How Two Gay Poets Are Making a Change

It’s the middle of June in 2016 and the world has completely changed. Patrick Ramsay, a young writer from Syracuse, Utah and Spencer Ballard, another writer and marketer from Mapleton, Utah, about 80 miles away from Patrick, wake up to the news that 49 people had been murdered in a gay nightclub in Florida. Both Patrick and Spencer had only come out as gay men to their friends and family a few years apart from each other, but they both had remained silent about LGBT issues in respect to the religious community around them. In this moment though, they, along with the rest of the world, could feel the stinging pain of losing so many innocent lives in a believed safe space. At this moment, they both decided that they could no longer stay silent.

“It Is Late” by Spencer Ballard

Spencer realized he wanted to be a writer when he was at an acting retreat and a monologue brought him to tears. “I realized that I didn’t want to be the instrument for the words” says Spencer, “I wanted to create them.” He’s only been writing seriously for a few years but finally feels like he’s stepping into his own style of writing through free writing poetry.

Being raised in a strict religious family, he never felt like he could share his views on acceptance in the LGBT community since it was already a strain on his family to accept him for being a gay man. That viewpoint changed the day after the Pulse shootings. “I was walking down the street by myself and was thinking about how I should react if someone approached me or yelled a slur at me.” says Spencer, “I realized after the Pulse shootings that my fears were reasonable, unfortunately.” Not only did the effect of the Pulse shooting inspire him to write but also the reaction of his family. “No one in my family even tried to reach out to me.” Spencer says, “It really hurt when they couldn’t even recognize that my very soul was hurting.”

Spencer wrote a poem titled “It Is Late” as an embodiment of his fears he experienced that night. Spencer shares what he wants people to take away from his poem, “I hope that people realize how horrific it is that there is a whole community of people that don’t feel safe in the modern world.”

Spencer’s poem shows the brutal reality of being a member of the LGBT community in today’s modern society. The poem starts out with a strong stance that takes the reader’s breath away with a single sentence saying, “You are gay. Let every step you take reflect that you are not.” With this line alone, Spencer shows how he has to walk and act like he is straight with every moment and step he takes. The next stanza in his poem follows that idea by explaining how he has to adjust everything about himself to “make them believe.” Throughout the rest of the poem he explains that he needs to “mimic the men” and “lower your voice”. He ends by telling his LGBT family “Don’t speak too quickly, don’t wear those shorts, don’t let them see, what you are.”

After reading the entire poem and letting the words soak into your mind, you get a small glimpse of the world within the LGBT community and how fearful most of the members still feel today and still have to hide from the world.

You can find the entire poem on Spencer’s personal Instagram account @Spencerjballard.

Today, Spencer wants to inspire other writers to express themselves to make a change. “The quietest voices are the ones that need to be heard the most.” says Spencer, “We need an entire chorus of voices and stories if we want to make a difference.”

“How to Talk About It” by Patrick Ramsay

Patrick Ramsay found his passion for writing when his mother would read him stories at bedtime. “I guess at some point I realized I liked telling stories as much as I liked reading them” says Patrick, “I have a booklet I made in elementary school titled ‘A Poet named Pat’, so i guess that was probably a bit of foreshadowing.” He truly found his knack for poetry when he came across a Ted Talk by the famous poet Sarah Kay titled “If I Should Have a Daughter”. He gives credit to this poem as being the “poem that woke up the writer in me.”

In the years since Patrick came out, he’s written hundreds of poems about nature and love. After the horrible mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Patrick decided it was time to speak up for those that were too afraid to speak for themselves. “I felt like Utah had a lot of pressurized issues, like youth suicide, that I had to talk about somehow” says Patrick.

He wrote a poem inspired from these events titled “How To Talk About It”, emphasizing the heartbreak of the shooting, the disturbing suicide rate of the LGBT community, and most importantly how there needs to be change and love. He decided to share this poem at the Ogden Poetry Contest at the 2016 pride festival, giving him the honor to share the poem online, receiving over 237,000 views and 2,000 shares on social media. “That’s when I stopped thinking I could be a writer and knew it instead.” Patrick says of the awarding moment, “I was overwhelmed by the outpour of support, love, and relation I received from members of my local community and members of the global LGBT community as well.”

The poem talks about love and loss, tragedy, and finding oneself. Patrick starts his poem with a simple understanding that many can relate to saying, “Let me preface this by telling you, i’m pretty quiet person. There are a few reasons why, but mainly, being quiet is easy.” He then explains how comfortable it is to be quiet and he liked it that way, until the fateful day of June 12th, 2016 when he awoke to reports from the media about the Pulse nightclub shooting. “Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. I close my eyes and try to hear my friends’ pulses too” he states, “There are 49 less pulses.”

