Coming Out

Wow. What a scary thought.
If we don't--we pay the price of hiding, always hiding.
If we do--we run the risks. Of being found out. Of being alienated: by 'friends forever'. By family. By everyone at school (or church, or 4-H, or any other club). By the one you were hoping would say, "Me, too!" and live happily ever after with.
The toll that would take is almost too much to risk. Almost.
There are precautions, of course. You don't have to suddenly go to school wearing a shirt that says "Yeah, I'm Gay" on it. One at a time is okay. And you can gauge their responses.
I'm saving for later the people who slip. Comments on two boys hugging? A confused/disgusted face at a Facebook 'marriage'?
Not today I won't.
But there's my best friend, who just might be able to accept me. Which would be worse: to be alienated by all the people you see all the time, or by one of the very people whose opinions actually matter?
Not to scare you. There are plenty of people who will accept you with open arms if you tell them.
Just that there are people who won't. And sometimes it really matters, like parents. No matter how wonderful they are, have a place in mind to go if worst comes to worst.
My parents are pretty okay with me, so my best friend is the next step. It doesn't have to be that way for you. Friends first, then parents is okay. But today, I told my friend the truth.
I had everything to lose. The one person I can really talk to. I figured if I could trust anyone, I could trust her. But by the same token, if I couldn't trust her, who could I trust?
It's the season of celebration. I gave her the gift of my life: My trust, and the truth.
It took courage to do that. Especially when I have doubts myself. What if I made a huge mistake? I'm pretty sure I didn't. But I've never been kissed. I've never been on a date. How can I be sure?
My mom sort of figured it out. In fact, after I told her about my wedding dreams (with two brides) at the age of thirteen, she gave me the book that made me go, huh. Gay.
I mean, I knew what it meant. I'd just never applied it to myself.
My dad got the "I think there's a very good chance that I'm a lesbian".
To her, I said it out loud. For the first time to someone else, I literally said, "I'm gay."
It felt right.
She did what I'd hoped: She asked questions. She wanted to know how I knew.
I said, "Well, I keep falling in love with girls. That was kind of a giveaway."
I also mentioned out loud the two and a half year infatuation with the same girl. It occurred to me, that doesn't just happen. She never egged me on, at least not intentionally, and I've still been in love with her that long.
She told me that it would be really strange for her to have a problem with it. In fact, I half expected her to already know. It will be wonderful if things can be normal again. I really hope I haven't screwed up our relationship at all. I'll cross my fingers: for her, and for all of you.

Finally.

It passed the House--for the second or third time.
It passed the Senate--for the first time.
Now we're still waiting for Obama to act on the repeal of DADT.
I got four emails on Saturday with the news.
Unfortunately, as the Post said, repealing DADT was a solid, less controversial issue (as ENDA really should be--but I'm not seeing a whole lot of action going on there) . Marriage is going to take a lot more oomph to pass.
Harvey Milk once said, "Come out, come out, wherever you are." meaning come out of the closet, of course, in hopes that those who formerly were against gay rights, finding that they know someone who's GLBTQ, will change their minds and support their friends and family. This is insanely difficult, I know. But it could help.
On the right and below are some pictures of the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy in San Francisco.

Homphobe: Fag.

Ever been in one of those situations where you know you want to say something, but by the time you know what, the moment has long passed? This time, I planned ahead. How to stand up for someone called a fag in your presence. Of course, this will only work if you're gay and ready to come out, but you can probably edit it a little yourself. So, my model script for you:
Homophobe: Fag.
Me: That's a despicable thing to call someone.
Homophobe: But it's true.
Me: He/she may or may not be gay. What does it matter? I'm gay, and that is highly offensive. You know what it means, 'faggot'? Bundle of sticks. So you're saying that a person, a living, breathing, thinking, feeling person is no more than a bundle of sticks. And you know why you say that? Because you're afraid. And you demean a person to the level of debris because a bundle of sticks is nothing to be afraid of. A bundle of sticks can't possibly make a rational decision. A bundle of sticks isn't worthy of human compassion. And a bundle of sticks certainly doesn't know love when it feels it.

