It’s been said that gay people don’t come out of the closet just once, but thousands of times. I’d venture to guess that’s a serious undercount — I’ve been coming out multiple times a day since I made it official over thirty-eight years ago.
It’s not like I’m constantly addressing the issue of my sexuality directly. I work from the premise that I have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. But that doesn’t mean that I wear my identity lightly, muchless find it to be a universal strength.
Most people I encounter are non-intrusive about these sorts of things. It’s rare for strangers or casual connections to address questions of my sexuality directly. Yet I wonder what calculations are going on behind other people’s eyes. Is their gaydar going off? Probably. Does anyone really care? Well, it depends. And frankly, I care.
Behind the easygoing veneer I present to the world, I’m performing my own set of calculations. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m also categorizing and judging other people. The reptilian part of my brain is constantly scanning the environment for threats as my observing mind is chattering away, creating a sense of self-consciousness about everything I think, feel, and do. Sometimes the observer speaks in a scream — red lights flashing — alerting me to potential humiliation.
Sniffing out potential judgment of my sexuality like a bloodhound hot on the trail of a wily fox is exhausting. That’s the terrible thing about shame. In spite of yourself, you’re always locked and loaded, ready for an assault. Part of the reason stems from the sense that my most private parts are transparent to others and the moral acceptability of those parts are open to public debate — a debate that includes a history of public shaming and exclusion, life-crushing legal consequences, and bodily harm.
What I truly want is to feel accepted, unremarked on. Not to feel pigeon-holed or judged. I sometimes fantasize about a world — and a relationship with myself — where I can skip the whole damn thing.
Passing under someone’s gaydar is not an option. I’m not stereotypically hyper-masculine. I don’t have broad shoulders and a deep voice. I don’t enter rooms oblivious to my privilege. Moving around in the world with my husband and our twelve-year old daughter of color attracts attention. Even if I could “pass,” imagine the damage it would do to my self-esteem.
Returning from vacation this past summer, my husband, daughter, and I were about to leave the customs area of the airport when I made the mistake of making eye contact and smiling at a security officer. Blocking our path, he and another officer steered us to the area where baggage is searched. At the next station over, I noticed a Black family who looked like they’d been there for a while. They searched our bags while peppering us insistently with questions: “Where are you coming from? Why don’t you have a tan? Where do you live? Who is this? Do you need directions to your house?”
The questions were designed to try to trip up someone who is anxious and lying. They don’t take into account that you might be stressed about other things — like the fact that your daughter is on the autism spectrum and we can’t predict what might come out of her mouth next. Or that we had gotten up at 4 am and had been in transit for twelve hours. Thankfully, she was able to respond correctly when they asked who we were, but those were very stressful moments after a taxing day.
The likely reason for our being stopped is that border security has been on a mission to crack down on the trafficking of young girls. If this is what it takes to help nab kidnappers then I am willing to be inconvenienced. However, being profiled can feel humiliating. It forces a person to confront the limits to their safety and the fact that our freedoms can be snatched away without warning.
Fortunately, incidents like this are rare. In our day-to-day life I’ve mostly trained myself to filter out the lingering stares that often follow my family. With the help of a lot of therapy, my high alerts are now mostly relegated to times when I must march into lion’s den — typically all-white conservative enclaves — rich or poor — and their environs. Nowadays, my observing mind tends to speak only in a whisper.
As a white man I recognize my privilege in not being profiled by the color of my skin. I was able to be legally married in 2008 — something I never dreamed possible. Perhaps it’s a function of my age, but I still can’t wrap my head around high percentage of Americans who now support gay marriage. The sea change feels swift and dramatic, almost too good to believe. The recent attempts by Congress to put those rights into law has been reassuring, especially when there have been murmurs about the possibility of the Supreme Court striking down same sex marriage.
The seesaw nature of my feelings about my sexuality is impacted by these experiences, but it also reflects the larger story of L.G.B.T.Q. acceptance across the country. It’s only been six years since the massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando left forty-nine people dead. Last month’s shooting at an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Colorado Springs left five more dead. According to ABC news, “the Drag Queen Story Hour, a national project conceived as a means to educate and entertain children by appealing to their imaginations, has generated social media backlash from opponents who claim they want to protect children.” In October of this year, “protesters, some of them armed, threw rocks and smoke grenades at each other outside a drag queen story time event at an Oregon pub… some in the crowd had semi-automatic rifles.”
The threat of violence hangs in the air and being murdered because of your sexual orientation did not die along with Matthew Shepard. Gunmen are not the only ones responsible for these deaths. Those who drive public conversations about sexuality hold outsized influence in spurring on the people who commit physical violence. The New York Times recently reported that “conservative political and media figures have accused L.G.B.T. Q. people of “grooming” children, a homophobic trope that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia.” Is this 1952 or 2022? The mixed messages about non-heteronormative sexuality is enough to make anyone’s head spin. In my upcoming book Daddy, I discuss the genesis of tolerance and oppression in American society. Even though I have explored the history and understand that the present is a great improvement, a part of me still wants to just draw the curtains and hide under the bed. But what kind of life would that be?