A pivotal experience happened for me three years ago, when I went to one of the memorial marches for Charlie Howard.

Charlie Howard was a young gay man who was thrown off a bridge in Bangor by several anti-gay youths and drowned. The year before, I had gone and I hadn't yet come out publicly. I brought my camera and said, "I'm just going to take pictures; I'm not going to be in it."

I ended up taking pictures and kind of walking for a little bit, then stepping aside and taking pictures. The next year I went, and I stayed for the service. I remember walking down the street, with cars driving by and people yelling obscenities out the windows. There were about a hundred people there, and we got to the bridge and tossed flowers off as a symbol. Then they had a moment of silence, and I can remember looking down in the water. I could almost hear Charlie's screams, and I just started bawling.

After that, they had a rally in the park. A Reverend spoke, and he was telling about a conversation that he had had with Charlie only a week or two before his death. I guess Charlie was fairly flamboyant. He had asked Charlie, "Why don't you just tone it down a bit, and people won't be so hard on you?"

Charlie said, "I can't participate in my own oppression."

I didn't hear the rest of the speech. I sat there, and those words just kept ringing in my head. I got home that day and got to thinking about it. It dawned on me that I was participating in my own oppression by pretending to be someone I'm not. All these people who knew me were saying, "Oh, I don't know any gay people." That's when I made a conscious decision to come out completely, and I went and did my first talk. 

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