In this article, John Culhane speaks eloquently to the realities of being "open" about who we are... I agree with him that the times are changing. I can clearly see the day coming when the law catches up with the reality that "we" are only human. We live, we love, we dream...
Culhane: The Law and Life of the Closet
By John Culhane, Professor of Law, Widener University
08.05.2010 365gay.com columnist
I’m sitting in a coffee shop as I type this column. The barista and I have become well-acquainted enough to exchange more than the perfunctory pleasantries. He knows that I have twin daughters who just swam their first full length of the pool. We’ve talked about where we live, what we do, what we enjoy, and so on. Yet as I sit here, I can’t say with confidence that I’ve ever disclosed to him that I’m gay – as I could quite easily do by mentioning my “partner,” which has become code for “my other half in my same-sex relationship.” (Now that I’ve realized this, I’m going to go up and tell him. I’ll be right back.)
(It was the non-event I assumed it would be, and I used David’s name, instead of the clinical title.)
Even though I’m about as “out” as one can be, I know that the story described above is typical of so many of us. We choose, many times a day, how “out” to be. Social creatures, we crave some level of connection and don’t want to risk rejection – even by people we little know- by doing a gay cannonball into the pool. Not everyone enjoys being splashed, and some become outright hostile (even violent). So we test the water first.
Is this toe-dipping affected by the law? How do social norms and law interact? A good clue comes from Justice Scalia’s thinly veiled screed against “homosexuals” in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent. In taking angry offense to the Court’s view that morality, without more, can’t be used to defend a law’s constitutionality, he wrote:
“One of the most revealing statements in today’s opinion is the Court’s grim warning that the criminalization of homosexual conduct is ‘an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.’ It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war… Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
Note Scalia’s sly blurring of the facts – Lawrence involved private, intimate activity, not “open” “homosexual conduct.” But his reminder of how the law and social norms reflect and reinforce each other is accurate, and forms the underlying cause of his concern. As the law unravels ancient proscriptions against our behavior, and then moves – however glacially – to recognize us as full citizens worthy of equal legal treatment, the basis for social discrimination also starts to erode.
Scalia furnishes a veneer – but only that – of intellectual respectability to his more primal longing for a vanishing society that socially forced all but the bravest into the closet. Few dared be “openly gay” – in part because of the laws he defends, but also because the very presence of those laws enables those who don’t want us as business partners, teachers, and so on. If you live in one of the majority of states where you can still be fired just for being gay, for example, you might worry that your boss or colleague is one of those who doesn’t “want you” as partner.
There’s not a simple correspondence between the law and social convention, of course. No one can (legally) fire me for being gay, and I’m out enough to be a columnist for a publication called “365gay.com”, for crying out loud! Yet, I still and sometimes unconsciously withhold this essential truth about myself until I’ve sussed out a new situation. Why?
I still live in a nation where my marriage isn’t recognized, and where a (shrinking) majority of folks still support relegating me, and my family, to second-class citizenship. These legal facts tell me that my reality makes some people uncomfortable, and sometimes I don’t want to deal with that – and, probably more to the point these days – my own angry reaction to it. I almost never run into problems when I disclose, but I’m still working on getting over the years I spent elaborately dancing around the issue.
Things are changing, and quickly. As more people come out sooner, this whole “gay thing” is becoming less of an issue, and the law has started to catch up with a new social reality. But as minorities, we’ll never completely assimilate. Our cannonballs are changing into cleaner dives, but we’ll always be plunging into deep water, with a high degree of difficulty.
Culhane: The Law and Life of the Closet
By John Culhane, Professor of Law, Widener University
08.05.2010 365gay.com columnist
I’m sitting in a coffee shop as I type this column. The barista and I have become well-acquainted enough to exchange more than the perfunctory pleasantries. He knows that I have twin daughters who just swam their first full length of the pool. We’ve talked about where we live, what we do, what we enjoy, and so on. Yet as I sit here, I can’t say with confidence that I’ve ever disclosed to him that I’m gay – as I could quite easily do by mentioning my “partner,” which has become code for “my other half in my same-sex relationship.” (Now that I’ve realized this, I’m going to go up and tell him. I’ll be right back.)
(It was the non-event I assumed it would be, and I used David’s name, instead of the clinical title.)
Even though I’m about as “out” as one can be, I know that the story described above is typical of so many of us. We choose, many times a day, how “out” to be. Social creatures, we crave some level of connection and don’t want to risk rejection – even by people we little know- by doing a gay cannonball into the pool. Not everyone enjoys being splashed, and some become outright hostile (even violent). So we test the water first.
Is this toe-dipping affected by the law? How do social norms and law interact? A good clue comes from Justice Scalia’s thinly veiled screed against “homosexuals” in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent. In taking angry offense to the Court’s view that morality, without more, can’t be used to defend a law’s constitutionality, he wrote:
“One of the most revealing statements in today’s opinion is the Court’s grim warning that the criminalization of homosexual conduct is ‘an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.’ It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war… Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
Note Scalia’s sly blurring of the facts – Lawrence involved private, intimate activity, not “open” “homosexual conduct.” But his reminder of how the law and social norms reflect and reinforce each other is accurate, and forms the underlying cause of his concern. As the law unravels ancient proscriptions against our behavior, and then moves – however glacially – to recognize us as full citizens worthy of equal legal treatment, the basis for social discrimination also starts to erode.
Scalia furnishes a veneer – but only that – of intellectual respectability to his more primal longing for a vanishing society that socially forced all but the bravest into the closet. Few dared be “openly gay” – in part because of the laws he defends, but also because the very presence of those laws enables those who don’t want us as business partners, teachers, and so on. If you live in one of the majority of states where you can still be fired just for being gay, for example, you might worry that your boss or colleague is one of those who doesn’t “want you” as partner.
There’s not a simple correspondence between the law and social convention, of course. No one can (legally) fire me for being gay, and I’m out enough to be a columnist for a publication called “365gay.com”, for crying out loud! Yet, I still and sometimes unconsciously withhold this essential truth about myself until I’ve sussed out a new situation. Why?
I still live in a nation where my marriage isn’t recognized, and where a (shrinking) majority of folks still support relegating me, and my family, to second-class citizenship. These legal facts tell me that my reality makes some people uncomfortable, and sometimes I don’t want to deal with that – and, probably more to the point these days – my own angry reaction to it. I almost never run into problems when I disclose, but I’m still working on getting over the years I spent elaborately dancing around the issue.
Things are changing, and quickly. As more people come out sooner, this whole “gay thing” is becoming less of an issue, and the law has started to catch up with a new social reality. But as minorities, we’ll never completely assimilate. Our cannonballs are changing into cleaner dives, but we’ll always be plunging into deep water, with a high degree of difficulty.
*******
"A life lived in fear is a life half-lived"
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