Sexuality and Understanding

We All Deserve To Feel Gushy Inside

A morning read reminds straight-guy writer how much more he still has to learn about LGBTQ community — and his own prejudice

My multitasking efforts came to a screeching halt this morning when I clicked on a powerful essay by Kelsie McWilliams about her struggle to confront her bisexuality and its conflicts with her evangelical upbringing. I couldn’t put it down.

McWilliams reached into my entrails and shook up all kinds of stuff — emotions, reflection, self-criticism, and other hobgoblins.

To be clear, I know that it’s not up to people in the LGBTQ+ community to educate straight guys like me. Nor is it their job to give a damn what I think. The responsibility for learning about and loving people different from me is my own.

When anyone in my life, even a writer I’ve never met, opens a door that invites greater understanding, though, the least I can do is accept.

Let me walk a mile, or a few thousand words, in her shoes so that she knows she is not alone. If I can root out a little more of my own ignorance along the way, even better.

McWilliams whisked me into a time travel machine that hurled me back one decade on its first stop, and two more after that — back to a time when I had no experience with anyone who was gay, bisexual, or anything else but straight.

I remembered a piece I wrote on my own blog in November of 2012 as I prepared to vote on a Maryland ballot initiative legalizing same-sex marriage (it passed). I copy it here to share part of what’s churning through me today:

I ran into a high school sweetheart nearly two decades ago back in our hometown of Atlanta. She told me that her life had changed a lot since we dated: She realized she was gay. “Rebecca” (not her real name) shared the painful journey that ultimately led to her happily embracing her sexuality.

We lost touch not long after that but recently found each other again here in the Washington, D.C. area, where we had met so many years ago as puppy-faced kids on a multi-school trip to the nation’s capital. I found that we weren’t all that different in our middle age: Rebecca and I had both moved here to make a difference and were thriving in our District careers. I was in a committed relationship with a woman; she was, too. If she is ever able to marry, I will attend her wedding. On Nov. 6, I will also vote yes on Maryland’s Question 6 to express my support of Maryland’s recently passed Civil Marriage Protection Act legalizing same-sex marriages.

Any two people who love each other should be allowed to celebrate that relationship through the act of marriage and no government has any business deciding who can and can’t be together. Opponents of marriage equality refuse to recognize the inherent issue of fairness and equal rights this country has fought for more than two centuries to preserve. It is beyond me how one human being can look into the eyes of another and declare the latter to be a second-class citizen.

I find it particularly odd that many African-Americans would deny gay people the right to marry each other. I mentioned this to my stepmother, who happens to be Black, and reminded her that it wasn’t that long ago that the government banned Blacks from marrying whites. She later told me that my points resonated with her and that she has since changed her view on the subject. Civil rights champion Julian Bond, meanwhile, appears in TV commercials every day encouraging people to vote yes on Question Six.

How would other Americans react today if the government forbade people from marrying someone who speaks a different language, practices a different religion, or has a different skin tone? What if the government told heterosexuals that it would deny the right to marry only to that group? There would be revolution in the streets, that’s what.

Opponents of marriage fairness are also misguided on the subjects of choice and religion.

I’ve heard many condemnations that homosexuals shouldn’t “choose” to be gay. No one chooses who they’re attracted to or who they fall in love with.

I don’t remember ever sitting down with my parents and saying, “Mom, Dad, I’ve given this matter a great deal of deliberation and I have decided I shall date … girls!” All I remember are a zillion moments in which I spotted a young woman like Rebecca in a Smithsonian cafeteria and got all gushy on my insides. I was in love with her by the time I put my arm around her at the Jefferson Memorial later that evening, and I nearly fainted when she agreed to go out with me when we got back home.

I don’t buy religious arguments that homosexuality is a sin, either. While people can use any document including a bible to justify their views, the god I believe in is not one who condemns a group of people he himself played a role in creating. Many churches in Maryland are supporting marriage fairness.

