Tag Archives: lgbt

Rejoice, spouse and spouse

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I had a post about other things scheduled for today, but then I got caught up watching the live feed from city hall in Minneapolis, where same sex marriage became legal today. And I think it would be better if we all just rejoiced with these couples:

Photo gallery: Gays marry in Minnesota

Photo gallery: Weddings at Como Conservatory in St. Paul

Gay couples rush to wed as Minnesota, Rhode Island legalize same-sex marriage

I think my favorite from the live blogs is the tweet from sometime in the early morning from a person watching at City Hall: “I’ve got this down: cheer, clap, cry, repeat.”

Context is everything

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All sorts of news sites and blogs and individuals have been spreading the “news” far and wide that Pope Francis said, “Who am I to judge gay people?” As if this represents a significant softening of the church’s anti-gay stance.

There are three problems with that: one, that sentence isn’t quite what he said even as a out-of-context quote; two, once you put what he did say in context, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone is reporting he said; and three, it isn’t an actual change at all.

First, what did he actually say? “If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?”

It might seem like a subtle difference, but there are two qualifiers in the sentence which can be unpacked in a variety of ways. What constitutes searching for the Lord, for instance? If he means striving to adhere to current church teachings that homosexuality is disordered and sinful, then that right there means that the kindest spin you could put on what he said is, “Who am I to judge ex-gays?”

Second, what was the context? The pope was responding questions from reporters about a person who was recently hired to sort out problems at the Vatican Bank, but there are allegations the person was involved in a gay relationship a decade ago. And while repeating that homosexuality is a sin but gays shouldn’t be marginalized, he made the above comment, and then went on to chastise the reporters from bringing up someone’s past sins that are behind them. Once again, the kindest way one can interpret the statement in context is either “Who am I to judge ex-gays?” or “Who am I to judge people who are discreet?”

Third, it has always been the case that the church overlooks the past sins of its own people in leadership positions, so long as they make a token statement that they won’t do it again. That’s why there are all those thousands of pedophile priest scandals out there, for goodness sake! And it has always been the case that the church overlooks homosexuality among its own clergy so long as they deny it or pretend to hide it (Pope Benedict XVI, for instance).

In full context, keeping in mind that he began the answer with a sort of bizarre observation that no one has ever handed him their business card with the business card proclaiming the person to be gay, the statement isn’t even really about either sexual orientation or sexual activity. It is about whether a person is closeted. It’s the same song-and-dance haters always retreat to when confronted about either their bigotry or a seeming double-standard: I don’t care what someone does in private, why do they have to flaunt it?

Even the section of the answer where he mentions the church teaching that calls for homosexuals to be treated with dignity and not marginalized doesn’t earn him any tolerance points. That line has been repeated whenever the church unloads a new condemnation of gay people, gay rights, and so on. It was even mentioned by that Bishop last year in his statement about a bunch of pedophile priests whose crimes the church (under his watch) had covered up when the Bishop blamed all those crimes on the homosexual nature of the children whom the priests abused.

So, no, I don’t think this qualifies as a softening of tone. And it certainly doesn’t signal any new kind of tolerance. And it most certainly doesn’t count as a baby step.

What would count as a baby step? Here’s one, and it really wouldn’t be that difficult. I wish that this pope would take a page from an American priest who spoke up last year at a county commission meeting where the public was weighing in on a proposed gay rights ordinance. The priest said that the church’s teaching on the matter should not be taken into account on an ordinance. “We do not have authority over people outside our own flock,” he said. A baby step would be for this pope to say the church would stop weighing in on such matters of civil law. That the church would stop trying to prevent governments from decriminalizing gay activities. That the church would stop trying to get laws passed banning gay people from adopting. That the church would stop trying to keep the law from recognizing marriages between same sex couples.

The church doesn’t have to approve any of those things in order to stop trying to blackmail lawmakers into enforcing its disapproval by means of the law. The church doesn’t approve of divorce, but it long ago stopped trying to pressure governments into outlawing it. The church doesn’t approve of divorced people remarrying, but it long ago stopped trying to pressure governments to outlaw such marriages. The church considers children born to remarried couples as illegitimate, but it doesn’t pressure governments to label children that way, nor to deny the children of a remarriage Social Security benefits if the remarried parent dies, for instance.

