Stories don’t usually start with, “Harvard University outed me.” This one does. When Scott Blair took the LSATs and checked a box on his Harvard application that he was gay, the university gay law student group called his mother’s house. She asked the reason for the call, and they told her, “Well, he’s gay and applied and we’d really like him to come.”
She confronted Scott about the call in the car soon thereafter. “Did you save the contact information?” he appropriately asked her. “No, I was hoping you were lying to them to get into a better law school,” she replied. The time had come to be totally honest, and Scott told her that no, he wasn’t lying.
“I almost want to drive this car into a tree,” said Scott’s mother. “Can you let me out of the car first and then you can go ahead?” he answered like a true lawyer-to-be.
His parents ended up joining a “Parents and Friend of Ex-Gays” group in New Jersey, even though Scott was comfortable with who he is. “That is the opposite of the group you are supposed to be joining right now,” he tried reasoning with them.
But reason rarely matters in the unfortunate world of ex-gays. His parents asked Scott to meet with one of the group’s leaders, to “understand what the homosexual lifestyle is about.” To humor them, he agreed.
By the time Scott met with him, it was the summer of his second year of law school. Harvard Law School. Scott was already a clever young man, but armed with two years of legal argumentative training, the guy didn’t stand a chance.
First, the counselor started with the “there is no gay gene” schtick. “Every study that’s reported to find a gay gene has been authored by gays,” he continued.
Scotts response: “I have no idea what studies you’re talking about, but sexuality is very complex. Everything that humans do is very complex. All a gene does is control the expression of a protein. I would be extremely shocked if one gene could control anything like that.”
The counselor looked at Scott with confused bewilderment, never having received such an answer. His next move was to pry into Scott’s upbringing —specifically his parents’ divorce. He told Scott that many people who are angry at their mothers following a divorce are “turned off” to women.
“So if I was angry at my mother, that would make me gay, but you also asked me how I felt about my father. My guess is what you’re going to say is that if I was angry at my father, that would make me want to seek the company of other men.”
The ex-gay counselor said yes, that can be the case as well.
“Isn’t that sort of contradictory? No matter which one of my parents I hate — which I don’t — that made me gay.”
Next the counselor moved the conversation to the subject of homosexuality leading to the fall of civilizations, referencing the Roman Empire.
Except Scott is a history buff with a special interest in the Romans. “The Roman Empire only fell after it became Christian,” he told the therapist.
“Well they weren’t really Christian in any sense of the word that we would use today.”
“Saint Augustine was one of the most famous Christian theologists ever, and according to what you’re telling me, he wasn’t actually a Christian.”
“Well, you know, they were very Catholic.”
“You realize my mother is Catholic, right?”
“Well, thank you for your time,” he eventually told Scott, leaving the room.
In an interview with I’m From Driftwood, Scott reflects on the experience:
“It’s actually hard not to feel a little sorry for him, because he was gay before he ‘changed,’ and he claims that he realized homosexuality was immoral in the 80’s when he saw a lot of his friends dying from AIDS, and it’s hard to mock somebody for that.
“I would tell any kid who has to go see an ex-gay therapist or somebody that’s telling them that it’s wrong to be gay that they are smarter than somebody who thinks that and they are better than somebody who thinks that. And frankly any argument that somebody uses to support changing who you are is very, very bad. And very dumb. 30 second of thought will show you why it’s wrong.”
If we ever need a lawyer, we’re calling Scott.
See the whole interview here:
Kieran
So the homophobic bigot was also an anti-Catholic bigot as well. Haters gonna hate.
StephK
The “ex-gay” Christian counselor sounds like someone I knew back in the day. This guy, like so many others, left his partner for a woman during the depths of the AIDS crisis in the 80’s. It is so impressive that Scott could give him a pass understanding that. Scott’s parents have every reason to be extremely proud of him because his confidence, self-love and character willserve him well in his future. Their problem..non-acceptance.. indicates to me that they are the ones in need of therapy, not Scott. Apparently he is the grown-up in the family.BTW I love Scott’s answer to his mom about driving into the tree..sounds like what I would have said to mine.
1EqualityUSA
StephK, True, though keep in mind that Mr. Blair has had years to adjust to his identity. The parents, under the impression that their son was straight and all that that entails, now have to adjust their minds to this newly revealed reality. It cannot happen overnight. If it did happen too quickly, I would suspect it. The parents will come around. I hope this young man will be patient with them and consistent in his message. This story was fun to read.