Life can be difficult enough when people aren’t being treated to bigotry and discrimination. We don’t need to make it harder on anyone because he or she is different.

Rebecca may be off the list of women I can marry but that doesn’t mean my feelings about her are any different. She had big beautiful brown eyes and wanted to make the world a better place when we met. She still has big beautiful brown eyes now and she is fulfilling her dream. America is a better place because of it. I remain incredibly grateful for the romance we once shared. She helped me gain a sense of self-confidence and blessed my life in many ways.

No law should deny Rebecca the opportunity to make a woman as gushy on the inside as she once made me.

There are multiple epilogues to this story — some good, others dark.

Rebecca did ultimately find the woman of her dreams — inviting me to her wedding, where I stood up in front of a huge crowd and congratulated the happy couple by recounting the story above. Then I hugged the stuffing out of her!

A lot of personal growth and joyful tears flowed with the champagne that night.

Rebecca’s parents, highly successful, conservative, and wealthy attorneys who intimidated me as a kid, had already become warmer, more open people as a result of embracing their daughter and her struggles. All of the straight folks in the church that night shared a bond not just with Rebecca and her new wife but with each other: We recognized how much we had already learned about our own ignorance — but that we barely had any idea of how much further we still had to go.

As ol’ Donald Rumsfeld might have said if he had been there that night, the straight folks were at least starting to identify the “unknown unknowns”.

I would love to report that I’ve made so much self-improvement progress since Rebecca first shared her news that I am now a 100-percent evolved human being. Yes, I vote for ballot initiatives like marriage equality. I support all laws making illegal any form of discrimination. I vote for gay political candidates when they’re the candidates who hold the positions I support the most. I used to umpire gay and lesbian softball leagues in Atlanta in my 20s. I have a lot of LGBTQ acquaintances now, and a few gay friends.

I even make inclusive videos capturing LGBTQ perspectives when I’m out celebrating big election wins.

On paper and in my daily interactions with people whose sexual orientation is different from my own, I’d like to think I’m one of the good guys. An ally, even.

In the most appalling darkness of my own heart, though, I continue confronting my shortcomings, my own ugliness.

I’ve struggled from day one to understand the advent of preferred gender pronouns. I was practically born a writer so I’ve taken umbrage at the idea that the rules of English grammar should have to change.

“People can refer to themselves however they’d like,” I’ve huffed in my head. “But can’t they come up with a way to do so that’s consistent with the rules of the English language?”

It’s still not easy for me to accept a noun-pronoun agreement issue in a sentence, but, slowly, I’m recognizing that it’s me who needs to change — and that perhaps I have to drag the English language along with me.

I turn away from the mirror, too, when I meet gay men who are feminine. My gay friends who are men all happen to be masculine in appearance and affect — just as most of my female friends who are gay are feminine in theirs. I realize as I write this paragraph that these facts are not a coincidence — that they are a result of my own deep-seated prejudice not yet fully extinguished.

It’s like I’m secretly saying to the universe and to people I meet, “It’s ok if you’re gay, as long as it in no way makes me uncomfortable or doesn’t conform with my norms.”

That’s not fair, and it’s absolutely not good-guy thinking.

I clearly remain a work in progress on the sexual orientation front: The immensity of my ignorance is far from being erased.

I feel pretty shitty about myself right now — and this isn’t remotely the path I thought this essay was going to take when I started it — but I thank Kelsie McWilliams for the discomforting reminder that I still have a lot of gut-wrenching self-improvement to do.

I think it’s time for me to see my old friend Rebecca again, too. She’ll absorb all of this — and hug the stuffing out of me anyway.

Christopher Lancette is a Maryland-based freelance writer who likes to write about the meaning of things. He frequently writes about nature, sports, TV, and his own flaws. A former journalist and environmental organization communications director, he spends much of his time exploring and writing about his favorite creek at EyeOnSligoCreek.com. He has written for some 50 national and local publications ranging from the Atlanta Business Chronicle and Biography magazine to Salon and the Washington Independent Review of Books.