A few thoughts from a married straight dad on National Coming Out Day.
Jennifer Rose in the
Baltimore Sun Editorial Page, October 11, 2006:
This year's National Coming Out Day - today - is a bittersweet one for me. Although I have been openly gay for decades, my partner of 14 years did not come out publicly until this spring - when her obituary appeared in this newspaper. Cecile had come out to her family only four years earlier, on the day she came home from the hospital after surgery to remove a malignant tumor.
What fueled her fear of coming out?
She did not have to be afraid of losing her job. She was a tenured, full professor at the Johns Hopkins University. One of her deans was an open lesbian. When she finally had come out to her family, they had all been accepting and loving (and not at all surprised). Every friend she had been able to come out to had been absolutely fine.
And yet, each time, she expected rejection and hostility. Although her immediate personal world was accepting, the larger world our generation grew up in had given a different and often hateful message, and that was the one she, like many gay people, heard and feared and even internalized.
I think of my cousin whose parents, more or less, boycotted her mountaintop wedding ceremony to her partner.
I think of "Stan," a very conservative activist - firebrand, really - and religiously observant Jewish student from Canada. He and I knew each other from Princeton's debate society. I remember attending a meeting of the debate club at the school's kosher facility one Sunday evening when the news reported Saddam Hussein "Scudded" Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, how Bibi Netanyahu came on the TV and how "Stan" praised him and said he might be prime minister one day. "Stan" and I got a bit shrill at each other (okay, he got shrill, I got really shrill) at a debate about the U.S. action in Kuwait; as the son of a Vietnam vet, I recoiled at our entry into Kuwait while "Stan" was gungho. It (i.e. I) got unpleasant. I later apologized for my temper.
Four months and more than one peace pipe later, "Stan" was telling me about how he could not tell his parents back home that he was gay, that he could not be out in any way in his religious community. As an RA at Princeton, I knew crudely how to address issues of sexual orientation and health, but as a liberal-leaning-lapsed Catholic I lacked the wherewithal to know how to guide an observant Jewish student through such a maze. "Stan" and I knew each other from a class we both took on Jewish-Christian debate in the Middle Ages (Nachmanides, Pablo Cristiani, etc.), a class that 15 years later still means a great deal to me.
As an RA at Princeton I got an 11:30 PM call 3 weeks away from my 100-page thesis deadline from "Tim", the barest of acquaintances. "Tim" called me specifically because he did not know me well, but we were in the same class, 1991. "Tim" called me because he needed a calm voice at arm's length; even though RAs were supposed to help freshmen and not seniors, I pulled back from my Mac SE and we talked. "Tim" was freaked out because he had met someone at the local Choir college and had sexual relations with him. He was freaked out because of the health issues and because it was right before spring break, he was going home and "knew" that his father would "know" that he was gay, that he had had sex with another man. I told "Tim" that there was no way that his father could know his calendar or activites, that he should take care to avoid unsafe practices and that he could get support from Princeton's gay and lesbian community. (That last statement would be more true in 2006 than in the relatively homophobic 1991.)
Another Princeton colleage, "Jake," wrote an article to the campus conservative newspaper about why he opposed "married" housing allotments for same-sex couples, i.e. that a same-sex couple should be treated as two individuals, and not under the same privilege that married couples enjoyed for faculty and student housing allotments. I wrote a response (this time, not shrill), advocating the opposing view. "Jake" and I got to know each other reasonably well. Jake came out to me 4 months later.
One can understand and respect how many people of bona fide, mature religious commitments to conservative or orthodox religious beliefs will oppose same-sex unions. Many religious traditions speak with specific clarity on the topic and religiously committed people consider themselves bound to follow their tradition and commitments out of integrity. On the other hand, a great deal of political effort is being exerted, more and more, to ignite homophobia as a way to excite a conservative political base and, frankly, to crush an unpopular minority of the population to gratify some in the majority.
