Big Gay Closet

There’s a school of thought that it’s best for everyone to come out in every part of their lives since that’s the only way things will advance, although I’ve noticed that proponents of that tend to have jobs where being queer is an asset (like working in LGBT media). I remember going to a certain straight person’s lecture and being told that everyone should come out, and if they lose their job, well, don’t worry, you didn’t want that job anyway. She was married to an oil exec and never worked a day in her life.

via Gay Resumes Get Fewer Calls | The Bilerico Project.

Fascinating piece on a study that shows resumes with obviously LGBT affiliations get called 40% less than those without. And commentary on what it means to be out and why that’s a decision we need to make for ourselves.

I’m out at work (as are many people I work with) and it’s a real privilege to be able to be.

Glee star Jane Lynch said that she was unsure when, if ever, gay actors would land romantic leading roles because of the profit imperative in the film industry.

Lynch expressed her doubts in an interview with AfterElton.com that was picked up by outlets including The Hollywood Reporter.

“I don’t know when or if that will ever happen,” said the lesbian actress, according to THR. “…This is a business of projection and desiring people from afar … so there has got to be some truth to it, in terms of, ‘I could see myself with that person.’ Because the leading man and lady are the person we want them to fall in love with, and most of the audience is straight. So for right now, we can only use straight actors.”

Jane Lynch Doubts Lead Roles for Gay Actors | News | The Advocate.

This is kind of weird. I mean, all Jane Lynch has to do is look across the set at two of her openly gay co-stars who are regularly stalked (and one was once held hostage in an elevator by young women) to see that people will still become infatuated with an actor who is not perceived as available to them.

Maybe that’s all new. Bring on the future, and let’s stop letting the stupid past ruin everything.

We’ve heard a lot of sports coming out stories. Very few of these have been from people who are still active in their sports. Others have waited until retirement to get things off their chest.

Eighteen years ago, professional footballer, Justin Fashanu, came out in an interview with The Sun. His career and personal life suffered after the revelation. In 1998 he took his own life following an accusation of sexual assault.

Pink News has a feature on homophobia in football including Justin Fashanu’s story.

Disowned by his brother and England player John, increasingly alienated from football and embroiled in a sex-assault scandal in America, Justin hung himself in 1998. “I do not want to give any more embarrassment to my friends and family,” the suicide note read. Not a single British professional footballer has publicly come out since.

Read the rest at  Pink News.

Reverend Tom Brock is the Associate Pastor at Hope Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis. He is known for his denunciations of homosexuality and GLBT rights on his daily KKMS AM 980 radio program, The Pastor’s Study. His video series lambastes with outrage the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) for progressive attitudes toward women’s reproductive rights, racial equality, ecological stewardship—and, worst of all in his view, openly gay or lesbian pastors having the right to minister if they are in a committed monogamous relationship with a member of the same sex.

[...]

In stunning contrast to all this homophobic vitriol, I observed firsthand that the words spoken by the 49-year-old, unmarried Brock from his ivory bully pulpits do not match his actions.

[...]

I encountered Brock at my very first FIA meeting on April 16.

Having arrived 10 minutes early, I was greeted amicably outside St. Charles Church by its Pastor, Father Paul A. La Fontaine. He escorted me inside, down some stairs, through a kitchen, and into a meeting room.

At 7 PM, Brock entered with two younger men, who immediately swooped toward where I was seated. They grilled me to ferret out if I was Catholic, or at least Christian, and how I found out about the meeting. I was taken aback, as Father Jim Livingston, in my initial interview at North Memorial Hospital through which I was granted access to participate, gave the impression that the group was comparatively low-key and easygoing. I told the two that I was Baptist, not Catholic, but that I had great respect for Catholicism, having defended the Catholic Church to friends and family. I added that I had Googled to find the location.

One of the two younger men laughed, teasing that “now, Tom isn’t the only non-Catholic in the group.”

At one end of the table, Brock sat adjacent to me. At the opposite end was La Fontaine. After opening remarks, reading, recitation, and prayer, he asked how we had been faring—over the past week, since we last attended, or in my case since my interview—with what participants were calling a “gender disorder.”

Brock recounted that it had been “a good week.” He had been on a trip to the East Coast, and had kept his mind off men.

Following the first round were moments when attendees brought up feeling excluded and stigmatized as boys for being inept at sports.

Brock observed that he sometimes “feels effeminate” because he has no interest in the sports page, and that he feels deficient because he finds society’s mass interest in sports to be a bore.

On the other hand, most of the men, including Brock, expressed a deep love for opera and classical music. He related that he was especially fond of a Ralph Vaughan Williams composition.

When the topic of same-sex marriage came up, Brock stated, “The world needs [heterosexual] marriage.”

Read the rest: Lavender Magazine – Minnesota’s GLBT Magazine – Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender News – Minneapolis / Saint Paul » Blog Archive » Antigay Lutheran Pastor Protests Too Much.

This one has been widely discussed because the reporter who outed Tom Brock did so by infiltrating a confidential 12-step style support group for celibate gays.

While there is some support for the outing of hypocritical anti-gay gays, many people have been very uncomfortable with how the reporter got his information this time.

Not sure I’d have done it myself, but I’m not going to shed too many tears for the Rev either, I have to admit.

A mutual friend of ours threw a big party for her 30th birthday, tons of people were there and it was a lot of fun. Somewhere along the line you and I ended up on the balcony for some fresh air at the same time. We started chatting; we talked about sports, books, tv – discovered we both are about to start our masters degrees and spent some time debating the pro’s and con’s of the educational system. We talked about hanging out sometime, and you wanted to meet my girlfriend.

