Sad things

[marag]

I've been searching for something to say about the man who walked into a Tennessee UU church and shot people. Honestly, I think I can't say it any better than artaxastra here (although she wrote it before it became clear that she was right about why he did it).

artaxastra says (in part): And yet all the time I see on LJ people saying things "Coming out is no big deal

Comments

[mofic]

I cannot imagine living in a place where being openly gay is not acceptable.

But acceptable to whom? There's certainly plenty of anti-gay feeling in NYC and plenty of people who suffer from discrimination. Gay bashing in Greenwich Village is pretty common, for example, as it is in the other gay meccas (I think we may be the only minority in this country that has the people who hate us come to *our* places to beat us up). Or, for another example, in choosing an elementary school for my kids I had to deal with a school board resolution (in supposedly progressive Park Slope) that said that public schools should teach tolerance *except* towards gay and lesbian people.

Yes, there's more protection some places (NYC has a law against discrimination in employment and housing, for example - hard won and long time coming, but we have it). Yes, there's more support and more recourse when bad things do happen. But I just think it's not a case of some places it's acceptable to be openly gay and some places it isn't. Coming out is a complex issue, and the risks and benefits are very hard to gauge, but I don't think it's anywhere as simple an issue as some places are safe and others aren't. NYC is very safe, relative to Knoxville (or at least that's what I hear from folks in Knoxville), but there are still risks/costs to coming out and there are still risks/costs to being closeted - both in Knoxville and NYC.