A year fighting
for equality has left our high school diarist with lousy
grades and an e-mail box full of anger from bisexuals who
misunderstood his last posting. Don't we have better
ways to expend our energy?
Satre is a senior at Notre Dame Academy, a private
Catholic high school in Middleburg, Va., and the founder
of the Virginia LGBT activist group Equality
Fauquier-Culpeper. He writes journal entries
for The Advocate.
Herein lies both
a confession and a rebuttal.
I am an actor, an
activist, a freelance journalist, and a senior in a
Catholic high school. Among other things I am gay. The
difference between where I am now and where I want to
be is that where I am now, I am perceived solely as
gay; where I want to be is a place where sexual
orientation does not define my character. Maybe that is
outside of my small Catholic school in Middleburg, Va.
Maybe it is outside of my hometown of Culpeper.
Perhaps I need to leave Virginia and find some other
home where sexual orientation is not a deciding factor for a
person’s persona.
For just over a
year I have been working tirelessly alongside thousands
of my colleagues around the country to further the
movement for equality. I speak of equality for local
cases in regard to gender discrimination, specifically
for women who have been targeted in the workplace or
who have been subject to domestic violence. I speak of
equality for the black community, especially in Culpeper, as
an active member of the Culpeper Branch of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. I speak of equality for people of varying
economic status, especially in the LGBT community, defending
their voices in the press and in private meetings with
national organization officials. I speak of equality
for the youth of the United States, especially in
Virginia and around the East Coast as an advocate for
teenagers and people in their 20s suffering from societal
barriers because of their sexual orientation.
I have not told
anyone this, not even my parents. Last year, my junior
year of high school, which is also known as the cardinal
year in high school, I knowingly allowed my grades to
slip. I went from having a solid 3.5 GPA to becoming a
C student in most of my classes. For the past few
weeks I have been filling out college applications, one in
particular to a dream school of mine, and I know that
last year’s grades are not suitable for any of
the colleges I want to attend. Admissions officers
will look at my shameful transcripts and will not care
about an explanation as to why those grades slipped.
Last year, my
junior year in high school, I missed more school days than
any other student. I traveled around the East Coast, making
frequent visits to Richmond, Va.; Washington,
D.C.; and New York City. What for? Myself? Not a
chance. I did it for you, the person reading this
article. I did it for the kid I met 15 minutes ago down the
road who was kicked out of his house because he came
out as bisexual to his single mother. She said that
bisexuality was not only an abomination to God but did
not exist. I did it for my friend who was kicked out of his
house after telling his father, a Christian minister,
that he was going to have a sex change. I did it
because anyone in my position would have done it. I
did it because it was the right thing to do and the right
time to do it. So what if my grades slipped? I
probably will not make it into my dream school. I have
probably hindered my career in theater. But you know
what? I. Don’t. Care.
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You can contact Satre at tully@tullysatre.com
or via his MySpace page at myspace.com/whitedeosil.