A Valley Life: Young And In Love...Gay Teens Battle Border Culture...But They're Out There...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

HARLINGEN, Texas - More and more, news reports around here blast away at the blackout boozing and marijuana problems afflicting area teenagers. They're drinking, and they're tokin'. School suspensions related to both can be readily found in the archives of a high school's attendance rolls. But there's another trend that is not only manifesting itself on schoolgrounds, but also in local homes.

Gay teens, young people wrestling with sexual orientation in a harsh land where El Macho is king, where a young boy claiming homosexuality stands a good chance of being shamed and whipped. Julio cannot be Gay, says the mother. Julio is pinche dogmeat, says the father.

It is a story so well-hidden that the press has yet to give it a looksee. Gang warfare is covered, as is the equally-pressing problem of school dropouts and Brown-on-Brown crime. Gay teens remain in the Rio Grande Valley's darkest closet, there with incest and wife-beating. Only occasionally does one hear of Gay teens speaking comfortably or openly. Isolated incidents of gay bashing among teens gets news coverage, but only as isolated incidents. The bigger story remains under a pile of rough, wool military blankets nobody wants to peel back.

Brokeback Mountain, the Hollywood movie about two lonely homosexual cowboys in Wyoming, plays here as Brokeback Chorizo - a hardly-disguised attitude that something is wrong with being gay, so we're gonna stomp on'em and we're gonna beat it out of them. In the dominant Hispanic culture, homosexuality is said to be gaining a place on the couch for discussion, but not at the dinner table. The Catholic Church, long the favorite of Hispanics, remains staunchly against the Gay lifestyle. Teens find no refuge against open hate in the church, or from priests.

But they're out there, in and out of the closet. Speak to any openly Gay teen and be told their number is rising by the day. They are fast becoming a sub-culture, said one, a group onto itself, oblivious by choice of whatever else is going in at school and in their respective communities.

Gay in the Valley is not Gay in Dallas or New York.

There is no Gay Pride parade in Brownsville. There is no Gay bar in Harlingen, and the ones in McAllen, we're told, open and close before they gain valleywide acceptance. Politically, gay teens have no champion. To date, no city official has come out and said he or she is Gay. Rumors abound about other bureaucrats, such as cops and firefighters, but it is still risky for them to declare their sexual preferences.

"You can be Gay in this town," said one resident. "Just don't tell me about it. I don't wanna hear it."

Ignorance plays into the fear. Some genuinely wonder how two homosexuals can ever enjoy sex and express shock when told that coupling is still the connection of choice. Is oral sex different when performed by a male mouth? They say no. They say males choke less than women. They say young women employ phallic sex toys. They say it matter-of-factly, without apology.

It is a life being lived and, looked that way, well, who's to quarrel with a young person's idea of love...

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