Cutest Couple

Don’t misunderstand; it’s not just straight kids O’Reilly cares about. He’s worried about gay kids, too. Really worried. Because the world he’s helping create is a pretty dangerous place in which to grow up gay. As his guest in this segment, Laura Berman, PhD, points out, gay teens often feel they have nowhere to turn for support, and are more likely than straight teens to attempt suicide and use drugs.

O’Reilly flashed up a photograph of two high school students who had been voted that year’s “Cutest Couple” at an Illinois high school. It was a yearbook photo like a thousand others, the couple’s cheeks barely touching, shy smiles on their faces. Like a thousand others, that is, except for the fact that Brandy Johnson and Lupe Silva are both girls.

Some people, such as Dr. Berman, seem to consider that a positive sign, and believe that inclusion and visibility can go a long way to improving the lives of lesbian and gay youth.

Bill has a different suggestion for making the lives of gay kids safer, and surprise, surprise: It’s the closet. “Private behavior belongs in private settings,” he raged, apparently having a different definition of “private behavior” than the rest of the world. “I don't think it belongs in the high school year book. There's no reason Brandy and Lupe had to declare themselves anything other than friends… It's a matter of appropriateness.”

Since the girls are seniors in high school and they and most of their classmates are 18 years old, it’s unlikely the existence of lesbians was going to come as that much of a shock to anyone flipping through the yearbook. And you have to wonder at just what point in their development O’Reilly thinks that kids should be informed there are gay people in the world? When they turn sixteen and learn to drive? At their high school graduation? Never?

This Just In: Gay Teens Get Harassed

Bill took his “it’s for the kids” show on the road to promote his newest book Kids are Americans, Too. “You know who’s getting bullied in school the most now?” he asked his hosts, as if he were about to impart some monumental news of a societal shift. “The gay kids and the kids from religious and conservative homes.” This is news, that gay kids get harassed in school? No wonder Bill doesn’t get it.

O’Reilly often claims he’s not anti-gay, largely because he opposes the harassment of gay teenagers at school. (Which does raise the question, is support for high school gay bashing so common on the right that his opposition to it sets him apart?) But he has a pattern of only expressing support for gay issues when they intersect with some other group he supports, such as the children of conservative Christians, and that’s exactly what he does here.

COMING OUT

It’s easy to say, if you’re a straight, white man with his own TV show, that sexual orientation isn’t important, and there’s no reason for people, famous or otherwise, to discuss it. But the closet doesn’t work that way. Queer invisibility leads to a culture of alienated teens growing up thinking no one else feels the way they do, unhappy marriages based on lies, the fear of exposure to friends, family, and colleagues, and no actual relationships with real gay people to counteract myths and propaganda. And the harm the closet does to our civil rights is incalculable.

As Harvey Milk said nearly three decades ago, coming out is one of the most powerful things GLBT people can do to promote our equality. Time is proving him right: A 2006 study found that 70 percent of straight adults know a GLBT person, and more than 80 percent of all lesbians and gay men consider themselves to be out. That visibility has meant an increase in support for GLBT civil rights and equality. People who have a gay family member or friend are far more supportive of lesbian and gay equality in marriage and adoption rights, and far less supportive of a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.