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Oregon Daily Emerald 346-3712
LGBT Educational and
Support ServicesProgram
Bridges Trainin
October 19th
tf « ' ^ ■ t
10:30am - 3:00pn&/^
Not so ordinary
On National Coming Out Day, one
student shares his story openly
with the campus community
Michael J. Kleckner
Editor in Chief
Scott Bonnell is a 21-year-old Uni
versity senior majoring in political
science with a business minor. He
wears an unassuming, stylish hair
cut, is dressed like a regular college
student and carries a dark beige Ba
nana Republic messenger bag.
All of which may sound average
and ordinary.
But Bonnell is gay.
For many young people who are
gay, college is the first place they can
acknowledge their homosexuality
openly. Self-discovery is said to be
one of the purposes of higher educa
tion, and college towns often provide
a sense of freedom and a more liber
al community than students have
experienced before.
But for Bonnell, who recently
came out to the entire country in
The Advocate, the nation’s longest
running gay news magazine, a sense
Jeremy Forrest Emerald
University senior Scott Bonnell decided he was through lying about his sexuality.
of freedom was only half the battle.
In order to express fully his gay iden
tity, he needed to find a place where
no one knew him and he could begin
with a clean slate. That happened
earlier this year, when he was an in
tern for Disney in Orlando, Fla.
“That was the major turning
point,” he said, “where I decided
basically — here it is; I’m laying it
out on the table, and if no one likes
it, then...”
He trails off, politely not finishing
the sentence. For his national com
ing out, however, he did finish the
thought.
“If you don’t like it, then fuck
you,” he wrote on The Advocate’s
Web site.
That emotion, that uncompromis
ing sense of self, likely came from
the stress he carried while living an
“average” life — or at least, an aver
age heterosexual life.
“All my friends, before I told
I---1
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them, thought I was straight,” he
said. “So they’d always come up to
me and say, ‘Hey, what do you think
about that girl? She’s kind of cute.’
(They would) fix me up on a date.
And I just got sick of it.”
The tension eventually built to
where Bonnell felt he had no other
choice but to come out.
“I was afraid to check out a guy,”
he said. “I just couldn’t be myself. I
mean, it pissed me off after a while.
It got to the point where I was just
like, this isn’t even worth it.”
Even then, the decision was diffi
cult because Bonnell wasn’t sure
how his ordinary friends in Beaver
ton — which he describes as “con
servative, yuppie, judgmental” —
would react.
“What are they going to think?”
he asked. “Are they still going to be
my friends? You know, everyone
says that if they’re not your friends
after telling them, that they weren’t
your true friends to begin with.
“But it’s a different feeling when
you’re actually going to do some
thing like that — like tell them.”
Since living in Florida, Bonnell
has come out to most of his friends,
but not all of them.
“I’ve got two friends up in Port
land who I love very much and I
would do anything for, but I know
that they’re extremely conservative
and completely anti-homosexual,”
he said. “They’re the only two that
I’m really, truly afraid to come out
to because I think I actually would
lose them.”
Bonnell is in a similar situation
with his parents, whom he has not
told about his sexuality.
“I feel like we’re probably not as
close as we could be if they were un
derstanding of it,” he said. “It really
sucks when I go home for a week
end, and they’re asking me, ‘So what
have you been doing with yourself?”’
Here, Bonnell’s voice sounds al
most plaintive.
“And I want to tell them, you
know, I threw a great dinner party
on Saturday night with 20 of my
friends, and they’re all gay,” he said.
“We just had a couple of bottles of
wine and barbecued.
“Instead, I’m like, ‘I had a few
friends over. And you don’t know
them.’”
It’s his friends, here on campus,
that Bonnell said is the best part of
being honest about his sexuality.
“Once I came out, I opened up to
all these different people. I started
Turn to Coming out, page 10A
Oregon Daily Emerald
P.O.Box 3159, Eugene OR 97403
The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub
lished daily Monday through Friday dur
ing the school year by the Oregon Daily
Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the Uni
versity of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.The
Emerald operates independently of the
University with offices in Suite 300 of the
Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is pri
■ • -vate property. The uniawful removal or
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