Big Gay Closet

This is possibly the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s an audio interview with Gayle King, and Chris (who plays Kurt on Glee) talks about how his family have simply accepted him, without the need for a big announcement. He also talks about the bullying he experienced in school.

And I’ve been wondering for a while, because I’ve read very early pieces where Chris’ parents say that they didn’t know if he was gay or not, that it’s not something they’d all discussed just yet.

There was later some confusion over comments he’d made, since he’d never actually announced he was gay, that maybe he was “back in the closet.”

Gayle King: Interviews – Chris Colfer on ‘Glee,’ Fame, and the Golden Globes.

I remember at the age of about 13 having an argument with my very Catholic grandmother. We were arguing about the rights of gay people. It wasn’t the first time we’d had the argument, and, as you might expect, I was very pro-gay equality and she was very much not. It’s not like she wanted homosexuals executed or anything, but she considered it an illness. She thought that Oscar Wilde had “ruined his life” with his homosexuality and believed that HIV and Aids were god’s way of eradicating gays.

I remember at the time having not the slightest doubt in the power of my position. I was one of those annoying little gits that went around describing themselves as “an equalitarian” (I’d read it in the dictionary and instantly adopted it) and as I grew older I met friends who were gay or who would later come out as gay. I even wrote a thesis on Oscar Wilde as a school student and remember feeling mortified when, commenting on the death of Freddy Mercury, a family member ‘joked’ to a neighbour that it “served him right for being a poofter”. (Imagine the embarrassment when the neighbour in question replied with “my brother’s gay”).

I guess the point of mentioning this, is to highlight that I myself never had any issue with homosexuality. Or bisexuality. Very much the opposite. That makes it all the more baffling to me that it took me so very long to realise that I myself was gay. I was into my twenties, had completed my degree and had even got married. And then it hit me like a train. I’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. I wasn’t the person that I had thought I was – actually the person I married turned out also not to be the person I had thought he was either, which at least made it slightly easier to leave. But that still left me with a massive problem. I could leave him easy enough – I was pretty much stuck with myself. There was no leaving that behind.

I didn’t so much come out of the closet – more exploded out of there, hurting myself and a few others on the way. I told a close friend what was muddling around in my head. She seduced me. I tried to resist and then thought what the hell. The first time I kissed her I was terrified. No amount of alcohol seemed sufficient to calm my nerves and in the end I just had to swallow them. Once I’d taken the plunge I knew there was no going back. I think it probably remains the best kiss of my life, not only for how damn good it was but also for everything it symbolised. I then fell crazy in love and had my heart broken. It took me three years to patch it back together.

I went off the rails, had some brilliant and some awful times and never stopped to look back. It needed doing. I suddenly had all this catching up to do – there was a whole world out there that I had always known existed, but had never thought applied to me. Now it suddenly did.

I occasionally wonder why it took me so long. The gay community is now the centre around which my life resolves; it’s where many of my friends are, it’s where I go for support and a huge chunk of my social life. It’s where I feel safe. Accepted. Me. I simply can’t imagine my life without it – and I doubt I would want to live somewhere without a significant gay scene. And I suppose the answer is in the two stories I started this with. While I was able to know that there was nothing wrong with being gay, my entire experience of any discussion about homosexuality had been that of it being ‘othered’ by people. Being gay was what happened to other people – not to me or anyone in my family. It’s not like I had the kind of upbringing where we were encouraged to think about the kind of people we were or the lives we wanted for ourselves – there was certainly no questioning, let alone challenging, or perceived norms. We were all assumed to be straight, to be destined for a lifetime of unsatisfying low-paid work, marriage and kids. I bucked the trend by going to university after my history teacher talked me into it, but otherwise I was sleepwalking towards my future. It took the (apparent) finality of marriage and the prospect of a miserable life to jolt me awake and make me ask myself who I really was and what I really wanted. For that reason alone, I remain glad that I did it.

Mr Davies described how he faced the team for the first time after the coach told them he was gay. He said that each man shook his hand and told him he had done the right thing.

But he said that the strain of hiding his sexuality had been hard.

“If I am brutally honest, I never enjoyed touring because of my secret and having to conceal my sexuality,” he says.

“My friendships with the guys would reach a certain level, then I’d have to take a step back.”

via England cricketer Steven Davies comes out as gay – PinkNews.co.uk.

All the girls loved Jordan. I — always different — loved Jon. He only solo’d one song, I think. That didn’t bother me though because I didn’t really like NKOTB that much anyway.

First Doogie Howser, now Jon Knight. If Roch Voisine comes out, my childhood crush trifecta of gay will be complete!

“I have never been outed by anyone but myself! I did so almost 20 years ago. I never knew that I would have to do it all over again publicly just because I reunited with NKOTB! I have lived my life very openly and have never hidden the fact that I am gay! Apparently the prerequisite to being a gay public figure is to appear on the cover of a magazine with the caption I am gay. I apologize for not doing so if this is what was expected!”

via New Kid on the Block Jonathan Knight Comes Out of the Closet | Rolling Stone Music.

Of course, this hit the tabloids two years ago too.

Dave sits on the swing where we once waited out the effects of a stupid LSD experiment. We shared a common love of gorey horror movies overflowing into practical jokes – when we met he threw a bag of ketchup at me trying to make me look “bloodied”. He was the first person who I could relate to on a nerdy level; that it was ok to like science fiction.

“That’s cool. I guess. What’s it like?” He was always curious. Not “gay-curious” but curious in general – hence I thought it appropriate to tell him on the “LSD swings”. If I had said I tried recreating the Jack the Ripper killings, he’d probably ask the same thing.