Seriously, when was the last time an Archbishop directed priests to deny communion to law makers who didn’t vote for laws to declare the children of remarried parents illegitimate?

Treating gay people and gay relationships the same way that it treats divorced people would be a baby step. It wouldn’t be approval. It wouldn’t be a change of theology. It would be a simple admission that the church doesn’t have the authority to enforce its doctrine on people who are outside of its flock.

This ain’t no baby step.

Speaker for the Abyss

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I thought I had said all I would say about the Orson Scott Card stuff in “Abyss Gazing” and “The Abyss’ Game“, unfortunately some people who I would have hoped knew better have decided that any gay people who have chosen or are contemplating choosing to withhold our patronage from anything that will put money in the pocket of that hateful homophobe, simply don’t understand the situation properly.

So they’ve decided to explain it to us…

Continue reading Speaker for the Abyss →

The abyss’s game

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A few months ago I wrote about my decades long struggle with a specific incident of separating the art from the artist. A writer some of whose work I had enjoyed back in the eighties, removed all doubt about the hints of his extreme homophobia in 1990 when he published a long essay explaining how he didn’t hate anyone, but homosexuals deserved death and worse punishments, which god would mete out upon them some day.

At the time of my earlier post, DC Comics was facing a boycott by comic book stores and fans for having hired Orson Scott Card to write a Superman series. That deal has since been indefinitely suspended. Now, as news of a boycott of the movie adaptation of Card’s most famous work has surfaced, Mr Card is pleading for tolerance, because it’s a policy decision that has now been settled, and it would be unfair for people to punish a book written before this topic was even a political issue.

Card is doing what several of the anti-gay organizations and politicians have been doing the last year, trying to claim that they simply have a disagreement on this one tiny area of policy, and that now they are being punished for holding this reasonable opinion. The truth is, that Card, the National Organization for Marriage (of which he is a board member), and all the others oppose all gay rights, as well as opposing the laws allowing adults (straight and gay) to make a whole slew of decisions about their own sexual and reproductive behavior.

Orson Scott Card is a hateful homophobe who has actively campaigned for (and given money to) efforts to criminalize such behaviors. And it’s something that he has been doing for a lot longer than he would like you to believe.

At the time he wrote Ender’s Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, he stated multiple times that he believed his writing was god’s work. He believed in moral absolutes, he said. He thought any society that didn’t enforce his moral absolutes would collapse, and he wanted to write fiction that demonstrated those ideas. He wrote more than once disparaging the moral relativism of much of science fiction, particularly the original Star Wars movies and novels of Iain Banks.

In that 1990 essay I mentioned above, Card wrote:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The 1990 essay was written as the culmination of years of defending comments he had made shortly after the publication of Speaker for the Dead to the effect that homosexuality is all about domination and control of others, so of course he had to include homosexual villains in his world, even though he thought homosexuality was a sin and that homosexuals who didn’t repent would deserve whatever bad things that happened to them. Or, as he put in in that essay:

True kindness is to be ever courteous and warm toward individuals, while confronting them always with our rejection of any argument justifying their self-gratification. That will earn us their love and gratitude in the day of their repentance, even if during the time they still embrace their sins they lash out at us as if we were their enemies.. And if it happens that they never repent, then in the day of their grief they cannot blame us for helping them deceive and destroy themselves. That is how we keep ourselves unspotted by the blood of this generation…

In 2003 Mr Card was really angry at the Supreme Court for saying that laws which criminalized private sexual behavior between consenting adults were unconstitutional, and among other things he wrote:

There is no such thing on this earth as a human society that does not closely regulate the sexual and reproductive behavior of its members, to one degree or another.

In 2004 Mr Card wrote in The Rhinoceros Times:

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were… In fact, it will do harm. Nowhere near as much harm as we have already done through divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. But it’s another nail in the coffin.

In 2008 Mr Card wrote in an op-ed piece for the Mormon Times:

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

In 2012, again writing for the Rhinoceros Times, he said:

Heterosexual pair-bonding has been at the heart of human evolution from the time we divided off from the chimps. Normalizing a dysfunction will only make ours into a society that corrodes any loyalty to it, as parents see that our laws and institutions now work against the reproductive success (not to mention happiness) of the next generation.

