Seth Crawford, a junior at Northwest Guilford High School in Greensboro, NC, wrote a great student journalism article and profile on me and my activism as a part of a multicultural journalism workshop with the Greensboro News & Record.
His article appears in today’s paper:
UNCG student fights for gay rights
June 26, 2007
Seth Crawford, Northwest GuilfordThis article was written as part of a Multicultural Journalism Workshop at the News & Record.
The numbing cold handcuffs constrict his wrists.
A firm hand tightly grasps his arm.
An attentive man guides him to the sporadic blinking lights of a police car.
As he is placed in the back seat, confidence builds up inside him.
Unlike most college students, 21-year-old Matt Hill Comer has been battling adversity his entire life.
Comer, a UNCG junior, realized he was gay when he was 12. But he grew up in a strictly conservative Baptist home, where he struggled with a decision to make his sexual orientation known. He would sit in church on Sundays, listening to his pastor — who seemed to point him out — condemning gays as despicable, vile creatures that would inevitably burn in hell.
Comer struggled with his sexual orientation. Maybe he didn’t feel the way he thought he did, or maybe it would pass. After two years of wrestling with himself, he finally came out to his parents at 14.
“My dad just sat on the couch. He didn’t really say anything,” Comer said. “My mom gave me the typical conservative Christian reaction saying, ‘You’re going to hell.’
“I cried myself to sleep.”
After he told his parents, he built up enough courage to confide to a friend in his Boy Scout troop and another friend from school, who told everyone else. It wasn’t the way he had planned. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, except grit his teeth and take the verbal abuse that followed.
Comer remembers being teased by the kids in his Boy Scout troop. That eventually turned to violence.
“They tied me to a tree and threw rocks and sticks at me and hit me with wet towels,” he said.
His father confronted the Scout master, who simply replied: “Boys will be boys.”
I emailed Seth this morning, told him he did a great job and gave him just one correction in his article. Besides that… I think his little bio at the bottom of the article – “Seth, a junior, wants to write for Sports Illustrated.” – might be right on cue with his talent for writing.
