"Don't you get sick of it, sometimes?" This was a question a good friend asked me many years ago. At the time, I was in my late 20s and he was around the age that I am now. He was talking about how exhausting it can be to be in a straight world, to continually have to work against the tides of assumption and ignorance. At the time, I said no because I wasn't there yet. Now that I'm where he was, I know what he was talking about.There have been some very recent events of late that have brought my exhaustion into sharper focus. There is a drag queen in Ireland that cut to the core in a speech. If you haven't seen it, watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXayhUzWnl0
Powerful stuff, at least to me. One part in particular struck at my heart.
"Have any of you ever come home in the evening and turned on the television and there is a panel of people – nice people, respectable people, smart people, the kind of people who make good neighbourly neighbours and write for newspapers. And they are having a reasoned debate about you. About what kind of a person you are, about whether you are capable of being a good parent, about whether you want to destroy marriage, about whether you are safe around children, about whether God herself thinks you are an abomination, about whether in fact you are “intrinsically disordered”. And even the nice TV presenter lady who you feel like you know thinks it’s perfectly ok that they are all having this reasonable debate about who you are and what rights you “deserve”.
And that feels oppressive.
Have you ever been on a crowded train with your gay friend and a small part of you is cringing because he is being SO gay and you find yourself trying to compensate by butching up or nudging the conversation onto “straighter” territory? This is you who have spent 35 years trying to be the best gay possible and yet still a small part of you is embarrassed by his gayness.
And I hate myself for that. And that feels oppressive."
I've recently become aware of the weight sitting on my back, pushing on my shoulders and added to the weight I carry in my day and this speech helped shine a light on that. I realized just what I do day in and day out to try to mitigate any negative blow back from just being who I am. Much of it is because I'm trying to plan a wedding. After 21 years, I finally get to have a wedding and be married. But this has opened up a new series of landmines. I spend days researching companies and services to find out whether or not they will even serve me because I'm in a same-sex relationship. I look for their blogs, I read their twitter, I try to find reviews, and anything that might give me a clue as to where they stand on my relationship. Because I'm already stressed enough with the plans, I don't need to add a lecture about my hell bound destination on top of it. And I know that I'm lucky, I live in a big city that has options.
But many times I feel that I have to live in a big city, to protect myself. That I need to be in an area with options, with paths that I can take when faced with denials because of who I am. To live in a space that might try to protect me because of my life and the person that I love. I feel the chains of limited choices sometimes, not always placed by me. When I was younger, I was more than happy to fight and yell and scream. Now, I just want to live in peace.
A spat of laws have come into the public view around this as well. Most haven't passed, but one did in Arizona and it basically says that I can be denied any service because I'm gay and that due to their religious beliefs it's ok to do that. And it enrages me. This law is sold to people because there have been some high profile cases around cake makers and florists, who have refused to help gay people and their weddings because of their beliefs that I'm not and gay people aren't moral, and our weddings and marriages are not moral. And I've heard so many people tell me that it's just cake, it's just flowers and to find someone else to help you. And that's great that I have options, and I can do that where others can't, but that's not the point.
Because the message that they are sending is that these trappings of tradition are fundamentally not for me. The things that may have made up the wedding of my parents, my brother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins - those are not for me because I am lesser. I can't have the flowers that I may have dreamed about, or the cake that can only be found here, because it isn't FOR me. It's for straight couples only. Instead of hiring them to do a job that they have told the world that they are willing to do, it's once again me who has to change and bend and allow someone else to have their way. I get to just shut up and accept that and Arizona is on the edge of making that officially and fundamentally ok and it feels oppressive.
It feels oppressive that I can't just call and say, "I'm having a wedding and I would like to have your cake that you make, do you have time?" like so many couples do every day. It feels oppressive that I start most of my conversations with vendors by saying that we are a same-sex couple, so at least they can try to tell me a lie about why they won't serve me. It feels oppressive that I worry about the quality and the cost after they agree because I don't know if I'm going to be punished in more subtle ways. And I hate that I think that I'm going to be punished because this is how the world has taught me.
So, years later I've changed my answer.
Lastly, I'll let Justice Richard Bosson sum up many of my thoughts in his most recent decision:
"The Huguenins today can no more turn away customers on the basis of sexual orientation—photographing a same-sex marriage ceremony—than they could refuse to photograph African-Americans or Muslims.
All of which, I assume, is little comfort to the Huguenins, who now are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives. Though the rule of law requires it, the result is sobering. It will no doubt leave a tangible mark on the Huguenins and others of similar views.
On a larger scale, this case provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice. At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation’s strengths, demands no less. The Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the Huguenins in that respect and much more. But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.
In the smaller, more focused world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world. In short, I would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect:
it is the price of citizenship."
