SouthBear's Autobiography
For purposes of this website, I'm known simply as SouthBear.  I am 42 years old, and I live in Birmingham, Alabama.  I moved to Birmingham in September 2006, to start my new life with my partner, Mark. Before moving to Birmingham, I have lived in Hattiesburg, MS for almost 4 years (1995-1998), Laurel, MS, one of my two hometowns, for 12 years (1983-1995), and Tupelo for almost 8 years between 1999 and 2006.  I was born in Ellisville, Mississippi on 15 June 1964. If you've ever seen the movie Mississippi Burning, that was the summer those events occurred, the Freedom Summer, when Mississippi went to war with the rest of America. Actually the date of my birth was just six days before Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Earl Chaney were shot on June 21, 1964 in Philadelphia, which is about 60 miles north of Ellisville. I take some pride that I was born during the Freedom Summer, because the good that came out of that difficult summer has shaped my life.  I am of the first generation of Mississippians to have lived their entire lives in an integrated Mississippi.  While we are still struggling to make the dream of a color-blind America a reality, the successes that were won in that summer and later paved the road for other minorities, such as women and homosexuals, to begin the process of claiming their rightful place in society. For that, I am grateful to the workers and martyrs of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Ellisville is a small town 7 miles south of Laurel, Mississippi.  Though Laurel is bigger, Ellisville is older.  It was the only town in Jones County during the Civil War. It remained unscathed from the ravages of the war, though it played a role in a minor skirmish between a band of outlaws led by a renegade named Newt Knight and the Confederate authority in the region named Maj. Amos McLemore. This skirmish, in which Knight shot and killed McLemore who was charged with Knight's arrest, gave seed to the rise of the legend of the Free State of Jones, during which Jones County allegedly (but never did) seceded from Mississippi (and thus the Confederacy).  To this day, Jones County is still called the Free State of Jones.  Ellisville remained the sole town in Jones County after the war was over, until a Yankee entrepreneur (he was not a carpetbagger) from Iowa by the name of George Gardiner Eastman, who was looking to tap into the resources of the virgin pine forest of the county, came up on the railroad from New Orleans and founded Laurel in 1882.

My parents were very young and attending Jones County Junior College in Ellisville when I was born.  Otherwise, I'm sure I'd have been born in Laurel, my father's hometown.  I am the only person that I know of that was actually born in Ellisville.  Even people who grow up in Ellisville are born in Laurel before they are taken home to Ellisville, as it has the only hospital of any decent size in the county. Yet, there was a small hospital in Ellisville at the time, Ellisville Municipal Hospital. Today, the facility is operated by the hospital in Laurel as a medical clinic.

My father eventually became a respiratory therapist, and my parents moved to New Orleans.  Except for about a year when we lived in Birmingham, Alabama (in 1969), during which time I started my schooling in kindergarten, I would remain in New Orleans for the rest of my childhood and adolescence.  I went to school in New Orleans, attending St. George's Episcopal Day School, Aurora Gardens Academy, Jefferson Parish Schools, and Brother Martin High School (Roman Catholic) between the 1st and the 11th Grades.  In 1970, my parents were divorced.  My dad left New Orleans, but my mom stayed with me and my brother.  In 1973, she married her second husband.  He worked for the U.S. Justice Department (U.S. Marshal's Service), and was transferred to Tyler, Texas in 1982, just before my senior year.  Therefore, I finished high school at Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler in 1983.