You can read a whole lot of this on his own site, because he reposts most of his essays. He has disavowed some of his previous positions, but he’s also demonstrated a remarkable ability to change his tune back and forth as seems appropriate. Back in 2004, for instance, in an interview he disavowed some of the lies about gay people he had previously spouted in his editorial writings, and said that he no longer supported reinstating sodomy laws. Then he turned right around and as a Board Member for NOM voted to use those same lies and tactics in campaign commercials against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t tell, and the passage of civil unions and marriage equality laws. As recently as the 2012 election, he’s authorized the same arguments for restoring sodomy laws as part of those campaigns supposedly defending traditional marriage.

On his web site he appeals to democracy a lot, decrying most of the civil rights progress (not just gay rights — he opposes divorce, access to birth control, and thinks that unmarried woman who have babies should face substantial penalties from society) because he thinks it is largely imposed by the courts.

Which I find particularly hilarious since a deep loathing for the notion of allowing people to make their own choices is obvious in every piece of fiction Card wrote, especially Ender’s Game. If you don’t remember that theme, and feel an urge to tell me how I fail to appreciate the brilliance of his work, go back and read your old copy of Ender’s Game, paying especial attention to the story arc of Peter, who eventually becomes a “benevolent dictator.”

Then we can talk.

Orson Scott Card is a hypocrite and a bigot who has used distortions and outright lies to hurt innocent people. He has renounced those lies and distortions when it is politically convenient, and then gone right back to using them as soon as possible. Now, he’s just a sore loser who hopes to make some decent money in Hollywood. And how much would you like to bet that he’s going to keep pouring part of his money into groups like NOM, and go right back to spreading the lies and distortions?

It’s time to stop giving him a pass. It’s time to stop giving him money, no matter how indirectly.

The coffeehouse closes

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I don’t remember exactly when it was that I first read a post at Pam’s House Blend. One of the other news blogs I read posted a link to a story, I clicked it, and was immediately charmed by the logo of a coffee cup next to the blog title, with the tag line, “Always steamin'”

The blog, and its creator, Pam Spaulding, has been a good source for news related to the equality—particularly for women, racial minorities, and the LGBT community. Writing from North Carolina, Pam brought us news and commentary leavened with a bit of humor and the friendly attitude implied by the coffeehouse theme. Both Pam and the blog have won awards for online journalism.

I really felt as if I were sitting down with a cup of coffee and chatting about the news while reading her blog.

Today is the last day for Pam’s House Blend. In her announcement (which I linked above) about closing down the blog, she mentions her health issues, and alludes to the difficulties in being an unpaid citizen journalist while trying to keep one’s day job.

I know some of her regular contributors will be launching a new blog to continue reporting on the types of issues Pam’s House Blend was known for. And anyone who has read her commentaries knows that Pam is going to keep speaking her mind and standing up against prejudice.

But I’m going to miss my regular visits to the virtual coffee house.

Farewell, Pam, and thanks.

Why I’m proud

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“If it’s just who you are, why be proud about it?”

It seems like a reasonable question, right? I mean, if we’re born this way, what is there to be proud of? It’s not like we did it, right?

If you’ve ever asked that question, or been tempted to ask it (especially if you think it’s a clever question) here’s what I need you to do: imagine one of the really big St Patrick’s day parades. Imagine a very big, bearded, slightly inebriated Irish American in that parde. Now imagine yourself wearing a t-shirt with a British flag printed on it, and some slogan such as “The Irish are all terrorists!” in really large print. Now imagine yourself confronting the inebriated Irishman in the middle of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and demanding that he explain just what it is he has to be proud of, anyway, just because he was born Irish?

If you are a straight or straight-identified person living in our society, having grown up going to schools that encouraged your childhood crushes, that held dances that celebrated your teen age boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, watching movies where 99.9% of the plots include at least an element of either boy-meets-girl or boy-rescues-girl or woman-gets-her-man, et cetera, much of your existence is the result of a system of privilege which is the equivalent of that t-shirt.

