I was late, as usual. It was the second Monday of some month in 1996. The second Monday meant we weren’t just having a regular sorority meeting, we were having a formal meeting. Which had a lot of rituals. Which I was about to interrupt.

I was a sophomore at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded at the College in 1776, making William and Mary the birthplace of the Greek system in America. But I wasn’t thinking about that as I slunk in late to formal meeting. I was just trying not to get caught.

Jenny Hagel

I rushed in dressed up, wearing my Kappa Delta pin. I took a seat in the back row and crossed my legs at the ankles, per formal meeting rules. As I did, I looked to my right and noticed two fellow sophomores, Mary and April, giggling to each other.

“What are you two laughing about?” I whispered, eager to be in on the joke. They looked at each other, turned to me and smiled that smile of people about to let you in on something really good.

“You know how they say that ten percent of people are gay?” Mary asked.  “Sure,” I shrugged. I thought I’d heard that vaguely somewhere.

“There are a hundred people in this room,” April pointed out. “So. Who do you think it is?” The three of us craned our necks and looked around the room at our sisters. At the rows of girls, dressed up, wearing sorority pins, legs crossed at the ankles.

“No way,” I thought. “There is no way anyone in this room is gay.” Twelve years later, it turns out that four of the women in that room were gay.

Turns out one of them was me.

If you had asked me in 1996 if there was anything wrong with being gay, I would have emphatically replied “no.” I knew, intellectually, that there was nothing wrong with being gay. Still, it was something that people didn’t really talk about.

The late ‘90s were a unique moment in time, just after it was no longer considered okay in most circles to be openly homophobic but just before being gay started to be met with acceptance. In 1987, Eddie Murphy’s box office smash Raw opened with Murphy declaring proudly, “I hate faggots.” In 1998, Will & Grace premiered as the first network television show to include gay characters in its premise. But in that space in between there was a certain silence around gayness.

I wasn’t self aware enough as a college sophomore to understand that I might be gay. And so I felt then about gay people the way I sometimes feel now about victims of a natural disaster in a far away country. I understood in an intellectual way that they were in a difficult, complex situation, but I didn’t understand how that connected to my life.

And because gay people seemed so distant and far away, it never occurred to me that one might be in my sorority.

Twelve years later, a lot has changed for gay people in America. While, clearly, there is a long way to go toward achieving full social acceptance and civil rights, huge advancements have been made towards equality in the last decade. At a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the right to marry, and protection from workplace discrimination still hang in the balance for so many gay Americans, though, why should anyone care about gays and lesbians in fraternities and sororities? Why does it matter if a gay undergraduate man is allowed to attend a toga party? Or if a young lesbian has access to all-night puffy-painting sessions?

According to the North-American Interfraternity Council, 9 million people in the U.S. and Canada are current or alumni/ae members of the Greek system. Over the course of American history, 48 percent of U.S. presidents, 42 percent of U.S. senators, 30 percent of congressional representatives and 40 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices have been Greek. Thirty percent of Fortune 500 executives are Greek. So, even if the worst stereotypes of Greek life are to be believed, it seems that the beer bong enthusiasts of today are the decision-makers of tomorrow.

Several greek organizations created specifically for LGBT (and LGBT-friendly) members exist throughout the U.S. The largest LGBT greek organizations include Delta Lambda Phi National Fraternity, founded in 1986, and Gamma Rho Lambda National Sorority, founded in 2003.

The exact number of such organizations is difficult to determine, however, because many gay fraternities and sororities consist of only one local chapter.

In any case, whether or not gay and lesbian students feel welcomed into mainstream fraternities and sororities by today’s young people can tell us a lot about how gays and lesbians will be treated by tomorrow’s adults. And, more importantly, how they  – and their rights – will be treated by our nation’s future leaders.

NEXT PAGE: “You didn’t want anyone in your sorority to be gay.”