#*This is my own damn term so don't you dare quibble.

[jeanjauthor]

There has been some discussion of late of just how rare and difficult it was pre-2000s to “come out”, to “find your community”, to connect with the LGBT+ community.

This is a five-page explanation of how the story of Lawrence Poirier was broached in the world of major syndication newspaper comics...and it is JUST as important a story to know and understand and learn from as any other story about how the world started to genuinely discuss being something other than, well, “heteronormative.”

It really was NOT easy to connect, because of how heavily stigmatized and horribly punished a person could be, for coming out as someone who was queer*.  It really did cause a lot of backlash.

But the thing that makes me absolutely proud of Lynn Johnston?

She wrote the most normal comic/cartoon family ever...and she knew she had to include more than just the “normal” folk.  She knew that being queer IS normal.

Mad props to her for weathering this early-days storm.

Mad props for her writing and her artistry, her effort and her willingness to write these stories in ways that shared knowledge, understanding, compassion, and acceptance.

Lawrence Poirier was the first cartoon character who openly announced he was gay.  Michael Patterson was the first straight ally of a fellow cartoon character who openly announced he was gay.  The Pattersons as a family came to accept him, and to rally around him, giving him support and a second family, a safe place to go to while waiting for his family to eventually accept Lawrence as he truly was.

Some of us have gained that acceptance.  Some of us are still waiting.  Some have given up on waiting, too.

This story could have gone in so many different ways, but it showed how one could behave, how one should behave:  with compassion, with friendship, with acceptance.

This was literally the first time in modern history wherein the masses (at least, the newspaper comics reading masses, and this was the equivalent of social media back then, in the sense that nearly everybody was reading it!) were given a chance to see good allyship modeled.  Many protested, but many more absorbed, internalized, and began reflecting what they’d learned back out in to the rest of the world.

It is thanks to For Better Or For Worse and Deep Space Nine and Xena: Warrior Princess and so many many more pieces of pop culture that we have the Pride Community that we have today.

Our stories can make a huge difference, you know.

...One thing to take away from Lynn’s experience, however, is very important, because it almost always unfolds in the same way:  The haters come out in droves...but the supporters come out in masses, in the end.  And though it took a couple weeks for the supporters to get going, and even longer for gays, lesbiants, etc to write up and send in their own thoughts...overall it was more positive than negative, and it definitely got a lot of people talking, at least for a while.

To quote her own website:  “ Altogether, over 2,500 personal letters were counted, and, of these responses, over 70 percent were positive. “

Like in all things, this was not the sole spark that lit the fires summoning the queer community together.  (The Beacon Fires of Gondor are in a fantasy book, after all.)  It took several different things happening.  But this was the first discussion of coming out as any flavor of gay in an internationally syndicated comic strip, and it was one of the beacons lit along the way, blazing a trail through the decades all the way to today.