Alan Ilagan

Let’s face it: we are in the midst of a cultural war. As the political year gears up for another Presidential race, as gay marriage slowly becomes legal state-by-state (and occasionally then illegal – California), as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ crumbles, the fight for gay equality has never been as vociferous, and hotly contested, as it seems to be today.

Thankfully, the tides appear to be turning slowly in our favor. Great cultural shifts don’t happen overnight, but in the last few years the strides have been enormous, and largely unthinkable as recently as the 90’s. The good thing is that we have not had to do it alone – because we couldn’t.

The revolution, if we are to fully realize a revolution, is going to depend largely on our straight allies. There simply aren’t enough gay people willing to put themselves out there and fight for it. Luckily, the enlightened straight people are taking up that challenge, fighting just as hard and valiantly for equality, as they recognize that to deny the rights of one person is to diminish the rights of all of us.

The more I thought about it, the more it struck home. All of my best friends – the folks I’ve held close to my heart for fifteen, twenty, thirty years – are, across the board, straight. Granted there aren’t many – I can count on two hands the number of life-long friends I’ve maintained – but they are the people who matter the most – Suzie, Chris, Missy, JoAnn – they know who they are – and they have been there for all of it. Unconsciously, I’ve surrounded myself with straight allies all my life.

While the villains often get more notice, the good guys wage a quieter, more dignified fight – and they pay for it with less fanfare and bombast. I’m guilty of it myself – you’re more likely to see a rant against a homophobic person than a congratulatory message on someone’s efforts toward equality. In an attempt to rectify that, I’m going to make a concerted effort to feature those who are working to make the world a better place, instead of those aiming to divide and destroy.

In the coming months, I’m planning to do a number of profiles on Straight Allies – those who have fought in their own way against homophobia, and for a better world of equality.

From Zachary Quinto’s blog: “when i found out that jamey rodemeyer killed himself – i felt deeply troubled. but when i found out that jamey rodemeyer had made an it gets better video only months before taking his own life – i felt indescribable despair. i also made an it gets better video last year – in the wake of the senseless and tragic gay teen suicides that were sweeping the nation at the time. but in light of jamey’s death – it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it – is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.”

I have bolded the portion that I wish Anderson Cooper would read, and understand.

Dear Anderson Cooper – You don’t know me, and while I knew of you, I had never seen any of your work prior to your viral giggling fit, which, I’ll admit, won me over. (For that silly reason alone, I got tickets to see your talk show.) I’m more aware of you from your cat-and-mouse game of dodging the gay question – which is entirely your right to do, but after seeing your show in person yesterday, I think it might behoove you to come out – if only for your own happiness.

I read somewhere that I wasn’t supposed to give anything away about the show before it aired, but since the topic was of no interest to me, I’m not going to reveal anything about that or who might have been on it (I didn’t know them anyway). Having never attended any other talk shows, I don’t really know how they work, but I got the distinct impression that you didn’t really want to be there. Much of the time you were short, quick, and almost testy with the crew. You seemed to be going through the motions, and there was an unhappiness and complete lack of joy in what you were doing, which begs the question: Why?

I get the feeling that you’re trying to be both things at once – the serious, hard news reporter, as well as the likable, friendly, my-life-is-an-open-Oprah-book-of-the-month talk show host – and you can’t really do that successfully – at least, you’re not doing it yet, and I wonder at the reason for it. Any sort of reticence to get personal or revelatory will be seen as disingenuous. The fact that you just showed an episode of yourself crying and discussing your brother’s suicide with your Mom shows that you can get personal and still maintain a professional stance, so your reluctance to address your sexuality is a sticking point with me, played out almost comically as Britney Spears blasts over the studio speakers and the seats fill with middle-aged women and young gay men. There’s no nobility in cowering behind the reporter’s visage, not when you have a talk show on which you’re revealing the personal side of your life.

Through the windows of the set, I can see flocks of birds flying over the backdrop of Central Park, and their freedom seems a tragic juxtaposition against yours. You suddenly seem to me a man who’s trapped – caged in that metal-and-glass backed set overlooking Columbus Circle, frantically running up into the audience for one last question that was actually just a gift: a ragged-looking woman in gold pleather gives you a rosary and a plastic vial of holy water – the significance of which no one seems quite able, or willing, to grasp. I don’t know what you made of the present – was it her effort to save you from a certain unnamed lifestyle? A simple, genuine gift of faith? A public push to accept Jesus Christ as your one and only savior? You received it graciously before literally running off the set with a wave, on to save the world in more important arenas perhaps.

