John Waters talks about growing up “different” & why you should never give up on people

John Waters
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Writer and filmmaker John Waters usually keeps it on the light side when he chats with his fans on Zoom.

But during a recent Q&A session with alumni and parents from a school he attended in Baltimore, one participant asked a question with serious overtones, and he gave a serious answer in return.

Related: Are you a “Homer-sexual”? Here are all of the queer jokes from “The Simpsons” ever.

The question was: What can grade schools do today to “help and support” LGBTQ students?

Waters, known for movies in which the adolescents often act more like adults than the adults do, and for famously confronting “Homer’s Phobia” on The Simpsons in 1997, didn’t hesitate.

“I always wonder, when I look back, how many kids turned out to be gay,” he said. “How to help them? Well, you just talk about it. You know, in school, to mention it. Because when I went there, it was never mentioned. You could never talk about it. It was impossible. It was illegal.”

Waters said today’s grade school students are much savvier about LGBTQ issues than students were in the 1950s, largely because of television.

“It’s such a different time,” he said. “The kids today, I think they see it on TV every day. There’s a gay character on every show possible, right? It used to be the love that dares not speak its name. Now it’s the love that can’t shut up.”

What a school can do, he said, is find ways to build on the conversations that students already are having outside the classroom.

“As a gay person, I always joke gay is not enough anymore. It’s a good start,” he said. “So I think as long as it’s talked about, that’s the most important thing. That it’s not hidden. That it’s treated as if it’s normal. It’s like being blond. It’s being left-handed. I think you’re born that way. I don’t think that anybody chooses to be gay or straight. I don’t think they do.”

Waters said he’s done his…

Read full story, and more, from Source: John Waters talks about growing up “different” & why you should never give up on people