I've often said that the most gratifying thing about blogging is the sense of community that develops, as though each blog is a house in a neighborhood and the neighborhood is full of interesting people. In my blog neighborhood, as I perceive it, there are three houses that have stood out to me above any others, the inhabitants of which I feel a particular kinship with either through common interests or common perspective, even when we may disagree. Those three houses belong to Timothy Sandefur, Jon Rowe and Jason Kuznicki. I often encourage my readers to visit their homes and enjoy their company. Tonight I am reminded why, once again.
Jason Kuznicki has written an essay that is at once heartbreaking and uplifting. It's about his coming out of the closet 8 years ago and how it has changed his life. He speaks openly about the difficulty of having parents who will not accept that the man he loves and has built his life with, of the battles that go on:
Scott is my family. And so are my parents. And here I am, trying to mediate somehow. On this day of reckoning, eight years later, this is the last real struggle of my coming out.My gay friends sometimes tell me that my parents don't really love me. They're wrong, and I get very angry at them for saying it.
My parents do love me. If they didn't love me, they'd long ago have disowned me. I am a cross for them to bear, a test in how much they can love the sinner and hate the sin.
It's become a contest, I think, between them and Scott, to see who can love Jason longer, more devotedly. My husband uses kindness; my parents, isolation. Mom and dad are confident that they'll win. Blood is thicker than water, as they like to point out.
They're right, of course, and they speak with the moral rectitude of two people who have never divorced, never remarried, never to my knowledge been unfaithful. Certain of themselves, they are content to wait.
My mother called me once, when I was doing research in France for a year.
"Are you going to live there for good now?"
"No, of course not. I'm coming back to be with Scott. We're still together, and we miss each other very much."
"Oh."
Then, heartbreakingly: "What's his last name again?"
Heartbreaking, indeed. But that's not the whole story. He also speaks of how fortunate he is and how easily he could have gone in another direction. Despite the problems with his parents, coming out has given him an opportunity for a happy and fulfilling life, and helped avoid the pitfalls that so many gay men fall into - dishonest marriages, self-loathing and unspoken secrets. It's a powerful message of hope and it should be read not only by those he addresses it to, those who are not yet out of the closet, but by the families and friends of those who already have. Perhaps most especially, by those who still see gays as "them" instead of US. If you do not see the common humanity in what Jason has written, then I dare say there is scarcely any humanity left in you.
Postscript: And while we're at it, please go read a similar post by Ace Pryhill in which she actually posts the "coming out" letter she wrote to her parents. Ace and Terra are another big part of this wonderful neighborhood that has spontaneously grown up. I have great admiration for the courage that is required of Jason, Scott, Ace and Terra, and millions like them. As Lynn and I just talked about, it's something we just take for granted. We don't have to give a moment's thought to our families rejecting us or our partners. It will be a happy day when that worry is a thing of the past for all of us.
Post-postscript: And while we're on the subject, see this post by Dave Jansing. We just recently found Dave's blog by way of Jason's and I have a feeling he's going to move into the neighborhood as well.
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Frankly, I can't imagine being in the position that Jason describes; it really is a heartbreaking story. I think it goes beyond seeing gays as "them" instead of us, Ed. In order to treat people the way that some straights treat gays, they have to first see them as something other than people. We see this objectification in that Jason ascribes to his parents: he's a "cross for them to bear," a "test," or a "sinner." Not a person or a son, but a thing.
It reminds me of stories I've heard combat veterans say when asked how they can kill another human being. The answer, of course, is not to see them as human beings. Once you start thinking of them as people, with families, children, lives, loves, hopes, and dreams, it becomes harder to pull the trigger.
And so it is for homophobes and gay-bashers. It's easier to hate someone, to demean him, to exclude him from social institutions, to deny him family relationships, and to cast him aside if he's not just a person like you and me.
It's sad that we're still having this conversation in 2004. Sadder still is the fact that we'll be having this conversation, or something very like it, in 2024.