FYI, whoever you're sticking up for might try to quiet you, saying "it's okay" or whatever. Remember: This isn't just about them. It's about saving everyone this homophobe may come into contact with from the insult that could be their last straw.

Yes, I'm in a heated fury. So be it.

Choices

Why anyone would think people choose to be GLBT is beyond me. And this is why.
Science indicates that genes and hormones both have to do with being gay. And it is definitively not classified as a mental illness.
Or, if you're the sort of person who doesn't trust science, here's some logic.
Why would I choose:
1. To risk my family ties and my friendships, and even be kicked out of my house
2. To make it more difficult to get/keep a job (it's still legal to fire me in most states)
3. To limit my dating options to less than 10% of the population
4. To be called names, teased, bullied, and even beaten and killed
5. To face such depression I commit suicide
6. To be persecuted by people who say they're of my own religion
7. To be stereotyped
8. To feel unable to talk about dating/crushes/love with friends, acquaintances or coworkers
9. To worry about moral issues, whether I'm unnatural or immoral or somehow not good enough
10. To face the incredibly painful pressure of coming out when anyone I love could turn against me, tell me to go away or get out, or start spreading the news around.

If people want to rebel, they do drugs, drink, smoke. Maybe, just maybe they hook up with someone of the same sex. But they certainly don't 'decide' to be gay.
If people just want more sex, they keep their options open! There are far more straight people to be found than gay people. And if you're going, well, what about those bisexual people? Then let me tell you bisexuals are often discriminated against by gay and straight alike. How's that for limiting?
And specifically for transgender people:
First, who's ever heard of being transgender? That's even harder to accidentally find information on than being gay. It's an awful lot of work to go to for a 'phase' or to punish someone.
Second, transgender people experience the feeling that they are actually in the wrong body (gender dysphoria). Not just dating the wrong people, but in the wrong body. How'd you like that?
Third, if a transgender person decides to dress as their gender identity, that can be quite obvious to complete strangers, much more so than someone's sexual orientation.
It's just too much to go through if you're not absolutely serious and positive, from my perspective. Combine the fact that transgender rights are even less prevalent than gay rights and you have a recipe for a life that people just would not choose lightly. Why go through any of that...unless it's something much more than a choice to you, unless the only choice involved is to stop hiding and lying to yourself and others and be who you really are?

It's really beating us over the head that it's not a choice. Just open up your ears and listen.

Special treatment? Come on.

I know that some people are of the opinion that gay people can do whatever they want in their own homes and shouldn't try to get 'special treatment'.
But taking a real look at the issues shows that special treatment is the last thing on the list.
We'll step away from the hot topic of same-sex marriage for a moment and look at plain old rights.
For one thing, did you know it's legal in most states to be fired from a job just for being gay? How is that fair? It doesn't matter to you if I'm a woman, if I'm an ethnic minority or a religious minority, but who I date comes into play? What does that have to do with how well I perform a job?
Don't Ask Don't Tell is related here. Top specialists are fired all the time from the military for being gay.
Finally, the paper reports to me that GLBTQ teens are punished more severely in schools.
Can anyone really believe that sexual orientation has anything to do with our education and job?
Stand with me and stop this.

Joel Burns

The Original Lesbian

Sappho was a famous Greek poet who formed a circle of women on the isle of Lesbos (from which comes the term 'lesbian') who worshiped Aphrodite. Sappho wrote lyric poetry, often about love for other women, and was considered the 'tenth muse'.
A beautiful fragment of her poetry (Sayre, 53):
"He is more than a hero
He is a god in my eyes
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you--he
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing
laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can't
speak--my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing
hearing only my ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body
and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn't far from me."

Such passionate love.

Sayre, Henry M. Discovering the Humanities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. Print.
Also check out the Wikipedia, her poetry, and About.com. They made a movie retelling, too, which I have yet to watch.

