We have had “Will & Grace,” “Modern Family,” Rosie, Ellen and Neil Patrick Harris. So everyone is fine with gay people, right?
The recent attacks in Center City and gay-marriage backlash paint a different story. And one of the most vulnerable sectors of our community is bearing the brunt of it: Gay youth are still being thrown out of their homes or running away at an alarming rate.
According to a 2012 UCLA study of homeless LGBT youth, 46 percent ran away from home because of family rejection and 43 percent say they were kicked out. LGBT youth are the largest community dealing with homelessness and poverty today, and the numbers continue to grow. Between 20-40 percent of the nation’s annual 1.6-million runaway and homeless youth identify as LGBT, according to studies by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In Philadelphia, there is no facility dedicated solely to the issue of LGBT youth homelessness. Rusty Doll is hoping to change that. An ex-military man, Doll has been working in the mental-health community for the last seven years. He took some time to tell us how a chance encounter changed his life.
PGN: OK, your name sounds like an old drag queen, Rusty Doll. Any story behind it?
RD: [Laughs] Not really. But I’m from Iowa. The name Rusty is fairly common there and I have a little red in my beard.
PGN: And you’re originally from a very suggestive-sounding place in Iowa.
RD: [Laughs] Yes, I’m from Cumming, Iowa.
PGN: That ranks right up there with Intercourse and Blue Ball, Pa.
RD: I know, I have no idea what they were thinking or why.
PGN: So tell me about growing up in the Doll house?
RD: Life was good. I have a twin, so I had a best friend with me all the time. We did our own little thing. We’d go hunting and exploring the terrain. We were in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness and farmlands of Iowa, and we’d go exploring, camping out by the railroad tracks and making our own fun.
PGN: Double trouble! Were you identical or fraternal?
RD: Fraternal, but you wouldn’t be able to tell us apart. We had the same friends, same classes, we shared just about everything.
PGN: Any other siblings?
RD: I have an older brother and a younger sister.
PGN: What’s the most mischief you got into?
RD: I plead the Fifth! I will admit to attempting to trick our teachers on a few occasions by switching classes, but our classmates kind of ratted us out.
PGN: That was rude of them.
RD: I don’t think they meant to, they just weren’t fooled and gave it away.
PGN: Is your twin straight or gay?
RD: He’s gay as well.
PGN: Who came out first?
RD: He did, about four years before I did. We both knew and expressed it to each other back when we were in school but I chose to take the straight path, so to speak, to get married and have kids … and then get divorced … and then come out.
PGN: How old were you when you first spoke about it with each other, and how long before you came out?
RD: We were high-school age when we first spoke about it, and I came out three years ago.
PGN: Oh wow! You gave it a nice period of time before coming out.
RD: [Laughs] Yeah, I’m new to the game.
PGN: So during those years, didn’t he ever whisper, “What are you doing?”
RD: Yes, but he understood the stigma around it and didn’t want me to have to go through it. He respected the fact that I chose not to go through some of that.
PGN: Did he face difficulties with the family?
RD: No. There were worries whether Dad was gonna be accepting or not but he was like, “Oh, so-and-so has a son who’s gay and cousin so-and-so is gay,” and he was fine with it. Mom’s fine with it, though she still felt that if she prayed hard enough, he’d be able to change one day. But for the most part, everyone was fine.
PGN: And yet you still didn’t feel comfortable enough to come out too?
RD: No. What finally brought me out was that my mother had a couple of strokes. I flew back to Iowa and realized that Mom wasn’t Mom anymore, she wasn’t lucid. She was the last person I was concerned about and I figured if her mind’s not there … I’m not hurting anybody, I’m not breaking anyone’s heart. So that’s when I came out. Then the doctors figured out where the stroke was coming from and were able to correct it and she was fine! [Laughs] But it was already out of the bag at that point!
PGN: That’s hysterical! So what were you involved in other than hanging out with your twin?
RD: I ran cross-country in track. Oh gosh, I forget what else. I’m sure there was something.
PGN: OK, let’s jump to present day. Tell me about your kids.
RD: I have three girls: two step-daughters and one biological kid. All three are amazing kids. I married into the family and both daughters accepted me as their father. Their biological father actually went to court to petition to cut ties with them. We had to tell them that their biological father was trying to legally disown them and ever since then, they’ve always referred to me as Dad. My ex-wife is 17 years my senior so the oldest daughter is only six years younger than me! But I went to all the games and helped them through college and taught them both how to drive and they’re wonderful kids. Now they’re both in relationships themselves and I do the step-grandfather thing, spending time, sending gifts to their kids, all that.
PGN: Are they nearby or back in Iowa?
RD: Oh no, they’re in Jersey, out near Great Adventure.
PGN: How did you end up on the East Coast?
RD: I joined the Navy right out of high school. I went to Illinois, North Carolina, California, Japan, Iraq. I got back from Iraq and they told me I needed to transfer again or deploy back to Iraq. So I transferred to New Jersey.
PGN: That must have been a hard choice — New Jersey or Iraq? (Just kidding, my Jersey people.)
RD: Ha! But that’s how I got here.
PGN: What was the most interesting or difficult situation during your time in uniform?
RD: My tour in Iraq. I was stationed with the Marines and I worked in the chaplain’s office as a religious-program specialist. My duty was to provide security for the chaplain; he didn’t carry a weapon so my job was to keep him safe. The most interesting thing was probably watching my friend get his leg blown off. We’re still close friends to this day.
