SPEECH, NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY RALLY: OCTOBER 9, 2003

    I am proud to talk with you here again this year  on National Coming Out Day  as an openly gay member  of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire faculty  and as faculty advisor  for the UWEC  Lesbian- Gay- Bisexual-Transgender- Straight Association.  I want to share a few thoughts with you   beginning with a story from my past.


    One day very early  in the history of the Lesbian and Gay Graduate Collective at Syracuse University,  now approximately fifteen years ago,  a comrade proposed that we each share our "coming out" stories.   We agreed.   As people started to recount their tales  of the seemingly always singular point in time in which they "came out"  and from which point they finally felt fully "free"  to be "who they were"  I experienced a steadily increasing sense of unease about what was happening.   When my turn came,  I indicated that I would not tell "my coming out story"  because I rejected the way in which we were making sense of this issue.  I proposed we should recognize that "coming out" is a process,  not an instant or event,  and one that continues,  of necessity,  throughout our lives.   What's more,  I contended,  for all of its liberating potential,  coming out is by no means,  in and of itself,  the solution to our oppression,  contrary to what my comrades' stories tended to suggest.   In fact,  I declared,  the necessity to come out– and to keep doing so,  again and again– remains a mark of our oppression,  as,  after all,  straight people almost never need to "come out"  as straight,  yet we,  in contrast,  continually have to identify,  explain,  and justify our existence.   Beyond this,  I added,  to come out only begins to challenge this oppression,  as we need to proceed beyond merely coming out  to challenge heterosexist and homophobic understandings  of what it means to identify one's self as gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  or transgender.   After all,  when we do “come out,”  when we do declare that we are gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  or transgender,  how are those to whom we are coming out  understanding what we mean?    How do we know  that they are not using the occasion of this revelation  to make sense of us  according to reductively stereotypical,  and even trivializingly insulting notions  of what it means to be gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  or transgender?   In short,  when it was my turn to speak at this meeting  I urged my comrades  that we ask ourselves  as what,  precisely,  are we coming out,  and,  even more important than this,  for what  are we coming out when we do come out?


    At the same time  as I voiced my objection to what we had been doing  up to that point in our meeting,  my comrades well knew I by no means supported staying in,  or returning to,  the closet.   I was,  and long had been,  one of the most widely visibly "out" people in our group.   My point was,  rather,  that we should settle  neither for an overly simplistic understanding  of what it means to "come out"  nor for a romantic idealization  of what the sheer act of "coming out"  alone can achieve.   An overemphasis upon coming out  as the pivotal strategy,  as the end-all and be-all  of what we do to combat heterosexism and homophobia,  can result in two dangerous tendencies for glbt politics:  1.  it can suggest a false homogeneity  among widely different ways of living  as gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  and transgender  (including by implying that there is one "best" –fully "out" –way to do this),  and 2.  it can cause some activists  to focus their activism  upon blaming closeted glbt people  for their supposed "immoral" "cowardice"  rather than upon targeting the larger social forces,  conditions,  and interests  that still to this day  make it often extremely difficult  to live as a fully openly gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  or transgender person.    


    I urge us likewise to be wary  about equating popular TV representations  such as we find in Will and Grace,  Queer as Folk,  Boy Meets Boy,  and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy  with genuine liberation  for all  gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  and transgender people.   Not only do these shows represent  the lives of only a small,  and, for the most part,  highly privileged sector of the glbt population in the United States today,  but also  they tend to do so  in ways that are quite often  at best shallow  and one-dimensional  and at worst patronizing and demeaning.   We should not be satisfied  when the most prominent popular representations of us today  provide the virtual equivalent  of the minstrel shows  that Blacks put on  in the days prior to the Black Civil Rights Movement  to entertain ignorant and complacent White folks.   And we should remember  that many of those minstrel performers  were Whites in “blackface”;  we should be wary  of endorsing the notion  that our queerity amounts only to a superficial “queerface”  and that this queerface  can be put on and taken off  with the same ease  as we put on and take off the clothes we wear each day.