Videos

So, having been doing some YouTube surfing during the writing of my last post (took me about an hour and a half to write that) I found a couple that didn't really fit with the last one, but I wanted to share.
First, a really touching music video to Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me. So sweet.
And also, remember that post about labels? And the one about the stereotype? Someone interviewed a few gay guys about their interests and put together a video about it.

Count me in

National Coming Out Day is October 11th and there's a grassroots campaign called Count Me Out (pun on out of the closet, I'm guessing) that involves changing your profile picture of your social networking site to include the word OUT or ALLY, utilizing "the power of visibility".
It's such a small thing to do. Such a hard thing to do.
And coming out? Such a small sentence. Such a giant leap.
To come out today, to tell my friends my secret, could mean I am made the pariah for years to come.
I was a pariah for too long.
It's a good word, isn't it? Pariah. Such a powerful word. It means the lowest of the low, the bottom of the social ladder, far below merely unpopular. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but then, if I wasn't a drama queen, would I be writing this?
I can be part of my circles, part of the group, and then something happens to make me remember I am not like them. They don't know who I am. They don't even seem to notice that they don't know. And I think, if I was outed right now, would any of you laugh with me? Which of you would try to tell me to change, to choose 'right', to pray that I 'get better'? Which of you would simply avoid me like the plague?
Who would come around later? Who would betray me completely? Who would come up to me the next day and say hello, just to give me a tiny something to hang onto?
More importantly, who feels like this every day? Who literally can't afford to come out for fear of death, beatings, being thrown out of the house?
Because this happens. And maybe doing this one tiny thing, showing some closeted friend you don't even know about that you would not desert a friend for being gay, or transgender, or bisexual, or somewhere in between, would give this friend a tiny something to hang on to.
Here's a tiny something to hang on to. I care. And a lot of other people do too. You could grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor, saving innocent lives. Or you could grow up to be an ordinary person, with an ordinary job, married with kids and happier than you can imagine now is possible. You could be the one to save someone else from suicide. And there are people, maybe not people in your circles, maybe not anyone you can see, but there are people who want you to hang on and see how wonderful it can really be.
Another tiny something, by the Trevor Project, is this video. It gets better. Faces you will recognize from movies and TV donate their time to tell you this.
Chris Colfer, who plays Kurt on Glee (read my last post on this) asks you to hold on. Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter--a straight man--says, "this is the thing I'm probably most passionate about". Ellen Degeneres is devastated by the recent suicide of a teen outed by his roommate.
People care. I care. Show that you care. Join in and change your profile picture.

Too High a Cost

You can hurt someone every time you make a gay joke. Let's say you're a football jock. It might be your friend, who makes up his mind never to come out to you and trust you. It might be your bisexual girlfriend, who's afraid of being dumped. It might be the kid who looks up to you, who first gets the idea that being gay is wrong from you, and goes home depressed or ready to pick on more kids. It might even be the guy you called a fag. Maybe he is gay, or maybe everyone thinks he is, and that was the last straw for a troubled teen.
Even if you're alone with your friend who makes plenty gay jokes himself, or who has a girlfriend, you never know who's just in denial.
By the same token, standing up against the teasing could be what saves someone's life. It could be what makes your friend or girlfriend trust you, or makes the kid who looks up to you be okay with it. It could even be your brother or sister who hears about it, and trusts you first.
If only it were that easy. If only it wasn't hours later that I come up with the perfect response. If only I could be sure that was what you said. If only I could be brilliant and end the jokes without being rude or just making it worse. If only I were braver.
I have the Broadway song Defying Gravity from Wicked in my head, which brings the phrase "it comes at much too high a cost" to mind when thinking about teasing. Even simple, unassuming comments.

Love

It's not about whom you don't loathe kissing. It's not about whom you choose to take to your bed.
It's about whom you'd die for in an instant, whom you long to kiss, whom you care about like nothing else.
It's about who shows up in your dreams, who makes you happiest, who can't be hurt without hurting you.
It's about whose touch you crave, whose smile brings yours most easily, whose happiness means more than your own. It's about whose kiss makes you feel like falling, whose trust is most sacred, whose love is enough for you to live on.

