For 18 years, Anthony had grown up in Austin, Texas. He recently moved to Kansas City, Missouri to go to the University of Missouri- Kansas City, to get his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. I am also a student at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. Unlike Anthony, I have lived in Kansas City, Missouri most of my life. I was also born in Texas, and shortly after I was born, we moved to North Carolina for my dad’s job. My dad was unhappy with the job in North Carolina, so we moved to Kansas City, and we couldn’t be happier. Kansas City is such a unique city where you can find a place you belong very easily. Anthony and I have one thing in common, and that is that we were both raised Catholic. The one big difference is that we both had very different experiences with the church.
When I was 4 years old, I was baptized Catholic. I did not get a choice, nor did Anthony. The big difference between our stories is that I went to catholic school for 16 years. I was surrounded by people with the same beliefs as me, and at the beginning of every class we start the class off with a prayer. Anthony did not get this. His parents made him go to Religious education class once a weekend because he went to public school. Anthony then came out to his family as gay when he was around 16 years old. Our faith journeys are very different.
Anthony was born into the Catholic Church; his parents chose his religion for him. He was baptized as a baby and went through the sacraments (baptism, first communion, reconciliation, confirmation). Anthony has always thought of church as being a burden. When he was younger, he never wanted to go to church and, since he went to a public school, his parents made him go to religious education classes and youth group. When Anthony turned 16, he realized he still was not interested in church and decided that his ideas did not align with the Catholic church. Since Anthony was so young, he did not get any say in if he wanted to be a part of the Catholic church or not. When asking Anthony if he wished he got the choice to decide if he wanted to be Catholic or not, he responded by saying, “I would say probably no. Being raised in the Catholic church has opened my eyes to this and is something I don’t really want to be apart of. Even though I might have had a few struggled and I felt a little awkward at times to be part of the church. I think growing up that way really made me realize that I had my own viewpoints separate than my parents and family had,”(3:44). This, for me, was very hard to hear because I was also raised Catholic and went to 16 years of Catholic school. It was heart breaking to hear that Anthony didn’t appreciate Catholicism as much as I do.
Anthony came out as gay in 2015 when he was 16 years old. For Anthony this was hard because he knew that being Catholic and gay was something that was difficult to achieve . A lot of old fashion Catholic’s do not support gays, and Anthony knew this. Anthony knew he had some struggles coming his way. The first people Anthony came out to were his parents. In the interview Anthony said, “My mom was really upset. She started crying and talked about how disadvantaged I was going to be. But my dad could tell. He had an idea and he was more okay with it, I guess you could say. As far as my extended family, I really did not feel like it was necessary because they all lived outside of Texas so I felt like it wouldn’t have made a difference if I came out to them. I really didn’t see a point,” (4:03). Imagine not having your mom not totally on board with your sexuality. That in itself must have been extremely hard. Anthony’s mom since then learned to accept him for who he really is. No one in Anthony’s family knows that he is gay besides his parents and his sister. He isn’t hiding it from his other family he just doesn’t see them and doesn’t find it super important to tell them. In the interview, Anthony said that he waited a while to tell his sister just because they are 15 years apart and he is not that close with her.
I asked Anthony if he would consider himself Catholic and his answer was, “At the moment I do not know. This is something I have struggled with for the pasted few years whenever people ask me what religion I am or if I am Catholic. I just don’t think I should entirely separate myself from the church. I am afraid to do it honestly,”(6:53). Anthony admitted that it is hard being gay and Catholic because he said when he came out, he started to judge the people in his church because he assumed, they were judging him. Anthony now has learned that no one is really judging him and that he is invited and welcomed into his church. Anthony, throughout his life, has struggled being gay. In the interview I asked him how being gay effected his self-image and he said, “I think for a while even after I came out I guess I really didn’t want to be perceived as gay even though I had come out. I just didn’t want to be looked down upon me. I didn’t want people to see me and be like that person is gay. I didn’t have a problem with being gay, I was just afraid of the perception people would have of me. I was afraid people would look less of me or they wouldn’t want to be friends with me because I was gay,”(2:30). This interview was so interesting to me because I have never had to experience wondering if I was accepted in my church or not. I have always just thought I was loved and accepted by my church community. Anthony is a very strong person to have to question whether or not he is accepted at such a young age. Since getting to college, Anthony has realized that he does not get treated differently because of his sexuality. He feels like he is accepted and welcomed at the University of Missouri- Kansas City.
