Big Gay Closet

I knew this wouldn’t be easy to do. I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was.

I also really think this project is a great idea and I think YouTube was the best medium for it. It reaches the right people, where they are.

The video I recorded first thing in the morning… if you look closely you’ll notice some serious bedhead going on. I meant it as a dry run, but I never made it through another version.So here it is.

There’s loads of stuff I didn’t get to say — like why I’m happy I survived. Things like how I’ve traveled and met amazing people. How I’ve fallen in love. But at least I’ve shared my story and in case someone else is going through the same despair and confusion, it might speak to them.

I think visibility has been a double-edged sword for kids these days. People didn’t talk a lot about gay stuff 20 years ago, and while that wasn’t good, it probably meant that people were less likely to be targeted, because the issue wasn’t on the radar the way it is right now. Still, there have been amazing advances.

Let me know if you’ve done a video or if you’re planning to.

Is anyone else doing one?

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I’m sure plenty of you have seen the news reports of the suicides in America this week.

Some of you may even have seen what Dan Savage has been up to with his “It Gets Better” project. It’s simple and brilliant.

He’s called on gays to tell their stories on YouTube to reassure gay teens that life does get better after school. It’s really taken off!

I know some of you are working on your own vids. I want links, people.

I’m also going to go through some of the videos and pick out some to blog.

To begin, I’ll include Michael Urie‘s video:

There will be more to come!

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The last 50 years has seen huge advances in gay rights within the United Kingdom, something that no doubt deserves to be should celebrate, however Jane Hill’s exploration of the LGBT community and their experiences in old age residential care in BBC Radio 4′s “It’s My Story, Glad To Be Gay” shows all too sadly how many older LGBT people are finding themselves facing that same solid wall of institutionalised homophobia that they were forced to face in their youth.

via Aging UK LGBT Population Facing Having To Go Back Into An Isolating Closet To Survive.

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.

This is part of Harvey Milk‘s famous Hope Speech — the one that starts with “My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”

Today, these two paragraphs stuck out for me, and I thought I’d share. I hope you find them as grounding as I do.

Harvey says it’s all about “coming out”. Our anger, our frustration, our loneliness and ultimately the hope we can have in our leaders — those that come from our community — it’s all ours, and while having friends in high places is great, being in high places is better.

Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders and by those who are themselves gay, those who are visible. For invisible, we remain in limbo–a myth, a person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no friends who are straight, no important positions in employment. A tenth of the nation supposedly composed of stereotypes and would-be seducers of children–and no offense meant to the stereotypes. But today, the black community is not judged by its friends, but by its black legislators and leaders. And we must give people the chance to judge us by our leaders and legislators. A gay person in office can set a tone, can command respect not only from the larger community, but from the young people in our own community who need both examples and hope.

The first gay people we elect must be strong. They must not be content to sit in the back of the bus. They must not be content to accept pablum. They must be above wheeling and dealing. They must be–for the good of all of us–independent, unbought. The anger and the frustrations that some of us feel is because we are misunderstood, and friends can’t feel the anger and frustration. They can sense it in us, but they can’t feel it. Because a friend has never gone through what is known as coming out. I will never forget what it was like coming out and having nobody to look up toward. I remember the lack of hope–and our friends can’t fulfill it.

via The Hope Speech : Harvey Milk | From Dana’s Guests | DanaRoc.com.