As Shakespeare once said, "Love alters not when it altercation (fight) finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken."
And,
"Love alters not with brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, no nor man ever loved."

Liberty and Justice for All?

Back in '09 a kid in Arkansas refused to pledge allegiance to the flag because we are not free. Read more. Why can't we all sit down? The Pledge of Allegiance is a serious thing. I've seen people giggle and fool around during it before.
Think about what you're saying. What's a pledge? A serious promise that you don't break. And 'allegiance'? Allegiance means you stand together.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America".
I promise, and will never break this promise, that I will stand with the symbol of the United States of America.
"And to the republic for which it stands".
Self-explanatory.
And skipping to the end?
"With liberty and justice for all".
This is not true. We are not free. We are not treated justly.
What a day when the Pledge of Allegiance is announced and the silence brings down the house.
What a day when liberty and justice for all are once again granted and the people stand up to say it again.

We are not free.

It's Memorial Day today in dear old America. And yesterday, at church, I heard something during the Intentions that kind of threw me, something about all the brave soldiers that died to protect our freedom.
But we aren't free.
Don't get me wrong. Those men and women who died were very brave and deserve recognition, and they died for many freedoms we should all be grateful for. We have freedom of religion, of the press, equal rights for all races and both genders, and even the right to elect our own leaders. These freedoms are precious and should not be taken lightly.
But we won't be completely free until gender identity and sexual orientation matter as little as biological gender or skin color.
We will not be free until laws allowing same-sex marriage, allowing gay people to serve in the military openly, preventing employers from firing people because they are gay or transgender, are made federal.
We must fight for our freedom. We might not be soldiers on the battlefield, but we can still fight.

If you want to tell the Democrats all this, you might read and sign the Courage Campaign's letter.

Please help end DADT!

When you sign a petition from the Courage Campaign, they ask you to send an automatic email to your friends. Here's one.

I just signed on to a letter from Gov. Howard Dean to President Obama asking him to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" this year.

With DADT repeal legislation being delayed indefinitely, it is now more important than ever that President Obama use the power of his office to repeal DADT as a part of the Defense Authorization bill currently under consideration in Congress.

Will you join me in signing Gov. Dean's letter to President Obama? Just click on the link below to add your name:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/DontWaitDontDelay

Thanks!

This is ridiculous.

Why can't same-sex couples be married?
Seriously. Give me one good answer.
Is your proposed answer that the Bible condemns gay people? Or that marriage is between a man and a woman? Go and read the facts.
As far as I can see, the only problem Christians ought to have with gay people being together is sex before marriage. And isn't the logical step to offer us marriage? Legal and spiritual?
Updated Jan. 13 (which may be slightly out of date, but can't be too far out of whack) the Human Rights Campaign shows us the big picture.
Computer won't read it?
It says:
29 states have "constitutional amendments restricting marriage to one man and one woman" 18 of which are "states where the law or amendment that does, or may, affect other legal relationships, such as civil unions or domestic partnerships".
12 states have "law restricting marriage to one man and one woman".
Wikipedia tells us that "same-sex marriages are currently granted by five of the 50 states, one federal district, and one Indian tribe:

• In Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., marriages for same-sex couples are legal and currently performed.
• The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon also grants same-sex marriage."

I'm guessing they mean Native American tribe, not strictly Indian.

Five. As opposed to 41 states that strictly forbid it.

Wikipedia also says that, "In New York, Rhode Island, and Maryland, same-sex marriages are recognized, but not performed",
"As of June 1, 2009, New Jersey has created legal unions that, while not called marriages, are explicitly defined as offering all the rights and responsibilities of marriage under state (though not federal) law to same-sex couples. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington have created legal unions for same-sex couples that offer varying subsets of the rights and responsibilities of marriage under the laws of those jurisdictions".
Go ahead and check out this article. It has a lot to say on the subject.
Makes me wonder what all these people have to say about New Mexico. The map shows it as not having law or constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage, yet the Wikipedia article doesn't talk about it, despite having been updated today.

