What was the expectation...?

What was the expectation…?

As I was wiping the kitchen counter off this morning I accidentally knocked a full cup of coffee onto the floor and made a complete mess, not a partial mess but a complete mess that required ten minutes of clean up. I used the time to reflect, why not kill two birds with one stone?

I thought back to the events of last year, family, discord, alienation and landed on the day when I received the email from my brother telling us that Julian had moved out of his home. That Julian would be accorded no support; emotional, financial or otherwise and I thought to why; why was that email, worded in that way sent to me and others? Why and what was the desired outcome?

The thought slowly came that I had been painted into a no win situation. If I should buy in and also choose not support, interact, help, listen to or otherwise love Julian, then I loose the opportunity to act in a selfless way and get to know a remarkable young man with a wealth of promise who for reasons of his own had to move on. Right or wrong, Julian had made decisions that were his decisions. We all fall, we all falter but our hope is that someone is there to help us up.

But if I should choose to maintain a relationship with Julian then I loose too. Although invited into the conversation by simply receiving the email, should I not choose the obvious, then I loose all interaction with my brother, his six other children and his wife. If I should choose this path then I will incur silence, alienation, shunning and fury; also an accusation of meddling and crossing a line to where I don’t belong.

Here’s where I could easily allow myself to become angry. I was invited into participation; the email was sent to me. At the time I didn’t realize that the guise wasn’t to simply inform me of certain events, the guise was, I’m telling you this and you have a decision to make; if the you make a decision that I deem incorrect; then you will have to pay for that in a most punitive manner.

Wow, well I’m not angry, I’m not even that hurt anymore; that’s not to say I wasn’t hurt. It’s like this; when a drastic change occurs in life, like the death of a partner or loss of a best friend; in time one learns to deal with the hole that’s left. The hole never leaves, it remains an indelible mark but those left learn how to maneuver around that hole so as not to fall into it or get caught by it, such is this case. Do I hope for healing and reconciliation? Absolutely, but there are caveats and criteria and my assumption is that I have not been granted a conversation because my guidelines are clear and I will not relent. My guidelines require courage, time and strength of character to confront because I will not tolerate the former status quo.

I like the South African model of truth and reconciliation; we can move forward and forge anew but we will not simply ignore the past we will address it and build reconciliation from it. I realize that in our situation not all of us are there and may never get there which explains the silence. With that in mind, I’ll keep praying, thinking and writing on the topic; it helps me manage the hole and gain perspective.

Happy Pride and a response to John McCann

Let’s agree to disagree…a rebuttal to John McCann local writer with the “Durham Herald Sun.” Durham, NC

Here again is a pundit and talking head taking on homosexuality a subject I dare say he knows little if nothing about. McCann like so many others seems to rely on the age old myth that gay folk, bisexual folk, trans folk and so on somehow made a “choice” to be what they are. I’d challenge that the above alphabet of folk, gbtl etc. no more made a decision to “be” what they are than McCann has. What they did decide is not to hide what they are or live deceptively. To that end I’d ask John McCann, when, just when sir did you choose to be straight?

Dear Sir, please tell me how many same sex encounters, even if they were only in your mind, did you have before you choose to be with women and women exclusively? If John is honest and I have no doubt he would be, and perhaps he says, none, I’ve never had that attraction. Well then, wouldn’t it be logical for me to say that I have never been physically attracted to the opposite sex? I haven’t and by not being attracted that way in no way makes me less of a human or less entitled to basic rights and respect. That’s why we march once a year and a lot of us work tirelessly year round demanding equal treatment under the law. News flash, John et al, it still eludes us. One would think that an African American man would get that.

You see us gbtl folk can’t marry, so there is no tax deduction or marriage recognition there and so unequal protection under the law. We can’t join the military openly and therefore no VA health care or G.I. Bill of Rights. Oh, we could join but being what we are; don’t ask, don’t tell flies out the window right along with us queers. Then should we choose to live with someone and own property and perhaps one spouse should die within our unrecognized family. Then property rights fly right out the window. When my partner John died, I had to hire an attorney to fight off his mother just to save my home, my car, my bank accounts, my furniture and my semblance of life built with the man I loved. How many heterosexual spouses have to battle that battle? I’d venture to guess, none.

So many of the McCann ilk and more extreme ilk seem to think that there is some sort of perverted choice at play here with so called decisions of human sexuality. Yet these same people deny that they ever made a choice most of the time. McCann even talks in his Friday September 26th column about a discussion he had with a friend of mine and male penguins raising an egg. He says there would be not egg without the female. True very true, but my challenge to John McCann when and if he comes to Gay Pride for N.C. tomorrow is take a look around at all of the gbtl families and notice that there are a lot of children being raised by single sex parents. You see we manage nicely with a donation.

Finally, what all of this who ha boils down to is bigotry; it manifests in interesting and unexpected ways but any way you slice it, it is homophobic bigotry. To mock, condemn, joke about gbtl folk simply because they are what they are is no different than doing the same thing based on race or color. We can synthesize it down to that simple a comparison, folk of color, whatever the color no more made that decision than gbtl folk made the decision to be what they are…they all are what they are...yes sir we are what we are, we’re not going away and we’re not going to live in shameful secret.