It was a January morning in 2025 when I tried to get Joanna’s attention.
I arrived to work a few minutes ago, and now I was standing at one of the lobby elevator banks. I had just pressed the call button when I saw her walking towards one of the other banks - there are three of them in the 40-floor Rhodes state office tower downtown where we both work.
A leader in Ohio’s public sector, she and I have talked over email a few times over a span of more than 10 years. We’d never actually seen each other in person so I wasn’t sure she’d know who I was. But still, I recognized her and wanted to say happy new year.
I know her through a mutual friend, Collin, who told me once that Joanna is the mother of his deceased partner. The three of us each work in state government, each in a different role, each for a different agency, all under a Republican administration.
“Joanna?” She looked over at me. “I’m not sure if you’ll remember me. I’m friends with Collin.”
She smiled and walked towards me.
“I know who you are,” she said, like of course I should know that she would know. She put her hand on my coat sleeve and squeezed my arm like a friend does. Like a mother you’d choose as your own if only the choice was up to you.
She leaned in.
“I read your letter in the Dispatch.”
She said it quietly, almost a whisper - all careworn and confidential. She made eye contact with me while she talked, but I could tell she was paying attention to who else was or could soon be around. Nobody was near, so we went on.
“Oh? I didn’t realize they’d published it.”
I was excited to know it, so I smiled and I’m sure my eyes got wide. I’d never had a letter to the editor published. Well, once, but it was a long time ago. It wasn’t my best writing and the paper was a niche local publication for gay Ohioans. I’d never had a letter to the editor published in a newspaper as established as The Columbus Dispatch.
“I’m so sorry this is happening. It isn’t right.”
Joanna was talking about a House bill, what the legislature was calling “The Parents’ Bill of Rights.” Calling it that made it sound noble and necessary, but it was neither. It was a piece of garbage legislation co-sponsored by a Republican state congressman named D.J. Swearingen.
Rep. Swearingen was the man to whom I directed a heaping dose of sarcastic ire in the letter Joanna read. The letter she whispered about now, taking care that any commentary or criticism she had about Republican legislation would stay standing where we stood: in the elevator bank in a lobby in a government building named after a Republican governor.
She was keeping her commentary and criticism quietly in the elevator bank, close to me, and just between us. Keeping her words just outside of the people-moving boxes with number-buttons and safety surveillance that sees and hears, transmits and carries commentary and criticism like ours up, and up to Republican bureaucrats at the top.
Republican bureaucrats who don’t appreciate commentary and criticism of their policies or people. Republican bureaucrats who make the rules, both written and unwritten. Republican bureaucrats who hear every whisper but never actually listen.
No, we would keep this commentary and criticism right here in the elevator bank.
The Parents’ Bill of Rights, by the way, was signed into law on January 8, 2025. It forces teachers and counselors to report any significant changes in a student’s gender/sexual identity or well-being to their parents, even in cases where that report might put the student more at risk.
More at risk.
More at risk.
When I was a teenager, parents living in Ohio didn’t have a Republican Parents’ Bill of Rights law to protect them. There was no law in place to force school teachers, counselors, and administrators to report gay kids being gay to rights-less parents like mine. Yet somehow when my parents found out I was gay, I got to learn firsthand what “more at risk” looked like. Because when my parents found out I was gay, even without those parental rights that Swearingen swears don’t exist, my home situation put me more at risk.
Lots more at risk.
More at risk of wanting to run away. (I knew the name of the runaway shelter. I knew our church minister’s daughter had run away. I knew an emancipated teen at school (my god I envied her). One of my friends, Pete, got permission from his parents to shelter me temporarily if I needed it. I needed it, but I didn’t take him up on his kind offer.)
More at risk of wanting to end my life by suicide. (I longed and ached for the “strength” to kill myself. Then I’d think of my little brother, 12 years younger than me, and I didn’t want to put him through that kind of tragedy. I couldn’t do that to him. He is one reason that I am alive today. On many nights back then, he was the only reason I was alive.)
More at risk of permanent scarring on my face. (In bed at night, I hated my life. I hated my situation. I hated being gay. I wanted to not be gay because it was awful. It was painful. I felt helpless and trapped. I had friends at school, but I felt entirely alone. So in my dark bedroom, I would cry, and cry, and scrape at my face and cheeks. I tore at myself, trying to pull off my skin. Trying to un-become what I was. I ripped at myself because I didn’t know what else to do.)
More at risk of depression. (Sometimes my brain felt like it was bending into itself. I was ashamed and angry and scared. I wanted to be small. Invisible. I should’ve been in therapy. I should’ve been on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. But I wasn’t. My emotions and feelings were all raw, all the time - exacerbated by “regular” teenage hormones and feelings. It was terrible.)
More at risk of shutting down. (We argued a lot, my parents and me. Afterwards, when we went into separate rooms, I couldn’t recall how the argument went. I couldn’t remember what they said, or what I said. For most of it, I still can’t remember. Some things, I do. Some things I can’t forget. The time mom looked right at me and said, “You make me sick.” The time dad asked, “Have you had another man’s penis in your butt?” I remember those things, and a few other things. But mostly, I don’t remember.)
I was more at risk of all these things, because they happened. And things, as things do, got worse before they got better.
"More at risk” turned into “at risk.”
“At risk” turned into “risk.”
The numb indulgences of escape - substances, sex, sneaking, and shame - became coping skills. I turned to them and relied on them for years - decades, actually. Well into adulthood.
These coping skills are the consequences Rep. Swearingen would happily force onto any queer or questioning kid with parents who don’t know better but think that they do. Parents whose rights have been taken away somewhere by somebody sometime here in Ohio - and who need a real hero like Rep. Swearingen to protect them, and not their kids about to become “more at risk.”
Joanna knew all this when she leaned in. She knew exactly what a bill like this does, and what it will do, and who it will hurt. And what she said when she squeezed my arm was right: it isn’t right.
It isn’t right at all. Parents have rights, and our legislators know it. At-risk kids need adults they can trust while they learn who they are, adults they can trust when their parents can’t be trusted. And believe me, some parents cannot be trusted. We should be talking about it, meagaphoning it, and big neon-signing it wherever we are and to whomever we see. We should be getting real loud.
But in the sterile elevator bank, on a cold January morning in 2025, standing warm in our coats and aware, all we could do was see each other, know each other, lean in, and whisper.
*Real names changed to Joanna and Colin.
Original writing prompt: A Whispered Conversation. Write a piece involving a whispered conversation. Consider why the conversation is whispered. Is it secrecy, intimacy, or social tact? Who may or may not be listening in?
Dyer, Matthew. “Swearingen wants to collapse public education.” 9 January 2025. The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus. Electronic. Letters to the editor. https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/letters/2025/01/09/ohio-rep-d-j-swearingen-has-lgbtq-kids-schools-in-sights-letters/77507336007/ Accessed 13 January 2026.
When I write about my past, especially when it involves some of the complex trauma I experienced as a gay teen, I write from as truthful of a place as I can. Sometimes that doesn't place my parents in a very good light. I don't like a lot of what they did or how they did it. I can't change it, and writing about it is partially how I process and deal with some of the most painful memories I have.
Today my parents are two of my biggest champions and cheerleaders. They love and support me and Husband very much, and their love for us is readily apparent. I'm grateful for the relationship we've come to have, and I'm content with where we're at as a family.
