It was the summer of 1956, and Michael Lloyd Gregory was seated on the front porch of his home in Wichita, Kansas, posing for a photo taken by his father. He was two years old at the time.
“My mom ‘styled’ me that day,” he recalls.
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“My dad wore athletic shirts around the house,” Gregory says, “especially when it was hot. I think my mom wanted to dress me a bit like him. I adored my father, so I’m sure I wanted to look like him, as well.”
The shoes and socks were a departure, he says, but later a signature.
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“There are several pictures of me wearing Mary Janes when I was little — always with the socks turned down.”
As for the rest of the mise-en-scéne — the humble concrete porch, the Plains-sturdy brick facade and basement, and Venetian blinds straight out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog — they’re the perfect modest backdrop for a Midwestern boy greater than the sum of his surroundings.
Gregory describes the child with a question: “Was there ever any doubt?”
If there was, check out the providential sunbeam lighting the scene.
It’s like an annunciation: “This kid is gay.”
“Although my being different wasn’t any kind of secret, I didn’t officially come out to my mother until I was nineteen,” Gregory says. “I still remember the day when she asked me, ‘I don’t know how you’ll take this, but are you a homosexual?’”
“At the time, I was sitting at her dining room table sewing new curtains for her kitchen. I looked up from the sewing machine and replied, ‘What was your first clue?’”
“We ended up having a long conversation about how she had changed her mind about gay folks over the years.”
That talk and change of heart followed years of abuse, Gregory shares.
“My mother did everything in her power to discourage my feminine side while I was growing up,” he says. “I realized at some point that the little boy in that picture was joyful because, for that moment, he was living unafraid.”
Asked for his advice to young people about embracing their own identity, Gregory says, “Things are different in many ways for gay kids nowadays from what it was like during my youth.”
“I want to believe that embracing one’s identity is easier than it was back then, but the hate hasn’t gone away. There are still kids being rejected by their parents and society. Trans kids are facing even worse times right now.”
“It’s not easy to live unafraid if outside influences are trying to tell you that you are a mistake.”
“This is why Pride Month and the Pride festivals are so important,” he says.
“We all need to have a safe place to be ourselves without worrying about what others think about us. We need to embrace who we are without fear, even if it’s only for a day once a year. You never know when your openness will help some other person better accept themselves.”
As for Gregory’s father, the boy’s photographer that Kansas summer day seventy years ago, “My dad and I never talked about my sexuality. But he got along great with my close friends, and he and my husband were very close, as they shared Army experiences.”
Gregory’s father died in 2000, “Without us ever having the official ‘talk.’
“But I don’t really regret it,” Gregory says. “He knew.”
Was there ever any doubt?
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