To the editor,

I would like to respond to the article in the last Northerner about the GLBTQ Youth Summit.

I must say I am extremely affronted by the ignorance expressed within it. First of all, there is zero scientific evidence that being gay is any sort of choice.

It is something one simply discovers about oneself over time, just like heterosexuality.

My personal experience as a gay male certainly resonates with these findings.

At no point in my life did I wake up and say “Gee! It would be really really fun to be discriminated against and put down in editorials by people who don’t even know me, to be put at risk for violence and possibly even murder. Yes indeed! That would be a wonderful move.”

No one does.

All I could do was come to term with the fact, accept it, and learn to live my life with homosexuality as a part of it.

Furthermore, I fail to understand the term “lifestyle.” What is the gay lifestyle?

I know many gay people and we all live different lifestyles.

I myself probably have more in common with your average straight computer geek than the circuit party gay male.

All people are different and live differently.

I honestly want the same thing a lot of people want: a good job, a peaceful world to raise a child in, a spirituality, someone to grow old with… even the dog in the yard.

I just want to grow old with another man.

Also, the author’s contention that no safe space is needed for GLBT youth is just flat out wrong.

Studies show that many gay youth, especially in high school, are subjected to treatment no one should receive.

They have no space to come to terms with who they are, no place they necessarily feel safe.

Thus, the need for the Youth Summit.

It is a day when people can feel safe in their own skin, no masks and no fear.

I agree with Mr. Grooms that such a space should not, in an ideal world, be needed. But this is not an ideal world, and it is needed desperately.

Lastly, I am unaware that Mr. Grooms was forced to attend the Summit, to spend the day full of homosexuals he seems to feel “are getting what they deserve” in every day life.

No course, to my knowledge, required attendance. If he doesn’t like the Summit, he can “choose” not to go.

Otherwise, I suggest he actually do some research into what being gay is really like.

Doug Meredith