Sans Fig Leaf
w
"Can you see me?"
22 June, 2006
Several years ago, when I was still singing with the Lesbian & Gay Chorus, I was chatting in the mailroom at work with a co-worker who had attended our most recent concert. She had just asked about our group's relationship with the Men's Chorus. While I was answering her, another co-worker, we'll call him Bruce, was just checking his mail but suddenly interrupted and asked, "You mean the Seattle Men's Chorus is a gay group?"
We both affirmed that it was.
He went a little pale, then literally ran out of the room. About a month later I found out why. But to explain it, I'll have to tell another story.
Jim and David were two gay men who met and fell in love. They had moved into their first apartment together a few months after they started dating. A few years later they had moved, together, to a larger apartment. They both considered themselves out and open about their sexuality. They had invited family members to dinner at their home many times. Eventually, they bought a condominium together, and shortly after moving in, they invited several of David's relatives over for dinner.
After the relatives had left, while Jim and David were cleaning up, Jim pointed out that David's father had referred to Jim as David's roommate on several occasions during the evening. David suggested that his parents, being older, were uncomfortable with the term 'lovers' or 'boyfriends.'
Jim insisted that it was worse than that. "I overheard your brother and mom talking out on the patio, and they were very confused as to why you had asked your roommate to move with you yet again. They don't know we're a couple."
David was skeptical, but over the next few weeks in careful conversations with his relatives, he realized that it was true. Then, David's perverse sense of humor kicked in, and rather than simply tell them, he bought all of them tickets to the upcoming Christmas concert of the Seattle Men's Chorus, of which he was a singing member at the time.
They made it a big family event, meeting for dinner before the show, then Jim sat with David's family through the concert. The printed program made mention of the group's affiliation with the gay community. There was at least one point during the concert where an announcer read the line about how the members of the chorus are proud to be out gay men. Surely the family picked up on it, right?
During conversations afterward, it became clear than none of David's family had clued in. By this point Jim wanted to just come out and tell them, but David's stubborn streak had kicked in. He found more excuses to obliquely bring it up. He invited his sister and husband to a gay-themed play at a community theatre. They thought the play was funny, but odd.
He tried to get the family to the chorus' Gay Pride concert, but June proved to be a bad month for every one. But they all wanted to see the Christmas show again. "We had such a good time!" So, for the next three or four years, David's relatives attended the Christmas concerts with Jim--remaining blissfully oblivious. We don't know how long it would have taken the family to figure it out, if David's brother, Bruce, hadn't overheard me and another co-worker talking about the chorus.
People have an amazing ability to ignore something that's right in front of them.
Every time I discover that a co-worker or someone else I interact with on a regular basis thinks that Michael is just a friend of mine, or that one of our female friends is my wife, I am flabbergasted. I have to remind myself each time that no matter how out I think I am, there are people I know who are oblivious.
I tell this story, particularly at this time of year, because I grow tired of listening to people, both within and outside of the community, asking, "Why do we have to have pride events? Isn't it enough to just be ourselves?"
Studies have shown, again and again, that the people most likely to oppose equal legal rights for gay people are those who don't think they know any gay people. The people who are most likely to support gay rights are those who say they count one or more gay people among their friends or family.
And don't kid yourself that we're treated equally under the law. I can point you to lists of well over a thousand legal rights and protections that we are absolutely barred from under the U.S. federal system, alone. Please don't buy the argument that gay rights laws aren't needed because "most gays can afford lawyers and can sue." If the law doesn't say we can't be discriminated against, we cannot sue.
That's just the legal side of things. There's more to it than that. My husband is a wonderful man--loving, smart, helpful, funny, and hard-working. I'm proud to be in a relationship with him, just as my grandfathers were proud to be with their wives, and my grandmothers proud of their husbands, for instance. Just as one former co-worker who had plastered the wall above his desk with scores of photos of his five or six kids and his wife was proud of his family.
The same coworker who complained that one small, tasteful photo of my husband tucked discreetly between my phone and monitor (facing me, so visitors in my office just saw the back of a picture frame) was rude and tacky because it was "like shoving his sexuality in your face."
And, yes, the ultimate irony. He was the same co-worker--Bruce--whose brother had been trying to come out to him by inviting him to the men's chorus concerts.
When Bruce learned that the men's chorus was a gay group, he went back to his office and called his brother. Apparently they had a very interesting discussion. About a month later Bruce stopped by my office to explain (briefly) why he had run out of the mail room. I later got enough details from Jim and David to piece the rest of the tale together.
It was some time after that incident, after Bruce had left to work at another company, when I learned that he had been the person who had complained about the photo on my desk. I'm actually glad I didn't know before then, because I don't know if our conversation about his brother would have been as cordial if I had known.
There is a part of me that wonders at the sheer magnitude of his selective observance. He overlooked all the evidence of his brother's relationship for years, but one chance glimpse of a photo on my desk sent him into fits?
The important thing is that when the truth finally got his attention, he accepted it and welcomed his brother's boyfriend into the family. That's the kind of ending we hope everyone's story has. But before we can be welcomed or accepted--before we can be even tolerated--we have to be seen.
To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unwanted truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.
--Eric Hoffer
.