PGN: Ouch! So you were right in the thick of action.
RD: Oh yeah, I was right next to him when it happened. He was the first injured soldier in the war in Iraq. He’s a Marine and also gay. He stood right beside President Obama when he signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He knew about me when I was in the service, but it was during DADT [“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”], so you never actually said anything for fear of getting kicked out.
PGN: Just dropped a lot of hints I’d guess. We develop our own codes. I just watched a movie last night and in one scene a kid walked up to this gay guy and said, “My mom said you were a friend of Dorothy’s.”
RD: Yeah, though the kids today are like, “What? Who’s Dorothy?” [Laughs] Though I guess it depends on what bars you go to. If you go to some of the piano bars around town, you’ll get called Dorothy a lot more.
PGN: So when did you get divorced?
RD: My actually divorce just went through in January but we separated three years ago.
PGN: That’s pretty recent. And how did you get involved with Change Philly Today?
RD: My ex-wife and I had bought rental property in New Jersey and after our divorce we sold it off, so I had some extra money. My mentality is that you need to own something so I bought a fixer-up house in North Philly to give me something to do. During that time, I was discovering the scene in Philadelphia and ran into a young man named Charles. He was 22 and he told me his story. He was homeless and living in a shelter and it wasn’t a good situation. He was facing some problems because of being gay and I thought, Wow, I can’t believe that there’s not a dedicated shelter or home for LGBT youth in the entire city of Philadelphia. I went home and did some research and the numbers were staggering: 1,300 homeless LGBT youth in the city of Philadelphia alone. I thought, This is BS, and called a friend of mine, Lisa Sipes. She did her own research and said, “We’ve got to do something. Let’s build a shelter.” Within an hour, we had a website and Facebook page and filled out the paperwork for nonprofit status and, since I already had the house in North Philadelphia, we were ready to get started.
PGN: Where are you now in the process?
RD: We had a strong GoFundMe campaign that raised over $3,000 in the first 24 hours, but that plateaued at about $6,000. We just did our first, hopefully annual, fundraiser in November — during National Homeless Awareness week — in the Mark Segal Ballroom at William Way. I’ve been doing whatever work I can on the house but we need to raise money to repair the roof. In addition, we just recently did a camp-out at Love Park to bring awareness to LGBT homelessness in Philadelphia.
PGN: Who participated in the camp-out?
RD: We had folks from the Community College of Philadelphia and some GSA students from Temple.
PGN: I read that you hope to do programs to help young people attain GEDs and other services. Have you started any of that yet?
RD: Yes. Currently, because of certain legalities, we only work with youth between 18-22, but our goal is to work with kids 13-24. But we’ve started a GED study program at my place and at the William Way Center. Eventually, once we open, we hope to have other services: educational programs, a nurse, a life coach and a human-resources consultant who can help mentor the home’s residents and get them educated and on their feet. But it’s a long way out. There’s a lot of work needed first.
PGN: Maybe we can rally the community and do a Habitat for Humanity-type weekend in the spring where people can come help build and paint, etc.
RD: That would be great. We need a contractor first to make sure that we’re doing everything correctly. We had an architectural firm that drafted up all the plans for the house for free, which will save us a lot.
PGN: Excellent, perhaps a contractor will read this and reach out to you. Then we can rally the community for an old-fashioned roof-raising!
RD: That would be great.
PGN: Back to your time in uniform. You worked for the chaplain’s office; were you a religious person?
RD: I was. I was very, very Catholic. I went to church daily and I had a closeted dream of becoming a priest. I was the Eucharistic minister at my church and I even vacationed at a monastery when I was in the military. I was a lay minister and did Catholic services in Iraq. So yes, I was. That’s changed a bit now.
PGN: Do you think the homophobia in the church is what delayed your coming out?
RD: Oh yes, definitely. We were told it was a sin to be gay or have those bad thoughts. And my mother praying to cure my brother didn’t help.
PGN: So what’s the best part of now being an openly gay man?
RD: Just getting to be myself and not put up this front of what society thinks I should be as a man. I’m so much happier. I can cross my legs and not feel judged!
PGN: When was your first male kiss?
RD: That was something I did as a kid. Just exploring.
PGN: I remember the first time I went into a lesbian bar and it was like “Eureka! I’m home!” Did you have that moment?
RD: The first time I went to a gay event was at Shampoo on their gay night. I was the wallflower, overwhelmed to see the freedom people had expressing themselves with other men. It was too much for me, overstimulation!
PGN: Were you married at the time?
RD: Yes, I’d come out to my wife and told her where I was going. At first she said it was fine — I think she was in denial — but when I came home she was upset. We’re best friends now; we talk several times a day.
PGN: And are you seeing someone now?
RD: Yes, we’ve been together for three years.
PGN: You just jumped right in, didn’t you! What does he do?
RD: He works for Ikea in the corporate headquarters.
PGN: People are always telling me I need to stop …
RD: Working.
PGN: What’s the oldest piece of clothing you still own and wear?
RD: Probably some underwear!
PGN: Celebrity you’d want to do a love scene with?
RD: Shemar Moore.
PGN: Ah, “Criminal Minds!” Best concert experience?
RD: Seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top. Years ago …
PGN: A word beginning with the first letter of your name that sums you up?
RD: Real.
For more information about Change Philly Today, visit www.changephillytoday.com.