I posted this on my Facebook page today and decided to share it here too. Thanks for giving me an inclusive community to be proud of for these last 12 years. I’m not very good at tags so If someone could add a few I’d appreciate it.
“I sincerely apologize to friends and acquaintances who may have felt insulted by some of my comments and posts during this election season. I have, in some cases, gone overboard and not kept myself in check while expressing my feelings about this election and for that I am truly sorry. I want to try to explain here why it has been so difficult for me to keep my anger under control so that you can better understand me and hopefully forgive me.
I am about to give you my perspectives on this election and how it relates to my experiences and my life as an older gay man. But there are other communities with whom I feel solidarity that are just as important as mine who also feel under attack: immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, the disabled, women, and more. I will leave it up to them to share their stories but know that I stand with them, united in opposition to bigotry and hatred.
To me this was not just another election. This was not just another battle between Republicans and Democrats. This was not just about the usual policy differences and approaches to governance. To me this was personal. Very personal. I offer here just a few highlights explaining why:
As a 65 year-old gay man, I have been fighting my entire adult life for my right to fully and completely partake of the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” which most other Americans take for granted. I grew up in an era where the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disorder”, an time during which the federal government and most states banned homosexuals from working in the government or for any of their contractors. During my childhood, I quietly and very painfully endured a culture where I was a called a queer and a fag, where I was considered a degenerate and worse. And so I worried and I cried, secretly.
By the 1970s, I was in my early 20s and out of the closet as the Gay Civil Rights movement began to flourish. I cried, got angry, and then fought back as Anita Bryant and her bigoted cohorts attempted to overturn municipal gay civil rights ordinances. I cried and felt ashamed knowing that in most states in the country homosexual sex was a felony. I cried and then fought again against a California ballot proposition that attempted to ban everyone in the LGBTQ community from becoming teachers. I cried and got angry as the assassin who killed gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk and the gay-friendly mayor of San Francisco got off with the lightest possible sentence.
In the 1980s members of my community started to die. Lots of them. And I cried a lot and got angry a lot. So I fought with the organization Act-Up for policy changes at the FDA and the Center for Disease Control as dozens and dozens of my friends, lovers and acquaintances were struck down by AIDS in the primes of their lives. President Regan and the Federal Government stood by and did virtually nothing. It was not until many years had passed and at the very end of his term that Reagan even bothered to publically mention the epidemic that was killing tens of thousands of my gay brothers. Going to funerals and hospitals and comforting the grieving parents of my dying friends became a way of life. And then I cried some more, and then fought some more. But I survived.
In the 90s I fought again as President Clinton tried to open up the US military so that my community could serve their country. Then, I watched, and got angry and cried as politicians across the country weighed in on my worthiness as a citizen and a human being. When people of my orientation were finally allowed to serve we had to do so in secret. “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell” they said. My friends continued to die. It seemed like almost all of them were gone… and they were. And then I fought back and cried some more.
Slowly but surely the LGBT civil rights movement began to have success and by the 2000’s the sexual expression of my love for another man was no longer a felony anywhere in the USA. AIDS treatments had been developed and people were now staying alive. LGBT politicians were winning elections. Anti-gay statues were being overturned across the country. The fighting had started to finally pay off. Last year, we won the right to marry. I cried again but this time they were tears of joy. Finally. We’re getting there. Or so I thought.
Which brings us to back this election. For me, this was personal. Very personal. We have elected a candidate who has said that he will strongly consider appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn same-sex marriage. He has, in fact, put forth a list of possible Supreme Court nominees who are publically opposed to gay marriage and other LGBTQ rights. He has promised to overturn President Obama’s executive orders that ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination in both the federal government and by federal contractors and another protecting the rights of transgender students. He is candidate who has promised to nullify much of what I have been fighting for, and crying about, for my entire life. We have elected a President who chose as his running mate a vehemently anti-gay bigot who is probably the most homophobic politician on the national stage. He has put forth a nominee for Attorney General who is unabashedly homophobic. He ran on a Republican Party platform that calls for an end to Marriage Equality, for limiting which bathroom transgender people can use and supports parent’s rights to use electroshock and other “conversion therapies” to change their children’s sexual orientation. And so, on election night, I cried and again the next day, I cried. And so it goes. I am angry. I am sad. I am crying NOW and I will cry again but I WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING.
So, please, don’t tell me to stop talking about politics on Facebook. Don’t tell me to “put on my big boy pants” and suck it up because my side lost the election. Because this election and its aftermath are about my feelings of self-worth as a human being. It is about being able to enjoy equality, justice and the pursuit of happiness instead of spending years being angry at the world and fighting back tears. And, most importantly, it is about making sure that future generations of LGBTQ kids won’t have to grow up like I did: crying and fighting and then crying some more.
