In addition to using the monikers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, the LGBTQ community has others, one of which is “the tribe.” So it seemed appropriate for Tribe publisher Tony Aguilar to reach out to the LGBTQ tribe for inclusion. And the tribe, in turn, was only too happy to oblige. If I could guess what many of the younger adults in the queer community are thinking, it would be that they are ready to ramp things up a notch.
Rather than guessing, however, I decided it would be more appropriate to contact members of the LGBTQ community, looking for a healthy cross-section of youngish folks, and ask them some questions. I wasn’t sure what their responses would be, so I knew it would be interesting not only for future readers but also for me.
I invited them to a Sunday breakfast in Providence. In return for this gesture, they were told they should be prepared to talk about LGBTQ issues that mattered to them. Though they represented diverse ethnicities, economic groups and orientations, each was lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. They came together to talk about what they want, what they care about and how they feel about a variety of issues that have a direct effect on their lives.
Family
The first question dealt with their coming-out experience, as it related to their family members: Had their parents been supportive?
Annie Cronin-Silva, an employee of a large communications company in her mid-thirties, began by giving a great deal of credit to her family—as well as the family of her partner of more than ten years, Melanie Silva—for having “come a long way.”
She said, “At the beginning, it wasn’t easy for my parents to accept or understand everything. This was 22 years ago, and being out of the closet in high school wasn’t as common as it is today. My parents sent me to a [therapist], and wouldn’t allow me to have any contact with my girlfriend. It was definitely a stressful and emotional time. But as time passed, I think they realized and understood that this wasn’t a phase I was going through. My mom came to love the women I was in relationships with, and finally recognized that we were like any other couples.”
Naomi Oliver, a veterinarian, said that knowing people in positions of power who were gay or lesbian helped her during her adolescence to feel good about her own orientation. “It was pretty much normal in my world,” she said. In the larger world, however, her androgynous look—and the reactions she gets in public—has come to shape her outlook on some issues. “When you wear your sexuality as plainly as I do, you develop a level of comfort with other people’s discomfort.” Jaye Watts, a transgender man, characterized his parents’ support as “evolving.” He elaborated, “It has been a struggle over the past seven years and, at times, it got very ugly. I was treated as if I didn’t exist. My parents excluded me from major family events like my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary party.”
Watts crashed the occasion thanks to the encouragement of supportive relatives.
“Many hurtful words have been exchanged over the years, and eventually I needed to make it clear that if [my parents] did not want to support and love me for who I was, then I did not want them to be a part of my life.” In the past year, Jaye said, they have moved “light years” toward acceptance. He is happy to have them back in his life and said their relationship is as good as it was before he came out to them. The change happened when Jaye’s grandfather died. “My dad had to give my name to the driver at the funeral. He realized he couldn’t use the name I was called before my transition, even though he had persisted in using it up until then. So, reluctantly, he spoke my name for the first time.” The death of Jaye’s grandfather, in this case, was a turning point for Jaye’s father, who has become more at ease and accepting since then.
Mari SanGiovanni, who works for a large corporation and writes novels in her spare time, was proud to say that her parents were very supportive. “They were awesome. And unlike our government,” she added sarcastically, “they don’t treat their gay children any differently than their straight children. I grew up in the middle of this loud, funny group of Italian people who told politically incorrect jokes and we all learned to laugh at ourselves. We learned not to take life too seriously.” Mari’s experience stood in stark contrast to that of Kevin Lam, a gay 22-year-old first-generation American of Laotian and Vietnamese descent. “The level of support I have received from my parents around my orientation has been little,” he said in a quiet voice. We all turned to pay attention.
“I came out to them fairly recently,” he continued, “and their response was that they love me no matter the situation or my sexuality, but they do not really acknowledge it.” The topic doesn’t come up at all, he said, and when it does, the discussion is quite uneasy. “But I know they love me,” he affirmed. Kevin works as the program manager at an organization that supports Southeast Asian youth, and he spoke of young LGBTQ people in his community being disowned by their families. “So, I do know there are other families who are not nearly as open or accepting as mine have been, but I can’t say my parents fully support me yet. I think they have accepted it, and it will take time for them to come to terms with it and adjust, just as I had to do. I am fortunate to have parents who are more open.”
