Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of National Coming Out Day (NCOD), which started on October 11, 1988. It began on the one year anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard. Matthew was a handsome, intelligent young man and he was a kind, gentle soul. On October 6, 1998, when he was 21 years old, he was beaten by two men, tortured, and hung on a fence post like a scarecrow. From The Guardian, an online publication, “They pistol whipped him with a gun then tied him to a fence in freezing conditions and set fire to him before leaving him to die.” He suffered and died six days later from severe head injuries.
SIX days later.
I came out to my mother, during the summer of 1979. Well, I didn’t really come out to her. She figured it out. I was 17 and it was the same summer that my younger brother sustained a spinal cord injury in a diving accident on the Fourth of July. That year really sucked for mom.
Coming out was really easy for me. Up to the moment I realized I was gay, I was very naive in many ways. Especially with regard to sex and sexuality. I just never thought about it. I had very little interest in boys, growing up. I pretended I did, because that seemed like the expectation. But the only thing I really cared about was whether or not they were nice to me. And we all know that a lot of kids are not very nice. My life revolved around school, sports, and work. I was very mature and very independent, but I was very naive.
That summer I had two jobs and I spent a lot of time with a female coworker at one of them. We got very close and our friendship eventually evolved into a love relationship, which would last close to four years. Up until our relationship started to evolve, I had never considered that I was gay. But after our first kiss, I had an “aha” moment. There was a flood of memories about girls and women I had crushes on from early childhood to present day. Until that moment, I didn’t realize they were crushes. But, at that moment, it all made sense to me.
Girls at school. Teachers. The girlfriends of my older brothers. And all of the female nurses that cared for my brother that year. Aha!
Aside from my mom crying for two weeks straight, I really never struggled with being gay. I was lucky to have a supportive step father who comforted her through it, but, I would eventually realize that he was only supportive because I was a girl coming out.
Several years later I told my dad I was gay. And it was at that point, when both of my parents knew, that I decided I really didn’t care what anyone else thought. They both loved me and supported me. Nobody else mattered.
I was always of the mindset that if my employer had an issue with it, they didn’t deserve me. I was alway ready to send out my resume if it ever became an issue, but it never did. I was lucky. I was lucky, because it never became an issue. And I was lucky that I never worried that it could. I valued myself more than the possibility of being discriminated against.
In 1979 there were no “out” role models and even flamboyant men like Liberace and Elton John denied claims of being gay, though John did claim he was bisexual. Boy George and George Michael were not yet popular and even they skirted the question for many years. Jody Foster was in the closet and Ellen, Melissa Etheridge, and Rosie O’Donnell were years away from introducing themselves to us.
In the 1970s and 1980s, young gay people mostly lived in a fantasy world, hoping that our favorite actors, athletes, and musicians were one of us. The first big screen movie that I ever saw with lesbian characters, “Personal Best,” didn’t come out until 1982.
And, in 1979, AIDS had not yet hit America’s gay community.
Coming out was easy for me. I realized instantaneously that this is who I am. From the core of my being; from my soul… I am gay. From that time in my life forward, it is who I have been; it is how I have lived; it is my authentic self. There is no question in my mind that God created me this way. There is no question in my mind that God loves me.
Coming out has not been that easy for many people. Even people I know. Many have stayed in the closet for fear of losing jobs or housing, living their true lives only within the confines of their home. Or on occasional vacations to places like Provincetown, San Francisco, or Key West, where they feel safe. Many have led heterosexual lives, marrying and having children, because society told them it was the right thing to do. Only to come out years later. Many have been shunned by their families, who have claimed the “lifestyle” is a sin. Even if those families have never stepped foot in a church.
One of the most troubling things that people claim about homosexuality is that it’s a choice. It is not a choice. And my typical response to that claim is, “Is it your ‘choice’ to be heterosexual?”
Being gay is as much a part of me as is being white.
And who would “choose” to be gay? Who would choose a life of discrimination? A life of being hated. A life of being told, from childhood, that you are a sinner, sometimes likened to pedophiles and beastialitites. Who would choose a life of being bullied, assaulted, or even, like Matthew Shepard, murdered? WHO would “choose” this life?
Nobody would CHOOSE to be gay.
I’ve shared before the few times that I have had bad experiences as an out lesbian. And there are two reasons there have been few. First, I am a strong woman and I am brave enough to call you out on your actions. But, too, I am smart and I know when to keep my mouth shut. And when I do that, I can hide in my own skin. My homosexuality is not obvious and I can fake it. Not every member of the LGBT community can do that. And those are the people who are targeted more often than someone like me.
Once when I lived in New York many years ago, a skin head approached me on a subway and, in a thick British accent, called me a “fucking dyke.” I was targeted because I had very short hair and I had a “Silence = Death” button on my lapel. It was a reference to the Reagan administration’s response to the AIDS crisis. My adrenaline kept me calm and safe and I was able to rationalize with him.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“That.” And he pointed to the button. I politely told him that it didn’t mean I was gay and I asked if he knew what it meant. I told him I would be happy to explain it to him.
