I'll be the first to admit that I have had an extremely virtual life the past few years. My physical world is very small, and a great deal of what I do and learn and play with and think about lives in a 13" screen. And yes, I also admit that with that has come some particularly strong acculturation into the LGBT community. That doesn't seem to be particularly abnormal, though. It seems overwhelmingly normal for LGBT kids to find most of their support and community regarding gender and orientation online. But that's for another post. My point is that, in the past few weeks that I have been mostly without Internet, I have begun to understand much more fully than I have in several years that most people really are straight. I know that's probably a strange realization to have, but when you live in a tiny community where you know almost everyone around you, and only a few of those people are in relationships anyways, it's easy to forget what it means to be a minority. It's not as though the fact was ever less apparent, but one forgets the magnitude of the majority, and how absolutely it controls society. That straight orientations are a given, that people don't normally make a big deal out of straight relationships or straight "culture" or whatever. Most of the time, heterosexuality is an unnoticed part of the world and its operations.
And so in that frame of mind, I began to wonder to myself why it is that LGBT people take pride in their orientation. Is it just a fighter instinct that makes them want to survive the oppression of the majority? Why do I, for example, care at all that I'm bi? I have a wonderful boyfriend that I wouldn't trade for anyone, and I know all too well that I am certainly female. I don't really relate to a lot of the stereotypical "gay culture." I have no great desire to strip down and paint my body rainbow and run around in the streets. Why do I still relate to the concept of "pride"?
A couple days ago, we were mooching around in a little curio shop at an airport here in South Africa. The Van Baaks came with us this year, and we were there to drop them off. While we were there, I saw a little stand with all kinds of things LGBT-related: little flags and keychains and bookmarks and that sort. Without even wondering why, I snatched up one of the keychains and bought it quickly, before the family could notice. It's shaped like Africa and has the SA gay flag inside. A day or two, we were at home, and I was missing Nick. Again, without thinking, I took out the keychain and sat there staring at it for awhile. Only after I'd been staring at it for a minute or two did it occur to me to wonder why I'd connected a Pride flag with my straight boyfriend.
It is incredibly difficult for me to explain well how my queer orientation influences my "straight" relationship to people that don't already know what I'm talking about. The only way I can think to do it is that I only know how to love one way, and that way is bi. Being "bi" doesn't just mean that I'm attracted to both sexes/genders. It's a whole different way of experiencing gender and sexuality in a relationship. To me, Pride is a celebration of my ability to love. Gay rights is an attempt to make the world a place where everyone is able to love as freely as I've been blessed to, almost as if by chance. The LGBT community was the first place I felt like people actually understood the way I operate, not only romantically and sexually, but socially, in a much broader way.
So when I celebrate my part in the LGBT community, it is not at all to wallow in past heartbreaks or make public my "sexual journey." It's to celebrate the way God has made me to function in relationships of all sorts; how I see society; how I relate to sex and gender; how I experience love and life. When I celebrate my part in the LGBT community, I also celebrate my "heterosexual" relationship with Nick. When people are unaccepting of the LGBT community, I experience that (even if it's not intended as such) as an unwillingness to accept the way I relate to the world and to my boyfriend, and as an attempt to fit my love into their pre-formed, restrictive societal boxes. When these people smile upon my relationship while still saying that LGBT relationships aren't optimal or aren't "in God's plan" or aren't natural or right or good, I cannot help but see them as deluded about what they're actually celebrating. It was the same when people were celebrating my baptism in 2007: the event itself meant nothing for me spiritually, but for the people around me, it meant that I was now officially "saved," so I got lots of positive attention. I would rather have had the baptism ignored by everyone that congratulated me only because they believed I'd be damned if I didn't perform the action. Likewise, I hesitate to accept others' positive recognition of my relationship if they don't even accept other relationships like mine that just happen to be gendered differently. Much of the time I just drop the worry because celebrations of love are celebrations of love, regardless of what restrictions are assumed from the outside, and it's cruel to dismiss people's approval or whatever just because they don't think the same way you do. I get that no one can understand another person fully, and it's not an unfounded assumption to make that I'm straight if I'm in a relationship with a man. But on my side of the interaction, there is always a hesitation. There's always a barrier. There's always that moment where I wonder if we're even thinking of the same thing. There's that yearning for freedom that shouldn't exist, especially among Christians and in families.
A couple days ago, I came across this website. I wasn't looking for it or researching or anything - DaveyWavey had reposted that viral picture that was voted #1 of 21 pictures that "will restore your faith in humanity," and I checked out The Marin Foundation, with which it's associated. I wish so much that I had found that site three or four weeks prior, and that I had read Marin's book for my project. (One of my interviewees actually recommended it to me during my project, so I'm taking my cue to read it.) The Marin Foundation is exactly what my whole project was about. I'm very excited about it. Please check it out. If you read my blog, it is sure to make you very happy.
Anyways, on this website, I found a link to Marin's blog, and on Marin's blog was this post, by Brent Bailey. It hit right at the crux of all the above processing I've been working through for a week or so. Because it's hard to quantify why it's important to be out, why it's important to care about someone's orientation, why it's interesting and good and worthwhile to think about, I never tried to put it in words for the first year and a half or so I was out. Brent puts it beautifully, though. Consider this excerpt:
Life is different outside of the closet: There’s less self-obsession and less concern for managing others’ perceptions. My language is less calculated and more straightforward, and my interactions with others feel easy and informal rather than rigid and contrived. I waste no more hours trying to keep track of who knows and who doesn’t know, and my relationships are no longer stratified into measurable levels of varying trust. ... It’s only since I’ve been out that I’ve been able to understand how essential is honesty—even when it makes others uncomfortable or challenges cultural norms—to my spiritual health. Being honest about that area of my life has profoundly shaped my perceptions of what it means to pursue God in community with others authentically and meaningfully in every area of my life. ... [We try to] present a convincing facade of what we think we’re supposed to be or what we wish we could be or what the other wants us to be. Beyond the hubris of thinking we could hide ourselves, we’ve often convinced ourselves we’re supposed to, that there’s some virtue in sanctimonious pretense or misguided self-loathing in our lives of worship. This is the foolishness that allowed me to deny my orientation internally for so much of my life as I compensated in other areas to try and achieve what I imagined I was supposed to be.
Hiding in the closet is different from other types of secrecy (for example, keeping it secret who your "crush" is) because it is a fundamental enough part of a person's being that it begins to affect the breadth of their social interactions. It's been argued that perhaps the solution isn't to push for acceptance, but instead to keep orientation from being such a monumental means of self-definition. Even in Brent's post, he says that he yearns for the day when his orientation will be the "least interesting thing about him." I am not in that camp. I value the fact of my orientation the same way I value my culture and nationality(ies): it is something that God has worked through to show me how amazing he is. Why would I discredit the importance of love and my way of loving if it's played such a huge role in my faith journey for nearly two years? I'm proud of the adversities I've overcome in being and becoming part of the LGBT community. I'm proud of the way I've been designed, I'm proud of the things God's written into my personality to make me unique. I'm proud of all the ways God has worked in my life, I'm proud of all he has done and is doing to show me himself through my dreams and thoughts and struggles. Why would I waste an opportunity to celebrate?
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