So that’s the first thing I have to be proud of: I haven’t been crushed by the forces of homophobia, I didn’t commit suicide in my teens, I survived all the beatings, I managed to avoid being driven into addiction or a life of loneliness by all of those people, assumptions, and cultural expectations that said I couldn’t love, and if even I could my love didn’t matter, my very self was false.

I survived all of that and became a productive member of society. I found a man who promised to love me and stay with me the rest of his life—and he did! And after he died, I was lucky enough to be found by another wonderful man who somehow isn’t put off by all my obnoxious personality traits and has the audacity to love me!

We have a circle of friends who run the spectrum from straight through bi and gay, and contrary to what I was told again and again throughout my childhood, how lovable or worthwhile any of them are has absolutely nothing to do with their orientation.

I’m proud not just because I’m still here and I’ve survived, but because all of those people marching in Pride Parades all around the world have survived. From the freaks to the wallflowers, from the lesbian moms and gay dads to the queer aunties and uncles, from the straight parents of lesbian & gays to the straight kids of gays & lesbians, from the queer soccer players to the queer sci fi nerds (and there are a lot more of us than you think!), from the drag queens to muscle daddies and gym bunnies, from the dykes on bikes to the queer corgi owners club (sometimes one of the largest groups in the parade), from the go-go boys to the clog-dancing lesbians, from the queer quakers to the gay service members, from the cyber sluts to the snap queens, from house spouses to the queer executives… in short, every bi, gay, trans, lesbian, gender-non-conformist, queer, homo, fairy, butch, femme, st8-acting person or ally who has survived another year and is still ready to stand up, be counted, and throw a fabulous party.

I’m proud because we have endured hate, which has taught us how to love better. I’m proud because we have fled the shadows, and showed the world our light. I’m proud because no matter how many times we’ve been knocked down, we have gotten back up.

I’m proud because we’re all here, and we’re beautiful!

Why I watch the parade

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First, because it’s a parade, and people do some pretty astounding things when they march.

I watched my first Pride Parade before I marched in one. I was barely out to anyone at the time, and I wasn’t even sure what the parade was. I had seen (usually lurid and shocking) pictures in the papers and during the very brief coverage that would appear on the evening news.

I suspected those representations were highly inaccurate, but I had heard a few conflicting descriptions from gay people I knew.

What struck me most about that first parade was how unexceptional most of the people looked. Oh, yes there were some outrageous costumes, and some people bared a bit more skin than you would normally see on a summer sidewalk, but the vast majority were far more fully clothed than a typical beach crowd.

I understand why a lot of people think there’s a lot more nudity at Pride Parades than other events. It’s mostly because of the men. Our society is so heavily patriarchal that we don’t notice all those women in revealing clothes, provocative poses, and suggestive angles used in advertising, television shows, and the like. Women are allowed to show off their legs, a little cleavage, and much more, to show just how beautiful their bodies are. No one blinks at all the near nudity of women on floats in the Seattle Seafair Family Torchlight Parade, for instance, or the Tournament of Roses Parade, or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade—it’s there! We don’t consciously think about how much of the world is geared around appealing to the sexual desires of straight men.

We are not used to men putting themselves on display in the same way. So when the float covered in go-go boys goes by, instead of realizing that it’s no more nudity or sex appeal than what you might see on, say, the Miss America float in the Tournament of Roses Parade, we’re too busy freaking out at the Naked Boys (who aren’t actually naked)!

But what really struck me that first time, was how ordinary so many of the people looked. The various hobby-based clubs marching by in their matching t-shirts, throwing candy. The men and women, mostly in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, walking in a group with their dogs on leashes. The political groups with matching t-shirts chanting their slogans. The groups with kids—lots of the queer couples and their kids—marching with whichever group they were with. Plus lots of church or other religiously affiliated groups and lots of amateur sports leagues.

There were a multitude of costumes, many feathers, copious amounts of glitter, and a lot of rainbows. The outrageous costumes sometimes had some sort of political message. But often they were just things like big crazy headdresses that you weren’t sure what they were meant to signify, but it was rainbow colored!

