A House Is Not a Home by James Earl Hardy Page B

didn’t say he would get off. There’s no question he assaulted him without provocation, especially since he left the bathroom to get the bat. I just don’t think he’ll be convicted of the added hate-crime charge. If the student he attacked was gay, maybe. But we are talking about the South. They’re not as liberal as folks on the East or West Coasts when it comes to gays and lesbians.”
    And Monroe hasn’t always been as liberal about gays and lesbians. He was more than shocked to learn from Errol that Mitchell was gay; he was flabbergasted . Weeks after the disclosure, he finally got the courage to bring it up: “How can you be gay when you have a daughter?”
    Mitchell’s response? “God didn’t bless a heterosexual man with equipment I don’t have—or that I don’t use even better.”
    That led to an hour of myth murdering and stereotype slashing. And after that conversation, Mitchell became Monroe’s pet project—anything and everything specifically or remotely dealing with homosexuals that he reads about, sees on TV, or overhears, he asks Mitchell about. So far, the topics have included “don’t ask, don’t tell” (“If I was in the army, I wouldn’t be comfortable knowin’ a gay guy is showering or sleeping next to me”), Pedro and Sean on MTV’s The Real World (“Why do gays need to get married?”), Matthew Shepard (“If they had such a problem with him being gay, why even mess with him?”), even John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo (“You think the rumor that they were . . . together is true?”), and Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street (“How could people think muppets could be gay?”).
    Last week, it was about “homo thugs” . . .
    â€œAin’t no such thing,” Mitchell informed him.
    â€œWhatcha mean?”
    â€œA thug is a thug. You either are one or you aren’t. Straight men don’t own the patent on thuggery, and gay and bisexual men who just happen to be thugs are not some special breed.”
    â€œBut I read that some get hard-core so they can pass as straight.”
    â€œI’m sure some do. But some don’t get hard-core, they just are . It’s a natural part of their being, it’s who they are, as it is with some straight brothers. You think every straight brother who is a thug is the real thing?”
    â€œI . . . I guess.”
    â€œGuess again. Being straight is not a prerequisite for being a thug. I know so-called homo thugs who make some straight thugs look like thug ettes . I’ve known them all my life, even when I was your age, growing up in Bed-Stuy.”
    â€œSo, there’s always been thugs who are gay?”
    â€œOf course. You think they just appeared yesterday or last week or last month? For as long as there have been thugs, there have been gay ones. Believe me, I know. I’ve dated a few.”
    â€œYou mean . . .”
    â€œAs in go out to the movies, to eat, hang out with.”
    â€œAh . . .”
    Mitchell understood the curiosity: He was Monroe’s first homosexual—he’d talked about them with other heteros who knew just as little as he did, but he’d never actually talked to one before. And after hearing about them all his life (mainly from his father, who is a stone-cold homophobe), Monroe now had the chance to learn about them from someone who would know. That he wanted to know, that this wasn’t his way of being obnoxious or a smart-ass, impressed Mitchell. He felt a little uneasy being viewed and treated as a science project, a spokesperson for the so-called gay community (he’s come across too many heteros who believe that if you talk to one you’ve talked to all), but Mitchell carefully and clearly addressed every query.
    The Morehouse controversy hit much closer to home for Monroe: it’s his father’s alma mater,