The Todd Glass Situation

by Todd Glass

  After my WTF episode, a lot of people reached out with their stories. I met a guy after a show who started to tell me that he felt like he knew what I had been through because he had a drug problem that he hid for a very long time. Then he stopped himself. “I don’t mean to compare what I went through with what happened to you . . .”

  It was my turn to stop him, to let him know that it was okay to continue. He was just trying to relate to me. It didn’t matter how he was trying to do it. All that matters is the act of compassion. When someone is standing in front of you, trying to relate with you, don’t let how they do it get in the way of the fact that they’re doing it.

  Can we just agree that empathy is not a competition? Yes, some people have a harder struggle than others, but isn’t the ultimate goal to not struggle at all?

  THE REAL WORLD IS SAFER THAN A SCHOOL BUS

  You already know that I had a hard time at school. That’s why when I talk to friends who have kids in school today I’m so happy to hear about all the progress we’ve made. Sure, bullying remains a big problem, but I think our schools are trying to take great strides toward creating a safer and more nurturing environment for everyone.

  That’s why I am so sick and tired of hearing some people say that we pamper and protect kids in schools too much today and that it doesn’t prepare them for the “real world.”

  I’m not a child psychologist, a teacher, or even a parent, so my expertise in certain areas is obviously limited. I can’t tell you, for example, why giving out trophies to every kid just for participating is a good idea. But as someone who grew up with a learning disability, I consider myself an expert in just how fucking tough school can be. Kids can be cruel and merciless. So can some adults.

  As much progress as we’ve made, chances are that a ten-year-old kid is much more likely to get harassed, made fun of, or bullied during a walk from the front to the back of the school bus than he or she would be walking five blocks in New York City. So the idea that all this “pampering” won’t leave kids prepared for the real world is bullshit: The real world can often feel like a much safer place than a school bus full of bullies.

  WE’VE NEVER GIVEN RIGHTS AND REGRETTED IT LATER

  The national conversation over gay marriage rages on. Once again we find ourselves in a debate over giving equal rights to yet another group of Americans.

  I can’t fucking believe that we’re having this conversation again. We’ve been in this place time and time before. How is it possible that it still requires a national dialogue? When, in the history of this country, have we ever given rights to a group of people and—once we’ve had time to adjust to the change—regretted the decision later?

  Never.

  Not once.

  Maybe you disagree with me on this. If there is a group whose rights to equality you wish we could take back, I beg you to bring it up the next time you’re at a party or on a date.

  Let me know how that goes over.

  PAIN AND GAIN

  A few years ago I was walking down the street with my friend Gary Gulman when we saw a group of high school kids getting into a limo on their way to prom. I spotted a gay couple among them. My first instinct was to feel a little sad.

  “Look at that,” I said to Gary. “I wish I got to go to prom. I mean, I’m not complaining. I guess all of the things that happened to me made me who I am today. More empathetic. A better comedian . . .”

  But then I had a second thought: FUCK THAT!

  Growing up with learning disabilities—and, later, my situation—didn’t make me a funnier comedian or a better person. I just did the best I could with the hand I was dealt. And I was one of the lucky ones, born to good parents and surrounded, for the most part, by kind and smart people.

  I think it’s great when people manage to use hardship and pain as a source for inspiration to help others or make this world a better place. But it’s not a necessary part of the process. Trust me: We’ll still have music, movies, and art even if people aren’t bullied when they’re kids. Life will give you plenty to deal with before it’s over—whether it’s lost loves, unexpected deaths, or other misfortunes. You’ll have all kinds of opportunities to learn from pain. I just don’t think it’s necessary to inflict it on each other on purpose.

  GEORGE CARLIN

  If you’ve listened to my podcast (The Todd Glass Show—available for download on iTunes!) you probably know that I’m a huge George Carlin fan. “I swear to George Carlin” is what we say when we want to let one another know that we’re telling the absolute truth. A lot of listeners have kindly suggested that Carlin—who famously said that “there are no bad words”—would have mocked me for having a problem with words like “fag” or “retarded.”

  What you have to remember is that George Carlin grew up in an era where people were offended by Elvis’s crotch instead of, say, segregation or any of the other social wrongs of the time. When he talked about people getting offended by certain words, he wasn’t talking about the ones who would rather you didn’t use the word “faggot” or “retard” just because you weren’t smart enough to use the proper adjective. He was talking about the hypocrites who look the other way when it comes to the major wrongs being done in this world and instead choose to get offended at less meaningful things.

  And by the way, I don’t really get offended when I hear these words. I get . . . confused. When I hear someone use “retard” to mean “stupid” or “gay” to mean “feminine” or “different,” to me it’s like watching someone light a cigarette on an airplane or drink a beer while driving. I’m not offended, it just looks wrong. If anyone gets offended, it’s mostly these people after you correct them. Their feathers get ruffled and they choose to concentrate on what their ego is saying instead of their brain. They get offended, but at the wrong thing. I think that’s an idea that would have been okay with George Carlin.