Then after all the groups with their banners and fliers and sometimes matching t-shirts had passed, the parade just kept going, just lots and lots of random people. It took a few minutes for us to figure out what was happening. I learned later that it’s a tradition that’s gone from the very first Pride March in 1970 on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. After the parade passes you, you step off the curb and join it.

And that’s why some years I watch. The reason for the parade, ultimately, is simple visibility. We’re here. We’re your daughters, your neighbors, your sons, your co-workers, your friends, your siblings, or your parents. We’re not mysterious monsters lurking in seedy clubs, we’re the person in front of you at the check-out line in the grocery store, or the two gals sitting in that next pew at church, or the grey-haired guy trying to read a label on a bottle of cold tablets in the pharmacy, or that kid on the skateboard going past your bus stop, or that guy sipping a coffee at Starbucks while laughing at something on his computer.

We’re here, we’re everywhere, we’re real, and we have lives just like you.

I watch so that the people who are being brave and marching in their first parade will be seen and cheered for. I watch so that group of teen-agers (half of them straight and there to support their bi, gay, and lesbian friends) will get the applause that their costumes deserve. I watch so the guy who was up all night gluing sequins on his and his boyfriend’s costume will get the cheering that work deserves. I watch so that the older couple walking together holding hands will be seen and their love acknowledged.

I watch so that the ones whose families rejected them and told them never to come back will know they have another family, and we’re clapping for them right now. I watch and applaud so that the trans* gals and trans* men know they are seen for who they are and we think they’re beautiful, wonderful, and I am proud to call them brothers and sisters. I watch so that the ones who are carrying a photo or wearing the name of a deceased loved one will know that we see their grief and share it. I watch so that the straight parents who have spent countless hours explaining to friends and relatives that their queer kids have nothing to be ashamed of, and yes they are very happy, and no those things you’ve heard or read about their health and lifespan are all myths will know their efforts are appreciated by the whole community.

I watch so I can see and be reminded of just how big and wonderful and diverse and amazing our community is.

And finally, I watch so that as the last official entry goes by, I can see all the people who aren’t part of a club or organization who, just like me, stood on the sidewalk cheering and applauding.

And I cheer and applaud for all of them until finally it’s my turn to step off the curb and say to the world, “Me too.”

Why I marched the other times

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Oh, the many reasons one continues to march in Pride Parades after that first exhilarating time…

One reason I marched in so many parades was because I was a founding member of the (now defunct) Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus. Every year we marched together with our banner. Some years we had candy to hand out. Some years we had fliers. Some years we just waved. People always shouted at us to sing, but you can’t do big choral singing in the middle of a loud street. If you try, no one can hear you over the ambient noise unless you scream. You can’t hear each other well enough to stay in key or in rhythm. We tried, a few times, to get a good mobile sound system to play recordings of us singing, but that doesn’t work well, either.

So one reason I was there in the parade year after year was to march with my fellow choristers. To show people we were there, maybe get a few more people coming to our concerts. Maybe find a few new recruits. It was always a fun group to march with.

I was also there for the same reason I marched the first time. Saying to the world that I’m here, I won’t be invisible, I’m not going away.

I was there to see all the people standing on the sidewalk. Some in couples. Some in family groups. Some were there specifically waiting to cheer for a friend, family member, or significant other who was marching with one of the groups. Some were just there to cheer everyone. Some of the folks watching together had gone to more trouble dressing up than some of the people marching. There always seemed to be at least one group like that watching from a big balcony or deck overlooking some part of the parade route.

I was there, yes, so that I’d have the satisfaction each year of either glaring at or blowing kisses at that one guy who was always there at one corner with his big sign with a bible verse on it telling us how much he thought god hated us all. I never yelled at him. One year, Ray and I stopped right in front of him, french kissed, then turned and blew kisses to him. Ray kept turning around, waving, and making yoo-hoo sounds as our group marched on. Which was hardly original, but it was fun. I don’t know if it was literally the same guy year after year. It seemed like it was. He always seemed to be alone. He was very grim-faced but always silent. At least when I saw him. I like to imagine that he eventually came out, got some therapy, and settled down with a nice leather daddy in Palm Springs.

I marched to smile and wave at the people watching. To accept the applause and return it. “Hey! We all made it another year!”

