Personal Testimony
Out: Better Late Than Never
How Justice Clarence Thomas spurred me to be myself after more than four decades in the closet
When California’s first openly gay elected official was assassinated in San Francisco, I was a high school senior in the next county North. When people said, “Harvey Milk died because he was a gay man,” I believed it. It’s a dubious claim, but Milk’s bloody demise seemed a plausible culmination to daily bullying I witnessed on playgrounds. Taunts of “faggot” confronted any hint or tolerance of same-sex affection and still ring in my ears. I escaped persecution, having learned years earlier to conceal my feelings for other boys.
I would have chosen a “straight lifestyle” if I could!
Fear and misinformation about same-sex attraction helped keep me from being myself.
- When I was eleven, the American Psychiatric Association still considered same-sex attraction a mental illness.
- I still hear that being gay is a choice. I would have chosen a “straight lifestyle” if I could!¹
I spent my celibate youth hoping I would develop a latent attraction to women. In my middle years, acquaintances came out as gay, shattering their marriages and long-term relationships. I had to admit that acting straight would shatter me, too, if I insisted on it. But even after giving up hope of being bisexual, I spent more decades silent, closeted, and celibate. That seemed easier than explaining myself after a lifetime of personal don’t ask, don’t tell.
Meanwhile, society changed. Gays came out en masse. In the sociological wink of an eye, most Americans discovered that people they trusted, relied on, admired, and loved, are not straight. They learned that sexual orientation varies among us and is no more contagious, threatening, chosen, or mutable than are height, handedness, and skin color. Gays and their allies insisted on equal rights and achieved the once unthinkable right to same-sex marriage.
I shamefully sat out that historic struggle. I never disparaged gay people or lied about my sexual orientation like some closeted politicians did. But it is as true for me as for former Representative Aaron Schock that “I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary, brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not.”
I stood silently by while my allies fought and won my battles, but they still need me to secure their victory!
70% of Americans (including a majority of Republicans) now support same-sex marriage, but a sizable and powerful minority retain their homophobia. They (at least those who are not cynical political manipulators) feel threatened by societal change. They interpret their religious or moral teachings to be incompatible with the practice, or even tolerance, of sexual behavior they consider “deviant.” Perhaps they fear their own sexuality. Whatever their motivations, those who want to shut us back in our closets (or worse) have launched a potent backlash against recent hard-won civil rights victories.
- Television commentators with millions of viewers ludicrously complain that white people are “being marginalized on a daily basis based on our gender, our sexuality, and the color of our skin.” To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.
- Lawmakers in my state and others stigmatize vulnerable transgender youth by attempting to legislate what sports teams they can join. As if they care about women’s athletics.
- Just as “the Klan openly stated their reason for existing was to protect white women from black men,” a hysterical fringe foments fears that “groomers” are coming for our children. I am not a pedophile. I cannot “convert” children to be gay, nor would I try.
I could go on. But I reached my breaking point when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas opined that marriage equality should be “corrected” (overturned) in the same manner that Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections just were. Both of these freedoms — and many more — derive from the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thomas threatens them all, writing that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” He did not advocate reconsidering Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that legalized his own interracial marriage on the same grounds. I wish I could put Thomas on the witness stand to ask: “Does the Constitution protect interracial marriage? If so, why does it protect your right to marry whom you love, but not mine?”
When my parents took me and my brother to see our nation’s capitol, we sat in the Senate gallery to witness part of Thomas’ confirmation hearings. How incredulous my younger self would be, if I could tell him that Thomas would spur me to out myself thirty years hence!
Now I own my half-century of cowardice. I stood silently by while my allies fought and won my battles, but they still need me to secure their victory! Our truth matters. Telling who we are is what brought us this far. It is how we will secure the acceptance and legal protections we have gained. Millions more await the “right time” to tell our truth. In my experience, the right time for that never comes. Now will have to do. Now is always the best time!
Coda
In case my testimony sounds sadly pathetic, please spare me your pity. The angst and deprivation I’ve suffered from homophobia is real, but trivial in the context of my privileged and joyous life. Homophobia and heteronormativity cause immense harm, and must be resisted, but my advantages largely immunized me from the most serious consequences of discrimination. I now relinquish the privileges afforded straight people (and good riddance!), but I uneasily retain the unfair advantages of being “white,” male, and middle class. More importantly, I enjoyed excellent parenting and the love and support of an awesome family, powerful lifelong friendships, connected community, and communion with the natural world. As a result, I suffered none of the self-loathing and little of the depression and anxiety that afflict so many gays. Therefore, I do not deserve your sympathy. But if you feel moved to do so, and you have a Republican Senator, you can urge them to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act to support equality for all, including Clarence Thomas and his wife.
Update
On December 15, 2022 the Respect for Marriage Act became Public Law No. 117–228. My Senators were among twelve Republicans who voted for it. 👍😁🙏❤
The backlash against equality rages on (thirty six other Republican Senators voted against the act), but democracy and justice prevailed in this battle. 🏳🌈
¹(Edit, 2024–03:) “Born this way” accurately captures my experience of knowing from childhood that I was different, and finding that there was nothing I could do to make those feelings go away. But I acknowledge and appreciate that for some, gender identity and sexual orientation both may be less binary and/or more fluid. Just because someone felt at home in a cishet box at one stage of their life, or could live there even though they are also attracted to others of the same gender, does not mean it’s OK to put a lock on that box and keep them there always. In other words, we should all be free to marry a person of any gender, period (however we were born).
