5 minute read
Saving LGBTQ lives, starting with his own
A boy on the phone shakes in a parking lot, not from the cold but from his nerves. He uses small talk to build up the courage to tell his dad that he’s gay.
A girl at a podium stands before her fellow congregants, pouring out her heart. She is unable to finish before the church leaders cut her mic, preventing her from discussing her hopes and dreams.
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A child in front of a computer smiles, fixing a typo before posting. They sit excitedly and wait for the likes and comments to come in.
These are some of the scenes that people expect when they think of someone coming out. For John Meisner, assistant professor of education, his story involved years of internal struggle, coming out to his wife and kids and learning to love himself.
Although he now advocates for LGBTQ representation, Meisner’s journey wasn’t always filled with sunshine and rainbows.
As a child, Meisner said that he always knew something was different about him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“There seemed to be a whole extra level of something that was very undefined and weird that I couldn’t understand, and that turned out to be, quite obviously, that it was the whole gay thing,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was at that time, being so little, you don’t have terms for that.”
As he continued through school, it became harder to ignore the feeling that something was off. Most of his classmates talked about dating girls, but he had no interest in dating. By the time he was 15, Meisner knew what being gay meant — he grew up during the AIDS epidemic — and he said this added another level of terror to his discovery that he was, in fact, gay.
In his fundamental Baptist community, there was nothing worse than being gay — Mesiner said that it was a social crime equivalent to child abuse and murder. Because of these views, he struggled to come to terms with his identity.
“Everything was through the lens of either consequence and punishment, so the question was when did I make this choice (to be gay)?” he said. “And there was absolutely no answer; I grew up in such a sheltered world. So then it was obvious that I was being punished for something, which made no sense. And that’s the cycle I stayed in for the next 30 years.”
Due to isolation, shame and depression, Meisner said that he started thinking about suicide in high school. He started focussing his time and energy on surviving, which he said caused all of his emotions to become muted.
Meisner with his boyfriend, Anthony, on vacation.
Photo courtesy John Meisner
When Meisner finally realized he was gay, he went through an emotional rollercoaster.
“The immediate thought was ‘Oh God, I’m gay,’ and within a millisecond, it was ‘no, you’re bisexual because you like girls,’” Meisner said. “Of course, that wasn’t true and I knew it the moment I thought it that it wasn’t true. I had girlfriends through high school and that was always difficult.”
Meisner went through decades of denial before he realized that no amount of praying or therapy would change who he was. He had four kids at this point, and he came to terms that there was nothing that needed to be fixed.
“That then became the worst moment ever because there was no out, there was no solution,” Meisner said. “Once I realized that (I wouldn’t change), that opened a whole new set of problems. I had a career, a wife of 20 years, four grown kids, and I did not know how I was going to get out of that.”
This caused Meisner to start seriously planning his suicide.
According to Meisner, it had to be an accident and he couldn’t leave a note because he felt it would be more hurtful to come out after suicide. However, after about six months of planning, he had a realization that even in an accident, his children would be hurt.
“I hoped that my kids would rather have a gay dad than a dead dad,” Meisner said. “I was not sure that that was the truth, but that was my hope.”
He originally wanted to wait until after the holidays to come out, but he didn’t make it that far.
“My wife knew something was wrong,” he said. “I was such a mess, I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating right, I was on the verge of a panic attack all the time. I hadn’t been well for a decade, but she could tell something was wrong, and she asked me pointblank, ‘what is wrong with you?’ I almost lied again and then I didn’t, I finally told her.”
After coming out to his wife, Meisner went through what he described as the worst year of his life. He and his wife decided to get divorced.
“She was fed up (with the marriage) too, she was not happy either,” Meisner said. “You couldn’t have lived with me and been happy, that’s for sure. She’s the most amazing woman I’ve known in my entire life, and we briefly talked about staying together, mainly for the kids, but we quickly decided that we couldn’t do that.”
About a week later, Meisner sat down with his kids to explain it to them.
“They were very upset about the divorce, but telling them I was gay — maybe it was all the shock and awe — but that part did not seem to matter as much,” he said. “When you’re in a situation like that, all the people you’ve tried not to hurt, you’ve directly hurt them, and now they have to come out everywhere. Then they’re having to deal with the homophobia and bullshit, and they’re not even the gay ones.”
For awhile, Meisner feared he would lose his family, his job and his house. He said that he knows a lot of formerly-married men with kid who are afraid they will lose everything, but this is rarely, if ever, the case.
“It won’t go as bad as you think it will,” he said. “It will probably be a lot better than you ever imagined, and that’s the truth. It felt like it was going to be forever, but after that year, things started progressively getting better. It’s been just over five years (since I came out) and things are amazing now.”
Currently, Meisner is dating a man he describes as “wonderful.” Now that he is out, he advocates for LGBTQ rights and suicide prevention.
“I feel the pain of every kid who doesn’t understand, I feel the pain of every kid who’s thinking about killing himself, I think of every dad, of every mom, there is someone right now who doesn’t have any hope, and it just makes me so angry,” Meisner said through tears.
According to Meisner, he never feels like he is doing enough to help the cause, and he feels as if he is failing most of the time. He has joined up with organizations such as Allies on Campus and Equality Utah in order to have the largest influence possible.
One of Meisner’s main goals is to build a stronger LGBTQ community in southern Utah, because due to the cultural and geological isolation, LGBTQ youth often feel more alone.
Last year, Equality Utah honored Meisner with an Excellence in Advocacy Award, and he said that although he didn’t feel like he deserved it, the award motivated him to do more.
Solving the problem of LGBTQ youth suicide isn’t simple, but according to Meisner, there is a simple thing people can do to help.
“I think the first thing is that everybody needs to watch the words they use because you never know who’s hearing what you say,” he said. “The people who are struggling need to hear that there are people around them that would be supportive because that would give them hope.”
LGBTQ Resources
Suicide Prevention Hotline — 1-800-273-8255
Trevor Lifeline — 1-866-488-7386
The Trevor Project thetrevorproject.org
SUU Allies on Campus — suu.edu/allies/directory.html
GLAAD — glaad.org
