The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

Garcia talks about the politics of coming out

Rick Garcia said that the most important advice he could give a college student struggling with race and sexuality would be to come out.

"People should plan a strategy of being out and open about how they are and what their sexuality is," Garcia said. "The most important political stand anyone can take is to be out."

Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, spoke about his experiences growing up Hispanic and gay Thursday night in the Mississippi Room located in the Student Center.

Garcia said that he has "tangled" with a number of American Catholic bishops, both publicly and vocally.

"Sometimes even through this I get a little emotional because I have to go back and put that cold, hard, bitter, nasty political role aside and talk about where I come from, who my family is and how I got to be who I am today," Garcia said.

On Garcia's last visit to SIUC, Mike Lawrence, who was just named the Public Policy director, asked him about his background and family. Garcia said he was "thrown for a loop," because he did not usually discuss his history with outsiders.

"Usually, when I come to talk to groups, I talk about politics," he said. "I never ever talk about my background as a Hispanic gay Catholic boy who grew up in south St. Louis in a little Spanish colony."

Garcia lived in a completely Spanish neighborhood in South St. Louis and went to church every Sunday with his family.

"My identity was Spanish," he said. "Spanish before Catholic, Spanish certainly before American and our life revolved around the Spanish society and the church.

"When one realizes that one is gay, and you come from this very Spanish 'machismo' background with uncles that all play ball and cards and made slurs about sissies and queers, and all of a sudden you realize you're gay. That's a little problematic."

Garcia said he considered himself a "stereotypical gay boy," a very good child, but a "spoiled brat" as well.

"When my brothers were out playing ball with my father, I was in the backyard with my grandmother and all of her old lady friends gossiping about all the neighbors," he said. "They should've seen the writing on the wall much earlier than they did.

"I realize I'm gay and here's where one's ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation all kind of intersect and that's the kind of intersection where you could have a major traffic accident."

Garcia said he was surprised that what he learned from his Spanish roots and his faith gave him the courage to come out and do his political work.

"I don't think that I would not be the activist I am today if it were not for my grandparents, who instilled in me the value of family," Garcia said between tears.

Garcia said he came out to his family on TV by accident.

"I was hollering at a professor at St. Louis University who was testifying against a gay rights bill in 1976," he said. "I went after him, and I look up and there's the television cameras and I thought 'Oh my god, oh my god.' I called my brother and he said, 'Oh you should hear what's going on at Grandma's house."

In the late 1970s, Garcia's mother became one of the founders of P-Flag in St. Louis. His siblings attended gay rights events, and Garcia added that his grandparents "always liked his boyfriends better than they liked him."

Garcia said that his family does not want to talk about his sexual orientation, but they accept him for who he is.

"I always knew that I could go home no matter what happened, who I had to face that day, no matter how difficult, what people called me, no matter what people threw, I can go home and go to mass with my family on Sunday and go to grandmother's house for dinner," he said. "We nurtured one another and took care of each other.

"That's true family values."

 

 

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