He then explains how all at once he saw his community coming together in love and support. He shares his personal feelings of breaking up with his boyfriend that day because his boyfriend would judge him for acting “too gay”, and being as quiet as he is, it never bothered him until that day. Just like Spencer, he also shares how he had to change who he was to not come off as too feminine to protect himself from the harsh words and stares that society would throw at him

After sharing how terrified he had felt for so many years and how he was always told to be quiet, he pushes his fellow LGBT family to be louder saying, “I need to be louder. Louder for my friends. Made family by our trials. Louder for the time my father scoffed and rolled eyes at the headband I was wearing. Louder for the parts of me i’m still afraid of. Louder because it feels so good to walk… louder because of Orlando.”

Patrick found that he will no longer be silent on who he is and what he believes in and pushes those in the LGBT community and supporters to fight and never give up. Patrick’s poem inspired thousands of people to open their eyes and understand the true torture that members of the LGBT community go through everyday.

You can find the full video and poem here.

Today, Patrick wants to inspire and continue to be an active and accepting member of the LGBT community, marching hand-in-hand towards love and equality on the horizon.. “I’m hoping people will feel a sense of community and pride in themselves and the LGBT community in general. I’m hoping that people who persecute family members for being gay realize the harm they’re doing and choose to love them instead. I’m hoping for solidarity. I’m hoping someone reads or hears [the poem] and is louder.”

“Like Dragons we did fight…”

A strong support group of the LGBT community in Utah are a group of mothers called the Mama Dragons. The group consists of a group of mothers within the mormon church that have sons or daughters that have come out as gay or lesbian. The founder of the Mama Dragons, Meg Abhau, explains the name in her blog after her 13 year son had come out. “There is a whole new level of protection that has come over me. I now call myself a Mama Dragon.” she says, “I could literally breathe fire if someone hurt my son.” What started out as one mother sharing her fight and love for her son turned into a private group of over a thousand mothers standing strong alongside their sons and daughters. The official Mama Dragons page states, “This is an unusual ally group. We are there to offer support for each other, and for LGBT loved ones.”

An official member of the Mama Dragons, April Ycmat, joined the group in 2012 after her youngest son came out as a gay man. “I struggled between my faith and the reality of knowing that my son was gay but that didn’t change who he was” says April, “All I knew was that I loved him and I had to find a way to fight for him.” April found the Mama Dragons through a Facebook group called “I’ll Walk With You” where many Mama Dragons post about their experiences and support for the LGBT group. April shares “I finally found a group of woman that knew what I was going through and taught me so much about the LGBT community and how to support them through my faith.”

Just like Patrick and Spencer, April struggled with the news of the Pulse nightclub shooting. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” says April, “it’s almost like you knew it was there, but you could never believe that hate could become so violent.” Almost immediately, April contacted her son to let him know just how much she loves him. “I remember talking to him and he was so upset” says April, “I was already a Mama Dragon but the events almost made me an even stronger Mama Dragon and I was ready to fight.”

April, along with the Mama Dragons, believe that they will always keep their doors open to the LGBT community and it’s members to show true love and protection against the rest of the world. The Mama Dragons, as well as many other support groups, are fighting to make a change, one hug at a time.

Patrick, Spencer, and April have shared how they feel about the LGBT community and the love that needs to grow around them. Both writers agree that writing completely changed their life for the better. Spencer states his hope for the future, “I want people to realize that there doesn’t need to be an us and them. I hope for a day when sexuality isn’t a dividing factor between people.” Patrick shares his own beliefs about writing, “writing took who I thought I could be and made me become it. Every time I sit down and write, I am sitting with my mistakes, my goals, my loved ones, and my lost ones. It helps. It helps so much.” There is a lot of change that needs to happen but it’s by taking baby steps and sharing your voice that will actually create the change that needs to be done.

Sidenote

The Pulse Nightclub Shooting

In the early morning of June 12th, 2016, a 29 year old man named Omar Mateen, entered a gay night club and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on 320 people, killing 49 innocent people and wounding around 53 others. Many believed the gunshots were firecrackers or part of the music but quickly took coverage in the bathrooms. Those that were stuck inside the club searched for help by calling or send text messages to their family and friends. At 2:45 am, Mateen called the local news station stating that he was carrying out the shooting on behalf of ISIL and that it was triggered by a U.S.-led bombing strike in Iraq that killed a ISIL military commander. It became the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter, the deadliest event of violence against the LGBT community in America, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the September 11 attacks back in 2001.