A Link and a Story

I've been a fan of Jason Kuznicki's blog for quite some time now, as should be obvious. But I had never read the essay Without Pain or Fear or Guilt, an essay he wrote about his coming out of the closet, until today, when Lynn pointed it out to me and suggested I read it. My reaction upon reading it was just, "Wow". I challenge even the most hardened homophobe to read that essay and not be moved by it. I have been asked a few times why I, as a straight man, argue so passionately for gay rights. Jason nails the answer perfectly:

Properly speaking, there is no such thing as "gay rights." There are only individual rights, and these have been denied to homosexuals throughout history. If you defend liberty you will defend the rights of homosexuals to do as they wish. If you do not do so you are no friend of individual rights, whatever your opinions elsewhere.

It's because I see gay people as people, not as abstractions or as "them". They're not members of a category, they are individuals and it is upon the foundation of the right of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our entire system is built. The most inspiring thing about Jason's story, I think, is that he has not only managed to rise above the fear and hatred that the anti-gay crowd has aimed at him, but he has also managed not to get bogged down in the group identity of "gayness", that he continues to view himself as an individual, not merely as a "gay American", to quote the New Jersey governor's annoying phrase.

All of this reminds me of a story I have been meaning to tell here for a while now. Regular readers of my blog will recall that over the last couple of months I have been very excited to have reconnected with a few wonderful people from my past that I had lost contact with. One of them, Jeff, is my oldest friend. We have known each other since our freshman year in high school (we attended different schools but competed against each other in debate on an almost weekly basis). We then went to college together, coached debate together and were generally inseparable for years. He moved to Washington DC after college and we spoke only occasionally, but he has recently moved back to Michigan and I am thrilled to have him back in my life. This story requires a good deal of background...

In high school, Jeff was president of the Young Republicans of Michigan. In college, he was president of the College Republicans of MSU. He worked for Reagan's campaign in 1984, and for Jack Kemp's campaign in 1988. I'm 90% certain that he was born in khaki pants, oxford button down, blue blazer and wingtips. Well about 6 or 7 years ago, Jeff calls me up and asks if I'm sitting down. I said yes. And he said, "Ed, I have something really important to tell you. I hope this doesn't come as too much of a shock to you, but it's important that you know this. I'm out of the closet. I'm gay." And I started laughing. I couldn't stop laughing. And he started laughing with me. After our laughter subsided, he said, "You know, I knew you were gonna react that way. You were the last person I was worried about telling, I knew you'd handle it just fine." But to understand why we both laughed for the same unspoken reason, you need to know a little more history.

In college, we coached a high school debate team together. There was a guy named Chuck that we took with us almost every weekend as a judge, and he was a good friend. One day Jeff comes storming into my house as I'm eating breakfast and throws down a copy of the school newspaper on the table. Jeff was always doing something to get himself in trouble on campus, so I figured this was a story of his latest adventure when he told me to look at page 2. I turned to page 2 and there was a story about a candlelight vigil sponsored by the Gay-Lesbian Council on campus. I said okay, what exactly am I looking for here? He points to the picture of the rally, a picture which included our friend Chuck right in front.

Jeff: "Chuck is gay."

Me: "Okay....and?"

Jeff: "Ed, Chuck is GAY. And how many weekends have we spent in hotel rooms with him at tournaments?"

Me: "Hmmm. Seems to me that's a good point. We've spent a dozen weekends in hotel rooms with him and we didn't even know he was gay. Seems to me maybe that means it isn't a problem."

Jeff: "It doesn't bother you that you've even slept in the same BED with him and he's gay?"

Me (said with laughter): "Well, he obviously doesn't find either one of us attractive."

Jeff stormed out. He was just furious about this for a couple of days. Then, to his credit, he called Chuck and took him out to lunch and apologized to him for his reaction, even though Chuck didn't know how he had reacted. That's incident #1 that provoked my laughter at his announcement. Here's incident #2...

