Choices
I told Ben the other night that I do what I do partly from survivor guilt. My best friend from school died in 1991. When my mother died in 1973 (when I was just 20), his mother took myself and my sister under her wing, especially my sister who was not even 18 at the time. His mother imagined for many years that Jed would marry my sister. Of course, it was not to be. By being in a straight marriage, I was protected from that world in which so many gay men of my generation had died. However, it was not the many that I cared about. Only one.
It is not as though we were close. We had never really communicated with each other, a situation not uncommon among adolescent males. He would be as surprised as anyone to see where I am today. After we left school we drifted apart. I was not comfortable with his straight friends or his later gay friends for reasons that were entirely unrelated to sexuality. However, we were almost family. For reasons that are no one's fault, or mostly my own, I excluded myself and I was excluded from those last months of his life and from the truth. Four years afterwards, at our school reunion I found myself ducking questions that I discovered later to be answered in the public domain. Since I feel still that I do not yet have permission, I remain careful to avoid naming his fatal illness.
I had come out to my wife on our first date in 1979. It was to be another twelve years before I came out to her for the second time in 2004. It was around the time that John Howard, our local member, was using same sex marriage as a wedge issue. I knew what was at stake. I knew what it was really about. The question was whether our relationships are equally valid and valuable.
Howard was attempting to ensure our choices remained limited. If the world had been more supportive of LGBTI people, Jed and I may both have made different choices. It was not that I regretted my life in any way. I had married a woman who is still my closest friend and more sympatico than anyone that I have met so far. I had chosen that life because it was the most viable option. In those days, the prevailing wisdom was that sexuality is a choice. I made my choice and attempted to live with it. If we could change society there would be more options for LGBTI people.
So my first excursion into the gay world was not to the Shift or Bodyline, but as a volunteer with the Lobby.
There are many people like myself who may have made different choices. There are many people who will feel more comfortable being who they are, being more comfortable in their own skin, if the state recognises our relationships as equally valid and valuable, especially when they do not find that recognition within their families, or within their religious or cultural worlds. My fight is for us to be respected and valued, not only those of us who are happily out, but more particularly for those who feel that they have most to lose by coming out.
The issue is not about whether I wish to marry or not, just as the issue with same-sex adoption is not whether I wish to adopt children or not. It is about having the same choice as other people. If I want to eschew marriage and live in a bohemian polyamorous world experimenting with different kinds of relationships, then I can choose to do so as any straight person can choose to do so and some do. If I want to live a more conventional life and marry a man and live in the suburbs behind a white picket fence with a labrador in the backyard and a Volvo in the driveway, then that should also be my choice as much as it is an option for any straight person.
It is not as though we were close. We had never really communicated with each other, a situation not uncommon among adolescent males. He would be as surprised as anyone to see where I am today. After we left school we drifted apart. I was not comfortable with his straight friends or his later gay friends for reasons that were entirely unrelated to sexuality. However, we were almost family. For reasons that are no one's fault, or mostly my own, I excluded myself and I was excluded from those last months of his life and from the truth. Four years afterwards, at our school reunion I found myself ducking questions that I discovered later to be answered in the public domain. Since I feel still that I do not yet have permission, I remain careful to avoid naming his fatal illness.
I had come out to my wife on our first date in 1979. It was to be another twelve years before I came out to her for the second time in 2004. It was around the time that John Howard, our local member, was using same sex marriage as a wedge issue. I knew what was at stake. I knew what it was really about. The question was whether our relationships are equally valid and valuable.
Howard was attempting to ensure our choices remained limited. If the world had been more supportive of LGBTI people, Jed and I may both have made different choices. It was not that I regretted my life in any way. I had married a woman who is still my closest friend and more sympatico than anyone that I have met so far. I had chosen that life because it was the most viable option. In those days, the prevailing wisdom was that sexuality is a choice. I made my choice and attempted to live with it. If we could change society there would be more options for LGBTI people.
So my first excursion into the gay world was not to the Shift or Bodyline, but as a volunteer with the Lobby.
There are many people like myself who may have made different choices. There are many people who will feel more comfortable being who they are, being more comfortable in their own skin, if the state recognises our relationships as equally valid and valuable, especially when they do not find that recognition within their families, or within their religious or cultural worlds. My fight is for us to be respected and valued, not only those of us who are happily out, but more particularly for those who feel that they have most to lose by coming out.
The issue is not about whether I wish to marry or not, just as the issue with same-sex adoption is not whether I wish to adopt children or not. It is about having the same choice as other people. If I want to eschew marriage and live in a bohemian polyamorous world experimenting with different kinds of relationships, then I can choose to do so as any straight person can choose to do so and some do. If I want to live a more conventional life and marry a man and live in the suburbs behind a white picket fence with a labrador in the backyard and a Volvo in the driveway, then that should also be my choice as much as it is an option for any straight person.