I'm a Gay Man: Coming Out Again

Ah, Vermont: America’s Canada. It’s the Shangri-La of idyllic liberalism through the lens of an overwhelmingly white™ population sheltered from the realities of urban socioeconomics and intersectional diversity. The Great Green North brought to earth Goddard College, so it’s no surprise its progressive organizations would be dabbling in the kind of experimental wokeness that might make a Feminist Studies major in Colorado blush or a gay man in Pennsylvania seethe.  

Pride Center Vermont, “the region’s most comprehensive community center dedicated to advancing community and the health and safety of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer” community, has managed to elevate its values to a zenith that comes full circle, tiptoeing into its own homophobia.

 

For all of those who aren’t up to date on the recent additions to the LGBT community’s alphabet soup, or just need a refresher on the founding stalwarts, PCV offers a glossary of terms and definitions it calls “LGBTQIA+ 101: The Basics.” It includes our community’s everyday words like “Lesbian” and “Transgender,” as well as newer ones like “Pansexual” and “Two Spirit.” While its debatable whether those who identify as Two Spirit necessary belong under the LGBT umbrella, most of the terms are assigned mundane dictionary definitions.

 

However there is one standout. Perhaps the identity most commonly associated with the LGBT community, certainly the most commonly used, “Gay” is defined as:

 

1) A man who is romantically and/or sexually attracted primarily to other men. 2) The term may be used by any person to describe same gender attraction (e.g. gay man, gay woman, gay person), or as an umbrella term for all people who experience same gender attraction.

 

So far, so good.  But PCV’s definition of “Gay” goes on to claim:

 

For some in our community, this term can feel invalidating or undermining (to) the full breadth and depth of attraction identities (emphasis mine).

 

Poor grammar aside, I’d like to see their research. (I asked and will post a follow-up if I receive a reply. Don’t hold your breath. I asked over a month ago.) If the word “Gay” in fact invalidates or undermines the breadth or depth of attraction identities, what is an appropriate, alternative term for homosexual men?

 

Interestingly, PCV’s glossary doesn’t include the word “Homosexual.”

As a gay man, I’m not necessarily offended by the word “Queer,” which PCV defines, but as anyone who was bullied with the word in their youth can attest, it’s not something I personally identify with. That’s a fairly common theme among men and women over 40. More curiously, PCV’s definition of the word “Queer” doesn’t contain a caveat similar to the one used for “Gay,” despite it being as triggering, if not more so, to a much larger audience within the LGBT community.

 

The glossary goes on to note:

 

“It is very important to respect people’s desired self-identifications.”

 

I’m not sure how gay men’s desired self-identification is being respected when PCV acknowledges it as being “invalidating” or “undermining” to others, particularly when no reasonable alternative term is offered for gay men. It’s worth noting PCV repeatedly uses the acronym “LGBTQ+.” “The “G” is right there at number two. 

 

Pride Center Vermont has summited progressivism’s genderless Mount Everest, accounting for every gender and attraction, even the voids of those genders and attractions, by bullying those who started our Liberation Movement out from under the umbrella we started. Make no mistake; these microaggressions are designed solely to make us repent for the Original Sin of being born male, especially continuing to identify as such.

 

After 40 years, gay men are finally digging ourselves out from under the stigma of AIDS only to be shoved back in the closet by our own community.

 

I know hate. I know persecution. When I was a kid in the ‘80s, bullies at the skating rink constantly asked me if I was “a boy or a girl” just because I was effeminate. As a teen in the ‘90s, I was bullied – thrown off the back of my school’s bleachers before being beaten and shoved headfirst into a trash can – for being a “Queer.”

 

Now me and my brothers, and sisters too, are being thrown off our own parade floats because we’re not queer enough.

 

I can handle Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Green. I’ve been handling them my whole life. But now, my own community has become my biggest bully. When I watch conservative pundits on the television railing against the “homosexual agenda,” I’m inspired to fight. When I visit PCV’s website, or when a nurse asks for my pronouns, I’m reminded of the vile children who threw me in a trashcan because I was different, or asked if I was “a boy or a girl.”

 

If the word “Gay” is invalidating or undermining, how should I identify? Am I just supposed to step aside without any identity at all? Should I forget all the rallies I went to, all the quilts I signed, all the friends I buried?

 

What are my struggles worth to what my community’s become? How can I embrace that community when it doesn’t allow me my own identity?