SPEAK OUT
OCTOBER 1, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 9
What makes coming out something worthy of celebration?
by Richard D. Mohr
A gay friend new to town needs to buy a washing machine. "I want a really basic model," he tells the salesman, who in response asks if he's married. He hums and says no. The salesman continues, “Well, when you do get married, you'll want a delicate cycle for her dainties." Later, my friend guiltily admits, “I should have just come out to him. I was caught off guard."
It's fall again. The first day of school. Two minutes into class. After drawing attention to the syllabus listings of my office information, I do a mental push-up and proceed: "I've also given you my home telephone number; there's an answering machine and my lover is willing to take messages, though please don't try his patience with complicated ones." The sentence floats out over the room: some students get it, some don't, some, still sleepy-eyed, aren't even listening. But word gets around. Word is out. I've just come out to fifty strangers.
October 11 marks the eighth annual celebration of National Coming Out Day. What is it that we celebrate? What makes coming out something worthy of celebration? Why for so many gay people is coming out the central event of their lives? The answers are courage, freedom, and dignity.
Now, many gay theorists-mostly trendy academics--claim that the very idea of coming out is a bugaboo. They hold that there is no lurking inner gay essence that somehow is first discovered by the gay person within him
or herself and then made manifest to others through an act-coming out-whereby that which before was concealed is now revealed. They claim rather that society induces or constructs the person as gay and so also always knows that the person is gay even though both society and the person pretend that this fact is not known. On this account, homosexuality is an open secret, a secret that is always giving itself away.
But the issues of whether one's sexuality initially is an open or a complete secret, and whether its causes are society, genes, or something else, are largely irrelevant to understanding the coming out processes.
Coming out is primarily a moral rather than a cognitive act. It is not a matter of knowledge but of acknowledgment. In coming out, one acknowledges one's sexuality to oneself and presents it to others in such a way that even if they know of it already, they can no longer act as though they don't. Coming out is the claiming of one's sexuality as one's own (wherever it came from) and raising it as an issue for others where relevant.
As the lesbian theorist Joyce Trebilcot has put it, coming out is primarily a matter of taking responsibility for sexuality: "Coming out is not merely a matter of reinterpreting one's past; it involves taking responsibility for being a lesbian both in the past and in the future."
Coming out is socially important because it dashes the shame generated by the open secret, the dirty little secret that runs: "We know that you know that we know, but we
won't mention it because your sexual bearings-you-are as embarrassing to acknowledge as excrement."
Coming out says no to the humiliating rituals of "don't ask, don't tell." Coming out is a refusal to go along with society's presumption that for all public purposes, being a person means being heterosexual.
But because this presumption is so central to society's understanding of itself, coming out will not be socially viewed as merely an irritation, like hooliganism. It will be viewed, like civil disobedience, as an act of treason— a challenging of the very ground rules by which society, largely through unacknowledged habit, constitutes itself. And so coming out is a major act of moral courage. Indeed as modern culture becomes ever more bureaucratic, mechanistic, and socialistic, the coming out process affords one of the few remaining opportunities to manifest courage.
But what's in it for the individual? Many gay activists hold that the point of coming out is that it makes you feel good and gives you power. The truth, though, is one which gays' parents in particular don't want to hear: coming out is not chiefly a means to happiness and power; indeed it typically requires putting these values at risk. Coming out cedes away privilege and its powers. It increases one's exposure to discrimination. It gives one a heightened awareness of the ways in which society despises gays. These changes are not near occasions of happiness.
But no one who goes through the coming
out experience ever willingly goes back into the closet. For people get something else, something more important, out of the experience. They get a sense of self, a sense that, for better or worse, their life is their own, that it has a ground. This is something quite different from acquiring materials and benefits or enjoying, say, sex or a tune.
Coming out is an ultimate adventure, for it constitutes the surfacing of the individual as capable of guiding her life by her own lights. To be so positioned is to be a person, to live in freedom, to have dignity. In their willingness to sacrifice their own happiness, privileges, and benefits, gays and lesbians through coming out reconsecrate personhood, freedom, and individual dignity as the highest human values.
We are right, then, to celebrate coming out and to give it its special day. Coming out is the heart of gay pride. What is worthy of celebration is not the simple and perhaps given fact of being gay, but our doing something about it for the good.
That we mark coming out, like a birthday, with one special day should not mislead us into thinking that coming out is an event, like being born, which is singular, unique, and done once and for all. At least until the emergence of the messianic era, everyday living itself will occasion the need for coming out on a rolling basis. The paradigm case of coming out is not that of telling mom and dad, but of telling sleepy students and clerks at Sears.
Richard D. Mohr is the author of Gays/ Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law.
Why a good neighbor and loving parent was a 'dangerous man'
by David Clarenbach
In late January, Des Moines school board member Jonathan Wilson announced his sexual orientation at a packed school board meeting broadcast live throughout the state. In an act of uncompromising integrity and courage, Wilson chose to sacrifice his right to privacy and speak the truth about his life-about our livesdespite a campaign of intimidation including threats of violence against him and his family. Wearing a bullet proof vest at the request of law enforcement officials, the 12-year veteran of the school board said, "I am coming out to educate and so that I can speak with a clearer, unintimidated voice. These death threats show how desperately we need to educate people about tolerance for differences."
Two weeks ago, Jonathan Wilson lost his bid for re-election. And he didn't lose because he is gay. He lost because he is a wellrespected attorney at a prominent law firm, a fiscal conservative, an outstanding advocate for education, a man of faith, a loving parent, and a good neighbor.
You see, Wilson epitomizes everything that the radical right wants people to believe gay men and lesbians aren't. Wilson's visibility as an openly gay official seriously
compromised their ability to demonize the gay and lesbian community as a recruiting and fundraising gimmick. Because of that, they mounted one of the most sophisticated campaigns ever to target the three-time school board president for defeat.
The right-wing agitator who started the anti-Wilson movement is conservative carpetbagger Bill Horn. Horn was sent to lowa less than a year ago to open the midwest office of The Report, the California-based group that distributes the virulently homophobic video The Gay Agenda. Horn does not live in the Des Moines school district. Rush Limbaugh wanna-be Jan Mickelson harangued against Wilson and "the gay agenda" on his radio talk show and sent fundraising letters for The Report to help "stop homosexuals from indoctrinating our children in the public schools."
Right-wing politicians were quick to join in the fray once picklepuss pundit Pat Buchanan took the first shot. Presidential hopeful (read: hopeless) Phil Gramm even mailed a fundraising letter “thank[ing] God for Bill [Horn] and the thousands of parents who would not be intimidated by the liberal media or the radical homosexual community."
In addition to recruiting candidates to run against Wilson, the Christian Coalition distributed more than 48,000 voter guides and mobilized thousands to vote. A special appeal letter from the Coalition stated that this election was "a test of strength between the pro-family movement and the homosexual rights movement." Ultra-conservativè pastors exhorted their parishioners to "vote for those who will uphold the principles of godliness."
There are 15,000 school boards in the United States, and Wilson was one of only nine openly gay school board members in this entire nation. That a cabal of right-wing media, social and religious groups would concentrate so much money and manpower to defeating him shows how desperate they are to keep people from seeing the truth. The Radical Right makes millions of dollars and wins political power by perpetuating the stereotype of the homosexual as antisocial deviantand Jonathan Wilson blew that stereotype to smithereens.
To people who make their living selling lies, there's nothing more dangerous thatn the truth.
David Clarenbach
David Clarenbach is a former Wisconsin state representative who is now executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.
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