REVELATIONS
We were shocked to learn that someone we’ve been in relatively close contact with over the last couple of years has a serious problem with the fact that we are gay. It’s not someone we actively sought to have in our life but rather an unavoidable package deal in which we had to deal with him fairly regularly due to his closeness to someone we did choose to have in our life. We suppose that in view of his issues, he should be commended for behaving civilly all this time, but we remain perplexed — not to mention offended — about this insulting attitude. Have we ever conducted ourself with anything but complete social decorum around this guy? No. Have we ever behaved inappropriately at any time? No. But perhaps it’s our own fault for blithely going through life thinking that we would be judged on our merits rather than some preconceived idea based on sexual orientation. One of our new all-time favorite movies is called Kinky Boots. Forget the title; it doesn’t give any clue to the real message of this utterly charming movie, which asks the viewer to “Change your mind about someone.” It has been our experience throughout life that we were usually able to change someone’s mind about us through repeated interactions that displayed our knowledge, intelligence, and personality in a respectful, respectable, empathetic, and supportive manner. Again and again, we’ve overcome negative attitudes on a personal basis: We like to think of it as changing minds one at a time. A sort of Johnny Appleseed of good intentions, if you will. But not in many years have we come up against something like this in which the ramifications would directly affect our life. Silly and hurtful, like all prejudice, it was easy to forget such ridiculousness existed until it smacked us in the face. It always seems like it boils down to choices and the notion that being gay is a choice. Sorry, we had no choice in this matter. But of the choices we did have, we chose to forgive him for being a Republican, but we could not forgive him for being stupid.
This article appears in July 27 • 2007.