Trippy
So those are the types of questions reparative therapists are using to create “ex-gays”? Wow… really weak. I’m surprised they manage to “turn” anyone at all.
1EqualityUSA
yeah, they don’t “turn” anyone, they shame people into suppressing their true nature.
GayEGO
I guess we just have to keep educating the non-gays that they only know themselves, not us.
Captain Obvious
Honestly I can’t stand extremists no matter which side of the fence they’re on. “Ex-gays” spreading a bunch of self-hatred and out gay men who don’t understand that everyone needs to come out at their own time both get on my nerves.
This kid seems to understand both sides and that caught my attention so kudos to him. It makes no sense not to feel bad for “ex-gays” let alone attack them. They can’t hurt us, but they are hurting themselves.
bnard620
@1EqualityUSA: how’re right, parents need time to adjust. I mean If took person years to come out to parents than I would assume that it was took a while for the parents to accept it as well.
Bryguyf69
From the article:
the university gay law student group called his mother’s house. She asked the reason for the call, and they told her, “Well, he’s gay and applied and we’d really like him to come.”
===
Something must be lost in translation. First of all, a gay students group would not be calling someone to tell them they’ve been accepted into law school. Notification is made through the mail, and it’s from the law school’s administrative offices, not a student social group. And I’d highly doubt that they would announce it, “…he’s gay and applied and we’d really like him to come.” Double-entendres aside, what does “We’d like him to come” mean? Getting into any Harvard school is an honor; they don’t call to beg for an applicant’s acceptance.
AtticusBennett
PFOX – parents and friends of ex-gays = “the reason people kill themselves”
there are no ex-gay people. anywhere. they’re merely all brainwashed and emotionally abused cowards who lie in order to win back some pithy tolerance from the bigots they’re surrounded by.
everyone who promotes the lie of “ex-gay reparative therapy” has blood on their hands.
Bryguyf69
2:25 “Nobody has found a gay gene….” Well, no one has found a straight gene either, so I guess heterosexuality isn’t natural either.?
Stache99
@1EqualityUSA: That’s so true and people always seem to forget that. They have all these hopes and dreams and in their minds it comes to a crashing end literally overnight. Now they themselves get to begin the process of coming out of the closet. It will take years but they’ll come around.
Stache99
@Bryguyf69: It wasn’t getting into Harvard. It was about being accepted into their gay student group.
Bryguyf69
@Stache99: The gay law students group, Lambda, doesn’t have acceptance criteria like a fraternity. You simply have to be a gay Harvard law student. Actually, I don’t know if you even have to be gay. So if you apply, you’re in. There’s no fanfare or acceptance procedure. Now, it may be true that they were calling to invite him to an event although that’s unlikely because email is much more efficient. Regardless, if you watch the video, you’d see that the phrase, “we’d really like him to come,” was never uttered. So it does seem like something was lost in translation.
michaelmt1009
Best response I have ever read about anywhere. I hope that Scott continues to speak out for LBGT rights because his responses are intelligent, non confrontational, and basically stops the bigots in their place in a very well thought out way. Good for you Scott.
Publius
He actually ended up attending (and graduating from) NYU Law.
Alan down in Florida
First I disagree that parents have to have time to adjust. Parents should love their children unconditionally and their immediate reaction should be “We love you and support you and nothing can change our love for you.”
As for no gay gene – this link is from TODAY!
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/11/22/are-you-born-gay-or-is-it-a-choice-scientists-might-have-found-the-answer/
jason smeds
I would never tick the gay box. I would simply write “none of your business”.
I wish that Harvard would stay out of people’s personal lives.
onthemark
@jason smeds: The image of Harvard Law School mulling over your application in CRAYON is quite amusing.
jmmartin
@michaelmt1009: Hear! Hear! When bigots are confronted with facts they either deny them or change the subject, but this smart young man carefully lures them into traps of their own making, pointing up the logical fallacies in their arguments. One does this with Mormoms and Jehovah’s Witlessnesses all the time.
Stache99
@jmmartin: I agree that’s he’s smart but does it really take a Einstein to confront their “logic”. Usually eventually turns into. La la la la la. I don’t hear you. La la la..
