After surviving nearly two decades of bullying, ridicule, taunting and trauma through grade and high school in the small, nearly all-white town of Ossian, Indiana, Don Bentz knows the importance of family as a bedrock of love and support.

In a school system that privileged athletics, and where students often graduated with the same kids they started kindergarten with, Don wasn't the image of the All-American athlete - and the onslaught was constant. Don accepted that it was going to be with him his entire life.

"School was brutal for me," Don explains. "Since I didn't play Little League and was not exactly 'butch,' I was labeled a 'sissy' until Three's Company and Soap came out when I was in the seventh grade. Then I became one of the school fags."

Don was lucky, though, as nothing ever happened physically except having things thrown at him at school games.

But the verbal assault seared his psyche, causing intense fear when entering public school functions unless he was with a group of friends. People would be nice to him when no one was looking, but as soon as others were watching, these same people quickly avoided him - "guilt by association," Don reports.

Moving to Florida for college was a liberation. The "reputation" he would have "lived with to the grave" in Indiana was gone ... the pecking order in Ossian had no power beyond its town borders. A new world of friends, acceptance and self-confidence swelled and consumed his life, and Don started earning awards for academics, journalism and leadership at Manatee Community College and then University of South Florida.

But his new-found self was still incomplete.

"Since my family was the only place I felt love and safety, coming out to them was terrifying," Don recalls. "I was trained by my community and church that I would be disowned and left totally alone."

Fortunately, Don's family surprised him.

Don lived with his grandparents his first two years of college and was very close to them. "We were best friends," Don says. He remembers the turning point came after seeing a movie about a gay man who stayed in the closet until after his father died, and the gay son found - after his father's death - a letter to his son stating, "I never got to know the real you ... it hurts that you thought you could not share your entire self with me."

Don vowed to tell them.

"I was all prepared ... stuttering and stammering, unable to say 'it'," he remembers.

When he finally did, his grandmother said, "Oh, hell, I've known that for years." He looked at his grandfather and all the man said was, "What the hell do I care ... you're not sleeping with me."

When telling his mother a year later, she acted composed and just asked a few basic questions, but Don knew her well enough to know she was "just holding it together for my sake."

Don later discovered that his mom had gone back to Indiana, cried, thinking it was her fault - that she had done something wrong raising him - and then started doing research at the library. She quickly learned that most of what she and Don had been taught since birth about homosexuality was not true. Months later at Christmas, she gave him everything Chippendales ... cards, puzzles, posters. It was her way of saying, "it's okay."

Don's father told him "that he was okay if I was gay and someone else was gay, but when we got gay together, that bothered him," Don says. "He told me never to tell him which guy was my boyfriend because he would have to kill him for what he knew he was doing with his son."

By the time Don entered a long-term relationship ten years later, his dad accepted it, but Don believes that the fact that his partner was the florist for The Ice Palace in Tampa and could get great Tampa Bay Lightning tickets helped.

"Right before Dad died, he revealed that what scared him the most was that something would happen to me ... someone was going to queer-bash me or it was going to cost me my job," Don remembers.

Don's Dad's fears almost happened.

While at his first job out of college, Don "played it straight," thinking if he worked hard and didn't "push it," he would be left alone.

"It doesn't matter," Don explains. "If they think you are gay, they are going to make it an issue. After listening to fag jokes told at loud decibels for my benefit, and experiencing intentional sabotage, I realized that it did no good to 'make them comfortable.' From that day forward, I've always been up front from Day One. If you aren't ashamed, they can't use it (being gay) against you."

Those experiences now drive Don's passion for working with queer-focused groups.

"I don't want to see any other kids having to live in fear or worry about losing their family or job because of who they are," Don pledges. "It's all about building circles of love and support, especially for those who cannot find it in their own families." •