My college career began in the summer of 1983 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, where I began studying Philosophy and Religion.  It was my intention to become an Episcopal priest, so I figured Philosophy and Religion was good place to begin.  However, I became disillusioned by the liberal ideas of the philosophy professors at USM. These were Reagan years, remember, and I was influenced by the conservative swing of the pendulum during the 1980s.  Today, I'd probably agree with much of what they tried to teach me back then, but I'd have nothing to do with it at the time. So, I decided to change my course of study and put off any philosophy or religion until seminary.  Because of this, I decided that I'd explore my interest in planning as a student of community and regional planning.
After graduation from Ole Miss, I left Oxford to go home to Laurel, where my grandmother still lived. For a while, I lived with my grandmother in Firethorn, our family home. Firethorn is now over one hundred years old (built in 1901), and my family lived in it for 60 years before my grandmother passed away in 2004.  When I moved back to Laurel after school, I expected to live there only until I was accepted to a seminary, a year perhaps two.  Both plans failed.  In
I returned to school in 1994, when I attended USM to get a degree in History and my teacher's license.  That goal was obtained in 1997.  I would have graduated much earlier, but I ran into a crisis, the worst of my entire life.  On October 7, 1994, a young black boy named Marvin McClendon was sulking because he had not been allowed to play poker with a group of older men because he had no money. Determined to be included, McClendon was out looking for money when he came across my two good friends, Bobby Walters and Joe Shoemake, while they drove down a dark ally in Laurel looking for a friend of Bobby's.
However, thanks to Camp Sister Spirit, a controversial organization of lesbians that had moved to Jones County a few years before, it was leaked to the press that Bobby and Joe were gay.  This group of lesbians had long been at odds with the Sheriff's Department in Jones County since their move and they apparently were determined to use the case of
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© 2001 SouthBear

This page was created on: 28 August 2001
Date of last revision: 21 October 2006
SouthBear
FBI Bulletin for Goodman, Chaney, & Schwerner
June 1964
SouthBear in Runneymeade England
Summer 1987
Firethorn Hall
Laurel, Mississippi
(Click the thumbnail for more photos)
Naming a home in the South is a well-known and still widely practiced tradition, particularly for families who are well established in the same residence for many years.  Named homes do not necessarily have to be large, sprawling plantations or other estates such as Tara or other more well-known named homes. There are named homes in the South that  are as small and unassuming as two-room cottages. Naming a home, whether large or small, simply implies that the family considers itself established in that place on a permanent basis.  Firethorn was so named by my family during the 1950s.  It was named for the row of pyrocanthus shrubs (Pyrocanthus angustifolia) that used to line  
A Little about Firethorn
SouthBear's Origins, Early Years, and Education
College - Round Two and the Murders
The sheriff's office in Jones County has long been vilified as backwards and beset by the good-ole boy attitude that perpetuated the old status quo of the South.  However, in their dealings with us, the friends left behind by Bobby and Joe, we could not have been treated nicer and with more concern for own safety and well-being. Knowing that news of our sexuality may cause us harm, we were promised by the Sheriff's Department that there was no need to make Bobby's and Joe's sexuality public knowledge. 
SouthBear in 1995, shortly after the murders of Bobby & Joe
A Mid Life Crisis a Few Years Early
During the trial of Mississippi vs. McClendon, my schooling at Southern Miss was put on hold.  I had gone back to earn a bachelor's in history and my Mississippi Teacher's License.  After the trial was over, I returned my attention to this.  I loved teaching and looked forward to the day that I could do it as a professional teacher.  I had no intention of going back to Laurel, but I looked forward to teaching somewhere else in Mississippi with a new start.  Between the murders and the trial, I moved to Hattiesburg in order to escape the chaos.  It was my hope that I would be able to teach there.

I learned a very important lesson, though.  After I earned the required documents needed to teach, I began the search for a teaching position.  I applied at every school district in the state and with several private schools as well.  It quickly became apparent to me, though, that something was wrong.  Interview after interview, I came away with the feeling that all went well. "Surely," I would tell myself, "these folks will want me."  However, inevitably I would receive a telephone call with disappointing news that someone else was chosen.  Sometimes, in spite of a promise to call one way or another, I would receive no call at all.  A few times, I would make a call myself to follow up.  I could tell from the voices on the other end that the person with whom I was speaking was nervous and uncomfortable. 

