There was always something different about Tom “The Mother of Gay Comedy” Ammiano.

This comedian, popular politician, activist and affluent speaker, discussed his career from his childhood in New Jersey to his political career in San Francisco, with the De Anza community last Thursday morning in Conference Room B.

Although Ammiano knew that he was homosexual at a young age, it was difficult for him to come out. “If you’re struggling with yourself, it can be a rocky road,” he says.

In the school yards of his hometown in Newark, N.J., it meant he got teased endlessly. Then, as he grew up, mannerisms made him stand out in his Catholic school – signs of effeminacy that he said often resulted in attacks by bullies.

“When you’re queer and you’re feeling different … you’re always feeling examined … always feeling different,” he says.

Not only did Ammiano experience homophobia at a young age, he witnessed the struggles of living in a lower-class Italian family firsthand. He grew up in a four-room flat in his grandfather’s house, sharing the space with his parents and two sisters.

“The class issue is very important … We [as Americans] don’t admit to having a class structure … but we do,” Ammiano said.

Decades later, in a city that celebrates nonconformity, Ammiano, built a career out of being different.

He said he left New Jersey, which he found “oppressive,” as soon as he could figure a way out. “California was the farthest from New Jersey I could get,” he said.

So, in San Francisco he found a world where gay people were beginning to be an accepted part of society. He found work teaching disabled children in the public schools, as the first gay teacher to publicly come out of the closet in San Francisco.

All Ammiano wanted, he said, was the right to be secure in his job as a teacher at San Francisco’s Buena Vista School and the ability to announce meetings of the Gay Teachers Caucus in the school district bulletin.

Nevertheless, he said he found homophobia lingering in most places, even amongst co-workers and his elementary school students.

On the playground, he would hear children yell obscenities such as “faggot” and “dyke” to other children and to himself.

“I liked teaching. But there was this part of me that was hiding because people didn’t accept it [homosexuality].” He saw that “[homosexuals were] not helping each other out.”

As a result, Ammiano joined the Bay Area Gay Liberation where the institution took on issues established gay prejudice inside and outside of their community..