Is This Life Without Will and Grace?

I was a freshman in college, one of the most conservative in the country, one that had a known appetite for queer bating when I was getting ready to pack it in and go home. Aside from my handful of friends from home who carefully guarded my secret, there were no gay people, at least not outside of Gay.com.

"Watch Will and Grace, so you can see what life is really like for us." The simplest suggestion ever. Two gay men who made it through where I was and lived it up in New York. I knew then that everything would be OK. But Will and Grace are gone. The show has been off the air now for four years and even then, it pandered to a few too many stereotypes than real life. Vapid Jack bounced from man to man and Will had such an inferiority complex that he was always too afraid to get a man. Then Will meets Vince and off the air they go. Ironically just at the moment that America is pitched in the largest cultural battle since the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. But they did show that life could be as normal as anyone else. Gays can have close friends and find love and really the ladies on Sex and the City still haven't figured that out.

And so gay kids have almost no one to look to on TV today. Maybe that's why three of them have decided to take their own lives this week. The failure is larger than an absence of viable role models on television, the failure belongs to all of us. The parents of that child failed to reassure their frightened boys that they would love them unconditionally no matter what. The schools and public institutions failed to really prevent or assess the extent of the bullying. The Community failed to provide real-world role models. Perhaps we as a Community bear the heaviest guilt. We put too much emphasis on good looks and alcohol and recreational sex and drug use. All too often the twinks and leather daddies overshadow the professionals in long-term relationships with families. Doesn't this give the picture of a very limited reality for gays?

They Gay Community is probably one of the most diverse in the world. It encompasses many different ages and ethnicities, and a myriad of economic and cultural stratas. It is extremely difficult to unify that many people. It is extremely easy to vilify (and accuse) each of those individuals; to herd your children away from them on the street or stare from the corner of you eye in public and mutter your disapproval for something you think is a choice. From my own experience I know being gay is just something you come out with, not something you choose. I am almost positive that these boys would tell you that they were just like you, only a little different. Except because they were gay, and that is still such a terrible thing to be in the United States today, they just kept quiet and decided to end it all now, before they knew how good it can really be.