Heteronormativity Is Way Too Normal

In high school and before then I was raised to see everyone as straight.  My family is your stereotypical Mid Western family in the sense that everyone in my family is straight, my sibling and I played sports, we had cookouts, watched football on Sundays, hunt and fish, and go to a close minded Mid Western high school.  At my high school it was not very well accepted to be anything but straight, and if you came out of the closet you were black listed.  There were no gay people or any that were openly gay, on any athletic teams.  When people from my high school go to college I feel like our heteronormativity goggles that we had on for four years carry over into the next four years of college.  When I got to college my freshman year I was slightly homophobic, not because I didn't like gay people but because it was all unknown to me.  I have never been friends with someone that is gay until I came to college and in high school I never thought I would be.  Now that I have a few homosexual friends I see why they hide their sexuality from outsiders and how heteronormativity plays into that.

My two gay friends look like your two average straight guys in college.  If you didn't know them you would never guess that they prefer men.  In a way that kind of hurts them because they want you to know they are gay, they are proud of it but they can't get that out to people because everyone views them as straight.  They think they will lose a lot of their friends if they come out because most of their friends think they are straight.  They feel like their real self is locked in their body and they can't free it because if they tell people they are gay then it makes it look like anyone could be gay.  In America we look at everyone and see them as we want them to be, and most people want to see only straight people.  This is something in the US that we must stop, because it is making the gay community feel like they must mask their true identity to make everyone else feel comfortable.
Learning about all of this going on in America really disappoints me and it shows Americas true colors.  I hope that one day gays and lesbians will be able to come out with out being chastised and everyone can be happy.