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Due to constraints on my time, mainly resulting from my no longer being a student, Dispatches is now a bi-weekly column. As always, thanks for reading!

I’m not usually the type to listen to morning radio shows. Unless, you count Morning Edition that is. But now that I’m carpooling to the Metro with my boyfriend, I have an opportunity for a few minutes each day to listen to the juvenile antics of disc jockeys. Usually I don’t find much interesting in these shows, but occasionally, things are different.

Friday was unusual both in the length of time I had to listen to the show and the content of the episode. Instead of riding the train, we drove to Silver Spring, where we both work. On the way, my boyfriend turned on the Kane Show on local Washington station Hot 99.5. 

As we headed for the Beltway, I listened raptly to the debate. Someone called Heather had phoned into the show. She was a mother whose son was just about to go off to the adventure we call “college.” According to Heather, this occasion was (is) being marred by a frightening and dangerous circumstance: she has discovered somehow that her son’s soon-to-be roommate is gay.

Suppressing a sudden pang of schadenfreude, I listened as other callers made their opinions known. Far from being an impartial moderator, the show’s hosts strongly criticized Heather as ignorant. Heather, it seemed, believes that her son might “catch” homosexuality from his roommate. She is apparently livid that the college would be so irresponsible as to house a gay person with a non-gay person. 

I don’t know how this situation will get resolved. Perhaps Heather will have her son moved to room with a straight roommate. Perhaps she won’t succeed in changing his roommate. Regardless, her son is either gay or straight. No matter who his roommate is – gay, straight, transgender, male, or female – the son’s own orientation won’t be affected. However, his sense of what is right and wrong may be up for modification. And perhaps that’s what she fears most. Perhaps she’s really afraid that her son will learn about social behavior from someone other than her.

A gay roommate can open eyes to different circumstances and lifestyles. I believe that having a roommate different from oneself is a valuable and rewarding experience. Should Heather read this column (which I find unlikely), she’ll likely claim it as proof positive of her contagion hypothesis. But I once found myself in a position very similar to the one currently facing her son.

I grew up in a small town in rural north Georgia. By the time I finished my junior year of high school, I had never once met a person who I knew to be gay. All I had to go on were stereotypes and the few portrayals of gays in the media. But that summer, I was tapped for a prestigious honors program which brought together the brightest students in the state. The program took place just a few miles from the Florida border at Valdosta State University. During the six weeks we stayed there, we lived in the dorms vacated by university students away on break. 

When I arrived outside Langdale Hall in the scorching south Georgia heat, I had no idea of what the summer had to offer. I met my roommate, who’d already moved in, and introduced my parents. Soon after, we were left alone to meet each other. Over the next few weeks we became fast friends and after about three weeks, my roommate came out to me.

I have to admit, I was frightened and intrigued. I had never met a gay person. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to react. And in my ignorance, I came off a bit homophobic. Although I was not actually afraid of my roommate. 

I had so many questions for him, and I think I was more afraid of the answers than anything else on the planet. I knew then that I was attracted to men, but I didn’t accept these feelings. But I wasn’t an idiot. The writing was on the wall, and I could see it, but I couldn’t quite make out the message. 

About a week later, when my parents visited, I mentioned my roommate’s homosexuality to them. Their reactions will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. They were horrified. Their first reaction was to see about getting either me or him relocated. An idea which I shot down quickly. But their outright hostility to my roommate made it even harder for me when it was my time to come out.

It was three years before I finally came out to myself and others. My roommate from the summer honors program was one of the first people I told, and as he tells it, he just about fell out of his chair. My parents eventually started to come around. Now when they go on vacation, they even bring my boyfriend souvenirs. 

But it wasn’t always easy. Heather’s outright hostility may just make her son hostile toward LGBT persons. He might overcome these prejudices when he gets to college, or he might not. A gay roommate would certainly give him a new perspective. But I certainly feel for him in the case that he is indeed himself gay and closeted. His mother’s ignorance, something she’s quite unabashed about, will teach him that it’s not okay to be gay. And if he is gay, he will face a tremendous challenge.

I didn’t catch “the gay” from my first-ever roommate any more than I caught my hair color from my kindergarten classmates or my hand preference from a preschool teacher.

But let me tell you, sometimes I wish it was contagious. Our fight for rights sure would be easy if we could just infect the appropriate people in power.

Alas, it is not, though. In the course of six years worth of straight roommates in a college setting, I’ve never once managed to convert a breeder into a fruit. And I still managed to have an enriching experience. Hopefully, Heather’s son will free himself from her still-attached umbilical cord and chart his own path.

After all, college is meant to change us. If we leave college the same as when we entered it, we’ve missed the point. It’s about much, much more than learning subjects from books. It’s about finding oneself and starting a journey to seek out a place in the world. And you can’t do that without growing just a little each day.

Heather, closing your eyes to truth in the world doesn’t stop change; it just makes it harder to see where you’re going.

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