Typo in the last comment; should be "in the words that Jason ascribes to his parents."
Sorry. Long day.
Oh, and by the way: reading posts like this makes me glad to be an occasional visitor in your neighborhood.
But Dan... It's not that I'm a thing to my parents. It's not so simple.
I'm their son, who has a terrible problem. I can't emphasize it enough: They do love me, and this is how they show it.
As an aside to Mr. Brayton: Is there a future for a group blog, say... Brayton, Kuznicki, Rowe, Sandefur? I'd be honored to be in such company all the time.
My family sounds like Scott's family. They are always trying to get my partner to come to Holiday celebrations; he usually declines because he speaks broken English and has sort of an "Asian shyness" thing going on with them (plus he literally has no blood relatives in America other than perhaps a brother and a father whose identities he has no clue of and the brother & father most likley have no clue of him or eachother -- that's a long story. He's an Amerasian baby of the Vietnam war. You could probably sort of figure it out from that. Since his family is in Vietnam, family celebrations here during the holidays sort of depresses him).
Coming out is always hard. I guess I'm lucky that my family made it as easy for me as they could. My mom cried. I actually came out to my Dad first. One of the benefits of having a liberal college professor as a father is that the cultural environment that he operates in made him more understanding than your average Joe Sixpack dad usually is.
I think another thing I liked about the post is that it illustrates that gays do have it hard, but hard in a different manner than we typically hear in the "oppressed minority narrative." And all this really helps to illustrate why the narrative is a flawed one.
You can't put a $ figure on marginalization. You can come from a middle class home, and be bound for college and a professional career (as is typical for a gay person) and still find yourself, through no fault of your own, a part of a despised group. And that would drive many folks into a suicidal depression.
There are gays who attended IVY league schools and ended up as rich as rich can be who still suffered enormous psychological trauma from coming out. Because of their status, we might tend to view them as "privileged." But anyone whose ever been through a suicidal depression -- that degree of pain -- doesn't consider their life "privileged."
How hard someone has it really depends on the person's circumstances -- who their family is, their upbringing, how tolerant was the atmosphere. The NE is better than the deep South. And it's better now in this post-Ellen, Will & Grace, Pedro Zamora era than in was just 10 or 15 years ago to say nothing of the 1950s where you could be jailed or institutionalized. And the person's psyche -- again, something that we don't choose -- is also a huge part of how they deal with this. I know of gay men who came of age in the "bad old days" and just peacefully dealt with their circumstance, never letting it get them down, and others who were positively psychologically tortured by the intolerance of the age.
Libertarian radio talk show host David Brudnoy actually got a lot of gays angry at him when he wrote of his coming of age. Why? He claimed that he had fun in college, at Yale, leading a double life, sneaking off to gay bars. He realized that it was an unfair accommodation and that things are better now than they were before. But even when making an unfair accommodation to a hostile environment, he had fun. He never got depressed. This was in Yale circa 1960. Yet, playwright Larry Kramer also came of age at Yale around the same time when you couldn't breath of word of your orientation to anyone else; you had to "find" the secret "gay clique" and lead a double life...and this drove him to a suicidal depression. The same unfair circumstances, two different psyches; two drastically different personal experiences.
Jon, you say your mother cried. I think that mothers more than fathers cry for the grandchildren they will never have. If more gay and lesbians would adopt I think mothers would feel that need met. But naturally not all want to have children.
Another thing, mothers start right from the birth of their child hoping that child will "fit in." By that I don't mean just fitting into society but being totally accepted by their peers in school, church, neighborhood and so on.
Mothers hear about how some families are torn apart when a child comes out to them. We all fear the unknown.
Educating society of the wonderful diversities in people has started. Let's hope it continues to get better quickly so no more mothers cry.
I think you are right. My mom said she was mainly sad for what I would have to go thru. And of course, not being a grandmother.
That was an excellent essay, very powerful and moving.