Gay Purgatory

Mr. Williamson, my high school biology teacher, made his position on homosexuality clear. He posted "Yes on Measure 9" propaganda all over his desk: bumper stickers, fliers, signs, etc. He wore a button on his suspenders, which cuddled the sides of his round belly, everyday. He turned on Rush Limbaugh and let him rattle away his conservative values while we worked away at our labs three days a week.

I sat at a table with four people who I remember very distinctly: three who, although they couldn't yet vote, were against Measure 9 (including myself), and one who was for it. I don't know if my table mates knew my mothers were gay and had been together, by that time, nearly 13 years. I certainly didn't out us. Maybe the mask I'd put on for the world was so affixed that not even I wanted to admit to myself that my parents were gay.

I'm not a unicorn. There are kids all over this world; biological, adopted, fostered, or otherwise; who have parents, aunties, uncles, cousins, or grandparents who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, transgendered, or queer. And they're not going away. And they will remain both out and faceless. The will not be heard from, they may not be asked or they may not speak out. The will need to be protected and they will need to be consoled. They will not understand and they will understand very clearly what the consequences of hate has upon their families.

I was once one of those kids. Now, I am one of those adults who endured a lifetime barrage of anti-gay legislation. There have been many in my time: Measure 8, Measure 36, Measure 13, Prop 8, and so many more I can't recall, and so many more to come.

Today, with the passage of California's Prop. 8, I can't help but consider so many things. To a degree, I am still closeted, blog and all. I am in Idaho and although my peers here are my allies, I am still afraid and careful of how much I am visible. How much can I be visible in the Idaho collegiate system? How can I be an advocate for my students who are in the process of developing their own identity? How can I be an activist in this community and be safe? How safe can I be when my partner is in town for a visit?

I am in gay purgatory, and have always been. Somewhere between being out but not being identifiable. Pass me on the street and you would never know I had gay parents or that I myself, identify as queer. And although I've sat before rooms full of people at city hall, at conferences, in colleges, and community meetings, I am still hesitant to engage people in conversations about gay rights. I know people sit at their desks reading the news about protests in California and roll their eyes? "Well, the people have spoken and you have to accept that." I've heard the apathy from our own community, "Oh well, it's been this way for a long time." I know both of these responses because I've responded the same.

Yes. It's been this way for a long time. Ballot measure comes up, gay rights come into question, and measure passes. We are used to defeat and elated by scraps of separate-but-not-equal rights we get.

Rights? These are the rights I have: I have the right to look over my shoulders in public, before I give my partner a good-bye kiss on the lips. I have the right to consider my vacation destinations because my partner and I could be killed in state parks while camping, in small towns as we leave the bar, on hiking trails, in our own town, and in foreign nations across the globe. I have the right to hide my identity from my landlords for fear that my relationship will have my lose my housing. I have the right to hesitantly hold hands in public. I have the right to determine what actions may cause me and my partner to be gay bashed. I have the right to fear small towns and rural communities. I have the right to be unionized or partnered in counties or states but as soon as I cross the state-line, lose that recognition. I have the right to, god forbid something happens while we are together, be separated from my partner in an emergency room because we are not family.

I am tired. I am sad. And I am fucking angry.

The View From Here.

When I woke up a half hour ago, my eyes were dry from the pumpkin beer I shared with friends last night. They were dry from staying up too late trying to beat one of my peers in a game of Wordtwister on Facebook. My eyes were dry because, although it rained last night, I now live in the Inland Northwest where we've seen a deliciously crisp and dry run of fall days. It's the season of dark, both in the morning and night.

I didn't want to get up. My eyes could not get wet. I blinked. And blinked.

My warm and soft little wiener dog curled up next to my hand and I rubbed her belly. My phone went off and my girlfriend sent a text message from Portland: Wish you were here.
Me too. I replied.

NPR was blaring from my bedside (an unreasonable volume for 6 AM) and Lakshmi Singh was saying People are lined up in Carson, Nevada where the polls have just opened.

It's a big day. I thought to myself.
And in an instant I was overcome with emotion and for just a second my bleeding liberal heart took a few deep pumps in my chest and I wept.

I know better than to put a moment of tears or crying into my writing. It's an action that needs to be written with a delicate hand (or typing since this is 2008). But since this is a blog and well, I don't filter and revise much here, I am going to tell you how it is and how it happens.

It was maybe three tears. Just three.

From 2001 to 2006, I fought the good fight. I was in the streets the day Bush decided to drop bombs on Afghanistan and Iraq with my best friend. We stayed in the streets until night fell. We blocked the freeways to demonstrate our need to stop our dependence on foreign oil. I sat in on anarcho-feminist meetings with friends and other revolutionary minded individuals and we looked at ways to serve disadvantaged populations in Portland. I worked in the Women's Resource Center with a group of women and we served women and men who were sexually assaulted, needed housing, support, education, supplies, food, resources of all kinds. We fought oppression in all forms. We called each other out on our shit. We had discussions about queer identity and the role of feminism in just about anything you can imagine. We educated. I spoke to people about being raised by lesbian mothers and how anti-gay legislation effected our household and my mind. I was out and fighting against Measure 36, the Oregon Constitutional Amendment to Ban Same-sex Marriage. I was anti-Bush and truly wanted Dennis Kucinnich in office ( a long shot) but voted for Kerry anyway. I sat before the television that night and watched as Bush, again, took office.

How could it be? I thought. All this work. All these people. This war. How could this happen?
And then I watched Oregon vote for the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and I couldn't believe my ears, my eyes. My state. My blue state. My liberal enclave on the West coast. Voted no for families like mine. For relationships like mine. For equality.

And I quit a certain kind of fighting that I had been doing for so long. I stopped being involved with politics and started talking to people and having conversations. I lost my faith in democracy. I still don't believe a true democracy exists here and I'm not sure it ever has or will. There is too little we, the American people, know.
So when the hype for this election started some 2 years ago, my enthusiasm was already lost. My will to fight, the get excited, to be involved dissolved with my state's, my nation's, inability to include me and my family (given and chosen) as an equal member or this society. I had it.

I felt a moment of exhilaration when I put my ballot in the mail and sent it back to Oregon.
And this morning, I felt another moment when I realized that no matter who is elected today, as cliche and repetitious as this is, history will be made.
And this is when my eyes got wet.
Provided that Obama (likely) takes office, we will have breached the rein of white-supremacy in our highest office. And if Obama takes office I believe I will feel a collective sigh come like a wave across the oceans, from the furthest reaches of the globe. To me, having Obama elected is asking the world to give Americans another chance. We don't want to be stereotyped as gluttonous consumers of the world resources, disregarding of our pacts with allies, our-way-or-the-highway war mongers.

We want a chance to show you another side of the American people.

And I get to be a part of it. My vote (hopefully) counts. That bottle of Champagne in my fridge might finally be opened because there may be a real reason to crack it. I might go dance in the streets of Moscow in the company of my friends and professor and students here in Idaho. I may...

But because I've been excited before, because I had hope and dreams, because I fought with all my intellectual strength and stood on my feet through the night and stood up against the police blockades and sat in meetings and protest Bush and worked hard for my community and STILL I was denied and STILL I watched my community both small and wide, denied. Still there is a chance I will, we will, be denied again.

And so, I put on my work clothes. I sit at my kitchen table with my laptop. I start writing my paper that is due at noon and I look out the window and see that although the world could change, the view may be the same.

Or the view could change and the world will never be the same.