She doesn’t like calling herself a lesbian.
“For some reason I don’t like the term ‘lesbian.’ I’m just gay,” said Lindsay Cuadra, junior accounting major. “A lot of times I really just don’t even think about it. It’s not something a straight person thinks about, ‘Oh how straight do I feel today.’ It just seems so natural. I like it, I like being gay.”
A tomboy growing up, Cuadra didn’t have many girl friends and didn’t really find boys cute. Her sophomore year of high school, she was in a secret relationship with a friend, who didn’t want to come out as a lesbian or admit what they were doing.
“We were in a relationship, but I didn’t really want to call it that, but it basically was,” Cuadra said. “It wasn’t ever like a thought in my mind that, like, I was anything but straight. But I was like, ‘I love you.’ But we both swore up and down that we were (straight). So that’s when I started knowing something was up with me. But I just did not want to be gay.”
After her and her friend broke up, Cuadra fell into depression. She went into school the following fall and had a class with her ex-girlfriend. She went to work really upset where an out lesbian she worked with, Kelsey, asked what was wrong, and Caudra finally found the nerve to tell her.
The two became friends, and Cuadra developed a crush on Kelsey. She began hanging out with Kelsey and her girlfriend, Corey, who Cuadra also developed a crush on, and began a relationship with. But keeping secrets proved too much and soon Kelsey found out about Cuadra and Corey’s relationship.
“I started liking Corey and fell like that, just completely fell for Corey and I was like you’ve got to be kidding me,” Cuadra said. “I felt terrible. Kelsey was my friend, they were both my friends and I was like in the middle of it, it was awful. So she asked me to meet up with her to talk about it, because she just wanted answers, and I felt like I owed her that much.”
Cuadra met up with Kelsey in a park before school on a late start Monday. She showed up with Corey and a friend who stayed in the car while Cuadra and she “talked”.
“That morning Corey had called me and said ‘Okay I only told her this and not this.’” Cuadra said. “So I didn’t want Corey to get in trouble so I told her what Corey told me to tell her basically. She knew I was lying, and she ended up beating me up, actually. I didn’t hit back because I felt like I deserved it.”
The next day, Cuadra came to class with two black eyes and questions started circling. But Kelsey was starting to tell people what had happened. After Kelsey sent her a death threat via text, Cuadra knew it was time to say something to someone – so she told her teacher, then her counselor, who in turn told the principal, the SRO and her father. She had to explain the whole story to them, thus coming out to all of them.
“I can’t say that I was totally shocked,” said Ben Cuadra, Lindsay’s father. “It was hard at first and I hoped that it was a phase that she would eventually come out of. I never thought she was gay growing up. She was always a tomboy and involved in sports. She didn’t like to dress up and wear dresses. But regardless of everything, I continue to love her no matter what.”
She didn’t come out to her friends until the next year. Her best friend since sixth grade Hannah Boyd, a student at University of Kansas, just wondered why she didn’t mention something sooner.
“And she wouldn’t tell me for the longest time what happened and then one of our friends at school told me that she kissed a girl and there was drama,” Boyd said. “We were best friends and she was scared. I said, you know, I still love you and you’re my best friend. This doesn’t change anything.”
The Cuadra family’s faith is something that makes it difficult to accept Lindsay Cuadra’s homosexuality. Raised Methodist, but currently converting to Catholicism, the church always seemed fairly accepting, but Lindsay Cuadra’s parents were still worried she wouldn’t be accepted.
“Yes, I struggle with this because of my faith,” said Tammy Cuadra, Lindsay’s mother. “Lindsay believes that she is born as a homosexual, while I tend to feel that it is more environmentally-driven and a lifestyle choice and she can possibly change the way she feels at some point. If she is born as a homosexual, it is difficult for me to think that God would purposely create people with desire for same-sex relationships when he began the world with Adam and Eve. My faith tells me to love everyone no matter what and to cast the first stone if I am free from sin – which, I guess is what I feel it is.”
Cuadra came to Emporia State to run track, something she loved doing in high school. She says her track friends don’t treat her differently because of her sexual orientation and that she has never gotten much negativity about her sexual orientation.
“I’ve never thought that it was an issue,” Cuadra said. “I’ve never felt like I was less than anybody else. I want to be able to go to work and tell my coworkers, hey I’m getting married, here’s my girlfriend.”