I marched to show that we’re not all cute fashion-conscious young men—some of us are chubby, grey-bearded, sci fi nerds in t-shirts and tacky Hawaiian shirts.

I marched for the friends and loved ones who are no longer with us: for Ray, who promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, who loved Disney movies and old books, who danced with an abandon I envied, who even made jokes about the chemo, and whose last words on this earth were “I love you” spoken to me; for Jim, a friend from high school who didn’t come out of the closet until he was dying of AIDS, and I don’t think ever marched at Pride; for Chet, a cousin who was sent away when he came out, who vanished for years until one day his mother got a call from a hospice, and whose immediate family continued to reject him even refusing list his name in his grandfather’s (my great-uncle) obituary; for Stacy who sang like a TV version of an opera singer and loved a good joke; for Frank who didn’t sing so well, but never missed a rehearsal; for Mikey who was as tall as a pro basketball player but would rather play Dungeons and Dragons; for Scott, who was so sure that if we prayed harder we’d both turn straight, but died in a car accident before graduation; for Kerry who was always defensive about his Vespa; for David who played even the impossible accompaniments written by Mr M and made the piano dance; for Tim who sang like an angel and loved David so much it took your breath away when you caught him smiling in David’s direction; for Todd who was diagnosed with the disorder that would become AIDS before it had a name, who made the most morbid jokes about the disease, and never allowed anyone but his partner see him cry each time he saw another funeral notice for someone he knew; for Phil who was kicked out by his parents before graduation, but put himself through college despite them; for the other Todd who moved in with one boyfriend after the next, never able to keep a relationship going for more than a couple of months until he met Jack; for Glen who had problems with labels; for Mike who had problems with middle C… and for so many others who I only knew briefly.

I marched because someone needs to and I could.

Why I marched the first time

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Why did I march in my first Pride Parade?

Because for years I was deathly afraid that people would guess. I was certain that, if people knew I was gay, that everyone would despise me. Why would anyone want to be friends with, let alone love, such a freak?

The earliest moment I remember feeling that fear was when I was four (yes, four!). I didn’t even know there were words for what I was. I had made a linguistic error, referring to two neighbor boys my age as my “boyfriends.” At that point, I thought that the word “girlfriend” meant a friend who was a girl, and “boyfriend” was a friend who was a boy. But my use of that word sent my grandmother into a tizzy, explaining to me that I must never, ever use that word. And as she explained, so emphatically that it scared the bejesus out of me, that boys would occasionally have girlfriends, and then eventually would find the one special girl that they would spend the rest of their life with, but would never, ever have those kinds of special feelings for boys, that was when I first realized that there was something wrong with me.

Later, after getting teased at school for being a “sissy,” or because I “threw like a girl,” I started to form a better picture of what that difference was.

For years, whenever my dad was angry to the point of beating me with something clublike (as opposed to just slapping, punching, and generally knocking around), he hurled the word “c*cksucker” at me repeatedly. That’s the word I remember most when I think about the time he broke my collarbone (I was ten), for instance. I didn’t know what that word meant until I was eleven. But that simply solidified everything I had already gleaned from the notion that every bully, harasser, and teaser at school, the park, or Sunday school had already made clear: boys like me were horrible, unloveable, detestable creatures.

So I did everything I could to hide it.

When puberty hit, a few months before my twelfth birthday, any doubt that I had about why all those words kept being hurled at me was gone. I threw myself into every church activity I could, because I thought if I just worked hard enough for him, surely god would eventually stop ignoring my years of tearful praying to make the feelings go away.

I honestly can’t say which motivated me more to try so many sports in middle school: trying to find a way to appease Dad, or trying to find a way to become a “real boy” to appease the bullies.

By my late teens I had finally realized that words like faggot, pussy, queer, homo, and so forth were hurled at any guy that someone meant to demean. It didn’t always mean that they thought you were literally homosexual, it was just that that was the most dehumanizing, detestable thing they could think to accuse you of being.

But because that was the most horrible thing someone could call you, it just amped the terror of what might happen if anyone realized that I actually was gay.

Even when I stopped believing that I was going to hell for feeling this way, the terror didn’t leave. Because what was really scary was the certainty that everyone I cared for would abandon me. Even when, after applying logic and ethical analysis to the abstract concept of sexual orientation, I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with any two consenting adults choosing to love each other, I still feared that abandonment.