    What’s more,  even in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision  to abolish all laws against so-called “homosexual sodomy”  this part summer,  along with the arrival of gay marriage  in Canada,  we still face many difficult struggles ahead  before we achieve full equality.   To begin,  we need to overcome the growing backlash directed against us  that currently assumes its most prominent form  in what I call  not “defense of marriage”  but rather anti-marriage and anti-family legislation.   But this is not all.   Even if the law declares us to be equal,  the law often only touches upon small sections  of our much larger social existence,  leaving us still subject  to the prospect of considerable ongoing discrimination,  prejudice,  and even violent abuse   throughout areas of our lives where the law does not directly apply.   And the law also needs to be enforced;  too many social movements in American history  have failed to recognize the need to remain mobilized,  to keep up the pressure,  in order to make sure that our governments –local,  state,  and federal– enforce the laws they have passed  in response to our demands.   Deeds matter more than words;  it is much easier for governments to pay lip-service  to glbt equality,  and even to acknowledge this in writing,  than it is to act to make sure  it is realized in practice.    In fact,  throughout the U.S. today,  and certainly across the globe,  real anti-glbt prejudice and discrimination,  as well as violent abuse,  continues often significantly unabated,  despite  recent movements toward greater visibility of glbt people  and more prominent public discussion of glbt issues  in the mainstream  media.   Even when subtler  and more indirect  than was common  in the not-too-distant past,  anti-glbt discrimination and prejudice  that prevents us from leading fully equal lives  still subjects us to real oppression.   


    I also maintain one additional concern I want to share with you today.   As we strive for greater tolerance and acceptance,  let’s not lose touch with our history as glbt people  and with the unique ways we have lived our lives together  within our glbt communities and cultures.   Let’s not lose our distinct identities as gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  and transgender people.   Throughout our history not only have we,  as glbt people,  struggled to fight back against oppression  and to secure our liberation,  but also we have created rich,  complex,  and dynamic modes of relating,  as well as codes of ethics and systems of value,  for which we should be proud.   At our best,  we have forged alternative communities and cultures  that are more egalitarian  and libertarian,  as well as more respectful and tolerant of genuine diversity,  and more celebratory of social and cultural  as well as sexual and gender freedom,  than much of the “straight” “mainstream.”   Let’s not de-gay,  de-lesbian,  de-bisexual,  or de-transgender ourselves  as we seek equality;  to do so would mean re-closeting ourselves  by surrendering our essential identities  in order to be accepted as “virtual straights.”   I firmly believe that we can,  and we must,  be equal  as ourselves.   Our gayness,  our lesbianism,  our bisexuality,  and our transgenderism  represent the greatest gifts we can give,  as gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  and transgender people,   to everyone with whom we interact  and upon whom our lives exert impact.


    Nonetheless,  I do strongly believe  that the individual act of coming out  can prove not only personally enabling  but also socially and politically inspiring.   From the moment I first accepted the fact that I was gay  I also accepted the responsibility to strive to be "out"  as far and as wide,  in public,  as possible,  in order to fight the widespread conviction  that being gay  is either,  on the one hand,  something trivial and inconsequential,  or,  on the other hand,  something shameful and embarrassing.   I refused to bear the burden of having to hide,  and of struggling to keep a strict division  between private and public,  because I recognized how painful such an existence  so often has been and can be  for so many.   I was proud of whom I was,  as a man who loved other men,  and who refused to conform to the dictates of heteronormative standards  of "proper masculinity."   I was proud of my friends,  and my comrades,  brave and beautiful people  who struggled to live and love  in similar opposition  to narrow and repressive definitions  of "correct" gender identity and sexual behavior.   I felt that,  if I could stand up,  and stand forth,  as one who was ready,  without apology,  to identify himself as gay,  even in the face of considerable hostility,  that it might prove helpful to at least a few of those  who had to interact with me  as an openly, and proudly, gay person.  


    So do come out, keep coming out, and keep fighting to exercise control over how your coming out will be made sense of by the others to whom you come out.   And come out so that you can proudly and confidently take up your place in the continuously ongoing struggle for human freedom and equality, uniting your efforts with those of all your gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender forbears who have enabled us to be as out as far and as wide as we are today.   Happy National Coming Out Day to all of you , including all of our friends and allies  who are here joining us  in supporting us  and celebrating who we are  as gay,  lesbian,  bisexual,  and transgender members  of this university community.