Len John
Cheers dude. We love you and your courageous response.
jamesnimmo
I hope he has a very successful law practice and winds up as a Supreme Court justice.
Saint Law
@jason smeds: “I would never tick the gay box.”
Technically paying ‘straight’ guys to shit on you at rest stops still qualifies as gay, so perhaps you should.
Redpalacebulleaglesox
Let’s see. This “therapist” totally misrepresented Freudian psychology, claimed something to be Christian that isn’t, claimed Roman Catholics are not Christian, and demonstrated a total ignorance of human biology and genetics. Mr. Blair has already mastered the art of cross-examination, while this “therapist” should be sued for malpractice and have his license revoked for quackery.
Large Marge
His brains are sexy!
NoCagada
‘…the counselor started with the “there is no gay gene” schtick. “Every study that’s reported to find a gay gene has been authored by gays,” ‘
So, straight people shouldn’t be studying straight people?
footwork61
@Alan down in Florida: Of course parents should love their children unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean they can instantly wrap their heads around the conditions.
I remember listening to the Derek & Romaine show on Sirius OutQ. A caller asked how long he should give his mother to accept his homosexuality because she seemed to be struggling. Derek asked the guy how long it took from the time he realized he was gay until he told anyone. The caller said 5 years. Derek said, so it took you 5 years to accept yourself as a gay person, but your mother should do it in a couple days? You have to give her the same amount of time to fully accept it.
Ridpathos
@1EqualityUSA: Sorry, but it’s not true that the parents WILL come around. It’s possible, of course, but my parents had 5 years to come around, and they still haven’t.
1EqualityUSA
Ridpathos, If you haven’t given them any other reason to distance themselves from you, other than being openly gay, they will regret this someday. It must hurt like Hell. Have you tried talking to them since?
Billysees
@Bryguyf69:
Good observation. I was thinking the same.
IvanPH
So what if there is no gay gene? There is a variety of human traits that could not be traced to a particular gene. For example, there is no LEFT-HANDED gene yet left-handed people are not choosing to be left-handed, are they? Having high IQ or being introverted could not also be traced to genes.
Anyway, good job to this young bright articulate fellow. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also cute.
Smart and good looking… a very rare breed!
msfrost
@Kieran:
Most are Evangelicals.
onthemark
@1EqualityUSA: That’s what’s amazes me about this site: so many grown men who are absolutely obsessed with what their parents think of them. Boo hoo. “It must hurt like Hell,” really? Or maybe if you’re older than like 15, who the f*** cares???
Maybe it’s generational, all these gay millennial douchebags who yearn for their hetero parents to be their Best Friends and when this unrealistic expectation can’t be realized, as it inevitably cannot, they “feel” that Something Is Wrong With The World.
But I’ll take a guess, judging from his screen name, that “RID PATHOS” agrees with me at least somewhat!
1EqualityUSA
onthemark, Just got home from walking doggies. Yeah, I guess it depends on one’s background. Speaking for myself, a third generation immigrant, (Grandparents came from Greece, Ireland, England, Germany, some Scotland in there, oh, and a little Doberman Pinscher, though you can’t tell unless my tail wags…I tape it down every morning with duct tape before going out…especially for poker night, as it’s a definite give-away,) so all our lives we were taught that blood is thicker than water. Family was all one had in this big, bad country that didn’t take kindly to immigrants coming in and, “taking jobs away from__________fill in the blank. It may be that your fam established roots so long ago that this concept of family ties eroded? Back then it was sink or swim. Family was and still is very important. That’s the best explanation I can muster, mister.
It gave me food for thought, what you said. Now I’ve got to go vacuum up the sand tracked into the house with my hiking boots. The rains finally gave way to blue skies. You have a beautiful day.
onthemark
@1EqualityUSA: Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I’m hurting from a recent accident and was taking it out a bit on you! There’s something to what you say; I hadn’t thought of that angle. (Those immigrants, always complaining about something!)
My misgivings are a little different. It seems to me that not so long ago, the parent stuff (re: gays & coming out, etc.) was discussed in a pretty ordinary way. Believe me, people came out in the ’80s and even the ’70s, and they (we) did have a tough time because it was a harder thing to do back then – both generally and in nearly every individual case. But nobody was surprised or expected better. It still needed to be done, it got done and we moved on to other much more interesting & fun aspects of adult life.
