["Double Jeopardy: Lesbian Activist Says Fear of Parents’ Homophobia Inspires Secret Life" is part 2 of a 3 part series on LGBT issues. Bookmark this page for updates.]
Second Life is a virtual reality game wherein members create a customized “avatar” that serves as a digital representation of themselves. In this three-dimensional virtual community, the avatar assumes an identity, takes up residence and moves about in a world completely created by them, for them. Second Lifers buy property, start businesses, make friends, join clubs, attend classes or sometimes just hang out.
Amber Holt* has never played this game, but in many respects, she feels like she lives it every day.
Holt, 20, a junior at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga. - about 26 miles outside of Atlanta - is vice president of the Kennesaw Pride Alliance (KPA), a campus-based Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) focused organization. She’s active in the campus president's Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning (GLBTIQ) Initiatives. She even helped organize the campus visit earlier this year of Meghan McCain, a gay rights activist who is the daughter of former Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. When she’s not busy planning AIDS Walk Atlanta, the Atlanta Pride Parade, The Summit (KSU’s annual LGBTIQ conference) and for KPA’s 20th anniversary celebration slated for the fall, she’s often spotted around campus hugged up with her new girlfriend of a few months.
“I’m very much out on campus,” says Holt, with a laugh.
Interestingly enough, Holt’s parents who live just over an hour away in a small rural Georgia town have no idea their daughter is living as a proud, openly lesbian woman. When Holt visits home base most weekends, they get to see her “avatar,” a tomboyish young woman, who abhors dresses and enjoys tinkering under the hood of her pick up truck.
“I was 17 when I finally realized that I can’t change who I am, but I was 18 when I finally embraced it,” explains Holt, an unassuming, but outspoken woman with cerulean eyes. “I finally realized who I am and nothing’s wrong with it. It’s such a burden covering my tracks all the time. I have to be very conscious of who’s around when I’m speaking.”
KPA President Victor Ferreira has nothing but compliments for his newly elected vice-president.
“She’s a great person, a hard worker and an excellent organizer; she always has KPA on her mind,” he says. “If she were to run for president, KPA would be in great hands. She has so much to deal with at home, in a way I feel her work with KPA helps to make up for it in many ways.”
Living a double life, Holt says, is what’s best for now. In fact, Amber Holt isn’t actually her birth moniker. She’s asked us to conceal her real name because she has not yet “come out” to her parents. She fears that when she does, they’ll force her teenage brother to cut all ties with her. The mere thought of losing contact with her baby brother, whom she calls her “best friend,” is crushing.
“That’s really the only thing keeping me from telling them right now,” says Holt. “He’s the most important person in my life right now. I know when I tell them they’ll cut me off from him; they’ll think I’m being a bad influence.”
Tana Hall, a counselor at Atlanta-based non-profit, YouthPride, which provides support for Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) youth, says Holt’s predicament is not uncommon.
“Many GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender) folks hide their queer identity from their family,” says Hall, who is also a lesbian. “Older folks more so than young, I think. It’s about safety; the fear of getting kicked out or cut off.”
Holt says her personal struggles help her relate to the many recent reports nationwide of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) young adults and teens taking their own lives at alarmingly high rates. They are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers, according to the Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey. "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes" a 2009 study conducted as part of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, shows that adolescents who were rejected by their families for being LGBT were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide. And for every completed suicide by a young person, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made, a 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey concluded.
Holt, too, battled depression as a teen, once her parents first discovered her affinity for girls. “I definitely thought about it, but I always said to myself that I would never be that selfish,” says Holt. “I think suicide is the most selfish thing you can ever do. There’s always someone out there who loves you.”
Her parents spent several years and lots of money on efforts to get rid of what they consider to be a curable affliction. She hasn’t worked up the nerve so far to tell them that their efforts to help her “pray the gay away” have effectively failed.
Holt feels her parents just won’t understand, so the charade continues. It’s not surprising. After all they’re practically television’s Ward and June Cleaver, of “Leave It To Beaver” fame, personified. They met in high school when he was the football team captain and she led the cheerleading squad. They married after high school and had Holt and her brother shortly thereafter. Her dad’s also the lead minister at a small non-denominational church in their tiny close-knit town that at one time had only eight traffic lights. Neither of her parents believe that homosexuality is morally right. They cite Bible passages as proof.
“I love my parents but I believe they’re sorely misguided; I know they will never accept me being gay,” Holt says. “They genuinely believe in the Bible; and that I will go to hell because I’m gay. I know they honestly believe that they’re going to end up in heaven without their daughter one day. I think that’s how they genuinely see things; they’re stuck.”
*Amber Holt is a pseudonym. Her name has been witheld to protect her identity.
