partners. State High’s anti-hate campaign last year got some traction in the local headlines, too.

For the most part, though, the cultural, social and political shifts we’ve seen locally in, say, the past 15 to 20 years have emerged without much of a local-media spotlight. I wish we’d been covering them better, for sure, and that we have not is among my great regrets as a local reporter here.

At the same time, from a non-journalistic perspective, there’s something to be said for the raw power and sheer worth of a movement that can unfold so successfully, so gracefully, without the perceived benefit of a steady public spotlight.

Now, as these cultural shifts are reflected nationally in a bona fide political turning point for our country, it’s worth thinking deeply about how we got here — and why.

I don’t have a grand analysis on that score — not yet, anyway.

I am, however, tremendously proud to be part of a region that has grown its thinking, moved (mostly) beyond squeamishness, and proved itself able to see bias and bigotry for what they are.

State High was the scene of the first anti-gay attacks I witnessed, yes. But it’s also where my sophomore-year English teacher, in 1998, supported my willingness to write an anti-discrimination column in the Centre Daily Times.

I was 15, and it was a big risk. Be prepared for people to question your own sexual orientation, Mrs. Gentry told me; it’ll happen.

And it did.

But so, too, did the start of a self-aware life entrenched in politics and journalism. New friendships developed, as well. An argument that I’d originally rooted in ideology became more personal, more tangible, and all the more worthwhile.

Across the county — across the nation — Generation Y’ers have similar stories: Standing up one by one, we’ll tell you, has meant something, and it’s turned into something greater than any one of us.

Well more than a decade has passed since I put that anti-bias column in the CDT. And I’m happy to observe today: People are no longer so quick to make gossipy personal assumptions when someone argues for a social cause outside his own apparent life and immediate self interests.

You can see it in the Coming Out Week events at Penn State, where dozens upon dozens of gay and straight students stand with hands clasped. You can see it at State High, where students have rallied to remind gay teens of their worth — and that they’re loved.

What can we assume about the activists? Perhaps that they care.

Frank Bruni said it best, I think, in his New York Times column yesterday: The tide for gay rights has gained so much momentum in part because it’s become personal for so many Americans.

The same is true in our Centre Region microcosm.

Of course, our gay Pennsylvanian brothers and sisters don’t yet have the legal ability to tie the knot.

With as far as we’ve come, though, I wouldn’t bet against how much further we can go.