Since I had been licensed to teach social studies, many potential employers had asked if I would be able to also teach physical education, coach the football team, or perform some other PE-related function.  Though I was more than willing to be active in extra-curricular activities, I related my unwillingness to coach for several good reasons, the most important of which was my desire to break with the tradition of Southern schools of killing two birds with one stone by getting social studies teachers to coach sports teams.  I wanted to break this cycle because, firstly, I'm not a particularly athletic person (me coaching football would be like the Queen sponsoring a group called the Citizens for a Republican UK!)  Secondly, I believed that relying on physical education teachers to teach social studies contributed greatly to the low scores Mississippi students consistently achieve in history and social studies.  If the social studies teacher (a.k.a. football coach) has his mind on Friday night's game, he's not doing a good job helping his social studies students achieve the ability to locate Mississippi on a map or understand the numerous causes of the Civil War.  I explained my concerns very pointedly to my interviewers and ended by letting them know that I was very willing otherwise to sponsor other non-athletic extra-curricular activities. I accentuated my desire to do so by expressing interest and enthusiasm in exploring these possibilities with the administration once hired.

However, more than once, I was told by nervous and uncomfortable voices on the phone that they wouldn't hire me because I was unwilling to coach football or baseball.  I could tell that though this was the excuse, it was not the real reason I wasn't being hired.  I knew something was wrong, and I was beginning to get a feel for the real reason for my unsuitability. Getting desperate, I called a friend in the Laurel School District, a person who will remain anonymous to protect his/her identity.  I asked this person if my newfound hunch may be correct.  This person confirmed for me that when potential employers called the Laurel School District for a reference, they were told that I was not eligible for re-hire in Laurel because of moral unsuitability.  This person told me that my connection to Bobby and Joe, and by extension my own sexuality, put my moral character into question and that I would therefore never work for the Laurel School District again.  As I listened to my friend tell me this, I was brought back to a particular evening on the Gulf Coast when a group of us, including Joe Shoemake, were at a local gay club in Biloxi.  It was the first evening that legalized gambling was allowed in Mississippi waters, and the coast was particularly active with tourists that day.  While we were at the club, a familiar face walked in.  It was a person (who I will also keep anonymous) who was intimately involved in my work as a Chapter I aide.  This person was in Biloxi because he/she had come to gamble and decided to drop off as a bar for a drink.  Of course, I considered it ironic that this person chose, out of all the bars and nightclubs on the Gulf Coast, to choose this particular club, but the fact remains that he/she did and I - an employee of the Laurel School District - was seen in a gay bar.  At the end of that school year, I was told that my job was eliminated and that my responsibilities would be carried out in the next year by the regular Chapter I teacher.  Coincidence? Perhaps.  But when I was told that future employers were told that my moral character was in question (without any further explanation as to the circumstances), I realized that I would never teach in Mississippi, perhaps not anywhere else either.  When an employer hears that a potential employee has had his moral character questioned, it could mean just about anything, from alcoholism to pedophilia.  Without further explanation, why would anyone take a chance?  Even an employer in New York City, where my sexuality would not be an issue, would be wary to hire me if he thought that perhaps my problem was something more serious that my sexuality. I was, therefore, forced to abandon my hope to teach.  This was the second calling that I was forced to abandon, the first being my calling to the priesthood by the Church. (Not only was I told after college to go out and "experience life" and come back later about my desire to be ordained, a few years later, as a result of Bobby's and Joe's murder,  I was told that I would not be ordained in Mississippi because of my sexuality.)  