**Photographs are not of Amber Holt. Original stock photos were used to protect her identity.
The first tipoff was the time when Holt was 15 and her dad checked her out of school early one day. He hadn’t said one word to her the whole drive over to his church that afternoon. Once she saw the piece of folded notebook paper crammed inside his truck’s cup holder, she’d immediately known why her father seemed so angry. Her mother had apparently found the love note she’d written to her former BFF-turned-girlfriend. What happened next, she says, is mostly a blur.
“My mom didn’t want to see me for a while,” recalls Holt. “All I remember was my dad saying, ‘I can deal with this when it’s other people’s kids, but not when it’s my own child.’”
She does distinctly recall her mother alternating between bawling and yelling at her, interspersed with an occasional supportive statement like, “we’ll get through this.”
“At one point she told me you’re not going to Kennesaw [State University], you’re not going anywhere until we get this straightened out,” Holt remembered her mother saying. “I found that to be an interesting choice of words.”
Holt was grounded indefinitely from, well, just about everything – no cell phone, no MySpace, no extracurricular activities, no social outings with friends; nothing but school and church was allowed. Then came the “Christian counseling” sessions and mandates to read books written by self-described “ex-gays” who, with the help of Jesus, had been “cured” of homosexuality.
“They gave me Bible verses, books to read by ‘ex-gays’ who came out of that lifestyle,” Holt says. “It was all just a bunch of crap. It was a confusing time. For a while I was brainwashed into thinking that I could actually change this about myself. Then I eventually came to the realization that I cannot.”
Holt spent most of her sophomore year of high school holed up in her room, depressed and writing dark poetry and tearful journal entries. She sincerely tried to change many times, she says, but somehow her attraction for females always resurfaced.
“They pretty much kept me under house arrest for a while,” she recalls. “I had nobody to turn to in high school. I wasn’t allowed to be friends with anyone. They even changed my class schedule at one point because they heard I was in a class with some lesbians. I was miserable.”
Her last ditch effort at “turning straight” came during her junior year of high school when she’d dated a sweet, mannerable guy who was head over heels for her.
“He was the nicest guy ever; he was thoughtful and sensitive and I knew he was trustworthy,” remembers Holt. “He was absolutely crazy about me and his personality was absolutely perfect for me. I kept telling myself that I was attracted to his personality and the physical attraction would come.”
It never did. After nine months she broke up with him, but dating a guy had its perks. During that time her parents, believing that her “lesbian phase” had finally passed, had begun letting up a bit on the tight restrictions. She was able to get out more often. She used the freedom to sneak off with her latest female love interest.
“I never made up any fake boyfriends, but I did go out on a fake date once with a gay friend of mine,” quips Holt, chuckling at the memory. “He picked me up and we met up with my girlfriend at the time and we all went out to dinner. It was a lot of fun.”
Holt got in trouble once again when her parents discovered her latest lesbian liaison.
Exasperated, Holt spent her senior year convincing her parents that the counseling and books worked. She managed to throw them off her trail long enough to enroll in KSU. Once there she knew she’d get to become her real self. She joined KPA within the first few weeks of school.
Ferreira says Holt’s ordeal is “heartbreaking.”
“I have very understanding and supportive parents so it’s not something I’d ever experienced personally,” says Ferreira. “I’d heard about terrible reactions like this but I never knew anyone who this happened to personally. It saddens me to know that she can’t be who she really is at home, but her experience is a great reminder that these things still really happen. I admire her courage.”
Holt’s mom and dad rarely take the drive out to campus, but when they do she has a bit more cleaning up to do than the average co-ed preparing for a parental visit.
“I always have to ‘de-dyke’ my room,” she says, with a giggle. “I hide all of my pictures, my rainbows and all traces of my lesbian self. One time I thought I had cleared everything out and I noticed a picture on my corkboard just before they walked in. I hurried up and took it down at the last second.”
She takes the hour-long drive to her parents’ home nearly every weekend to work and spend time with her brother. When her parents ask about how her week went, she keeps her answers brief and generic. She wishes she could share with them the details of her life, but she’s convinced they can’t handle the truth. So for now, she’s resolved to alternating between her real life and her second life.
“Who I am on campus is who I really am,” she says, with conviction. “The person that they see every weekend is not the real me. I will come out to my parents eventually, but not right now. I need to wait until my brother turns 18.”
She’s bracing for the worse, she says, when she does tell them.
“I know they’ll love me regardless, but I want them to love me for who I am, not despite of who I am,” she says. “That would be my dream come true as far as my family goes.”
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[NEXT: Part 3 of 3 a part series on LGBT issues, "From She to He: A Transgender Journey of Self-Discovery." Bookmark this page for updates.]
Photography** by Clay Duda, JJIE.org.
*Amber Holt is a pseudonym. Her name has been witheld to protect her identity.
**Photographs are not of Amber Holt. Original stock photos were used to protect her identity.