UNCG student stands up for gay rights

GREENSBORO — At 14, Matt Hill Comer was a Winston-Salem Boy Scout who told the world he also was gay. Soon, he was no longer a Boy Scout.

"My Scout leader told me they would be voting on my membership," Comer said . "I don’t know who the 'they’ were."

A month later, Comer went back to the Scout leader and asked about his status.

"He said that if you choose to live the gay lifestyle then you’re choosing not to be a Boy Scout," Comer said .

Now a 20-year-old sophomore at UNCG, Comer is still challenging the norm .

Last May, he co-founded the N.C. Advocacy Coalition, a registered state political action committee that champions gay rights. His blog, www.onlinegreensboro.com/~matthillnc, focuses on gay rights, and he writes a weekly column in the UNCG newspaper, The Carolinian. He’s a member of UNCG’s PRIDE, a gay and lesbian student group, and the Triad Business and Professional Guild, a gay and lesbian business and social group.

That’s not all. Comer was among nine protesters arrested at a local Army recruiting office this fall when he and three other openly gay people were refused the chance to enlist under the Army’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

This spring, Comer was also arrested for trespassing when he and other gay activists walked onto the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., the first stop on the 2006 Equality Ride. The misdemeanor convictions just go with the territory of being an activist, Comer said.

"I was raised to be very outspoken and to be very patriotic," he said . His mother agrees.

"I pretty much raised my children to say what they had to say as long as they watched their tone," said Alice Hill, a mother of five who still lives in Winston-Salem.

She admits she was shocked when her oldest son told her he was gay. "I saw it as a rebellion," she said . "He was 14 and we had never clashed on anything. It took me a couple of years to quit thinking of it as disobedience, but it’s his choice. I still think it’s a choice, not something you’re born with. I still think it’s wrong, but I don’t necessarily think as harshly of the people now."

Nor has Alice Hill forgiven the Boy Scouts for turning her son out.

"It was like a betrayal," she said . "The Boy Scouts had been the most stable thing in his life, the only male influence. We had been involved with them for years. They just turned their backs on him."

Comer’s father, who had been physically abusive to Matt, had left the family years earlier, Hill said .

Matt Hill Comer (he legally had Comer added to his name earlier this year in honor of his maternal grandfather) says he’s just getting started as an activist. A political science major and a student government member at UNCG, he’s hoping for a career in politics.

Last summer, he sparred online with Guilford County Republican Party Chairman Marcus Kindley after Kindley commented in his own blog that being gay was "as natural as pedophilia ."

Comer demanded an apology from Kindley.

"He never replied," Comer said .

But as Comer himself is quick to point out, he remains a 20-year-old college student. Last month, while on a trip with fellow members of UNCG’s PRIDE group, Comer drank so much vodka so quickly that he had to be taken to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Subsequently, he agreed to resign from the PRIDE board, but he remains a member.

"I had to take some accountability," he said .

"I made the decision to do something that was not only harmful to me, but harmful to the group." He also apologized in his column in The Carolinian.

"I see it as a learning experience," he said . "I wasn’t even old enough to drink legally. I didn’t know what the limits of my body were."

Though chastened, Comer has no plans to stay quiet.

"There are problems in America, especially on lesbian, gay, bi sexual and transgender issues," he said . "They have a place within society and the law that makes them second-class citizens . And unlike some others, I have the ability to be out.

"I’m going out there and being outspoken because a lot of people can’t do that. That’s why I do the things I do — to stand up for the people who don’t have a voice."

Contact Tom Steadman at 373-7351 or tsteadman@news-record.com