Gay, lesbian, and gender-nonconforming people have experienced much worse and more direct violence and discrimination than I have. On my own, I could pass into the straight world and drop some of the baggage, worries, and constant calculations that simply living required for my LGBTQ family and friends. As a straight man, my experience with closeting and anti-gay discrimination had a clear limit. Of course, I also know that I was relatively lucky. The compounded stress from these situations was intense. On other occasions, it was safer and easier to stay in the background. One of my uncles lived in Texas, and on one of our visits there, I saw a large placard outside a church condemning “homosexuals.” Anti-gay comments were routinely parts of casual conversations. But when we left the city for less-friendly territory, I knew we had to put our guards up, to watch what we did and said. Would I lose friends? What if I brought a girl home? What questions would she have?Īll of this happened in New York, which had a large and thriving LGBTQ community even then. The lies came with constant nagging fears about being found out. I told anyone who met her that one of my mothers was an “aunt.” It stung to say. But hiding my family came with its own set of hassles. I badly wanted a break from the strain of being different. My parents did all sorts of complex paperwork, but we weren’t technically family - after all, it would be a nearly three-decade wait for them to be legally married.īy junior high, when I switched schools, I decided it was time for me to be the one in the closet. When my sister was born, she spent time in the intensive care unit, where some of the hospital staff wouldn’t let one of my mothers and me in to see my sister.
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Sometimes the barriers to acceptance were official. Even with many caring, accepting friends, I couldn’t shake the knowledge that my family wasn’t always welcome. One classmate teamed with a teacher to ask repeated technical questions about my birth, questions that felt repetitive and invasive. They said it was no surprise I was “dirty” because of my family. I distinctly remember seeing the two assistant principals at my school pointing and laughing at me. One day in kindergarten, we made Thanksgiving decorations. It meant not being invited to a certain friend’s house and not knowing why until I overheard that his parents called my mothers “perverts.” There was this nagging feeling of constantly being discussed and watched as the child of two women. For me as a kid, this meant getting into fights. But during that time, being out came with its own problems.
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Our openness at home, however, meant everyone at school knew about our family. I remember how being part of that hiding hurt, and yet for her, it must have been so much worse. If I visited her at her office, my mother told coworkers I was her nephew. Years later, I can’t imagine the pressure she must have been under every single day, especially during those times when we had to come up with elaborate ruses to deal with potential emergencies. She was in the closet at her job and felt that was necessary in order to keep it. While my parents lived openly at home, one of my mothers worked at a large company in Manhattan.
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When I was born in 1984, it was far different. Today, estimates vary, but it is clear that millions of children are growing up in loving, happy gay families. So, despite the LGBTQ community gaining greater acceptance in recent years, I worry we might brush these past experiences aside, that there isn’t always enough focus on just how far-reaching the impacts of homophobia can be. Families of all stripes were affected - and it cut deep. However, I am an example of how the damage caused by decades of discrimination against the LGBTQ community was wider than many realize. I am a straight man, so in many ways, this is not my story to tell. My experience with the closet was unusual.