The last thing I expected was a room full of women. As it turned out, I was in the wrong room; instead of the Seacoast Gay Men’s panel discussion, I had walked into a women’s chorus meeting. A kindly singer directed me to the downstairs area of the church—ironically, to the Ladies’ Lounge—where the SGM meeting was to be held.

The group’s panel discussion, entitled “Dude, I Was Out Before You Were Born,” was held on Monday, Feb. 13 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Portsmouth before an audience of almost 30 mostly late-middle-aged members of Seacoast Gay Men, an organization formed 27 years ago as a “social vehicle for gay men in the area,” according to their Web site. Three panelists and a number of SGM audience members conveyed their experiences in accepting their own sexual orientation and, in most cases, making their orientation known.

Before they spoke, SGM assistant vice-president Frank DeSarro placed cards on the floor marked with numbers representing ages from 10 to 50. He asked members of the association to stand by the number that most closely represented the age at which they realized they were gay. Three gathered in the 35-40 range, one was at 25, and the rest formed a large group which stretched from 20, well past 10, to the side of the room. He then asked that they move to the age at which they admitted openly, even to a few close friends, that they were gay. The distribution changed dramatically; only a few gathered toward the bottom of the range. Of the rest, three men clustered at 45, the rest split themselves evenly between 20 and 30-35.

Almost every participant realized he was gay at least 10 years before he admitted it, even to close friends. Probably as many waited 20. What happened in those years?

The panel members described a struggle to come to terms with their own sexuality that was in most cases at least as demanding as the task of making it known to those around them. Because the panel was composed of men in their 40s and 50s, they did not enjoy the benefits and support offered more commonly today. The mainstream of psychology considered homosexuality to be a mental disorder until  at least 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove the sexual preference from its official roster of mental illnesses. (The update was not entered into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the bible of abnormal psychology—until the third edition was published in 1980.) At that time, to admit to oneself that one was gay was to label oneself, by that single word, sick and immoral. To admit it to others was to face ostracism and contempt.
The most poignant fact to emerge from these men’s stories is this: it is hard to be true to oneself in the face of a hostile world, and, lacking that integrity, it is impossible to maintain a healthy view of and approach to life. The accounts provided by the panelists are a manifest of self-denial.

SGM vice president Joe Murphy’s first gay relationship was in the late 1950s, when he was 15 years old, with a 16-year-old “jock.” When his orientation became the subject of rumor, Murphy said, his friends abandoned him, and he became “isolated… very depressed.” In college he discovered alcohol. As Murphy puts it, “I dealt with my sex life in a very clandestine way. I got drunk, went to bars, and had sex with anybody. I was dying for sexual contact with males, and after a few beers everyone was beautiful. It was a pretty dismal existence.”

But for gay men at that time, there were few options. Homosexuality had been driven underground, and the only place he could meet other gays was at the bar. Alcoholism was rampant, and thoughtless promiscuity was often an unquestioned way of life. Later, Murphy would take more dramatic steps to evade his orientation. “I was about 21, and all my friends at that time were getting married. I was kind of seeing a girl, and my mother said ‘All your friends are getting married, why don’t you marry Colleen?’ I of course knew I was gay, but I didn’t want the life, because all it was to me was dingy bars and sordid sex and falling down drunk and hangovers and guilt and, you know, self-hate.”

Murphy’s marriage lasted 16 years and produced two children. He does not regret the marriage.
“I think everything I did I had to do to get where I am today. I think by being married I was blessed with children.” Though his son, who was part of a born again Christian group at the time of Murphy’s coming out —and who later, at the age of 21, came out of the closet himself—sent him “a scathing letter about how (he) was going to hell,” his wife and friends were very supportive. He describes his coming out as “an enema of the mind.”

After so many years of suffering the psychological consequences of deceiving himself and others about his sexual preference, Murphy has a remarkably optimistic attitude. Some speakers, however, were not so positive about their experiences. One panel member, who has requested anonymity, is in his mid-50s and is still not out of the closet. Having had sexual relations with other males since the age of nine, he met his first love at college in South Carolina in the late 1960s. The school was evacuated during the violent turbulence following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and, back at home with his family, he found himself relieved of the unearned guilt he had been suppressing. “I felt wholesome again,” he said. “Some part of me hadn’t felt wholesome, which was part of the whole self-hatred thing.” He refused all contact with his lover. Later, he moved to the Seacoast, protecting himself by isolation.

“For like 15 years I had no contact with anyone. For 13 years I had no sex. Part of that was fear of AIDS, but part of it was also having constant contact with my family. It’s part of the self-hatred thing. I believe you can’t grow up in America as black, gay, any minority, and be constantly told you’re bad without absorbing some of it.” Even now, when he finds himself for the first time in a relationship he believes may last, he maintains that “there’s no such thing as real happiness.” Later, concerning his reluctance to be openly gay, he said, “I would encourage everyone to have the courage not to do what I did.”

Of course, the same challenges still exist, but they are no longer almost universal. A gay man coming out of the closet now may lose some friends, his family relations may be strained or ruined, but he can generally count on having something left afterward. In most cases, he will not have to face the world alone. According to a 26-year-old SGM member, things are still rough in rural communities like the one in which he was raised, where social circles are more tightly bonded and social pressure is relentless. He says he was beaten daily in high school after outing himself. But, he says, each person who comes out becomes a role model for others and moves the culture one step further toward acceptance.

Murphy credits youth groups with making the world a less threatening and hopeless place for younger homosexuals. In particular, he praises Seacoast Outright, a safe meeting place for youth from 14 to 22. Seacoast Outright’s executive director will attend their March 20 meeting and tell them “what’s going on with Seacoast Outright and the next generation of SGMers.”

Seacoast Gay Men, which meets from 7-9 on Mondays in the Portsmouth Unitarian Universalist Church, and Seacoast Outright, which meets from 7-9 on Fridays at the Portsmouth Community Campus, are on the Web at www.sgminc.org and www.seacoastoutright.org.