Today, expectations are different, and even though coming out to parents is easier than ever (generally speaking), people dwell on the subject a morbid amount. Maybe it’s because the internet makes it easy to compare yourself to others, so every gay boy reads these stories of totally supportive parents who are held up not only as the ideal, but as the norm. And yet, notice that sites like Queerty invariably describe such parents as “amazing”! (There’s an “amazing” parent like that right on this page.) Well you can’t have it both ways, or even one of those ways really.
If totally supportive parents are an “amazing,” uncommon ideal, but one you don’t have, you get depressed & pissed off. And if totally supportive parents are the supposedly the mundane average norm, but you don’t have that, you’re still depressed & pissed off. Or you think there’s something inherently wrong with your suddenly-monstrous parents (who are in reality pretty ordinary). Or worse, you start to take seriously the blame-the-victim talk of some commenters on gay sites, and you think there’s something wrong with YOU (when you’re actually pretty ordinary). All this creates a lot of pressure and I think even a well-meaning comment like yours – “It must hurt like Hell” – adds to the pressure. At any rate, parents tend to come around over time.
To any closeted teens reading this, I’m trying to present a hopeful message in saying: Don’t take your parents TOO seriously. Don’t waste too much time thinking about them or their reactions. Your parents’ reactions are not under your control. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised by their reactions, anyway. Start planning for adult life and what you really want to do! … And (to get back to the original article) your parents are hardly your only worry; you might occasionally need to deal cleverly with homophobes out in adult life too.
Maleko
@Ridpathos: Patience, patience; it took mine 20 years to more-or-less come around. They are Mormon, a major problem for them. Mom says she accepts that my Partner and I love each other but she doesn’t understand it, but does accept us as who we are. My Dad still believes that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago; any thing I tell him that contradicts Mormon dogma, and they have lots of dogma, he just doesn’t believe. We don’t get along, as you’d imagine.
tricky ricky
@Kieran: Christians hate the fact they are the bastard spawn of the holy mother church.
tricky ricky
@IvanPH: the nuns at my school were under the impression kids chose to be left handed. my mom put a stop to that nonsense in the early 60’s before they were able to try to change my little brother from a lefty to a righty which they were attempting to do to kids in my class. she went to public school where left handers were accepted for who they were.
enlightenone
@1EqualityUSA: You make a lot of presumptions in your comment!
enlightenone
@1EqualityUSA: “…they shame people into suppressing their true nature.”
They cannot suppress anyone’s nature!
enlightenone
@Captain Obvious: “…They can’t hurt us, but they are hurting themselves.”
It “get[s] on my nerves” when people like you have blinders on!
enlightenone
@jason smeds: “I wish that Harvard would stay out of people’s personal lives.”
Being “gay” isn’t a personal life, it’s an IDENTITY! I wish you would get it together!
enlightenone
@footwork61: “Derek said, so it took you 5 years to accept yourself as a gay person, but your mother should do it in a couple days? You have to give her the same amount of time to fully accept it.”
Disagree! This isn’t mathematics.
enlightenone
@Maleko: “…Mom says she accepts that my Partner and I love each other but she doesn’t understand it, but does accept us as who we are.”
Ironic isn’t it that your mother understands the creation of Mormonism by the man who established this religion and with that have how ever many wives, but doesn’t understand the science of homosexuality!
Billysees
@Maleko:
“Mom says she accepts that my Partner and I love each other but she doesn’t understand it,…”
Here’s a good scripture verse your Mom may appreciate. It’ll explain in simple terms why “she doesn’t understand it” plus it will do a good job of explaining the spirituality behind the gay things that are in the world —
Man’s ways are of the Lord, so how can we understand our own ways?”…..Proverbs 20:24
Stefano
@onthemark: You are so right !
Maude
I know why I’m attracted to men….Don’t you?!!
Jerry12
I would like to know where some pundits think that being Gay or Strait are choices people make. If it IS a choice; I would like some explaination of how the following happened: My Father’s Father (A second born) was Gay; My Father, the second born, was Gay (I accidentally met his “Lover”); I, his second born, am Gay, and been living with my partner for over 20 years; as I was married before “Coming out” and had three children; my second child was Gay. He never had children before he died of AIDS at 27.
Brian Crim
YES SCOTT #EPICWIN!!!!