QUESTION BOX 3/22
I give my students access to a question box (an online survey) through which they can submit questions they want to ask me, that they don’t want to ask out loud. Sometimes I will answer those questions here. I can see who is asking the question by looking up a student ID number, but I promise not to do that unless someone submits something that in any way suggests that someone might be harmed.
Q. When you came out as gay, how did your family, friends, and others respond?
A. I came out in 1993, after college, when I was living as a 23-year old in Boulder, Colorado. At the time, we were only just beginning to see LGBTQ role models in mainstream media; for example, Ellen DeGeneres coming out, and in the summer of 1993, RuPaul’s big splash into the music scene.
Before I came out, I knew I was different, but I refused to believe I was deviant or broken or misguided.
Unfortunately, everyone I knew acted like being gay meant you were deviant or broken or misguided. At worst, it was like pedophilia. At best, it was like alcoholism. The people I knew didn’t believe those things because they were evil, but because that’s how they were socialized. Few people seemed to know any better, at least not where I grew up in the Mountain West.
I remember as a kid liking Culture Club and other androgynous pop bands, but keeping that to myself in order to avoid ridicule. When I was in middle school, I remember a kid I found attractive declaring with certainty, “If I ever saw Boy George, I would kill him. I would shoot him.”
My friend from college, John, came out long before I did, and he was one of my roommates during and after college, and his coming out made it safe for me to do the same. But I never forgot that people who knew me—let alone complete strangers—might actually kill me for being gay, at least as far as I knew.
First, I came out to myself, and to John. Coming out made me feel powerful and in control for the first time. Fully accepted for the first time.
Marching in Denver’s pride parade in 1993 was a political act, an act of defiance against mainstream culture. Just the previous November, Colorado voters passed the notorious Amendment 2 to the Colorado state constitution, which banned municipalities from recognizing or protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing or at work. Try to understand what that meant: not only was it already legal to fire you or evict you for being gay—that wasn’t enough for these people—they also had to make sure we had no sanctuary. They had to make sure the cities of Boulder or Denver or Telluride could not protect us even if they wanted to protect us. The Supreme Court blocked and later struck down Amendment 2, and it was the first great national victory for the LGBTQ community. (The other came 20 years later when same-gender marriage was affirmed by the court.)
Today pride is less political, more corporate, and pretty family friendly: strollers and cotton candy and balloons, and I’m glad about that. It’s the way things should be. I only bring all this up in order to describe the culture into which I was coming out.
My mother already knew (of course), and was supportive.
Her husband, my stepfather, did not understand. But because he is a loving man, he drove down to Boulder with some beer and we stayed up until the wee hours talking it out, and he has never let me down since.
My father, the biologist, struggled with it at first. Like many parents, the hardest part of a kid coming out is wondering what will happen to your own reputation, among friends and in his case especially, among colleagues. He never said anything bad to me but it took time. It helps that work was done in the field of biology showing that homosexual behavior is not confined to homo sapiens.
My middle brother told me, “Dude, I hope you keep your options open.” Meaning, try dating a woman. You might like it!
“I will if you will.”
He laughed. “I get it.”
So, I have no horror stories. Friends from college who weren’t invited to my commitment ceremony in 1994 were hurt. People at work desperately wanted to be there (it was still a novelty at that time). I was surprised anyone cared that much.
Coming out never ends. You end up in new jobs, and meeting new people, and so you go through the process over and over. I’ve never had a problem. And now I live in the only place in the world, Palm Springs, where my tribe constitutes the majority. I’ve got nothing but gratitude for all the support.