The Hidden, Normal Lives of Gays and Lesbians (Named or otherwise)

It's still a massive scary struggle for many stuck in small towns,
tight-knit families, religious groups, and majorly homophobic
jobs or positions.

Public advancement of rights and attitudes doesn't reflect the
nature of mindsets in cloistered, isolated sub-groups where
little individuality or visibility flourishes.

In these inculcated units of repression and assimilation,
there is still much private suffering. Those who live in a daily grind
without support, those who are questioning and deliberating while
too afraid to seek out like people, and those who are fighting
against their nature and desire,  are all likely to receive an even
higher dose of venom and rhetoric, if not abuse.

The unstable, hateful forces that oppose us (and anyone who is
different) take advantage of the quiet, the unsure, the struggling,
and the conflicted.

Truth is that no matter how visible many of us are nor how much
public strides are made, the vast majority of us will always be
unspoken, unidentified, private, invisible...living quietly and
unannounced. Unassuming. Wanting sexuality to be only a simple
and minor aspect of the whole. (Or wanting to ignore it all together.)

They are, and have been, and will always be part of us.

They are no less important, nor any less one of us, than the most vocal
activist. And in all our zeal to be confrontational and visible, we cannot
overlook that they will bear the brunt of the ignorant in  retaliation
against us.

They cannot be forgotten.

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Unnecessary Torture: We Hold The Key

I have seen so many people struggling with self-acceptance
over the years. The idea of living a complete life while wholly
accepting their sexuality and identity is a foreign concept to
many folks.


It is foolish to think that everyone will become an activist, or
be open about themselves across the world. Too many places
hold tightly to old ways and backwards, repressive notions.


And I don't think most activists do have that idea in their
head; a world where every LGBT person is out for the world
to see. I can't make the oppressiveness and hate change,
but I can try to help people choose to be free and comfy in
their own shoes, whatever their level of 'out-ness' may be.

To be comfortable in their own skins and love themselves.

In small towns, in religious families, in small countries, many
will never know the freedom of living their life completely for
themselves. Being a half-hearted part of a broken whole is
more significant to them than being a complete individual.
It takes time to break from the pack and live for self.


When I watched the movie J. Edgar this weekend, it broke my heart.


I was reminded of all the hurting people I've known over the
years who lived half a life, condemning themselves and turning
away from their feelings, in pointless attempts to please and
appease other people.

Leonardo DiCaprio's performance (pinpointing the truths of
Mr. Black's brilliant script) was phenomenal with the redirected
energies, culminating as they always seem to do, in self-destructive
behavior and extending the repressive hate to others.

There are all kinds of lives, all levels of self-acceptance, every
kind of gay person.


But self-love cannot ever be wrong, no matter how much it
scares other people....(most of whom, quite evidently it would
seem, are scared and angry from not loving themselves.)


Second class citizenship is not acceptable, even if many of us
have been shamed and trained to believe otherwise.

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Tragedy

"I feel sorry for him. I think it's really sad.

What a tragic character. He's tragic.

People like Ted Haggard - that's tragic.

Or Mark Foley. These are living tragedies.

They're people who want to be part of a

society that does not want them, and so

they're willing to be secretive about their

sexuality and hide who they are, and really

who they are is not bad, it's not criminal at all.

But it drives them to sort of criminalizing acts.

It's really sad."

- Margaret Cho on disgraced Senator Larry Craig.

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