The Workplace
I asked them about their levels of comfort with regard to being out at work. For most of them, happily, it was a non-issue. “I always handle the gay thing the same in every setting,” said Mari. “I let people get to know me first. I let this revelation happen naturally. But I am out, out, out! I write gay novels and I use my real name, so I am about as out as I can be. They ask, I tell, and I am very comfortable being out at work.” She does feel that people are less inclined to inquire about her significant other than they would with straight people in the workplace, “but that is more a cultural change that has to happen, and I am confident that it will. Being gay is just one of the things that I am. It is not all of the things that I am, so I treat it that way.”
Annie, whose wife works for the same employer as she, said, “Our co-workers joke with me that I am the gay poster child at work! I am very comfortable being out at work; everyone knows Melanie and me, and they have embraced us. Many of the people at our wedding were co-workers. All over my cube are pictures of our wedding, our vacations and our involvement with Marriage Equality Rhode Island over the past two years.”
What Matters Most
Next, I asked each person to name the most pressing issue facing the LGBTQ community. This was the most striking point of departure on the part of this group from their predecessors, who have been fighting for years to achieve marriage equality. It is not that these folks did not care about the issue of same sex marriage. Far from it, Annie and Melanie have had two weddings (they describe themselves as “high maintenance” girls). “We were legally married at the top of the Prudential Center in Boston accompanied by our three best friends and a Justice of the Peace. There was no greater feeling than when the JP pronounced us spouses for life. Our friends were crying and cheering, and my face hurt from smiling so much. Then we had a big ceremony, also in Massachusetts. We were both in wedding gowns, in front of 125 of our closest friends and family. The ceremony itself was so emotional. When the doors opened and Melanie and her mom stepped out, I could hear everyone’s reaction to seeing Melanie in her wedding gown, and I got goose bumps and started crying. She was breathtaking. Every year on our anniversary, we open a bottle of wine and watch our wedding video.”
She added, “We would have much preferred to be married in our home state of Rhode Island.” They would also like Rhode Island to recognize their marriage, but the Ocean State has not yet passed that legislation. “And in the meantime, the state of Massachusetts had the benefit of all the dollars from both of our weddings.”
When I put the question of marriage equality to Mari, her response was characteristically funny and bold, just like the books she writes. “I’m putting my lipstick down to become an angry lesbian now,” she began. “It boggles my mind that this is even a question for Rhode Island, and frankly, why this is even a state issue is beyond me. Would discrimination of any other group of people be a state issue? This is a human issue and it should enrage everyone in our country.”
“I was with the woman I loved for 14 years,” she explained, “and we waited to be married in our own state, but we never got the chance as she died of cancer last December. How many more people are going to miss their opportunity to have what other people in this country take for granted?”
Mari continued, “I was fortunate to work for a progressive company, which provided domestic partner health insurance for my partner and her children. However, this health insurance ended for the children the moment their mother died, since we were not legally married. So, don’t ever let anyone tell you ‘domestic partner’ is the same thing as married. We are less than straight people in the eyes of the law. In my family’s case, the situation could have been even more tragic if something had happened to one of the kids before I realized, almost three weeks later, that they were not covered with even a single day’s grace period. In the eyes of the law and the insurance company, I was nothing to the children because I was not legally married to their mother. The sad truth is that gays are the last group of people you can legally and openly discriminate against.” She took a breath, composed herself and said calmly, “Okay, rant over. Can you hand me my lipstick back?” Naomi said, “Yes, I do want marriage equality, not necessarily because I want to live the same life as my heterosexual counterparts, but because granting me anything less than a full equivalent suggests that I am a second class citizen. For me, civil unions and marriages are not equivalent species. Homophobia is inherent in the act of equivocating over the name.”