At the age of 34, I found myself without a career and without a viable way to support myself.  Every plan that I made for myself was derailed by external forces over which I could exercise no control.  Furthermore, these external forces were marshaled against me because of what was deemed to be a flaw in my character, as if I were an evil, undesirable person.  And they were marshaled against me by people and institutions with which I personally identified - the State of Mississippi and my beloved Church.  My only desire was only to be the best priest the Episcopal Church ever had, or the best teacher that ever taught in a Mississippi classroom.  I found it a hard pill to swallow that I was undesirable by these institutions because of something that I made no conscious effort to be.
Coming Out
On September 14, 1985, Holy Cross Day, I went with some friends to New Orleans for a road trip.  That trip changed my life.  It was during that trip that I discovered that my friends shared something with me which I had kept a secret until then. That secret, which I had vowed to keep to myself until the day I died, was that I am gay.  In spite of my vow of silence, I came out of the closet, kicking and screaming, on the corner of St. Peter and Royal Streets in the French Quarter.  I leaned against an old wall of a building that has witnessed countless other dramas throughout history as a friend helped me to come to terms with myself. Today, I call the wall on which I leaned as the process occurred "The Wailing Wall", and I visit it often when I am in New Orleans.

I became so absorbed in exploring my gay identity and the new life that I'd opened myself up to that my grades began to suffer. I also found that a few of the people I was associating with, including the person that helped me admit my gay identity at the Wailing Wall, was not the kind with which I needed to be associating, not because they were gay, I must point out, but because, there are just some people, gay and straight, that bring out the worst in other people.  I needed to back off, even if only for a while.  My parents (my mom and step dad) had in the meantime moved to Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss.  I decided to transfer there, which I did in January 1986. I studied Public Administration, part of the Department of Political Science at Ole Miss.  Though I like Oxford very much, and enjoyed my time there, in a way, I considered my stay there sort of an exile. As far as I knew, there was no gay life in Oxford, and I had few friends.  I didn't belong to a fraternity, an important association at Ole Miss, so I had little opportunity to socialize.  Years later, I learned that there was indeed a gay community in Oxford, a rather large one in fact, but it was very secluded in the 1980s in order to buffer itself from the intolerant, conservative elements which are ever present in Southern society, especially in small Southern towns. Just as well, I suppose.  I kept to my studies better, earned the opportunity to travel to London during the summer of 1987 to study at the King's College-University of London, and graduated, a little behind schedule, in May 1988.
1988, the South was already experiencing the recession that would eventually grip the entire country.  The economy was bad, and I couldn't find viable in employment in Laurel or anywhere else for that matter. Meanwhile, the Diocese of Mississippi wasn't too keen on sponsoring me for seminary either because I was so young.  At this time, the Episcopal Church had a surplus of priests and found itself in the position of being very choosy with prospective new priests.  They preferred older men and women who had been out in the world for some time.  Since I was so young and didn't fit that profile, I wasn't high on their list.  And since I couldn't find good work, I was advised to go back to school to get a graduate degree.  I really didn't want to do that but I had to make a living somehow.  To make ends meet (and they didn't really meet at all) I took a job as a substitute teacher in the Laurel School District.  Eventually I became the Chapter I teacher's aide for the 7th and 8th grades, working at Gardiner Jr. High School and Jones Middle School.  I had discovered the teaching profession.  I was hooked. After I became the Chapter I aide, I moved out of Firethorn when I rented an old house in Laurel's historical district.
Talmadge and the Tupelo Years
With this realization, I knew that I would have to make a dramatic change. I had to leave Laurel/Hattiesburg, perhaps maybe even Mississippi itself.  How does one just pick up and move away from home without first having something to go to?  How does one, at the age of 34 (when most people are in mid-career) begin to search out a new career?  At the same time, I met a person with whom I became very fond.  His name was Talmadge. Over the course of several months, we got to know one another better and decided that perhaps we could make a better life for ourselves together than separately.  I was certainly ready for a change from my current circumstances and Talmadge needed a change too.  Together, we decided to move to Tupelo, Mississippi.  We had several mutual friends there at the time, and they had been encouraging me to go up and see if I might be able to make a new beginning there.  They all extolled the virtues of Tupelo, a small Southern city that, though was the headquarters of the fanatical American Family Association headed by the homophobic Rev. Don Wildmon, was nevertheless a progressive town with a bright future in spite of the conservative nature of its surrounding environment (i.e., the State of Mississippi). We did as we were advised by our friends, and Talmadge and I rented our first apartment together in Tupelo's historic district.
Downtown Tupelo, Mississippi
It took us both about a year, but Talmadge and I were able to do quite well in Tupelo.  After a year long stint at a local motel as a night auditor, I was able to secure a position with the Lee County Library as the Bookmobile librarian.  Librarianship was not something I had ever pictured myself doing, but I realized that it afforded me an opportunity to do something that was related to teaching, the profession in which I had worked so hard to be accredited, but which I was not allowed to pursue by less than enlightened educators in my hometown. I quickly realized that Library and Information Sciences was a field in which I would be happy to make a living.  Of course, this required more education.  With two undergraduate degrees I felt that I had used up all of my options to get a third.  With support from my parents, however, I was assured that I could get financial assistance to earn a Masters in Library and Information Science.  Before rushing into it, however, I decided to spend a few years at the library to make absolutely sure that not only would I be happy spending a career in a library but that conservative homophobic forces might prevent me from doing it if I did spend the money and time to get this degree.

