When I first found this site and its listing of gay-friendly businesses, I called up the kind folks at Thunder Data Systems and asked, “Why am I not listed on this site? My son is gay, and his friends think I am downright friendly!” The omission was soon corrected, and I have been enjoying the essays on the site ever since.

Actually, I consider myself other than gay-friendly: I am a Neo-homophile. Let me define the term. Back in the sixties when I was growing up with my little brother, Bobby, I didn’t even know I knew any gay people. I knew I had a crush on my blocky-hipped camp counselor, Sandy Fandley, but I thought it was because she could sing so beautifully about Old Shep, the dying dog, as she strummed her guitar around a smoldering campfire while the pre-pubescent Girl Scouts bawled. My brother, Bobby, was merely a clever actor who spun around as the fairy princess in pink tulle when we played house. I had no inkling that either of these people might someday reveal sexual preferences that lay outside the mainstream choice of the opposite gender. Bobby’s official coming out proved anti-climatic, however, because it was after he took my mother and I to a gay dance at the Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa in 1973, where he dirty danced with numerous pals while we drank red Kool-Aid, ate popcorn, and pretended not to gawk. Our family of twelve never went through the “tears of acceptance” phase, as we just found we had something more to celebrate, that our family of liberal Democrats now had our own poster child of diversity to use to tout our “We are the World” social agenda. (Much later, however, as psychic reader told me that my mother had a difficult time accepting Bobby’s gayness. I insisted she was wrong, yet my mother subsequently admitted that she had quite a private struggle squaring his choice with her Catholicism.)

The ten Lapointe siblings cruised through the next decade with Bobby as our champion, living our lives in defiance of social norms, with having fun and finding ourselves top priorities. It was all so lovely, attending elaborate theme parties at Bobby’s brownstone behind Wrigley Field and dancing at gay bars in the Halsted Street area of Chicago. Then AIDS happened to America, and being gay changed from fabulous to frightening in a few short years. Bobby’s seemingly harmless sexploits in West Hollywood bath houses in the early 80’s (“We do this because for years people told us that we couldn’t , but guess what, we can!”) took an ominous turn. The unadulterated joy of being gay was forever squashed, and society began associating homosexuality with disease. (I never did understand how that stigma seemed to apply to both male and female homosexuals, since lesbians are in a lower risk group that heterosexuals for AIDS, but I also never overestimate the intelligence of the American people.)

The darkness descended into a long night, and Bobby went down fighting in 1995 at the tender age of thirty five. His family misses him dearly, especially the irreverent spark of levity he infused at every gathering. Who else would sing Elvis’s “Little sister don’t you do what your big sister done” when my baby sister, Amy, married my old fiancé? We missed his parties, his friends, his hip knowledge style and music, and yes, his decorating tips.

Then along came Jett. My son has always been gay, and I have always known it. Any attempts I made to think otherwise were only backlashes against people who wanted to label him as such before he even realized it about himself. Yet when he first came home to visit from school at the University of Texas and starting talking about this nurse he was dating, referring to “him,” there wasn’t a need for ceremony. I spent the next few months crying about it, and mad at myself for doing so. Yet I knew the cause of the tears. Jett is my only son, my baby. Mothers worry about their children; especially when they are gay; they tell you about the numerous boyfriends they have had in the past few months; and you watched your brother die a protracted and painful death that initiated from unprotected gay sex. So I continued to worry and cry at odd moments and get choked up when talking to my son until one day Jett told me, “Mom, stop it. I know how the disease is spread, and I know how to take care of myself. If I contract the virus, it will because I choose to ignore all knowledge.” Even though that sounded cold, it made me feel better. After two years, I am finally past the negative emotion, and what has replaced it is an incredible feeling of pride and happiness about being re-involved with the gay community. I call the philosophy Neo-homophilism, because I am a lover of gay people and gay things in higher style than ever. I am not part of the old school gay-friendlies who say, “I accept homosexuals because they can’t help the way God made them.” I now say, “I love gay people because my son is gay, and I have never been prouder of person in this world of the way he lives his life and who he is. And if his choice is to live his life as an openly-gay male, then that truly must be a wonderful thing to be.”

---

Thanks for sharing my experiences. Now that you know where I stand, I am asking for your help. I am currently looking for individual and corporate sponsors for the second annual Red Ribbon Ball, a fundraiser for the Coastal Bend AIDS Foundation. I have included a press release for our black-tie event for 1000 which will be held Oct. 22 or Nov. 4 at the American Bank Center, depending on when we can book an entertainer. I am also looking for an individual or club who would volunteer to collect items for and run a silent auction at the gala. Please contact me anytime at the numbers below if you would like to help with this event in any way. I need items for the silent auction, flowers, licensed food and beverage donors, sponsorship for the entertainment, advertisement, and volunteers to help coordinate and promote the event. Please feel free to contact me at any time.

Nancy Drew
NancyDrewTAKS@aol.com
361-877-1960
361-854-0525

Press Release:Coastal Bend AIDS Foundation's Red Ribbon Ball