The level of effort to oppose the "sanctity" of civil marriage from the predations of same-sex marriage is bizarre and, often, blatantly hypocritical. The Catholic Church, for example, rejects divorce and remarriage as a concept. (So do a few conservative Protestant churches.) The Catholic Church has swung hard against gay marriage legally and politically, but is not trying to get the divorce statutes repealed. Logically, if the Church thinks that church teaching should become law, making civil divorce illegal should be at least theoretically as important as making same-sex marriage illegal: Church teaching holds that divorce and same-sex marriage are not just "bad" but literally impossible.
A marriage between Adam and Steve or Jane and Julia simply does not affects the likes of me directly, no matter how often James "CashPile" Dobson screams otherwise. My kids still need their asses wiped either way. My work and commute and marriage and parenting and financial challenges remain. Those who want to impose their theological imprint upon my marriage, to reform it in their image, are invited to kiss my a- jump in a lake. My wife and I decide the religion of our house and the terms of our marriage, not some donor-funded committee in Annapolis or Washington. Is your marriage/relationship and your worship/non-worship approved by the proper Senate and House committees, signed off and approved by the Governor and the President? Did you get your "G-d permit" from the government or are you on probation pending review?
When will the day come when gay and lesbian people can simply come out without fear for their safety and their jobs. Being in the closet exacts a heavy toll on people. It trains people in dissembling, covering, lying and fronting. The real immorality is the debased fear, deception and pressure under which non-out GLBT people live. The same religious traditions that condemn same-sex activity and relationships also condemn lying and deception and condemn oppressing people with fear.
But the LGBT community must be the ones to lead this fight. In Maryland, we have seen some miraculous gains by GLBT candidates for public office, while the "pro-equality" [sic] group Equality Maryland seems to have an almost Lieberman-esque commitment to endorsing same-sex marriage foes while undercutting and trying to damage pro same-sex marriage candidates. This may reflect some collective self-hatred or self-disrespect by gay and lesbian activists, such that they will not punish the living shit out of organizations who, through Vichy cooptation or sheer reckless incompetence, reverse the 5,000 year old rule of punishing enemies and rewarding allies. Or perhaps it is an example of the single-issue advocacy mentality that gets Lieberman and Chafee endorsements from NOW/NARAL/whoever.
In the end, it's not a straight dad's fight. We are like the young blond student who asked Malcolm X what she could do: the flat reply, "Nothing." Perhaps if more gay and lesbian (and transgendered and bisexual) people came out, they would feel more empowered to deliver a hard political punch. Until more people are out and politicians and single-interest cash-pile groups actually fear to mess with the GLBT community, we will be remain at the pre-Brown, pre-Civil Rights Act, pre-"I Am A Man!"[sic] stage on this matter.
May we see rapid progress, soon.
UPDATE: Eloquent comments below have led me to reconsider a statement I made above.
Speaking only for myself, I do not subscribe to the "let's all get along" version of politics; it sounds nice but it is the equivalent of bringing touch football equipment to bayonet trench warfare. In my view, politics is about coping with and triumphing in conflict, about recognizing that people are out to hurt you, to inflict damage on you and if you respect yourself, you will fight back to prevent the damage. James Dobson, to his credit, understands this. He is out to hurt people, and apologizes not for it.
The fight for GLBT self-respect and self-confidence, in my view, by literal definition cannot be a straight person's fight. I view this self-respect as absolutely necessary both to the attainment of political change and to broader social changes that will make life easier and more humane for all people. Part of self-respect is punishing the hell out of backstabbers and resource wasters. Bringing down the doom on Lieberman was an excellent example of this self-respect.
GLBT self-respect and self-confidence - both individual and collective - are not enough to win the social and political fights - absolutely necessary, but not sufficient, given the numbers and the power of countervailing institutions. All people who care about fundamental fairness and a humane, decent society have a role to play, at least to vote wisely (i.e. to be smarter than some of the single-issue groups out there.) It is not reasonable to expect straight adults to respect the GLBT community or GLBT adult individuals more than they respect themselves, and fundamental respect - for self and others - is what this is about.
So all people who care about fairness, including straight dads who write diaries when they should be writing bond indentures and offering memoranda, have a meaningful role to play, including taking part in some brass-knuckle political fights. I thank those readers who challenged me on this point.