The Inherited Closet

Ronald Hayden

Emily works at a university, reads the gay newsgroups on Usenet, does work for a lesbian and gay organization, writes letters and makes phone calls on gay issues, and is generally politically active.

But while she's at work, Emily is in the closet.

It's a story we all know. No matter how out we are in our personal lives, we sometimes find ourselves in the closet at work. But with Emily there's a twist: she's straight, married, and a mother. And none of those factors is likely to change soon.

Emily has a gay son. Sometimes we forget, those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual -- we have brothers and sisters and parents and children, and they too have their closets, inherited from us.

When you're as politically active as Emily, when you're personally involved in the issues of gays and lesbians, work can be a tough place to be in the closet. So much of life occurs at work. Things always come up.

Most recently for Emily it was the military issue. "When Clinton's attempt to lift the military ban on gays met with a popular backlash, I was terribly upset and I felt very distracted at work since I really wanted to be spending my time calling or writing letters."

And there's the question of communicating with gay coworkers. "Last October I hired an employee who I assume is gay, yet on the interview he wore a wedding ring and mentioned getting married in the municipal building." Emily was embarrassed for him that he felt he had to lie to get the job (the wedding ring has since disappeared).

"One of my co-workers once started to gossip about whether one of our faculty was gay and made some disparaging comment." Responding to the inevitable gay jokes, fag comments, stray remarks, is a dilemma that looms over anyone in the closet, gay or straight. "I closed the door of my office and explained to her that a close relative of mine was gay and that I had become involved, because of him, in the fight for gay rights."

Emily began discussing AIDS and being gay in this society with the woman, and introduced her to the writing of Paul Monette, a gay novelist. Now the woman is writing a psychology paper on AIDS and the family, and recently signed up for the AIDS walk in New York City.

Things, and people, can be changed.

"On the other hand, I recently had a letter published in Newsweek on gay issues. One of the faculty walked into my office and asked if that was my letter." Emily said yes but then didn't follow up. "I wished later I had had the courage to say something to him along the lines of 'yes, I'm very concerned about what is happening now to the civil rights of gays and lesbians.'"

What about identity? Who is a person who is involved in the fight but is not gay? What face shows up in the mirror?

Public controversies like the Clinton military ban furor bring the identity question to the surface. "I knew that members of the gay community were under a lot of pressure psychologically because there was so much open discussion about them in the press. We parents felt it too, the same excitement at having homosexuality out in the open yet horror that so many people were condemning it." This led to feelings of guilt. "There was that sense that we could choose to walk away from it if we wanted to, whereas our children could not."

During the fight over Measure 9 in Oregon, Emily displayed a bright green VOTE NO ON 9 button on her desk and explained the Oregon situation to anyone who asked.

Still, despite all her activities, Emily doesn't feel a part of this community she has done so much work for. With her son being away at college, her husband and herself not having any gay friends, and her not being out at the office to people who are gay, she doesn't have much face to face contact with gays and lesbians. "As a 45 year old married woman who leads a rather traditional middle-class life I'm not sure where I would fit in socially in the gay world anyway."

What leads a person who isn't gay, who doesn't perceive herself as a part of the community, who has a comfortable life, to get involved in the often frustrating and emotionally draining fight for equal rights for gays? "You must understand that many of us in P-FLAG have grown up with no expectation of discrimination since we tend to be overwhelmingly white and middle class. When our children come out to us we are suddenly aware for the first time of discrimination as a real factor affecting our children's lives."

And suddenly the parent is part of a minority group as well, with a family member being subject to the whims of homophobia and discrimination. "This leads often to anger at society and a sense of betrayal; after all, we've played the game and lived by society's rules and just when we expect our children to reap the benefits we find that they are denied some very basic civil rights."

Unlike the other fears a parent has upon learning a child is gay ("she'll be lonely", "he'll get AIDS", "I'll never have grandchildren"), the fear of discrimination is one that grows rather than diminishes the more the parent learns about what it is to be gay or lesbian in America today.

Closets are usually a self-imposed constriction, born out of embarrassment or fear or uncertainty, but for Emily that's not the case. Her son has requested that she not reveal his sexuality to her coworkers, who used to know him as a kid.

"Sometimes I ask myself what I would do differently if my son gave me his blessing to suddenly come out. I think I would display a pink triangle in my office and wear a button (maybe 'Hate is Not a Family Value') and simply wait for people to comment. Of course we all have dreams of what we think we would do -- how close could I come to my dreams?"

Pretty close. Emily would definitely come pretty close.