This is a long post that rants quite a bit in several directions, but hopefully comes together at the end…
I keep reading on all these legal discussion websites that being gay is something that you do, while being black (or white, or whatever) is something that you are. And I think to myself, what planet are they on?
For me, and I suspect the vast majority of homosexuals, being gay is not about what kind of sexual acts we perform, but it’s a way of being. My sexual and emotional response does not move me toward women. Of course, I love specific women, and I love womankind, but I am not, and I hate to use this phrase, capable of being in love with women. I am a homosexual because I love men and I fall in love with men.
This is an important distinction. I was married to a woman, and I had a sexual relationship with her, and I love her as a friend and companion, but I was never in love with her. Nor any of the handful of other women with whom I had sexual relations. In order to perform sexually with them, I had to fantasize about having sex with men.
Similarly, I often muse about the situational “homosexuality” that occurs in all-male or all-female environments. Meeting a sexual need with whatever person is available does not make the person a homosexual. Engaging in same-sex sexual behavior does not make a person gay, or even necessarily bisexual.
If I had never had sex with a man, I would still be a homosexual, because in my mind, I am attracted to men affectionally and physically. It is my frame of reference that makes me gay, not what I choose to do about it.
But that leads men to my next topic. When I was a child, I was a very effeminate boy. I was never interested in typical boyish pursuits, never like rough and tumble play, always wanted to play with the girls at school, played with dolls, played jump rope, played other typically girlish games. This did not endear me to either the boys or the girls. Yet, I didn’t know any other way to be.
As I grew older, my otherness was the subject of ridicule, taunts, violence. There were countless times when my classmates reduced me to tears, terrorized me to the point that I used to get into fights with my parents about going to middle school. I would stand outside the door of my house weeping and crying because they were making me go to school.
The fear of school was a large factor to why I took the GED test when I was 16, and went to work at an alternative high school for a few years as a computer programmer before I joined the Navy at 22.
The otherness was why I was jumped by some football players at a riverside park one night when I was 17, why they broke my nose and ribs kicking me when I was already down on the ground. I hadn’t done anything to them, hadn’t said anything to them, didn’t know who they were. I was just minding my own business with a couple of friends.
I married my ex-wife while I was in the Navy to throw people off the scent. The closet is a invidious place to live. It breeds resentment and destroys one’s self-esteem.
In 1994, a year after getting out of the Navy, I got fired from my first job because I trusted the boss’ wife, and came out to her. I believe that she really didn’t mean me any harm – she really did like gay people. But her husband, on the other hand; she must have told him, because before I came out to her, he had liked me well enough, praised my work and job performance. Not long after that, he accused me of not being a “team player” and fired me. It made no sense.
I feel weird that I feel like I have to write about my discrimination cred after all this blame and counter-blame that’s been going on. I never blamed anyone for the passage of Proposition 8 except those of us were opposed to it. We were too complacent to believe that anyone would seriously oppose us, and we allowed ourselves to be swiftboated. We didn’t do enough outreach to other communities that have experienced discrimination to enlist them as allies, and we didn’t do enough selling of our point of view of why our rights matter, why we matter. Some may argue that we shouldn’t have to do such things, but people need to be convinced that what they are doing is right, and the opponents of Prop 8 didn’t do enough.
I heard someone on the radio today say that she’s a black lesbian and she thought of herself as invisible to the predominantly white, predominantly male gay community in the Bay Area, and that the only time the community ever came to her was when it needed something from her. That issues of poverty and jobs were more pressing issues to her. That stings, and there is probably some truth to it, too.
So what can I do to find more allies for the struggle for civil rights for gay people of all genders, races, ethnicities, national origins, religions? What can everyone do?
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