When I return home that night, I turn on your AC360 show on CNN, where you are more formal in jacket and tie. You open by reporting on another suicide due to bullying – a 14-year-old child has killed himself after being bullied for his sexuality. It is not the first time you have drawn worthy attention to the issue, even if means being ridiculously perceived as pushing a “gay agenda” – and that’s admirable of you – but it’s not enough.

You talk of the loneliness and desperation and how heartbreaking it is. You showed the video that the boy – Jamey Rodemeyer – made for the ‘It Gets Better’ project – and I wait for some flicker of whether this is personal to you. There are some things that only another gay person who has been through that fear can understand and access. Is that you? Are you one of us?

How sad that this dead child – this 14-year-old boy who was brave enough to be himself at such young age, to put his life in danger and ultimately take it himself – has done more for gay youth than you have done. Make no mistake, you have done a lot in your own way – just not that one final admittance of truth, that one simple act that might make all the difference.

You continue to publicly crusade against bullying, yet your very act of playing it coy and private with your own sexuality doesn’t seem to be saying that it’s okay for young people to be gay or for their mothers (who adore you) to embrace them. I’ve seen those mothers gush over you on FaceBook and Twitter and now in your own studio, and I know the power you have.

Maybe you’re afraid to offend and lose viewers. Maybe you honestly feel it is none of anyone’s business and it shouldn’t make a difference. And maybe you’re right on all points – but if there’s the slightest chance that it might help someone, why wouldn’t you do it?

When I was a kid growing up in the 80’s, my only gay idols were Liberace and Rock Hudson. While the former enticed with his glittery extravagance and the latter had lots of luminous lady co-stars, in the end they were two sad, scared souls who had to hide from the world and die more or less alone. That’s all I had to look up to. In a People magazine story on Liberace, I searched for a sign of recognition, desperate to discover whether that would one day be me. Was the only way through a life like theirs an early death of secrecy and disease? It would be another decade before I could even face the fact that I was gay.

Far more resonant than “Stop the bullying” or “It Gets Better” would have been the intrinsic message of solidarity and acknowledgement in a hero’s proclamation of “I am like you”. That would have done more to drive away the loneliness I felt than any sort of pat on the back or other protection would have engendered. By leaving us without that, you fail in all your other efforts.

If I’d only seen someone like you – someone successful, someone I admired – living openly as a gay man – how much heartache and loneliness would that have prevented? How many other kids might be saved, if not from death then possibly from pain? Why wouldn’t you come out to help just one person, or save just one life? Knowing the hurt and anguish that a single extinguished soul can leave, why wouldn’t you take that chance?

No offense to Lady Gaga, but this is so much better than the original verison of the video.

Until an oppression is lifted, you never realize how much it’s been weighing you down. If all your life you’ve been told you are not as good as someone because you are gay – either literally or symbolically – if that’s all you’ve ever known, when the realization comes that you are as good, that you are equal… it’s a big deal. That’s what I’m going through now as New York State becomes the sixth state in the nation to make gay marriage legal.

It feels different when it’s your own rights that are being decided – and when the right decision is made, it feels a little overwhelming. The majority of people won’t ever know what that feels like (that’s why they’re the majority). But for the minority of us who have been denied certain basic human rights – to anyone for that matter who’s been hated or discriminated against for being different – being granted the acknowledgment that we are equal is a big thing. I hate to say that it validates us, because we have always been valid, but in a way that’s what it feels like.

It says we are human.

It says we are worthy.

It says we deserve our love.

As I sit here writing this, with tears once again welling up in my eyes, I am simultaneously touched, saddened, emboldened, and exhilarated that I get to live in this great state, in this great country – where so much is wrong, but where so much can be made right.

I have to admit, until we received it, I never realized how much it bothered me, and how much it worked to silence me. Last night, as we passed people on the way to the gay bars where we were going to celebrate, I walked proudly down the street. It used to be that I would cower a bit and hasten my pace, hoping they wouldn’t notice my white pants or flamboyant shirt. I used to keep my head down and avoid eye contact, remembering moments when someone would shout “fag” at me. Not tonight. I walked with head held high, daring someone to say it. Tonight I felt liberated.

How sad that it was that way, and I wish I’d had that same belief in myself for all these years, but I didn’t. Because no matter how well I carried myself, no matter how confidently I may have come across, internally I never really felt it. That’s what a society that treats you as less than equal has the power to do. It is soul-crushing – it is a stamping-out of one’s spirit, a trampling of one’s heart.

Over the years I put up many barriers and a lot of armor to deal with all my doubts and feelings of inadequacy – a wardrobe to impress, a wit to charm, a nonchalant arrogance and aloofness that was meant to read as ‘I don’t care what you think of me, I’m just as good as you’ but I never, ever truly believed it.

This morning, as the sun begins to peek out from behind a bank of clouds, I’m starting to believe.