And meanwhile, on the Supreme Court...

I received an email from Rick Jacobs and the Courage Campaign just now. It was about GLBT people being potentially banned from serving on the Supreme Court. This is ridiculous. Here are some quotes included in the email.

"[A] gay judge's sexual preference will, without any question whatsoever, 'interfere with their job.' It's not possible for it to be otherwise... We simply should not elevate to the highest court in the land people who are known for engaging in sexually abnormal behavior which would technically make them felons in a quarter of the states over which they will have jurisdiction." -- Bryan Fischer, American Family Association

"We can assure you that we recognize that homosexual behavior is a sin and does not reflect God's created intent and desire for humanity. Further, we at Focus do affirm that character and moral rectitude should be key considerations in appointing members of the judiciary, especially in the case of the highest court in the land." --Focus on the Family
(The email's punctuation and emphasis, my inserted credit to the second quote)

I signed the Courage Campaign's petition to keep sexual orientation from being a consideration in appointees to the Supreme Court. They offered me the chance to send an email urging my family and friends to do the same. And I copied and pasted that email here.

Have you heard that right-wing groups like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association are insisting that gays and lesbians should be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court?

It's outrageous. With a Supreme Court vacancy opening up after the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, I just signed a letter to President Obama insisting that sexual orientation should NOT be a factor in selecting his Supreme Court nominee.

Will you join me? It only takes a minute to sign:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/NotAFactor

The religious right is firing up their massive lobbying machine and we need as many people to combat their outrageous attacks on LGBT people.

Thanks!

Seriously. Not evil.

A Christian pop star coming out as lesbian...
A man who "earned [his] master's and doctoral degrees at a conservative biblical seminary" telling us that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality...
There is hope for Christian gay people.

Hospital Rights

I couldn't believe it was true that hospitals would ban gay and lesbian couples from visiting their partners in the hospital. It turns out this wasn't exact, but applied to serious illness and incapacitation. But no more.
I remember watching an interview with the Obama party pre-election where they stated that they think we should have the right to visit each other in hospitals. And now it's happened. At every hospital that accepts Medicare and Medicaid, patients have the right to choose who visits them and who "may make their critical health-care decisions". Read the story here.
And read the Human Rights Campaign's take on it here.

Gaydar

What is gaydar? It's actually made its way into the dictionary. Type it into Dictionary.com and you get four results. I like this one.

Main Entry:	gaydar
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	an intuition about whether someone is homosexual; a homosexual person's ability to identify other homosexuals through intuition or interpretation of signals
Etymology:	1992; gay + radar
Usage:	slang

But according to the Washington Post today, gaydar isn't just for gays anymore.
An article by Rex W. Huppke entitled "Sorry, Ricky Martin. Flying under the gaydar is less frequent than ever." says that straight people too can often discern whether someone is gay. The article cites J. Michael Bailey, a psyche professor, who says that "gay and straight people who viewed the videos correctly identified straight people 87 percent of the time and correctly identified homosexual people 75 percent of the time" (though beware of statistics--notice he doesn't say which percentages gay people guess right and which percentages straight people guess right, but lumps them into one category. Neither does he mention bisexual and in-between people or how random the selection of either the guessers or those they were guessing about was).
I can easily believe that gaydar would work for straight people. I believe that gay people are more likely to look at someone and actually ask themselves whether the person is gay, whereas many straight people don't often even consider the possibility.
Bailey also says that gay stereotypes often (though he specifically says not always) do hold true. I'm not sure I believe this. But take from it what you may.
A different study posted on this blog gives nearly the same results. Cool stuff.
One thing that interests me is how exactly gaydar works. Does it require imagining that person is gay, or specifically wondering, as this study seems to imply? Or is it an automatic thing? I have never experienced it myself, but who knows. Maybe someday.

