A Big Gay Manifesto

Steven VanDeLaarschot
Undergraduate/World Politics

Being gay means being a member of the most unique minority group. This is not meant to say that we are better than any other group, but instead to say that our circumstances are different than those of any other minority group. What I write about centers on my own thoughts and experience as a gay man. I am not trying to exclude lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, or anyone else, I simply am not any of those.

We must face the continued belief that we choose to be gay, that we for some reason wake up one day and decide to be attracted to other men. This is completely false. I cannot stress enough how it is not a choice. I had no choice on whom I would be attracted to once I hit puberty. It just happened to be other guys. I cannot say exactly what causes this, just that I am gay and there is no chance in hell of me becoming straight. I realized that I was gay when I was sixteen. I was attracted to another guy in my band class and then it hit me that I was gay; I finally connected the dots in my mind.

No one else is accused of choosing to be a minority. Only the LGBT community. Honestly, who would choose that? Who would choose to face discrimination and bullying and inequality and being told that because of an integral part of your soul you are full of sin and will burn in Hell? I didn’t choose to be gay. My only choice is whether or not I will be open about it, whether or not I choose to pass. Because gays are unique in this way too, we can pass as “normal” and straight. We have no identifying marks because of our minority status. The only ones that we ever have are the ones we choose to give ourselves. We can remain closeted and live normal lives to all outward appearances if we so choose. No other group can do that. Admittedly some people who are minorities can pass because their skin color is similar enough to the norm that it is impossible to tell the difference, but gays are the only minority where everyone can pass.

There is another issue and that is that it’s only about sex. That all we want is sex. Also false. It isn’t about sex, it’s about soul. It is about who we are attracted to physically, romantically, emotionally, and sexually. If it was only about having sex with other men, this wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s not just about sex. This is about a genuine attraction on multiple levels of one man to another, about one man wanting to live his entire life with another man. I did not have sex before realizing I was gay. No one decides that having sex with a man is better than having sex with a women so being gay is better. I’m sure some people are helped along with coming out by that, but it is in no way the deciding factor in what your sexuality is.

We must also deal with the fact that we can be anywhere and that often means being a minority in a non-minority family. I am white and grew up in a typical white middle-class family. No one in my family or extended family came out before me and it was never something that was ever talked about. I am a minority with a family in the majority and I am the only one in my extended family who is gay.

We have to deal with being alone in our newly realized minority status when it hits us. Our parents can offer support and I am very glad that I have a loving family that continues to support me ever since I came out, but even though they can provide support that is different from understanding. They do not understand what it means. Even if they understand it cognitively, they do not have the firsthand experience to truly understand what it means. In black families, the parents are black and the kids are black so the parents can understand what the kids have to deal with. Not so with gays. There are some exceptions, but the vast majority of cases involve straight parents and a gay kid. There is a difference there that the parents cannot fully appreciate. We have to sort out all the confusion and anxiety and difference on our own and come to our own singular understanding of what being gay means.

Gays also have to come out. We are not just always seen as gay because we do not have any distinguishing marks or features to show that we are gay. Black people have dark skin, which is why they are called black people (without trying to offend or anything, just the way it is). Gays have to go to people and reveal their difference to the world and then suddenly we become minorities in their eyes. We can pass as the majority without any real difficulty. In a way, we have to choose to be identified by others as a minority.

But when I say that we can pass relatively easily, I do not mean to say there are no consequences. Passing means presenting a lie, censoring yourself so that no one knows the truth about who you really are. No one knows that you are a minority and you force yourself to go through life alone and in an invisible bubble because you don’t have anyone. It is a hard thing to do and you want people to know the truth. No one wants to hide who they really are. It is a depressing path to take and a rather difficult one because for whatever difficulties there are with being openly gay when you are closeted you are alone. No one knows that you are different, that you are suffering, that you long to have a boyfriend but are too scared to because you are also a guy. Passing has only one good quality and that is safety because no one will hurt you if you can hide it well enough. Except people you know can make remarks that hurt without knowing that they are really talking about you when they talk about gays, another difficulty of passing. Your friends don’t know they are hurting you.

Another issue is that we have no natural communities of our own. For there to be gay communities within cities, they have to be artificially created. A city has to have a reputation as gay-friendly and then gays have to congregate in that city and find their own little area, their own little corner somewhere. We aren’t even all that numerous. I didn’t grow up with a gay neighbor in every other house on the block. As far as I know I could have been the only one in that neighborhood.

Then there is the fact that two men holding hands, hugging, kissing, or publicly displaying affection is not welcome in society. I never see that, ever. There was one openly gay couple in my high school of over two thousand students and I cannot recall one couple here at Eau Claire. Not to say there are no gays here, just that I never see two men openly showing affection for each other. Straight couples do it all the time and I see it every other day and every time I do it makes me think of something I can’t do openly. Love is not something restricted to a man and a woman; there is the love between a father and his kids, a mother and her kids, sisters, brothers, friends, cousins, aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces. Also between two men or two women. I do not understand how the idea of love cannot be expanded to include a few more groups. It is not some revolution, just expansion or reform. The same can be said when talking about marriage.

There is also the problem of becoming attracted to straight men. I have had that problem quite a few times and I expect it will happen quite a bit in the future. You see, we do not have any special sense of who is gay and who isn’t. We just have that unique set of qualities that we are attracted to individually. I see a guy who I find very attractive and I want to get to know him and so forth, but all the while I have to wonder if he is gay or straight. If he is straight, then it’s best not to tell him because he can’t feel the same way as I do and, especially if he’s a friend, that would make things rather awkward. While I’m sure straight people could argue that this has happened to them, for gays it can happen all the time as opposed to rarely. Sometimes you want that person to be gay and you want it so much that you hold onto a small shred of hope that he might not be straight.

There is so much more I want to say; like how much of an ordeal it is to come out even with loving and supportive parents, how I am not equal in the eyes of the law of this state and this country and how that is unconstitutional, how I get nervous when there is a large gathering of conservatives because of the potential physical danger that presents. But I’m at the word limit for this article.