  He always managed to be ahead of his time in his day, and I suspect that, if he were still with us, that would still be true.

  BACK THEN

  I’m exhausted with people who say how great things used to be . . . back then.

  Back then a marriage was between a man and a woman. Back then families stayed together. Back then people were more polite, better dressed, and had cleaner haircuts.

  I get why some people might think it was better, but it wasn’t. Most of the problems we have today existed “back then.” Those family photos that look so perfect? They were staged. The big difference between then and now is that then, instead of trying to deal with the problems openly, people tried to sweep them under the rug.

  “My husband is an alcoholic . . .”

  “Shhhh!”

  “My wife was raped . . .”

  “Shhhh!”

  “My mother is suffering from depression . . .”

  “Shhhh!”

  “My daughter married a black guy.”

  “Shhhh!”

  “My son is gay . . .”

  “Double shhhh!”

  As Mr. Rogers used to say, “If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable.” Back then they didn’t mention much, so how manageable could life have really been? The term “unmentionables” was born out of people not being able to mention their underwear. How was a society that couldn’t even talk about underwear going to tackle massive social inequality?

  Let me tell you something else: The world we live in today is the way it is because of how things were back then. If everything back then had worked the way some people seem to believe that it did, we never would have stopped doing those things.

  “Back then we had prayer in school!” Sure. We also failed to account for alternative religious beliefs and left a lot of kids feeling alienated and confused. And by the way, if your kid wants to say a prayer before class, no one is stopping them. These people who complain about there being no prayer in school are perpetuating a fake argument. All we did was make religion in school more inclusive for everyone. I think your God would be okay with that.<
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  “Back then parents stayed together!” Maybe the divorce rate was lower, but there were a lot more unhappy marriages, forcing some kids to grow up in homes filled with resentment, hate, and violence.

  “Back then there wasn’t as much violence on TV!” No, you couldn’t watch The Sopranos. Meanwhile, in real life, the Holocaust was happening.

  “Back then a man would open a door for a lady and always pay for dinner.” Yeah, they also didn’t want women to work or vote. That’s a trade-up!

  Another problem with these Back Then people is that if you ask most of them how far back they want to go, it’s always to the day after they got their rights, but the day before somebody else got theirs. Next time you hear people saying things were better back then, ask them what year they would like to go back to. Then ask them to take a selfless look at where other people’s rights were at that time. Can we agree that maybe it wasn’t better for everybody back then?

  Obviously most of the Back Then people are older. Some people will tell you that old people have a “get out of jail free” card because of their age. They grew up in a society that was racist, sexist, or homophobic, and we shouldn’t expect them to change now. “My grandma is really old,” you might say. “Doesn’t that excuse some of the racist things she sometimes says?”

  I think my friend Eric Ohlsen put it best when said, “Oh really? Is your grandmother older than Abraham Lincoln?”

  I remember something my uncle once told me: “You can’t have the benefits of a forward-thinking society except when it comes to your prejudices.” So you really want to go back to the way things were? Let’s start by handing over your Lipitor, turning off your air-conditioning, and throwing away your cell phone.

  What’s that? You don’t want to go that far back? I see—you want to go back to the day when you didn’t have to be an open-minded, accepting human being. You want all the advancements that come with modern society except the ones that will require you to change your bigoted, outdated views.

  I get that it’s a lot harder for older people to change their views. Most of them probably won’t. But some people learn, evolve, and change late in life and that is extraordinary. So if you want to use your age as an excuse to dig in on your positions, go right ahead—no one will blame you. But what you’re basically saying is that you are not extraordinary. I wouldn’t brag about that.

  An evolved person doesn’t want to go back to a time that was better for him or her, but forward to a time that can be better for everybody.

  MACHINES DON’T HAVE EGOS

  While we’re on the subject of technological advancements, it’s true we’re doing pretty well. Cars, planes, cell phones, the Internet—we’ve come a long way in a very short period of time.

  What’s interesting is how technology progresses so much faster than society. There’s still a debate over whether or not homosexuality is an illness that can be cured, even though psychiatrists have been telling us otherwise since 1974. Why can technological innovation happen so quickly while social innovations seem to take forever?

  The answer is simple—people have egos, machines don’t. If cars had egos and refused innovations and new ideas the way some stubborn people do, we’d all still be driving cars with wooden wheels and no air bags. Changing a person’s point of view is fucking difficult.

  When deciding what dishwasher to buy, people tend to base their decisions on what the experts say. With social issues it’s often the opposite—people look for “experts” who will support their already existing point of view.

