| The
memories of despair that Bob Miskinis felt
as a bisexual teenager growing up isolated
and bewildered in a small North Texas town
inspired him to dedicate his life to supporting
youths that are struggling with their sexual
identity.
With that goal in mind,
Miskinis co-founded Youth First Texas, a
six-year-old nonprofit agency in Dallas
that provides services for GLBTQ youth.
The agency, which is funded by community
groups such as the Black Tie Dinner and
the Dallas Bears, offers support groups,
counseling, leadership training, recreational
activities and mentoring to teenagers and
young adults.
Miskinis, 36, whom the
agency's young clients call "Cowboy
Bob," said his commitment extends to
all youths that are suffering confusion
about their sexual identity, but he has
a special concern for bisexual youths. Bisexual
youths often feel alienated from both the
heterosexual and the gay world, he said.
"My big thing when
I started this organization was to make
sure everybody felt very comfortable in
the space and was respected in the space,"
Miskinis said. "And that the organization
gave them good role models."
Much of the confusion
bisexual youths experience about their sexual
identity is attributable to the absence
of good role models, said Miskinis, who
lives on a ranch near Dallas and operates
a landscaping business known as The Lawn
Ranger.
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"I grew up in the country in a very
small town north of Dallas," Miskinis
said. "I had no role models growing
up. There was nobody out there. I didn't
relate to the gay people, and I didn't relate
to the straight people. I was totally confused."
Miskinis said his attraction
to both females and males puzzled him. If
he ever heard the term bisexual, it made
no sense to him, he said.
"You know, what
does it mean to like a guy and like a girl
at the same time?" Miskinis said. "I
didn't even know there was such a thing
as bisexuality."
His only contact with
the gay world was limited to brief glimpses
of television news coverage of gay rights
parades, and that usually focused on female
impersonators riding on floats. It was the
1980s, seemingly light years away from today
when gay, lesbian and even transgender characters
are commonplace in television programming,
films, literature, magazines and newspapers.
For Miskinis, who played
sports and rode in the rodeo, it was impossible
to relate to the gay world as he saw it
then.
"It was very confusing
to me to see where I fit in," Miskinis
said. "How could I like sports and
play sports, being in a macho atmosphere
and at the same time knowing that I had
an attraction to somebody of the same sex
as well as somebody of the opposite sex."
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