GLAAD was formed in the city’s West Village in 1985 to combat defamation in the media, specifically the coarseness and sensationalism running through the New York Post’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic. Its mission and community have since expanded widely, though Ferraro, in his role as chief media advocate, still spends a good deal of time combating words and images that he feels are harmful.
Ferraro, 29, is a small-framed man with short, carefully styled hair, sideburns trimmed perfectly to the middle of his ears, and a clean, fresh face.
Ferraro grew up in Shelton, Connecticut, a small suburban town 75 miles outside of New York City. His family was Italian and Catholic, and his mother went to church every Sunday. He was one of three boys, the second born, and he realized he was gay around seventh or eighth grade. For his freshman year, his parents sent him to a prestigious Catholic school. “I was really unhappy,” Ferraro said. “And I remember sitting down to talk with a priest and telling him I felt different. I didn’t use the word gay, but I knew that’s where things were headed.” He knew because he’d seen gay characters on television shows like Queer as Folk, which he secretly taped in his bedroom with the door locked, covering the recording light on the VCR as a double precaution. “In case my parents came by,” he explained. “I didn’t want them to know what I was doing. I just wanted something I could relate to.” The priest told him he should pray, but that the school would be accepting no matter what. Ferraro decided he would fare better, as an open person, in public school. So he transferred.
He came out at 15, though his hand was forced earlier than planned. He’d been writing about his dilemma with a pen pal, and his mother saw one of the letters. She didn’t care that he was gay, and was upset only because he hadn’t told her first. Together they determined it would be best to wait before telling his father, who, they worried, might be less understanding. But here too, his hand was forced. “We were on a ski lift,” Ferraro remembered. “My dad was asking about my friend Lauren. He wanted to know if I liked her; if maybe I was interested in going on a date. I told him I wasn’t, and he said, ‘Do you like girls at all?’ I was like, ‘No,’ and thankfully we were at the top of the lift, and just skied down the mountain.” To his relief, his father was compassionate, and Ferraro quickly started dating a boy his age, whom he met at a diversity conference while playing gay bingo. They were together for six years, and spent their first Christmas Eve dinner as a couple with Ferraro’s family.
School, naturally, was a more complicated ordeal. “I wanted to be visible,” he said. “I wanted people to know fully who I was.” But, he added, “I was effeminate-acting; I was the short, nerdy kid; I was also the gay kid. I was the only one out, and I think I was the first person to come out in the history of the school.” Students called him a fag and threw french fries at him in the cafeteria, so he often ate lunch alone in a private bathroom stall. He was scared to change in the locker room, and made an effort to stay away from there. When he was a senior, and president of the Spanish club, he entered a “Mr. Student Body” contest. “I did a pretty silly dance routine to a Britney Spears song,” he said. “Two kids shouted ‘faggot,’ and I didn’t care, even though one of the people who shouted was sitting right behind my dad, who almost beat the shit out of him.” For prom, he had to walk across an auditorium stage to buy tickets for him and his boyfriend. “They didn’t know how to handle it,” he said. “I had to give my date’s name, and there was this pause.”
http://www.vocativ.com/12-2013/rich-ferraro-glaad/
Gay...bingo. I don't even wanna know.