  All I’m asking for is consistency. It drives me crazy when someone who believes in an archaic practice like “conversion therapy” to address homosexuality uses the Internet to find a place to take their kid, belts them into their brand-new car loaded with the latest safety features, and uses their smart-phone to look up directions. You’re willing to do all of that and still entrust a child’s mental well-being to someone without any scientific credentials who wants to “cure” him or her with a set of two-thousand-year-old beliefs? That’s selfish, plain and simple.

  Next time your car breaks down or your heart starts beating irregularly, don’t go to a mechanic or a hospital—go to the same person you go to for your social beliefs. Let your archaic views ruin your life in the same way they are ruining everyone else’s.

  BEING GAY ISN’T HEROIN

  Every day in this country, gay kids are thrown out of their own home because their parents don’t accept them for who they are. This is often called “tough love.”

  It’s not.

  If your child is on drugs, there are plenty of therapists or counselors who will tell you to turn them away. If you let them live in the house, feed them, and give them money, you may only be supporting their addiction. Some people need to hit rock bottom before they can face an addiction; kicking them out of the house can sometimes help them get to that place a little faster. That’s “tough love.”

  When professional drug counselors recommend tough love, they do so because of extensive research and past results. They know it can work. And if it doesn’t and your child dies before getting better, no one will blame you for making the choice that you did. You might blame yourself, but you will have plenty of professional help from people who will reassure you that you did the right thing.

  Some parents take the same approach toward their gay children. But consider this: If you cut off contact with your gay child and he or she commits suicide, no one is going to come to your defense. There aren’t going to be a lot of people saying you did the right thing. You might hear some words of compassion and people might tell you to forgive yourself but that will take a lot of work on your part. You’ll have to learn the hard way and maybe you’ll be able to heal by helping other people in your situation avoid making the same mistake you did.

  But wouldn’t it be easier to just skip all that and love your children for who they are while they’re alive?

  LOOK FOR THE HELPERS

  At times, especially when I start ranting, I can sound like a pretty negative person. I’m not. One of the greatest things about coming out has been the volumes of messages I’ve received that remind me just how decent and kind people can be. Things are getting better. People are doing great things. Let’s take a moment together to acknowledge that.

  I want to leave you (okay, I don’t really want to leave you, but here we are at the end) with something else that the late Fred Rogers once said. By pretty much every account, Mr. Rogers was one of the great ones, someone whose humanity and decency were evident to anyone who spent time with him. It’s easy to look back at Mr. Rogers now and see a guy in a cardigan who wouldn’t have had any clue as to how to address the social problems we face today. But I don’t think that’s true. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” he said, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ”

  Thanks, Fred.

  And thank you.

  Good night.

  CHAPTER 39

  A LETTER TO MOM AND DAD

  As I said earlier in the book, it took a series of teenage suicides to open my eyes to how devastating hatred can be to a child. I still feel the urge every day to speak up for those kids, making sure that the people who surrounded them understand their complicity in those tragedies and maybe helping others avoid a similarly heartbreaking set of circumstances.

  Let’s face it—most of the people I want to address would never read this book. But they might respond to a heartfelt plea from the kids who need them.

  The following letter is mostly made up of passages from the book, so if I sound like I’m being repetitive, well, yes, I am. My hope is that it might help someone articulate the feelings he or she is (literally) dying to express to a parent who wouldn’t in a million years read a book by a gay, dyslexic comedian.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  These might not be my words, but I hope that what you’re about to read helps to explai
n the way I’m feeling right now. It’s important that you know I want nothing more than what any other kid on this planet hopes for: to be loved and accepted by his or her parents. But your actions have prevented me from living that kind of life everyone around me gets to enjoy. You have taken that from me. Stolen that from me. But I want you to know that it’s not too late and I beg for you to give this letter serious thought.

  Ever since I was little, you’ve made me feel bad about myself. Now you’ve chosen to turn your back on me completely. I get that me being gay is not what you wanted. Believe me, if I had a choice I would gladly change this about myself if for no other reason than to end this nightmare.

  But I can’t. And I wish you could put half as much effort into understanding and loving me as you have into trying to change me.

  I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe it has to do with your religious beliefs. But from my point of view, the idea that you would let an archaic institution separate you from your child doesn’t make any sense to me (or to most people who know anything about these things). I know you think they’re right about me, but they’re not. Besides, why would you trust and follow “experts” who make your life easier while choosing to ignore the ones who could make my life easier?

  Maybe you think I’m sick. Well, you’ll be hard-pressed today to find a pediatrician or an accredited psychologist who will tell you that homosexuality is an illness. In fact, any doctor who diagnosed homosexuality as a mental illness would be discredited by every medical board in the country. Shouldn’t that alarm you? Don’t you trust doctors to fix your health problems, plumbers to fix your sink, or mechanics to fix your car? There are people who dedicate their entire professional careers to understanding what we’re going through—why can’t you listen to what they’re telling you? Why do you instead trust my well-being with people with no academic background or experience?