Read the rest: Coming Out: To my Friends « Dead Robot.

I love this story. I hope that this is a template for the coming out stories of the future.

A bit of back story for new readers: My oldest brother came out when I was about 11yrs old. I didn’t understand fully what that meant, but I knew there was drama of sorts… my parents were having hushed conversations that were punctuated with “DeadRobot, go to your room.” Later, when I was 16, my father came out of the closet for fear of meeting up with Dan in a gay bar on one of his many business trips to Toronto. Of course the family was shocked, the town of Brockvegas was scandalized, Dad lived a quiet life of a shattered bachelor for all of 10 minutes and then took up with his lover for 14 years. Family came to accept him (including Mom, to a certain degree) and we were happy chucks all again. Okay?

There’s your 8 years or so of drama packed into 125 words or less.

Skip ahead to my 17th birthday. The year I decided that if I was to live my life honestly, I had to tell the people I loved that I was a ‘mo. I decide that I have to make a trip back to Brockvegas to tell friends and family in one fast trip. Get in, drop the bomb, get out, let them decide where their loyalties lie.

Read the rest: Coming Out: To My Mom « Dead Robot.

When Yasser hit puberty, he grew attracted to his male cousins. Like many gay and lesbian teenagers everywhere, he felt isolated. “I used to have the feeling that I was the queerest in the country,” he recalled. “But then I went to high school and discovered there are others like me. Then I find out, it’s a whole society.”

This society thrives just below the surface. During the afternoon, traffic cops patrol outside girls’ schools as classes end, in part to keep boys away. But they exert little control over what goes on inside. A few years ago, a Jeddah- based newspaper ran a story on lesbianism in high schools, reporting that girls were having sex in the bathrooms. Yasmin, a 21-year-old student in Riyadh who’d had a brief sexual relationship with a girlfriend and was the only Saudi woman who’d had a lesbian relationship who was willing to speak with me for this story, told me that one of the department buildings at her college is known as a lesbian enclave. The building has large bathroom stalls, which provide privacy, and walls covered with graffiti offering romantic and religious advice; tips include “she doesn’t really love you no matter what she tells you” and “before you engage in anything with [her] remember: God is watching you.” In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”

via The Kingdom in the Closet – Magazine – The Atlantic.

Speaking to Attitude magazine, he said: “The relationship I have with my mother is amazing but it has grown stronger and stronger.

“The day my mother asked me if I was gay, she asked me if I was in love with a man or a woman. Oh God. For this woman to make it easier for me… this is really cool.

“But she struggled with it. She went there. She opened that door. That’s a mother’s love. Then she hurt. She said: ‘I love you, my son, I’m so happy for you. Bring it on. I’m right behind you.’

“And then, suddenly, I think she thought ‘Oh my god, it’s Kiki [his family nickname]. It’s his career.’ I’m sure every mother reacts to this in different ways.”

via Ricky Martin: My mother helped me come out – Pink News.

Our first coming out story in a while comes from Irish political organiser and activist, Neil Ward.

Coming Out, as most people who have done so will attest, is a process rather than a moment.  Every month of my life I have to come out to more people, and I have to continue examining how my sexuality has influenced my life, my values, my politics and my behaviour.  Which makes any Coming Out a difficult story to tell.

To combat this, I don’t intend to try telling the story of my Coming Out, but rather the story of one night in that process – the first night that I consciously realised the meaning of the confusion which had occupied me for so long.

In early 2000, I was coming towards the end of my 9-month stint as an Arts student in UCD.  While my academic performance was less than exceptional (to say the least) during that nine months, I had discovered that I wasn’t terrible at basketball.  I had quick hands, and my height was naturally advantageous.  And I fucking loved it – I’d practice, play and exercise for hours at a time – often getting to the UCD gym before noon, and leaving at closing time.  Memories of that time still fill me with joy – I’m not much of a sporty person nowadays, but I still think back fondly to those carefree days.

The other enjoyable aspect of playing basketball for UCD, was the extraordinary boozing we’d do – a group of 10-20 teenagers and young men on the absolute lash.  Our nights out usually ended messily (giving away my shoes at the Portobello bridge being the highlight of one particular evening), but they started so much more innocently.  We could smile together, and that was what really bound us.  We’d tease and torment, leer and laugh, chatter and chastise – all in the best spirit imaginable.

The combination of a bastketball match followed by one of those nights on the beer in March 2000, led to me walking fown the road in Stillorgan with one of the other lads, in whose house I was staying.  As usual, we were setting the world to right – chatting about music and basketball, analysing the result of the evening (which I can’t for the life of me remember at this point), and talking about the big issues of our worlds.

Suddenly, with no apparent lead-up or prompting, I stopped dead in the street – sober as a judge. “Fuck me” were the only words out of my mouth for a while – I retreated into myself processing the most unimaginable thought I had ever encountered.  To say this practically-catatonic version of me alarmed my companion is probably an understatement in hindsight, but he was either too wasted or too gentle to try and intrude too much on me.

What felt like hours later (and in fact was at least 30 minutes), I lifted my head and resumed walking, picking up the conversation where we had trailed off.  In the most stunning revelation my life has ever experienced, I had realised that my fondness for men was partly sexual.  And my life immediately made sense.

Christian gay man studying counselling at seminary talks about the false promises of the ex-gay movement and the hope of being yourself.

Resource he mentions:

http://www.gaychristian.net/