At MSU, the Gay-Lesbian Council had an annual event on campus called Gay Blue Jeans Day. They'd put up signs all over campus declaring a specific day to be Gay Blue Jeans Day, telling everyone to wear jeans to show their support for gay rights. So Jeff, being the campus troublemaker that he was, decided to make fun of this and put up signs declaring the same day to be Straight Shirt Day - wear a shirt and show that you're against gay rights. Needless to say, the GLC did not take this mockery very well.

Over the next few weeks, all hell broke loose on campus. They demanded that Jeff be punished by the university for this, and not a day went by without a letter in the paper calling him everything from the second coming of Adolf Hitler to the Antichrist. It was all quite amusing. See, I'm strongly for gay rights, but it's because I view them as individuals, not as members of a protected minority. My view of such things was summed up perfectly by Dennis Miller years ago:

Why, when a comedian does a joke on anything even vaguely controversial, do certain people moan like somebody let one rip during an audience with the Pope? I mean, come on, who actually moans at a joke? Who is responsible for that? Well, quite frankly, I'm pinning it on the gays, okay.

Now, now, I know there's some reflexively irate homosexual in the crowd thinking, "How dare you, Miss Thing?" And what I'm saying to you is this: I think so little of the variations in human sexuality that I refuse to treat you like a Faberge egg. You are part of the human collective. Come, join in our reindeer games. You too can be poked fun at.

Regardless of whether you're for or against gay rights, what Jeff did was, in my view, both justified and funny. The idea of gay blue jeans day is ridiculous because virtually everyone on a college campus wears blue jeans. This is exactly the sort of empty pose-striking that deserves to be made fun of, and that has nothing to do with my support for gay rights.

Anyway, with those stories as background, you can see why I cracked up when he told me he was gay. In retrospect, and in all seriousness for a moment, all of that makes perfect sense. And we've had discussions since then that mirrored Jason's essay, about the feelings of self-loathing that he had to face, about the long struggle to come to terms with the fact that he is gay, and about the courage it took for him to come out, especially as a Republican campaign consultant in this day and age. It's still a struggle for Jeff in some ways, especially because of what he does for a living. But at least he is now able to live honestly. And unlike a lot of gay people, he has a family that loves him and accepts him and friends who do as well.

I want to say thank you to Jason for his inspiring and courageous story. If you haven't read it, please go there now. Jason serves as a reminder to all of us that it is the individual that is to be seen when we observe others, not their membership in a category or group. His sexual orientation is but one small aspect of who he is, not the whole person. The essence of bigotry is the cancelling out of individuality, the exaggeration of one component of a person - race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc - over all other components. There are gay people who are moral and immoral, caring and uncaring, brilliant and stupid, Christian and atheist. They are as diverse in their other traits as any other group. I'm glad to have people like Jason, and Jeff, to remind me of that every day.

Postscript: As a follow up, I am also reminded of a story from college that demonstrates why even us "enlightened" folks sometimes get lost in ignorance and need others to remind us of their basic humanity...

I had a friend named Sandy in college who was lesbian (she didn't go to school there, she was a teacher at a local high school that I met through mutual friends). She and I went to a Melissa Etheridge concert together, and this was before Melissa had come out as a lesbian. After the show, she and I stopped to get a bite to eat and this conversation happened:

Me: "Was I the only straight person there tonight?"

Sandy (laughing): "You might very well have been."

Me: "Why does she have such a huge lesbian following?"

Sandy (with a hint of incredulity in her voice): "Because she's lesbian."

Me: "She is not."

Sandy: "She is too!"

Me: "Oh come on, she's not lesbian. Listen to her songs. The lyrics are all about relationships and love...(slowing down)...and breaking up...and heartbreak...and (suddenly sheepish)...okay, that was a really stupid thing to say, wasn't it?"

And Sandy started laughing, and laughing, and laughing. And all she could say was, "That was PERFECT." Oy. Sometimes we humans can be such idiots, even those of us who think we aren't, eh?