Gay Prom in Northern VA

A Unitarian Universalist church in Prince William County in Northern Virginia is getting ready to host its second gay prom. Here are the details. I first read about this last year when I read about the first prom in the newspaper. And I think this is wonderful. As it was put to me, at a regular prom, "It's not that the administration's going to look down on them. But they know people are going to be whispering behind their backs." But here, though gay and straight couples alike came from all over Northern VA, nobody cares. I want to go to one of these. Anyone want to invite me?

Same-Sex Marriage in DC Celebrated in Post

I was reading the paper today, looking for the advice columns, when I happened upon an article about a gay wedding planner. I searched for it online, and first found a new article interviewing two gay rights activists of different generations.
If you still have the paper, the articles are pages C1 and C3 of the Metro Section and E10 of the Arts & Style section of the Washington Post.
The article about the interview was columnist Robert McCartney. He talked with Frank Kameny, who he says picketed the White House and "forced the American Psychiatric Association to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental illness". The other was Rich Madaleno, a Maryland state senator, who hopes the signing of the bill will press home to straight couples that gay couples are no different. He raises two adopted children with his partner.
The other article, by Ellen McCartney, is about Rob Gillan, the founder of D.C.'s Gay Wedding Planners, and the shocking number of inquiries he's received when "setting up a company focused on gay weddings". Also mentioned is Kathryn Hamm, who runs the site GayWeddings.com.
As a girl who can only recall fantasizing about how she would design her wedding to her wife, I think this is a wonderful thing to work for. Let's just cross our fingers that no Prop 8 problems crop up in DC as they did in California.

Homophobia.

Who's up for International Day Against Homophobia? (Monday, May 17th)
All you have to do is wear a plain black shirt to silently protest homophobia. If you can, you can write "Gay rights are human rights" on your arm or on a piece of clothing.
*definition* Homophobia: The fear of homosexual behavior and those who practice it, often manifested as hate.
And by behavior, I mean everything, including kissing, holding hands, and the simple act of loving. (I know, loving can be anything but simple. But falling in love can be easy.)
This might not be the best definition. But I think it's the closest. Remember that post about labels? I would wager that homophobia is mostly about fear of the unspoken 'rules' getting broken.
I think that transphobia takes a slightly different definition than homophobia, but for simplification, assume that trans-phobia is included in, but not the same as, homophobia.
Transphobia: The fear of behavior and dress as though one were the opposite sex (especially in M2F trans people), often manifested as hate.
Homophobia is a horrible thing. It makes people fear themselves, their friends, and their family in the name of 'what's right'.
It is not a disease to be GLBTQ. Be proud.

Stop Labeling

We are all forced into labels and categories, and we don’t always notice. Rich. Poor. Young. Old. Blonde. Brunette. White. Black. Catholic. Buddhist. English. Hispanic. And dozens of others. But the least obvious categories are Girls and Boys. They can be called other things, like Females and Males, or Women and Men, Chicks and Dudes, Dolls and Guys.

The Girl has only female organs, is attracted only to boys, and (less commonly accepted) plays ‘house’ or with dolls, is docile, subservient, good in the household, unable to lead, and less able than the Boy.

The Boy has only male organs, is attracted only to girls, and (again less commonly accepted) is dominant, a capable leader and a good example, is above household duties except physically difficult tasks like mowing the lawn, and more able than the Girl.

I think the biggest problem people have with GLBTQ people is that they break those boundaries.

Intersex and transsexuals have physical makeup that breaks the boundaries. Gay, bisexual, and most especially labelless people break the boundaries of attraction. Femme and butch people of the opposite sex (not to mention capable women and type B men) break the boundaries of what is appropriate to enjoy, be good at, ‘Gay’ has become a separate category, but even it has its rules, like attracted only to the same sex and is either resembling the opposite sex, or is ‘with’ someone like that.

That would be a good final goal: For there to be no labels. For people not to have to come out, but for guys to be able to say, "I'm dating this great guy" or "I used to have this great game I played with dolls" (and vice versa for girls) without anybody batting an eye. I don't know that that'll happen in my lifetime, but it would be nice to hope.