Then Ellen DeGeneres had her famous coming-out moment. I could not believe it — this smart, beautiful, funny, kind woman was on national TV announcing that she was gay! I could see so much of myself in her — sure, she was funnier and more entertaining, but she dressed like me, wore her hair like me and, most importantly, she was a lesbian, like me! I couldn’t believe it! Ellen coming out meant the world to me and a multitude of others who, for decades, were told that we are abnormal (or worse) and should hide who we are.
I agreed to meet Snapper and will never forget seeing her for the first time. She was waiting for me on the balcony of her home in Portland. She was dressed in Bermuda shorts and a crisp, short-sleeved, blue shirt, buttoned all the way up to her chin. “She’s here, Mom! She’s here!” I heard as I pulled up. I laughed as I parked because I wasn’t quite sure what I was walking into.
“Welcome!” said Jaimee, Snapper’s mother, as she motioned me inside. I turned to Snapper, put out my hand, and said: “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I love your outfit — it’s very dapper!” Snapper broke out into a huge smile, which she tried to contain, and offered a quiet “thank you.” As we went inside, Jaimee whispered, “Snap changed her outfit five times before you arrived and at one point had on a tux.” My heart nearly exploded, and it took everything I had to conceal my reaction.
We sat down to talk, and Snapper told me how she came out on her first day of kindergarten. Apparently, the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves and say something about who they were — and Snapper said, “Hi, my name is Snapper, and I am gay.”
After school, when Snapper told this story to her family, they were shocked. Not because Snapper was gay, but because Snapper had never actually said it out loud. Jaimee told me: “We had never talked about her being gay, just that people could be straight or gay, or somewhere in between. I asked her what ‘gay’ means, and Snap was very matter-of-fact about how some people will grow up and marry a boy, and if she marries someone, they will be a girl— and that was it.”
Here we were, two years later, and I was meeting this sweet young girl who firmly identified as gay. Jaimee told me that she reached out to her friends to find a “strong, amazing gay person” who would come talk to Snapper. “I wanted Snap to meet someone that reflected certain parts of her that she could identify with,” Jaimee said. “I also wanted her to understand that the path she was on had been carved by a whole community of brave, strong humans.”