Talmadge was also able to secure a position at a dialysis unit in Tupelo.  This surprised me very much because I never knew that he was interested in the medical field.  I quickly learned, much to my delight, that he intended to go back to school to earn a nursing degree.  In this endeavor, he had my full and devoted support.  Neither of us would have been able to progress as we were able to do without each other's financial and emotional support.  About two years after he began working at the dialysis unit, he enrolled at Itawamba Community College to begin classes. 

Over the years, however, it became apparent that though we were very close friends and were able to better ourselves through our mutual support of one another, we were not in love.  We remained a couple for several years after we should have separated because of the financial support that we offered to one another.  It was simply easier to stay together than to break apart.  Fortunately, for our sake, we were very good friends.  That friendship sustained us emotionally through these years.  However, a time came at which I was no longer willing to call ourselves the couple we were living as when, in fact, we were not a couple emotionally.  Shortly after our 7th anniversary, in February 2006, I asked to break up with Talmadge.
Mark and Birmingham
At just about the same time, I met Mark.  We actually met on an online chat program called iSpQ (I Speak).  It is very ironic that we met this way because, though I chatted online often, I always refused to pay for a program when there are so many free chat program out there (Yahoo being just one of many).  However, for some reason that I'm still unable to explain, I broke from this policy and paid for a subscription to iSpQ. If I had not done this, I would never have met Mark.  I had seen Mark's profile on iSpQ several times, but he was never online when I was.  Even from the anonymity of his profile, I was very attracted to Mark.  He has told me that he had seen my profile as well, but never bothered to message me because he believed that I wouldn't have anything to do with him.  Regardless, one day I found him online at the same time that I was online and decided to say hello to him.  The match was almost instantaneous.  We spoke for most of that afternoon and then well into the evening.  We spoke almost as if we were long lost buddies and had merely reconnected after a few years, even though we had never spoken to one another before.  After that first encounter, we spoke online every day for several weeks.  We eagerly looked forward to our chats together.  In a very short time, we realized that there was something between us that was more than just online chat buddies.  There was an inner connection, a spiritual relationship that was deeper.  When we finally met in person, the spark was intense.

There are people in the world who believe in the idea of soul mates, people who are intended to accompany one another through each incarnation of the individual souls.  You must have a prerequisite belief in reincarnation, and I'm not sure how much of this I believe, but I certainly understand what they are talking about.  The connection between Mark and I was more than just what would have been apparent in our fledgling friendship and subsequent relationship.  It was something older and more established than our mere earthly ages would have been able to sustain.  Love at first sight, soul mates, it doesn't matter what you call it.  It is difficult to explain this especially if one has never experienced it before.  I certainly never had.  Before meeting Mark, I would have simply dismissed the idea as an excuse for rushing into things.  One thing is for sure, I am in love with Mark in way that I have never loved anyone before in my life.  Where I got this ability to love, or what I did to deserve the reciprocation, I cannot explain.  However, for the first time in my life, I feel complete.  For that, I thank God every day.