The group agreed that marriage equality was not the only pressing issue. Some of the other issues involved HIV/AIDS prevention, the appalling decreases in funding for such programs and the prevalence of health care providers who are insensitive or uninformed on topics of importance to the LGBTQ community. Many participants addressed safety issues. A brief discussion on hate crimes, bullying and other dangerous forms of bias brought forth an emotional response that was palpable in the room. Needing to worry about being safe in a public restroom for a transgender woman, rampant homophobia on some college campuses and the hesitation to interact with police for fear of further discrimination were just some of the examples that came up.
Kevin raised the issue of immigration, pointing out that people in opposite-sex relationships can sponsor a partner by marrying them, while there is no such right when it comes to same-sex couples. “Being a gay person of color, immigration and deportation are issues my community faces. Being queer just adds another layer of oppression we have to face. Immigration and deportation tie in with marriage equality, though, because if your partner is deported or lives in another country, it is very difficult if not impossible to have your partner live with you if same-sex marriage is not recognized in the state you live in.”
The top issue, however, was equality. Not just the right to be married, but equality in the workplace, in schools and under the law. The group was genuinely angry. They were fed up with inequality. They thought it offensive, arrogant and just plain ridiculous. And they bristled at the thought of all those who petition lawmakers every year, politely asking to be treated as equals, only to be turned down every time.
“I worry about the older generation,” said Annie, “the gay men and lesbians who have lived their lives, paid their taxes and supported their significant others for the past 20, 30, 40 or more years, and yet are not given the recognition that they deserve. They will not receive each other’s social security benefits, even though they have paid into the system their entire life. This is not fair. I do believe that marriage equality will happen in my lifetime, but I worry about the men and women who paved the way for the kids of today to be out, open and proud — they deserve to see it in their lifetime.”
The Myths
My last question was about misconceptions. What do folks not understand about the queer community? Naomi brought up the economic disadvantages—for example, the cost of a domestic partner’s health insurance coverage is taken from pre-tax dollars. Same-sex couples cannot file joint federal tax returns, even if they are legally married in the eyes of their state, because the federal government does not recognize their marriages.
“You know, I think they’d be surprised to know how boring we are,” laughed Annie. “We are really not so different from them!” The others readily agreed. Several talked about stereotypes and myths, such as the one that says LGBTQ people are more focused on sex than straight people, or that gay and lesbian couples have the same roles—one masculine, one feminine—as if they were of opposite sexes.
Myths spring up around any part of a group that is mysterious to those outside of it. No group seems, to everyone’s detriment, more mysterious than transgender people. Many of the misconceptions are concerned with sexuality. The reality is that this has very little to do with sexuality, except that transpeople do not identify with the sex or gender markers they were born with or assigned at birth. Being transgender is about something much deeper than just sexuality.
There was mention of our cultural need to know a person’s gender, that it drives some people crazy if they can’t tell whether someone is a boy or a girl. And somewhere along the line, that craziness can turn to bullying, anger or violence. Then there is discomfort. Something about the thought of “a boy in a dress,” for example, is so hard for some people to accept that they don’t go any further toward understanding it. The fact is, these are decent people who have gone through a lifetime of anguish already. All they want is to be respected for who they are.
My breakfast guests clearly agreed with this concept. It is wrong to write someone off, deny them rights to protection, or hurt them, they asserted, just because they make you uncomfortable. “My civil rights should not depend on whether people like me,” said Naomi.
At the end of our time together, everyone in the group felt they had learned something. “Open dialogues are so important,” said Naomi, “and it’s good for me to be reminded of how much diversity exists within our community.”
“Many of the issues that the straight and queer communities face are very similar,” said Kevin. “But I think it is important to bring awareness to the particular issues faced by our community so we can build understanding and solidarity, and create movement for change in the world.”
Kim Stowell is the Managing Director of Options Newsmagazine.