He walked away from me and started to bully a man a few seats away. A thin, quiet, frail looking young man. The exchange escalated and the man lifted a fist. As soon as he lifted his fist, several other men who had been strategically sitting throughout the subway car jumped to the skinheads side and began pummeling him. I immediately realized it was a planned assault on anyone who engaged. Anyone they thought was gay. They were clearly out for a night of gay bashing.
The train stopped and I went to the door, held it open, and started screaming for help. I screamed like I have never screamed in my entire life. The men left the train, but not before the one who originally approached me spit in my face.
I will never forget that night. And I will never forget that man’s face or voice.
There was another incident, just a few years ago, when a customer called me a “bitch dyke” while I was sitting at a local bar minding my own business. Completely unprovoked. He was making a scene about something and all I did was turn my head to see what the commotion was.
And there have been countless, less frightening times in between. Not to mention a lifetime of ignorant, hateful “gay jokes” and impersonations by people, men and women, who have spoken with a lisp or bent their wrist, describing gay men.
And, again, just recently. I was at a local bar for their weekly trivia night. The event draws quite a crowd and it’s always fun. The question was, “Which apostle carried a purse?” Without hesitation someone on the other side of the room shouted, “The queer one.”
That comment left me stunned, like a deer in headlights, for the rest of the evening. I looked at my friend beside me and asked, “Did somebody really just say that?”
It was one of two men. The younger one is a giant ass that annoys everyone around him. The other, a retiree and a respected member of the community. I have no interest in knowing which one it was. It doesn’t matter.
Like the time the skinhead approached me on the subway, my adrenaline kept me calm. I didn’t want to cause a scene, like I did the time I stood up to the guy who called me a “bitch dyke.” I let it go.
I let it go. And that was wrong. I should NOT have let it go.
If people are not called out for their homophobia (or racism, or xenophobia, or Islamophobia, or any kind of hate speech or discrimination), they will never learn. If people, gay or straight, don’t stand up to comments like “the queer one,” they will never learn. If people don’t shut down stereotypes and bad jokes, they will never learn. They will never learn that their behavior is not okay.
By being silent we are doing an injustice to every single member of the LGBT community who is struggling with their reality. We are doing a grave disservice to every single gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person who might be considering suicide, especially our children. So many children who struggle with their sexuality take their own lives and they do that because society crushes their spirit. And on a bad day, being called queer, or dyke, or sissy, or faggot… it can be just enough to send a child over the emotional edge.
Homosexuality is NOT wrong.
The room was quiet after that comment. That was comforting to me, because the people who heard him were clearly uncomfortable with the comment. Nobody even disputed that the answer to the question was incorrect.
This past May, the House of Representatives voted to bar gay “conversion therapy” in the state of Connecticut. The vote was 141 to 8, which means that 8 State Representatives in Connecticut voted against barring the discredited practice of trying to change the sexual orientation of young homosexuals. As recently as 1980, techniques used in conversion therapy in the United States included ice-pick lobotomies and chemical castration. And eight of our legislators, the “hateful eight,” thought it was okay to not ban this practice.
In many states, sodomy is still illegal. A sexual practice that many people engage in, gay and straight. In some of those states, it’s only illegal if you are gay. And in some of those states, it’s not illegal if you are a heterosexual AND married. These laws are antiquated. Do we really need to legislate what we, as consenting adults, do in our bedrooms?
Fortunately, while these laws still exist, they are not enforceable, because of a 2003 Supreme Court ruling, which declared that Texas’ anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional. This is progress. However, these existing laws, even though not enforceable, are still quoted and used to discriminate against gay men.
Gay marriage is also progress. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States of America struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage. That was a day to celebrate for gays and lesbians. However, still today, only twenty states have laws protecting this community against discrimination. In most states, a same-sex couple can get married on Saturday and be fired from a job or evicted from their home on Monday. For no reason other than being gay.
People in the LGBT community who are my age can handle all of this hate. We’ve seen it all. We’ve heard it all. We’ve lived it for many, many years. And we continue to live it. My senior peers survived New York’s “Stonewall Riots,” which were the catalyst of the gay rights movement. We came out on the other side okay. We survived. We are contributing members of society. We have careers and we pay taxes. We have homes; we have partners and spouses; and we have children. We are doctors and lawyers and teachers and politicians. We are plumbers and electricians and landscapers. We are stay at home moms and stay at home dads. We are actors and athletes. And we are okay.
And we have celebrated being okay with Pride events every year since the Stonewall Riots. Throughout the United States. Throughout the World.
Our LGBT and “questioning” youth, on the other hand, still have to make it out of their closets safely. Telling them “it gets better” isn’t enough. An overwhelming number of children are taking their own lives or attempting to take their own lives. They need our love and our support. They need to be protected against bullying and gay bashing. They need to see that they are surrounded by positive role models, which is one of the goals of National Coming Out Day. And our homophobic friends and family members need to see how many of their loved ones are members of the LGBT community… another reason that coming out is so important.
And when we hear a gay joke or a homophobic comment, or when we see harmful legislation, we must stand up against it. Every single one of us. Every single day. We all need to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
“The queer one.” If you think that’s funny, then you are a part of the problem.