It happens almost every year – whether it’s a Pride Parade in Albany, Boston, or Rochester  – I get a little teary-eyed. If there weren’t a ton of people around me, I’d probably let out a torrent. Instead, I keep it mostly inside, and on a rainy year like this no one notices a few extra drops on my face.

I can’t fully explain it. Part of it is the simple act of marching – the collective energy and efforts of a group of people who have, at some point in our lives, been marginalized and hated – if not specifically or individually then as a whole – all together and in unison.

Part of it is the various groups – the Youth Group, the Gay Fathers, the Dykes on Bikes – each one of them is moving in their own right, each one has a tale to tell, of hurt and hope, of triumph and tragedy, of life and death.

And part of it is simply the sea of smiling faces – friends, families, and complete strangers, all coming together in celebration and commemoration.

For all these reasons, I always feel overcome at various parts of the parade, and it never fails to elicit a few heartfelt tears from an otherwise-stone heart. Such was the case as I stood under a concrete eve near Shreve, Crump, & Low, watching the Boston Gay Pride Parade move slowly by in the rain. From the giddy drag queens to the dancing go-go-guys, from the Trolleys of gay octogenarians to the little rainbow-flag-waving child – everyone was joyful and happy, despite the non-stop rain and a chilly breeze. Even the leather-masked men were all smiles through their harnesses.

I still believe that if you think of someone at their happiest – when they’re smiling or laughing or finding joy in the world – you can never really be mad at them. You can’t hate someone’s happiness. More importantly, you can’t hate someone’s love.

Whenever I try to understand the reasons for attacking gay marriage, I can’t get beyond the fact that it is, at its core, an attack on love. And how can anyone be hated for loving? That kind of hatred is something I cannot access, cannot fathom. That kind of hatred doesn’t make sense to my head or heart. And on that rainy day in Massachusetts, in the city where Andy and I were married – just a few blocks from the Boson Public Garden – there was nothing but love around me. In that safety, in that warmth, in that relief, I cried out of joy and hope for what the world could - and should – be.

It’s not easy being gay. It’s easy for me to think it is, because when you surround yourself with good, open-minded, accepting people it’s easy to think that’s the way the world is, but periodically – on the news, on the street, or in the office – I’m reminded that we are still different. We are still ‘other’.

Much like any minority, being openly gay opens you up for feeling different. For anyone who’s ever felt different, for anyone who’s ever been pointed at or whispered about, for anyone who’s had a dream about being in public and suddenly realizing you have no clothes on – imagine that feeling ALL THE TIME. If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable in a gay bar, imagine that feeling EVERYWHERE.

This world is a straight world. Every restaurant is a straight restaurant. Every office is a straight office. Every bus, train, or plane is a straight bus, train, or plane. Heterosexuality is the default setting – wide-ranging, far-reaching, accepted and commonplace. Homosexuality is the exception to the rule.
Every so often I feel it – the weight of it – the burden of being different. It’s a cumulative thing, built up year after year, little by little, whispered word by whispered word – and the effects are mostly deleterious. A fatigue, a vague mistrust, a twinge of paranoia that eventually – and always – turns out badly. You have to be careful with what you do with it. Too easily does it turn against the very people who are there to help you – too easily does it turn you against yourself.

Over the years, as I’ve grown into myself and become more genuinely confident in who I am, this battle fatigue has become more manageable, and I’ve been less affected by it. But it has taken years, and the war rages on in lands beyond my backyard.

If I seem too sensitive at times, if I come off as prickly – stop and think where I’m coming from, and where I’ve been. If you spend your life in a world largely foreign to you, where 97 percent of where you are and what you do is the opposite of your nature, what would you feel? How well would you cope if you had to wake up every day in a gay world? How would you feel if those seven awkward minutes in which you shared a quick drink with me in a gay bar turned into seventy years?

That’s what it’s like when I wake up every morning, go into work, walk around downtown for lunch, go out to dinner, the movies, a show (well, maybe not a show…) and all the other things we do on a daily basis. As accepting as most of my friends are, it’s still there. There’s still the burden. There’s still the difference. And until you’ve been there, you can never know. You can sympathize, you can relate, you can support and you can love, but you can never fully know.

I guess this is my roundabout way of saying that there’s still a need for Gay Pride. As comfortable and as proud as I am to be a gay man, there’s still a glimmer of doubt, still a shred of uncertainty I feel whenever someone attacks marriage equality, calls someone a faggot, or kills a gay person. That doubt and uncertainty is what they want me to feel. That’s how you stifle a group of people, that’s how you silence those who are different. And though I’ve learned to embrace being different, there will always be a cost to it. All the rainbows in the world can’t fix that, no matter how pretty.