My rememberences of school are of being teased mostly.  I was skinny and very non-athletic.  So, to say the least I heard all the words--fag, queer, gay, etc.  I dated girls as soon as I was old enough to even know what a girl was.  As I hit puberty, this was when I realized I was attracted to boys. 

Even though not athletically inclined, and a musician, I still kept up the facade of a boy in rural Illinois who didn't play sports or go out and get stoned every week-end, but still enjoyed his women!  I could NEVER let anyone know that the names and taunting were because I WAS gay, then, my life would have been over. 

While no-one was particularly violent to me and I never got beat up, school was a living hell for me every day, especially from Jr. High on. I was never as happy to never have to go back to a place as I was the day I graduated from High School. 

After high school, I did go to college, a Bible College, though, and even though people didn't know my sexual orientation until my Senior year, it was a totally different experience.  I never got tormented once, not even by those who found out where I was coming from.  The ONLY time I've ever had Christians, as a whole, act Biblically toward me, regardless of my sexual orientation, so, for that I praise the Lord, because it was the environment in which I began my journey toward being "ex-gay."

Tom Cole's report of the B-A workshop at the 1998 GLSEN Midwest Conference