Homo for the Holidays

At 17 I was intelligent enough to know that public nudity, and especially sex in public were illegal. But my horny teenager self allowed me to ignore those tidbits of information one summer afternoon. I was out on a date with a 19 year-old attending a local college, and after we had lunch he suggested we hang out in a nearby park. Like a scene from a gay Harlequin novel, a freak rainstorm forced us to scamper from the tree that shaded our make out session into a shelter with a handful of picnic tables. Perched on one of the tables, as the water rushed by below, we continued to kiss and grope each other until we eventually brought each other much needed manual relief.

In 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas overturned any remaining sodomy laws nationwide, guaranteeing that gays had the right to express their passion in private. This may have been significant to me at the time I was experiencing splendor in the grass that summer, and perhaps would have made me feel somewhat more confident about what we were doing, except Lawrence vs. Texas was decided a year later, and we obviously weren’t in private. I also happened to be a resident of South Carolina, a state that had yet to repeal its sodomy laws until Lawrence. So, my actions went beyond normal lines of teenage stupidity and hedonism, but also traversed legality a few times over. I was lucky that the rain, or just luck kept the authorities away that day; otherwise the story could have had a much different ending.

I bring this somewhat serious topic up, not to weigh the pros and cons of sex in public, or even to discuss recent Supreme Court decisions. I recently, like hopefully many if not all of you reading this, saw Milk. For the blissfully ignorant, it chronicles the political career of Harvey Milk. A pioneer of the gay rights movement and America’s first openly gay man elected to a high public office, who was assassinated in 1978. Unlike most of you I assume, I saw it with my parents, in the same theater I first saw Brokeback Mountain, in Indiana. That may give you some indication of the support I am privileged to have from my family, but the messages of Milk nevertheless touched me and rang true.

In rallies and in private he encouraged every gay before him to come out to their family, their neighbors, their employers, etc. Though I believe that we are all entitled to our privacy, events such as the recent “Call in ‘Gay’ To Work” are designed to illustrate just how many of us occupy every office, and are founded on the idea that highlighting just how many homos exist in everyone’s life will promote tolerance and understanding for us as a whole. Though this advice may now be falling on deaf ears, since kids are coming out earlier and earlier, and I doubt there are many people who would claim not to know a single a gay person, if not personally, they are probably at least a fan of Ellen or Elton. But to know us intimately is different; to paraphrase Milk, when they know at least one of us, they are less likely to vote against us.

Milk also instructed young gays, troubled by the views of their parents and the conservative communities, in which they resided, to move to the big cities where they could meet other young people like them. Now it would be hypocritical for me to dismiss this advice since I knew from a young age I’d want to go to college and eventually live in a big city, and my parents are happy that I do. But I know many gay people, from my former home in SC and my trips to the Midwest that are happy to stay in the places they grew up. They don’t care if the nightlife is more limited or if the guys are less abundant. Now, more than ever I think we need those men in women in smaller cities and towns across the country to do just that, to show that they are happy to be themselves wherever they may be.

When I pack for home it’s the only time I drag my A&F tees from the back of my shelf, and leave my boots and tightest jeans behind. My thinking is not only do I care less about how I dress around my family, and even if I were to go out I would be held to a lower standard than in NY, but also that I wanted to be able to pass for just another Indiana boy, or at least come close. But now something in that logic seems flawed to me. We aren’t doing ourselves any favors by toning down our personalities or appearance just because we’ve ventured outside our urban sanctuaries.

Being a homo for the holidays is your chance to let your family and all the others around into to your world, and show them that you are no longer afraid of being yourself, no matter the locale or occasion. They may not need to know about hand jobs in the park, but as hard as it is, you must also share your heart. The day my mother became my friend was not when I came out, but when she was the only one who truly helped me through my break up. The Supreme Court may have the awesome power of ensuring our rights, but our families and they way we feel about ourselves in their presence often still hold the keys to our happiness and stability. But we’ll never know that satisfaction if we don’t give them the chance to see just how fabulous we are.

Originally appeared on 12/23/08 on homo-neurotic.com