Before the summer of my sophomore year of high school, I had never met anyone who was gay. I’d never seen a gay person. I had never even heard of somebody in Flower Mound who was gay. Even though I hate to admit it now, I was a bit of a homophobe. I am an only child from a conservative, Southern, Christian family. I was raised in the suburbs where everybody pretty much had the exact same view – being gay is wrong, drugs are wrong, cussing is wrong, tattoos are wrong and bad people are people I should avoid.

My sophomore year at LLYC – a Christian camp, where almost all of the kids are from families just like mine – is when I met Jackson. The first time we met, I was shocked. He was openly gay, and I had never experienced that before. At first, I thought, who is this guy? He was wearing tight black skinny jeans with a Gameboy sticking out of the back pocket and a tight, black Charlie the Unicorn shirt in the 100 degree heat. He had gauged and pierced ears, pink highlights and a rose tattoo. He looked more like a punk cartoon character than a real person.

Even though I was slightly scared of him, I couldn’t not talk to him because he was friends with my friends, so I just pushed back my initial feelings and tried to treat Jackson like a normal person. If he still made me uncomfortable after camp was over, I could just go home and pretend I had never even met him.

However, over the course of the next two weeks, I gradually opened my mind to Jackson and was amazed at what I saw. Even at a Christian summer camp, he was treated differently, just because he was gay. He was the black sheep amidst the herd of athletic, outdoorsy, masculine guys. While they wrestled and fished, he prefered to sit with me and my girl friends and help us paint our nails or do our makeup. He refused to participate in sports with them, because he didn’t want to mess up his perfectly styled hair. When he was forced to participate, he couldn’t keep up with them.

The guys in his cabin didn’t know how to act around him or how to interact with him. Jackson wanted to befriend them, but they were turned away by his sexuality. Most of them felt uncomfortable having to dress, shower and live in a confined space with him, and some just kept their distance all together. They had no idea who Jackson was beyond his sexual orientation, and they didn’t bother to get to know him because of their predetermined beliefs on homosexuality.

“This kid in my cabin told me, ‘I respect your decision to be gay,’“ Jackson said. “I told him it’s not a decision; it’s the way I am. I didn’t choose to be gay,”

That simple statement showed me how incredibly ignorant I had been. I was exactly like the boys in his cabin, and i didn’t even realize it until that moment. Jackson didn’t decide to be gay, to be ridiculed by kids at school, in church and life in general. Every day, Jackson had to deal with discrimination and hatred towards him, just because he was gay. And I had been one of those people. I had all these judgemental, discriminatory beliefs about a group of people I’d never spoken to or interacted with before. I had been a snobby jerk towards gay people, without any thought to how my actions might make them feel.
It’s been two years since that summer. I haven’t seen or talked to Jackson since then, but he still impacts my life every day. I am a much more open-minded person now. Instead of hanging steadfast to a certain set of beliefs, I have explored the other side. Learning about other beliefs hasn’t changed the way I think, but it has changed how I act. I don’t force my beliefs on anyone, and I don’t turn my nose up when I disagree with theirs. Even though homosexuality is not my lifestyle choice, I now have a different outlook on gay rights because of him. I still believe that relationships should be between a man and a woman, but I no longer judge those who don’t. Becoming friends with Jackson helped me learn to accept people for who they are – gay, straight, bisexual, a Democrat, whatever – because they really aren’t that different from me.