What we don’t know or haven’t experienced often challenges us, knocking us off our rockers a bit; it might even scare us. We tend to avoid what scares us, which — when we’re children — might be new kinds of food, or an abandoned building down the street. We each have a “normal” setting, and unless we do the work of trying new things, meeting new people and traveling the world, our understanding of normal might be quite small, or narrow.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but even after two years in college — in a theater program, no less — I still thought that the self-identified “gay” men and women around me were just going through a phase, were seeking attention or notoriety, and that eventually they’d straighten out, pun intended. I thought this because I believed, or rather I assumed that, y’know, everyone was like me and my friends, like my parents and their friends, and the vast majority of the people I knew. Nope. Not everyone.
And then, during our sophomore year of college at different schools, my best friend from childhood came out to me. I always knew there was something off about him dating whatshername in high school! So, I was right! I love being right (who doesn’t), and I loved this man, my friend; the idea that he was less than, or not as dear to me from one moment to the next because he was gay never even occurred to me. Why would it?
Exposure to those who were not entirely like me expanded what I was taught as a child: that in this country everyone was equal, guaranteed by law, even if a perfect equality under the law eluded us (it still does). My parents had also stressed that while we might be luckier than some of our neighbors, we were not better than anyone, and no one was better than us, or anyone else. Decency and fairness were core American values, and as a child, fairness — even if I witnessed instances of unfairness daily — struck a deep chord.
During the years after college, I learned how my best friend and many of my gay or lesbian peers had been shunned, abandoned or even beaten by family members, all for simply being who they were; this was shocking to me, clearly wrong, and frankly stupid. Why would anyone think you could shame or beat “the gay” out of another person? Could you beat “the straight” out of Tom Brady? Or that Mormon ballerina broad? Plus, hitting or beating anyone, any other person, was and is wrong, especially one’s own child.
The AIDs pandemic, years of cruelty and indifference to the suffering of other humans, also solidified what for me has always been about decency and fairness. Somebody’s gay? So what? Somebody’s trans? So what? I met my first trans woman when I was 25; she cut my hair for a decade that included her transition. Unless you’re talking about someone I’m dating, I don’t care what’s in their pantaloons, or how they’re shacking up. As to what bathroom anyone uses? It’s none of my business! I’m also constantly astonished by how many varieties of why, when, how, in what form and where other human beings pursue happiness.
The current Supreme Court (we’ll know later this month), in potentially allowing parents to opt out of school lessons that occasionally include books about same sex couples, gender queer and trans Americans, is further opening the door to unfairness and more cruelty, as well as to authoritarianism. Same-sex couples, gender queer and trans humans exist; denying that is denying reality, and denying reality is directly out of the authoritarian playbook. George Orwell, 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The You-Know-Who administration has withdrawn $800 million in grants funding studies into various health-related outcomes and issues in gay, lesbian and queer communities, constituting more punishment for our fellow Americans who have done nothing wrong other than exist within a minority population in a time when the GOP has demonized those specific minorities in order to consolidate power.
My high school bestie died of AIDs in 1993. He has been gone longer than he was alive. The ever-present pain of losing him, and other friends, so early in our lives has made me a fierce advocate for those whom others would cheerfully crucify on the mistaken belief that they — their party, their religion, their belief system, color, sexuality, gender — represent “better” humans, or “superior” Americans. Gay and trans and all kinds of different people exist; trans humans are the teeny, tiniest slice of us; demonizing them, or any other minority, is wrong.
Decency and fairness need to make a comeback as bedrock American principles, and values.