It took a few more years of being closeted, being extremely careful about who I let know that I wasn’t heterosexual. A few more years of telling even those few people that I was bi—it wasn’t that I was lying so much as trying really hard to convince myself. Because somehow being bisexual meant I was only half a freak, or something. A few more years of furtive attempts at having relationships with guys (and trying to do that while constantly fearing someone who wouldn’t understand might see is dreadful enough on its own, let alone all the other problems inherent with the inexperienced trying to figure out relationships)—before I was finally ready to stop hiding.

I marched because I finally realized that the sorts of people who would abandon you weren’t worth having as friends. I finally realized that my worth wasn’t dependent on their approval. I finally realized that if they had a problem with me being gay, that it was their problem, and not mine.

I marched because I was tired of hiding. I marched because I was tired of trying to be invisible. I marched because I was tired of all the people trying to make me invisible or urging me to keep it to myself.

I marched because I was ready grab the world by its metaphorical lapels, give it a shake, and say, “Hey! I’m standing right here!”

Why marriage (for some or all) isn’t enough

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Although the Supreme Court’s decision to declare section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional is a victory for us, it is a partial victory, only. People outside the 12 states and the District of Columbia which currently recognize marriage equality, are still denied the protection that marriage brings.

It’s sad that the five justices who ruled on this didn’t see through to the logical conclusion of one of their statements about the families of same sex couples in their ruling: “The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”

That statement doesn’t just apply to the children in the 12 states that currently recognize marriage equality. It applies to all of the two million children the census bureau recently said are being raised by gay or lesbian parents in throughout all the states.

Even if the extremely unlikely outcome had happened, if the court had ruled on the more fundamental constitutional question, it wouldn’t mean our fight for equality is over. In 29 states there is no law against firing someone simply because he or she is gay, or because an employer thinks he or she is. Laws don’t prevent someone from being a jerk and finding another excuse to get rid of someone they don’t like, but non-discrimination laws give you options in the most egregious cases. They also encourage employers, large and small, to create policies that reduce the occurrence of the less egregious cases.

When it becomes legally unacceptable to openly fire, refuse to promote, or otherwise materially penalize employees simply because they are gay, it starts becoming socially unacceptable to joke or negatively comment about it. And studies have shown in other areas of discrimination, that just turning down the heat of acceptability of open discrimination starts changing private attitudes. Not for everyone, but enough to make life a bit more bearable on a day-to-day basis.

In 33 states there is no law against firing or otherwise penalizing an employee for being transgender. Heck, it’s nearly impossible for a person who is either undergoing gender reassignment therapy or has completed it to use a restroom without people throwing hissy fits and wailing and gnashing their teeth about some of the strangest and most far-fetched “consequences” of that.

Even when the transgender person is a six-year-old child.

And don’t get me started on the people who don’t understand that it is not just a matter of someone deciding they want to dress in the other gender’s clothes. So-called natural physical gender is nowhere near as well-defined and clearcut in some cases as most people think.

While 49 states have some form of anti-bullying laws on the books, seven of those states either explicitly exclude harassment due to sexual orientation and gender identity from the definition of bullying, or severely restrict what schools and school employees can do when the bullying occurs in those areas. Another fifteen states don’t specifically exclude harassment because of sexual orientation, but leave the wording vague enough as to make it unenforceable. And then the extent to which gender identity is or isn’t included varies so widely, I get confused whenever I try to read all the charts about it at places such as Bully Police USA or the Trevor Project.

When the elder George Bush was President, the Surgeon General’s office determined that teen suicides could be reduced by two-thirds if we initiated prevention programs targeted toward GLBT youth that attempted to reduce the stigma and fear of rejection. Many other studies conducted by organizations ranging from the federal department of Health and Human Services, to the association of State Attorneys General have reached similar conclusions.

Even in states considered very liberal, with anti-discrimination laws and the whole works, gay and lesbian employees consistently make less money then their straight colleagues with similar education, experience, and job performance evaluations.

So, even if we had received marriage nationwide, there’s still a journey ahead before we’ll be at full equality.