Big Gay Closet

I’ve long held three basic beliefs about the ethics of coming out:

Gay people — generally speaking — have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can.

We should all get to decide for ourselves the “if and when we feel that we can” part of that.

Closeted people should reasonably expect to be outed by other gay people if (and only if) they prey on the gay community in public, but are secretly gay themselves.

I also believe that coming out makes for a happier life, but that’s not a matter of ethics, that’s just corny advice.

via The Maddow Blog – Anchors away.

Rachel responds to the media pick up on an interview she did with The Guardian. They’re reporting that she was criticising Anderson Cooper for not coming out.

The past week was almost all about the Cinco de Gayo announcement which turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax (“Who?”  echoed the world over, from gay blog to gay blog) but still interesting and important as one of America’s country music’s stars came crooning out of the closet with a new album and a new book.

Of course, we’d known last week since TMZ published her identity well ahead of the official announcement.

Feel like reliving it?

In chronological order, the Cinco de Gayo posts from the past week:

Newly Out Chely Wright:  ”I had a gun in my mouth” (This was the interview that The Advocate published too early and had to take back down. They published it again on the 5th)

Queerty asks: Did Chely Wright & Howard Bragman have a responsibility to closeted celebs?

Newsy.com: Will Chely Wright’s fans listen to a lesbian?

On the 5th, which was meant to be the official Chely Wright outing, New Zealand Olympian Blake Skjellerup came out in the Australian gay magazine DNA’s special sports issue. He also tweeted a very cute tweet.

We had a new contributor share a story of her very first girl-crush. When’s the first time you fell in love with someone of the same sex as you? Tell us!

Another new contributor told us the story of going to pride with her three gay aunts, and how she caught the attention of every woman in the room.

Oh and the incredible Jane Lynch — of The L Word and, more recently, Glee fame — spoke about her early affair with a teacher and about coming out.

Finally we (along with the rest of the queer blogosphere) gave a virtual standing ovation to Rachel Maddow who made it clear on her show why it is newsworthy when the vehemently anti-gays turn out to be gay, as she addressed the George Rekers/rentboy scandal.

More to come this week. I have a fantastic kinda-coming-out-story ready for tomorrow and hoping a few more will land in my inbox soon!

Have a Happy Mothers’ Day, regardless of how happy your mother is. Sometimes for us gay folks, family isn’t all that.

Jacq

There are times I begin to suspect that TRMS is wearing a bit thin for me. In fairness, I’m not American, so sometimes the content isn’t relevant to me.

But then Rachel Maddow does this. She succinctly explains why it is such a big deal that George Rekers got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. And she does it well.

You may not have heard much of George Rekers before the past couple of weeks, but he was involved with someone you’ve probably heard of: James Dobson (not in that way). The two were on the founding board of the now infamous Family Research Council.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I had a somewhat different take on things earlier when I wrote “Why we love a good fall from grace (and why that’s ok)” on the Irish lesbian website Gaelick. It was inspired, in part, by the Iris Robinson scandal that was in the news at the time. She wasn’t gay, just cheating on her husband with a teenager, and she was definitely anti-gay.

Happy Chocolate Day to you all!

As many of you know, I’ve been in London for the past week, and if things seem like they’ve been a bit slow around here, it’s because I’ve been very very busy seeing amazing people and having more fun than is probably legal.

But, this week should be back to more regular posts, and saying that, we’ve had some really fun stuff happen last week.

To recap!

I started the week explaining that coming out is never boring, and therefore your story is definitely interesting. So, write your story and send it to me

We all sat around and remembered Neil Patrick Harris coming out. I called him Doogie, yes I did.

Then, all Hell broke loose when Ricky Martin — yes, that Ricky Martin — blogged his way out of the closet. It was a big deal. And yeah, I know Twitter was full of “water = wet” comments, but coming out is always a big deal, and in Latin America it still can be a bit of a scandal. So, well done, Ricky.

And then, a real little You Tube find, was Lt. Dan Choi’s personal coming out story. I just thought that was neat.

This was followed up by an original coming out story called “Moms Say the Darndest Things”, which was really popular, and well read. My favourite part of this blog is the original coming out stories. I’m going to do my best to increase the number of those that we publish.

Right, and after that, I wrote a completely outlandish April Fools’ Day post about the adorkable Rachel Maddow that made no sense whatsoever and a bunch of you believed it. Not only that but some people thought it was a bit too much, so it went in the bin, and I explained it all here.

I am theorising that all of you who believed it lost your ability to think critically when Dr. Maddow became the subject of discussion. Um, discuss.

And finally, Anna Paquin, who plays sweet but fierce Sookie Stackhouse in the TV vampire drama, True Blood, came out as bisexual and came out fighting for the rest of us. Need more reasons to love her? Really?

Looking forward to bringing some great stories to you next week, but we need stories too! I know loads of you out there have had fantastic journeys to get where you are right now, and all I ask is a snippet of that to share with the world.

Thank you all for hanging around in the Big Gay Closet, it’s been neat and fun (and stuff).

This morning, I decided for Big Gay Closet’s first April Fool to write up a ridiculous post that would celebrate both the day that’s in it, and the birthday of someone we at Big Gay Closet quite admire, Rachel Maddow.

A lot of people liked it (it was  more popular than the Ricky Martin coming out news item), some even believed it (!) but some weren’t happy and because of that I’ve decided (after much thinking about it) to remove the story from the site.

April Fools’ Day is over, so no harm anyway, and it does upset me if people find anything on this website offensive, because it is supposed to be a safe space for genuine reflection and sharing.

If anyone, at any time finds something on this website offensive please — by all means — email me at CanuckJacq@gmail.com. If further discussion is warranted, my phone number will be forthcoming.  I do take any criticisms of the site on board, and opening up the discussion will help in ensuring Big Gay Closet remains a safe and helpful space in the months and years to come.

Thank you so much for reading and contributing, and again — my most earnest apologies to anyone who took offense to our joke. I assure you it was not intended.

In the meantime, please have a read of our most recent coming out story: the beautifully written “Moms say the darndest things“.

In this June 2009 interview, Rachel Maddow discusses how she feels about her own coming out (which has been explored extensively in other interviews) and her advice for others.

For those who haven’t read her coming out story, she talks about it on The View. If you can stomach it, The View video is below. The coming out stuff starts about 3 minutes in.

If you can’t stomach watching that (believe me, I understand), here’s a summary:

When Maddow came out as a lesbian at 17, she announced it by putting up posters in the bathroom of her freshman dorm at Stanford, a place she had found to be surprisingly homophobic. It was January 1991, and on the posters she made a sarcastic reference to the first Gulf war, which was just beginning, then suddenly she declared she was gay (the implication: deal with it). “I didn’t want any drama,” she says. “I didn’t want any personal touchy-feely BS from anybody. I just wanted to get it over, and make a joke about it, and move on. It was such an obnoxious thing to do when I think about it. Why did I think anybody in my freshman dorm would care? I was 90 percent attitude.”

Someone else cared: her parents, whom she hadn’t yet told. When an article about her outing ran in the student newspaper, someone mailed it to them anonymously. They were shocked. Elaine said it was difficult “intellectually, as well as emotionally,” because she was brought up as a strict Roman Catholic. As parents, they were protective: “It was worrisome because of the idea she would encounter prejudice and bias in her life—and I am sure she has. Life is hard enough without having to deal with a lot of prejudices,” Elaine said. “We worked it through somehow. We just want her to be safe.”
from Newsweek