March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Attorney general asks for tolerance > Ketterer urges acceptance of diversity

BANGOR — Maine’s attorney general urged a small gathering on Sunday to do “every single solitary thing” to promote diversity and stem discrimination and violence against people who don’t fit into traditional molds.

Attorney General Andrew Ketterer spoke to a group of about 30 people at a Bangor home via cellular phone, calling from his car somewhere in Maine while returning from the Patriots-Dolphins football game in Foxboro, Mass.

Ketterer’s long-distance presentation was part of a fund-raiser for the Maine Speakout Project, held at the home of Dr. Robert and Juliet Kellogg. The evening netted about $2,000 for the organization that began five years ago to promote an understanding of gays and lesbians.

Maine Speakout has chapters in 13 of Maine’s 16 counties and has trained more than 300 people to make presentations to schools and secular and religious organizations in what Executive Director Jonathan Lee described as a personal and nonconfrontational manner.

The harsh reality, Ketterer and others said, was that gay and lesbian teen-agers were turning to suicide in alarming numbers because they aren’t being accepted by their peers.

“It makes me shudder to think that someone is prepared to end their own life rather than face the reality that they face here in Maine, and perhaps in other states, because of sexual orientation,” Ketterer said. “We need to continue to do every single solitary thing that we can do to encourage an understanding and an acceptance of diversity in so many ways, including sexual orientation.”

Maine Speakout, other gay- and lesbian-oriented groups and the Attorney General’s Office have developed a resource guide for local schools.

Maine Speakout’s presentations stress a personal approach, and Sunday was no different.

Ron Hersom is the state venue coordinator for Maine Speakout, but he also had a story to tell — his own.

Hersom said he had plans to become a teacher, but that changed while he was still in college. As a student teacher in Yarmouth in 1972, rumors flew around the school that he was gay. The accusations were never spoken directly, but he heard them. He himself was “so far in the closet” that he wondered why people could suspect he was gay and wondered “where are the signs” that told people he was.

The comments “tore me up inside,” he told the group. Hersom earned his teaching degree but has never taught.

“Everything you say, everything you do has an effect on someone,” said Hersom, urging people to be cognizant of their actions.

Although he was not one of the scheduled speakers, Robert Kellogg reflected on a patient who died needlessly at a young age. After Kellogg was treating “Robbie” for years for obesity and diabetes, the doctor learned he was treating the results and not reaching the cause.

Robbie died at 29 weighing 300 to 400 pounds, Kellogg said, because he was gay and feared that if he lost weight, he would be perceived as being attractive to women and would be forced to confront his mother and society about his sexual orientation.


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