.When I was in high school there was this boy name Roger. He was outed - a gay kid and his homosexual orientation became known. West Philadelphia High was a huge and tough inner-city school. You can imagine what we did fifty years ago when ignorance prevailed on this issue. We humiliated this kid at every turn.
On Fridays, after phys-ed, when all of the other kids would go into the shower Roger wouldn’t go in with us; he was afraid to. When he took his turn we waited for him with our wet towels, and when he would come out, we would whip him and sting his little body.
I wasn’t there the day that they took Roger and dragged him into that shower room and shoved him into the corner. While he yelled and screamed for mercy, five guys urinated all over him. I wasn’t there when that happened.
He went home. He went to bed at about ten o’clock. They say it was about two o’clock in the morning when Roger went down into the basement of his house and he hung himself. I knew I wasn’t a Christian because if I was a Christian, I would have been Roger’s friend. You don’t have to legitimate somebody’s lifestyle in order to love that person, to be brother or sister to that person, and to stand up for that person.