I understand how upsetting it was for you when I blinked mildly in surprise and said I was here with my husband. I know it was a shock to your system, if your face had turned any paler I might have called 911. You made a good recovery though – that hurried mutter of “I’m not like that” was very polite and you only knocked over two drinks and one vase in your hurry to rush to anywhere other than near me. I can’t blame you – I forgot how delicate you straight boys are. So I wanted to give you a few helpful hints about where you went wrong last night…

read the rest at Craigslist: To the Straight Guy at the Party Last Night..

And they bring us right to the notoriously homophobic closet cases currently in the House of Representatives: Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Adrian Smith (R-NE), Trent Franks (R-AZ), David Dreier (R-CA), Aaron Schock (R-IL- [...]), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

Yes, there are some names missing from the list… but for a reason. Every one of the above gay men has a zero score on their lifetime votes regarding gay people. Like Ashburn, they’re all in terror and voting on automatic pilot when anything comes up regarding gay people, even something as assisting local law enforcement to protect gay men and lesbians from hate crimes. As Signorile put it, these hypocrites are “too traumatized to make critical decisions” with clear minds. They belong on therapy, not Congress.

via DownWithTyranny!: Political Outing– Is It Ethical? Yes, And Aaron Schock Is VERY Gay.

On the back of the Roy Ashburn change-of-heart interviews, the blogger makes the argument for aggressive political outing. It does seem that if Ashburn had been outed earlier (because plenty of people knew) he would have overcome his paralysis that kept him from ever voting positively on a measure that impacted the LGBT community.

It would be interesting to compare the voting records of those suspected closet cases with other conservatives. Are closet cases more likely to vote against our interests? Roy Ashburn would say yes.

I have lied for years.

I misrepresented situations, omitted crucial details, left out relevant data from conversations, and censored my writing.

Some may say that it is irrelevant. Others may say that I did not hide myself well enough. Everyone is a fucking critic.

via A Time for Honesty – 1938 Media.

I was sent this (secretly) on twitter, so I won’t credit the discovery of it.

I guess we spend a lot of time lying before we come out. I did. I got really good at it. I lied about why I didn’t have a boyfriend, about why I didn’t go home that summer to find a better job than I got in the university town. I lied about why I went to Halifax the weekend of Gay Pride. I lied about why I wanted to travel for a year.

Telling the truth was far more difficult than lying. In the movies, finally being honest is always met with acceptance and everything gets better. In real life, honesty can sink your friendships, family relationships and even your job if you happen to live in a country without basic human rights protections (I’m looking at you, America).

After my only experience of working and being closeted, and the subsequent wrath that was brought about when my gayness was discovered, I swore I’d never be dishonest at work again.

One of the most amazing things about honesty is that you always know where you stand. At least if you’re honest from the outset, you don’t develop attachments to people who will later not accept you and your truth.

Try and think of honesty as a way of weeding out the jerks to begin with, because it really does work like that.

Port Washington High School graduate Sara Isaacson worked for the past eight years toward the goal of becoming an Army doctor like her grandfather. She said she knew she was giving up that dream when she made the decision in January to tell the leader of her Army ROTC program that she is a lesbian.

The University of North Carolina senior’s decision might also cost her $79,265.14 – the price of seven semesters of out-of-state tuition, books and others expenses, all paid for by an Army ROTC scholarship.

Isaacson, 21, said she thought the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was unfair years before she realized she was a lesbian and realized she had the option of hiding her sexual orientation. But she said misleading others would go against the Army’s values.

“It really came down to my integrity,” she said. “That was the most important thing to me.”

via Coming out may cost ROTC student – JSOnline.

Because the American military apparently hates integrity. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a disgrace.

When you came out, did you lose or give up anything?

Before I realised I was gay, I was planning to study to be a Christian minister. I loved everything about it. I loved reading the Bible and gleaning understanding from its stories. I loved weaving them into a lesson that I could share at the pulpit. I loved talking to people, and helping them. I loved the music, the joy, the community. And while I enjoyed teaching Sunday School, I  more enjoyed leading worship.

I had faced some resistance because of being female, but because the denomination officially allowed women to enter the ministry, they had no choice but to allow me to try.

I remember approaching my unofficial mentor at the time and telling him, knowing very well where he stood on homosexuality, and that his stance was broadly representative of the denomination as a whole. I was so anxious about this meeting, I booked a counselling appointment for immediately afterwards.

I was surprised by his pragmatism.

He said, “Someone is going to have to fight that fight.”

And I, in a moment of uncharacteristic self-knowledge, replied, “It’s not going to be me.”

It wasn’t a fight for someone fresh out of the closet.

I had to go away and have my proverbial wilderness years.

While leaving that vocation was definitely right, it hurt like hell at the time. Perhaps if I’d been a more driven person I would have kept at it, or kept my sexual orientation a secret — or even sought help at the “sexual healing seminars” I’d sometimes heard about.

Did you face any choices like that?

I can’t say I know a lot of country music fans, but some of you will. I can’t help but remember how things went for Ellen when she came out. She’d been such a huge star and in the fourth season of her own television show, and a couple years later was unemployable.

How big a risk did Chely take in coming out? Could she end up like Ellen did?

And did she only come out now to promote her book and her CD both which were released today — the day before her intended coming out? Cynical publicity stunt, or pre-empting the CD and book launch questions?