Here we all were in some type of hall meeting for all of the guys who shared my floor of the dorm - a soulless mid-century building that reminded me of mobile home park trailers stacked on top of one another. Yes, it was a music camp, so there were plenty of people there who didn't "fit in". Still, we were all "horny teenagers", as one friend of mine says. Undoubtedly, all of us were still figuring things out about ourselves on all levels and wrestling into who we were going to eventually be as adults. That's what one does at that age.
The counselors were explaining the ground rules and expectations of behavior, all of which seemed pretty straightforward. It was the typical awkward conversation that you experience in a community of young people thrown together from various background. It was a litany of strictures that needed to be endured: be at orientation at 7AM, make sure to eat breakfast, don't wait to do your laundry until Saturday (since everybody does it then), have fun and attend the social functions we've planned for you, don't forget to practice . . . a lot . . .
And then, here it was, but with a twist - Girls aren't allowed in your room. And then they added something like, if you're going to have boys over, that's your business . . . I mean, this isn't the military or anything.
Fast forward about 17 years . . . and things haven't really changed.
I was speaking with an acquaintance this weekend who talked about the idea of being gay as an identity thing - as being something separate from simply being "same gender-attracted".
And I understood what he meant, after he spelled it out in that way. One could look at them as stereotypes, or one could look at them as important cultural markers that need to be embraced. In either case, "gay" has a lot of stuff that goes along with it.
There is a case to be made that there is a gay culture that can be identified, it is valuable, and it should be embraced by those who are same-gender attracted - both as a way of paying homage to those who helped form idea of what "gay" is in wider culture and as a way of accepting oneself. In doing this, they'd say, we take the same road that our foreparents in the gay rights movement took, making our sexual orientation that much less frightening and more acceptable - taking another step out of the shadows.
We're a long way from being out of the shadows with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" still the policy in our military, because we have to live in polite silence - and not just those in the military, but in the wider society as well.
Why?
Because I've observed more and more that this idea of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" provides a convenient blueprint for how the wider culture can relate to gay people. It's a baseline for how to operate in an institution some say is infused with all kinds of prejudice. If it's good enough for the military, then all of us can say "we know they're there, but we don't want to know about it, and they certainly shouldn't flaunt it." (Where "flaunting" usually just means doing the same things the straight people are doing in a given setting.)
Really, it's time for a new way for us to relate to each other, isn't it? We have to move beyond the unspoken policy that says it's okay to be gay, but it's not okay to live by the same social rules and expectations that straight people do. It's okay to be gay, but just keep it to yourself- nobody needs to know.
Last weekend, as some of us contrasted same-gender attraction and gay identity, we also wondered about what an America would be like when straight young people might even have to "come out" - when nobody automatically/negatively assumed your sexual orientation one way or another, and when a person could wrestle with the idea that he or she was actually straight in a supportive environment.
That won't be happening anytime soon, it doesn't seem. Not unless there's an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", first in the military, and then with all of us.
DADT needs to die quickly. It should not be the de facto standard for our dealings with one another anymore, because those of us who happen to be same-gender attracted need to be able to choose to identify with gay culture or not . . . and be respected for whatever choice we make.
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