Ted

Matt on Candace Gingrich: A Letter to My Brother Newt Gingrich: "I love that this is happening..."

Jan-Paul van den Bos on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "At first it seems if setting..."

Rick Hightower on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Thanks. This helped a lot. I..."

Joy on How to Sync Entourage, iPhone, and iCal: "Hi - in iTunes, I don’t..."

Matt on Don’t want to be in there.: "Well, the fact that it passed..."

Josh on Movies.app - Find movie showtimes, reviews, and tickets on your iPhone: "Movies is great, but I think..."

Matt on What’s going on in there?: "the republican congress is realizing their..."

I happened to catch Scarborough Country and was intrigued by Joe’s discussion of the recent outing of alleged homosexual Republicans. He talked about the inappropriateness of Bill Maher’s outing and about the idea that a homosexual should be able to have their private life, being closeted, and even oppose gay marriage in their public life.

I actually agree with both of those things, yet Joe’s reasoning is flawed on one serious level. And here’s the thing. Joe’s attitudes demonstrate that at some level there isn’t empathy for what it is like to be a minority. Let’s think about this - has anyone met a heterosexual who was “closeted”? Have we talked a person who was afraid for it to be known that they are attracted to the opposite sex? Why is that?

What Joe missed was the idea of being closeted - which means in essence presenting yourself to the world as a heterosexual when you really aren’t. In a society where presenting yourself as a homosexual can get you (a) fired (b) beaten up or killed (c) excommunicated from your family, it’s imaginable that some people choose not to come out. I understand that. And that’s a choice that everyone should make on their own. Let’s not make that choice for them.

So, be gay publicly and oppose gay marriage if you’d like. But when you oppose gay marriage and/or abridge the rights of others, which ultimately can result in (a), (b), and (c) above you’re asking us to closet ourselves just to survive. We don’t want to do that, and we shouldn’t have to make that choice, any more than a closeted person should be forced to make a choice to be out of the closet.

That’s what’s being asked of closeted individuals who support the abridgment of rights. Stay closeted. Let us be out. Don’t spend your energy for us to become like you. We’ve been there, and we don’t want to go back.

Joe, take some time to think about what you say and what you think. Listen better. We should all be compassionate in our dealings with other human beings. As to whether these folks should be outed, my belief is that they’re probably in a pretty dark place right where they are, and compassion is a two way street. Let them find their own way. In the meantime, there’s lots of role modeling that we can do for those that wonder if being who they are is compatible with lifelong happiness (it is).

Let a bullet through my head shatter every closet door. - Harvey Milk

Thanks for reading.