To Be Gay at Yale

Today, gay students at Yale no longer feel that being gay is a primary part of their identities. The word students use is “backgrounded,” as in, gayness has been backgrounded in their personalities. “I would identify myself first as a college student,” says Ethan Guillen, “and at appropriate times as a dancer, and as a gay person only after that.” Junior Laura Horak, the organizer of this year’s Pride Week, says, “A lot of people don’t feel the need to foreground that part of their identity. Most gay people spend the majority of their time outside of strictly gay situations.” Evan Leatherwood is a politically conservative senior. “If there’s actually any part of me that has caused me to encounter resistance from my friends,” he says, “it’s not that I’m gay but that I’m conservative.”

“There’s a prevailing attitude of, because I’m gay, it doesn’t mean that’s my life,” says Jonathan, a junior who was out to fellow members of the heavyweight crew team (and asked that his last name not be used because he hasn’t come out to some family members). Many people will go to gay-oriented dances, but they don’t go to meetings, he says. “They’re like, ‘Why would I come to a meeting? I’m not a “gay person,” I’m a person who happens to be gay.’ “

And that’s a good thing, says Guillen. “It makes it possible to just go about your daily life, rather than having to sit around reminding yourself that you’re gay all the time, fighting for all these causes.” Of course, other schools have yet to reach Yale’s level of acceptance. “It must be nice to live in that kind of bubble,” says Jennifer Storm, an activist at Penn State University, where four gay women were chased and attacked last year. And students are painfully aware that their families might not be as nonchalant as their peers. Hoa Huynh, a Vietnamese-American 2001 grad who came to Yale from Northern California, grew up in a Buddhist monastery.

By the time he came out to his family, he had already completed the first three steps of becoming a Buddhist monk — including the vow of celibacy. “When I came here, it was freedom,” says Huynh. “Being able to be myself and not having to worry about what might get back to my parents.” Even traditionally homophobic groups at Yale such as sports teams now have openly gay athletes. Old traditions die hard — heavyweight crew members still have a practice in which they point to the freshman team and chant “gay” and point to themselves and chant “straight” — but gay rowers swear it’s all in good fun. “It’s kind of awkward, but it’s been done forever,” says Jonathan. “They’ll make a comment, or make gay jokes, but they would never hold it against someone.” J.C. Reindl, a track star who’s out on Yale’s team, concurs. His fellow athletes rib him, he says, about being gay. “That’s their way of letting me know that I’m one of the guys,” says Reindl. “They don’t try to be ultra-PC around me, like they can’t kid around with me.”

Gay students on campus are just as focused on traditional careers as their straight counterparts. “I would say it’s about the same breakdown as the straight population,” says Roric Tobin, a 2001 grad. “There’s no difference.” At this spring’s Pride Week panel “Out in Your Career,” presenters offered advice and insights on being openly gay in corporate America:dealing with the “lavender ceiling,” securing domestic-partner benefits at a corporation, figuring out the best time in the interviewing process to make it known that one is gay. Nobody mentioned protests, changing legislation, rallying or picketing.

The gay social scene generally takes place within the overall social scene, and not apart from it. Groups like Not-Straight Frosh are mainly social clubs: People show up at the first meeting not because they need to share their struggles but to see who’s gay, who’s hot and who’s datable. Myles Gideon, a senior and founder of the discussion group T-GAY (Trannies, Genderqueers and Allies at Yale), notes, “Nobody wants to come to Yalesbians meetings, so they’ll have movie nights or parties.” Mostly, gay Yalies meet each other at the same parties as straight people. For example, John, a junior from Long Island who asked that his last name not be used, says, “I met this guy from Tufts at a party the other night,” he says. “It wasn’t a gay party or anything. I just spotted him, and he turned out to be gay.” Jonathan describes how he met John at a naked party hosted by a campus prankster organization. “His female friend was trying to get with the two of us, so as to get with him,” says Jonathan, “and he was trying to get with me, but I was in a relationship, so it turned into a rather convoluted, although amusing, evening.”

The few gay parties are generally thrown by grad students. “It’s architecture grad students, or in the divinity school,” says Reindl. “Graduates are pretty ravenous for any undergrads they can get their hands on.” But even those parties are “pretty tame,” he says. Off campus, things get racier. A favorite activity, especially among closeted students, is to go to gay clubs in New York en masse. It is a rite of passage in the coming-out process. “You kind of have a campus reputation, but once you’re off campus, you let everything go,” says Reindl. “I have friends who do maybe one or two on-campus hookups per semester, but if you count what they do in New York, you might enter double digits.”