I chose “Finding Identity in Kansas City” by Maeve Lenox because its themes related to that of my interviewee: homosexuality and the boundaries of tradition. The parallels between our subjects which were young at different times is intriguing. Lenox’s subject of the story is Anthony, who struggled with accepting his relationship with his church when his ideals conflicted with his religion. My subject is Mandy, who struggled with finding a place in her family despite her opposition of tradition. The likenesses in our subject’s experiences suggests that when one threatens the “norm” (in this case family values and sexual preference), the collective retaliates due to their subjective idea of tradition. For example, in Lenox’s post, when Anthony came out to his mother, he said “[she] was really upset. She started crying and talked about how disadvantaged I would be” (Lenox) In my post, when Mandy’s mother found out her daughter may be a lesbian, she wrote to the local church in hopes she would be guided “away from the alternative lifestyle…”(Kendall). This fear from deviation from cultural tradition is the basis of the Hitler’s endeavor to eradicate what he defined to go against the “norm.” This is not to say that the parent’s of these individuals were like that of Hitler. Rather, it is to say that it is toxic to a diverse world to cling to tradition so tightly that they lose sight of what makes us human.
I have chosen to write over Finding Identities in Kansas City by Maeve Lenox. The interview is about a young man named Anthony, who is struggling to find his identity and how it fits within his Catholic faith. Going off of my Interview with Isaiah, he never questioned his faith, but he questioned more of his sexuality. That is what makes both interviews intense, given that they both share different experiences with very similar interactions with the people in their life. Like Lenox, I went to Catholic school for my whole life. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, where we offered places and clubs for LGBT students. In my case, we had a different level of acceptance in my Catholic community, compared to other communities. Lenox states, “Anthony admitted that it is hard being gay and Catholic because he said when he came out, he started to judge the people in his church because he assumed, they were judging him”. Although this was not the case and he was accepted and welcomed in his community. In Lenox’s interview, Anthony states, “My mom was really upset. She started crying and talked about how disadvantaged I was going to be.” As for Isaiah his mother was the same way. She kept trying to get him to think things over, and change his mind for transitioning. That is the major similarity between both of their experiences. Relating these experiences back to our class, Hitler is gradually forming the perfect race or form of humanity. Hitler wanted to mold society to his version of a normal and “perfect” society, going as far as the camps to help purify the race. As for our society today, we are trying to make people conform to the “normality” rather than celebrating differences and the attributes that make them unique. We still use conversion camps to try and change people’s sexuality to embed in their heads that their difference is bad. Even though in society we are not killing a race of people, we are killing the way that people express themselves, and how they identify themselves and the people around them.
In society today, someone being anything other than heterosexual, often times than not get bashed, insulted, looked down upon, and in some cases even get violated. This scares anyone outside of the “norm” of being heterosexual. They immediately feel as if people won’t accept them or love them the same. We see it every day in society. Everyone has different experiences, and this happens from people as close as family and as far as strangers. In the short story, “Finding Identity in Kansas City” by Maeve Lenox, created in April 2019, Lenox’s main character Anthony faces some of these challenges. Anthony is a male who was forced into the Catholic Religion by his family at an early age. As Anthony got older he begins to realize that he was gay and that began to interfere with his Religion. Anthony decided to come out to his parents in hopes that he’ll still be accepted. His Dad pretty much already had a clue and was accepting but not so much as for his mom. “My mom was really upset. She started crying and talked about how disadvantaged I was going to be.” (Lenox). It seemed as if Anthony’s mom was upset because she’s seen how gay males have been treated in society and now that her son has come out as gay he will too have to face the same challenges. Another example is when, “Anthony admitted that it is hard being gay and Catholic because he said he assumed, they were judging him.” (Lenox). It’s so common in society that Anthony automatically felt like he was being judge and looked upon differently once people knew that he was gay. We see this same concept in the film Jud Suess by Veit Harlan. In the film Oppenheimer was a Jew and because he was a Jew no one wanted him working for the Dutch. His difference not being his sexuality but instead because he was Jewish. Jews were looked upon as unworthy and dangerous to society. It seems as if gays are being looked upon the same for different reasons.