Straight Lines 🌈
[P]rogress doesn’t follow a straight line. It zigs and zags, and sometimes it moves forward and sometimes it moves backwards or moves…
[P]rogress doesn’t follow a straight line. It zigs and zags, and sometimes it moves forward and sometimes it moves backwards or moves sideways. I am a firm believer that ultimately it moves in the direction of justice, and more prosperity, and more freedom, and more inclusion. — Barack Obama, 11/14/2016
Our kids have grown up in what I like to think was an inclusive and open-minded environment.
Some of that is the privileges they’ve enjoyed, as white kids with prosperous parents. Some of it is exposure to people from different backgrounds. They’ve loved our “chosen” family, a diverse group of beloved weirdos, including our treasured queer pals.
They came to know these people during the Obama years, when our hearts were swollen with optimism for the future.
The view today is bleaker. We’ve enjoyed decades of ostensible prosperity, but the world is much less safe. We may have experienced the ‘peak’ of equality and justice, at least for my lifetime. We can only hope that our kids will know something better.
Today’s explosion of violence against people of color, the pending assault on reproductive freedom are both signs that we are going backwards. All of the changes in our society seem to have one thing in common: They strengthen our prosperous majority, and threaten the safety of the most vulnerable.
I am an ally to marginalized communities. I want to support and defend them because I care about them, and because I want a better world for my kids.
There’s one aspect of allyship that’s grown uncomfortable for me. So let‘s clear something up.
I am a member of the queer community. I’ve always been certain that I wasn’t straight, and also certain that I’m not gay. I identified as bisexual starting around age 18. I married a woman when I was 19 and this is a whole other post but I ended up back in the closet, all the way in the back of it. We got divorced but I stayed in the closet for 30 years, more or less.
(I came out to my wife Jennifer when we were dating. If you’re considering it, I highly recommend coming out to my wife — if you haven’t already. She effortlessly failed to make a big deal out of it, like I had dropped my napkin. Advice to straight people: This is incredibly hot (not making a big deal, I mean, not the napkin.))
Anyway, who cares? Mostly nobody! I’m coming out because the world is getting more dangerous for queer people, and by coming out I can get a little bit more dangerous in return. My kids are going to have to live in this world, so I am deeply invested in trying to prevent a bunch of dickheads from fucking it up.
I believe that queerness is normal and in fact awesome, so why hide mine? I care about marginalized communities, so why not be the best ally I can be to them? It felt like hypocrisy and it feels great to put that behind me.
I am going to use my privilege to make the spaces I inhabit safer for vulnerable people. One way I can do that is by being queer in the spaces I’m already in.
So I’m going to start doing that today, and it feels like a step forwards.