I was there, in Boston, at the protest on the 15th. Amazingly, there were contingents from every new group of friends I’ve connected with since moving back and one from our old group of straight friends; all of us queers went out for a pint afterward. It was really nice!
There’s been a lot of talk about ‘what’s next’ — including whether or not as a movement we should be focusing on equal marriage as our main cause. I, as a legally married queer, really really appreciate my legal status. I don’t want to stop fighting for it, or have others in my community tell me it’s not important. It is important.
At the same time, when trans folk are still being abused, attacked, and murdered for being who they are, I recognize that my marriage is not the only thing we have to worry about. I have never supported a hate crimes bill, because I think we have plenty of laws on the books to protect people from violent crime. What we need is equitable, fair enforcement of the laws we already have. And marriage wouldn’t be a big fight if we were fully accepted members of society.
So in my opinion, the common thread is social change. We need to make the wider national (and global) community recognize our humanity. As my erstwhile church would say, they need to recognize our inherent worth and dignity. I’m not sure how to go about this, but it’s clear that all of our struggles with injustice and discrimination will continue until we are truly accepted in our communities. Until our leaders stand up and say that it’s not okay to sell us down the river for political convenience. Until our neighbors don’t snicker as soon as we turn around. I believe this can only be accomplished by confronting peoples’ prejudices and showing them our true selves, unapologetically.
So I’m posting a piece I wrote for national coming out day, and then didn’t publish it because by the time I finished it, national coming out day was a distant memory. But it really reflects how I feel about being out, and how I feel about what our mission as a community should be.
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When I was in high school, falling in love with my girlfriend and figuring out I was gay, there were no gay people around. Well, there were no out gay people. There were two lesbians who worked in our school, one of them as a guidance counselor. She never said a word to either me or M. the whole time. There was no information for gay kids, no pamphlets, no hotlines, no nothing. This was the mid-90s in a town an hour outside of Boston.
The isolation, plus the homophobia we were encountering from our families nearly killed us. It instilled a deep sense in us of being on our own, unable to trust anyone else. It seemed like no one was ever going to reach out a hand to help us, even when we were bleeding our pain and need all over the place. Somehow no one could see us at all.
How much would our lives have improved if that guidance counselor had been out? Like really out? Because everyone ‘knew’ that she was a lesbian, and that her partner had recently died; even we knew that much. But her silence on the matter only reinforced what we were figuring out for ourselves — if you’re gay, kid, no one’s going to help you. Through your own willfulness, you’ve gone down a road that means that you don’t deserve help, so you’d better figure out how to live on your own damn quick. This was pre-internet access, which I know is inconceivable to anyone even a little younger than I am, but we were cut off completely from the queer communities that were very close by.
Because at that very time, there were several gay youth organizations a train ride away in Boston. And we had no idea. One hour away from us was a group of kids just like us, adults trained to help, out gay adults who could show us the way to support networks and other people who had experienced the same trauma we had. But we didn’t know about them, and couldn’t reach them. My parents, supposedly supportive, had gay friends. But they never introduced me and said ‘here’s some people you might want to talk to about being gay’. So the lesson we learned was to never talk about it, never look like you need help, never show weakness. Walk like you know where you’re going even though you’re hopelessly lost.
So we spent a long time, even after we were officially out, being strong and silent. I have never, ever lied or even conveniently not mentioned it since the day I came out, but even that wasn’t quite enough. Being fully out is talking about how different this experience is whenever possible. Sometimes it means confronting someone gently about their ingrained prejudice. What we’ve discovered now is that being fully out and fully ourselves in every situation means some people just don’t like us. They don’t approve either. But being fully out and participating in our community means that there are also people who like us — people who are genuinely glad when we walk into the room, glad when we arrive at a show, glad to see us on the street. It means there’s help for us if we need it.
The moral of this story is: come out. Tell everyone. I come out to the cashier at the grocery store, people I randomly meet at parties, in job interviews, over the phone, at church, at work, at the bank, to government officials, to the car mechanic, to little kids, to big kids, to christians and jews and muslims and hindus and buddhists, I come out to friends’ grandparents (most of mine died before I could come out to them, but come out to yours too), to foreigners, to union officials, to the doctor and the dentist and the vet. Who knows, somewhere there might be a teenager who benefits from their guardian coming home from their day whose mind was opened just a little bit by my honesty.
And it’s the bare minimum I can do, so you do it too. The consequences of the closet are fierce, not just to ourselves, but to our community.