After several month of tying up ends with Talmadge, I resigned my position at the library in Tupelo and moved to Birmingham.  Together, we bought a home in the Crestwood community in eastern Birmingham.  I moved to Birmingham on blind faith, without a job to go to when I got there, but convinced that this was the right thing for me to do and that providence would provide the next step.  Though I find myself at present still waiting for this revelation (i.e., actively pursuing the next progression in my career), I know that with patience, I will find what it is I'm supposed to do.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying becoming accustomed to my new surroundings and circumstances in Birmingham.  Mark and I live almost as if we have been together for many years.  I am enjoying getting to know his three children, and we both are enjoying fixing our new house to make it our home.

When you're only 42, an autobiography can only be half complete. So, stay tuned for updates!
There the boy robbed and shot my friends to death, commandeered the Blazer that Bobby was driving, showed off the bodies to some of his homies, apparently in an attempt to show them they he was good enough to play poker with them, and then dumped their bodies onto an abandoned railroad track north of town.
the property along the street in front.  My grandfather, however, had these bushes removed in the 1960s or 1970s because of the painful result of trying to keep them trimmed and under control. Pyrocanthus have long thorns that are coated with an acidic sap that causes a painful, burning rash when you are pricked by them.  He replaced these fiery shrubs with the more pleasant susanqua camellia.  However, he allowed one pyrocanthus bush to remain near the main entrance to the property, the single survivor of the home's namesakes.

Built in 1901 as a farm house outside of Laurel, the city took in the property in the 1960s.  My grandfather bought the property in 1943 when he moved his small family to Laurel from Heidelburg, MS.  Though my grandfather died in 1984, we lived at Firethorn until my grandmother's death in 2004.  In 2006 it was sold to a new growing family who had moved to Laurel from California. Although the house is not owned by our family anymore, my heart and being is still centered here.  It will always be an important part of my life.
Bobby's and Joe's murders and excuse to bring more attention and notoriety upon themselves. Camp Sister Spirit had learned how to turn their feud with the Sheriff's Department to their advantage by playing the martyr card.  By claiming oppression by the legal establishment in Mississippi, they were able to appeal for relief to sympathetic northern benefactors who were all too willing to believe their story of oppression at the hands of the stereotypical evil Southern sheriff.  Once it became common knowledge that Bobby and Joe were, in fact, dead by the gay community in Jones County, the leaders of Camp Sister Spirit called the media and appealed for an investigation by Federal authorities, claiming that justice could not be given to Bobby and Joe if the investigation remained in local hands. They also called in the gay cavalry, the gay activists in Washington and New York, for assistance.  Before long, Laurel was besieged by gay activists. Some of them were radicals activists such as the Sisters, and others were legitimate activists, those who ordinarily work for good, worthwhile causes, but who were misled by the self-promoting Sisters in a case in which they were not needed. Most of these eventually realized that there was no need for them to stay in Laurel, realizing that once again the Sisters cried wolf. So, they left before the trial of McClendon began.

A few of the more radical activists continued their assault via the new Internet and email capabilities. In this nebulous and anonymous environment, a whole litany of conspiracy theories began to evolve around the murders of Bobby and Joe.  One of the most crazy of these was a theory put forth that Bobby and Joe were drug runners for a Mafia-affiliated family on the Gulf Coast who catered to the drug needs of the local gay community via a gay club that was operated at the time in Biloxi..  According to this theory, Bobby and Joe were executed by the sheriff of Harrison County who was also involved in organized crime but who was in competition with this particular crime family.  Realizing that he was about to be found out, he appealed to his friend, the sheriff of Jones County and called in some favors.  The Jones County sheriff was to find a nancy to take the rap for the crime and thus take the heat off of the Harrison County sheriff.  So, this black boy, a juvenile delinquent with a history of trouble at school and with the law was chosen so that the jury would easily convict him and take the heat off the coast sheriff.  Other theories were put for too, but this one was one of the most outlandish.

Of the legitimate activists that stayed, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund offered much assistance to the District Attorney during her prosecution of the case in Mississippi v. McClendon.  As the trial began, McClendon's sleazy lawyer, who was ironically a racist but who was also more repulsed by homosexuality than any racial bigotry, used a twisted self-defense strategy, arguing that instead of being a thief intent on robbing Bobby and Joe, McClendon was an innocent victim himself, confronted by two sexual predators that were intent on raping him.  In spite of the fact that neither Bobby nor Joe had any reason or need to rape anyone, and possessed not a single racist bone between them, McClendon's attorney continued down this illogical line of argument.  In his arsenal of ammunition was a secret that very few of their family or friends knew about, that one of them was HIV positive.  In order to use this ammunition, the attorney succeeded in convincing the judge to allow blood samples that had been tested for HIV at the time of the autopsies to be allowed into evidence during the trial.  Lambda Legal provided invaluable assistance to the DA in the argument against this tactic, in spite of the fact that it ultimately failed. 

The flood of activists, good and bad, created a media nightmare for Bobby's and Joe's friends and brought unwanted attention to the ordinary citizens of Laurel, most of who prefer to live quietly and to themselves. Whether they intended to help or not, the damage was done to the gay community of Jones County.  In spite of the fact that we, the friends and family of Bobby and Joe, were convinced that our friends were not victims of hate crimes, that they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, many of them came to Laurel to cause trouble on our behalf, convinced that we were somehow being coerced by the local authorities into silence.  They came under the assumption that we were too scared or intimidated to speak up for ourselves or our slain friends.  They assumed that we were all fearfully in the closet, afraid to come out lest we suffer the same fate as Bobby and Joe. What the gay activists that invaded our small town and our way of life didn't realize was that most people in the community already knew that we were gay. For them, that was nothing new. We were a large group for a town our size and we were closely knit. However, we lived by an unspoken rule with our straight neighbors: As long as the gay community doesn't shove their sexuality down the throats of the straight community, the straight community will allow the gay community to live in peace without interference. (Or as the ordinary Laurelite would put it: "Don't shove your sex down our throats and we'll let you be.") This is the Southern version of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (where do you think Clinton, a Southerner, got the idea?).  Some people find that unsatisfactory, and I certainly understand that.  But, we lived happy lives in our own hometowns under this unspoken contract with the community.  We lived happily, among our families and friends, in a town that was as much a part of us as were our own blood relatives. We didn't have to move to a large city, with its anonymity and unfamiliarity, in order to live in peace. We were able to stay home and live happily as long as we lived and obeyed this contract.  When the activists came to town, supposedly speaking for us, the contract was broken and nothing would be the same again.  The self-serving agendas of Camp Sister Spirit and other radical gay activists, who never knew or laid eyes on the victims of this crime, dramatically weeping and keeping vigil over pictures of Bobby and Joe on the courthouse steps for the media, cost their survivors our way of life.  Today, only a few us remain in Laurel, and since then, a new generation, who were only small children when these events took place, have come of age.  I have heard many of them speak of fear that we did not have when we were their age.  Before Camp Sister Spirit came to town and destroyed things, we lived quite openly and at peace with our neighbors.  Today's Laurel gay community speaks of fear, depression, and a desire to leave. Radical activism can create more problems than it solves.

The young man who murdered our friends was convicted of two counts of 1st degree murder and sentenced to two life terms in the state Penitentiary in Parchman.  He will be about 64 when he gets out, if he ever gets out.  Three lives were wasted that night, many others changed, needlessly, forever. I learned so much from this episode.  It has shaped my life profoundly. I am not pessimistic at all.  On the contrary, I used to the experience to take a long hard look at myself. Many of my values and beliefs were challenged, especially my social values (i.e.: poverty, justice and our penal system, and my ideas on the death penalty). Though I miss my friends tremendously, and the peaceful life we once shared in Laurel, I believe that I have redirected the course of my life for the better.  They say that good things can come from evil, and in this case it has.