The Best Damn Newsletter in New Jersey! ®
CHALLENGE The Newsletter of the Gay Activist Alliance in Morris County – Serving New Jersey’s GLBTI Communities Since 1972
Volume 37, Issue 8, October 2011
The Closet
by Mickey Suiter I’ve been intrigued by the recent legal wrangling between the defense and prosecution in the case of Tyler Clementi’s roommate. If you haven’t been following it, the issue has been whether or not the defense has a right to know the name of the man who was with Tyler in his dorm room and who was also secretly spied upon via webcam. The defense claims that he is an important witness, that no one else could know how much Tyler knew about what his roommate was doing and how he reacted to it. The prosecution says that the unknown man has a right to privacy and shouldn’t be outed. While I am not in favor of outing people, except maybe for right-wing anti-gay politicians who secretly are gay, I think I side with the defense on this issue. I’m not saying that this man’s name and face should be aired in the media, just that the defense certainly has the right to interview an important witness. But the situation has got me thinking about our community’s peculiar institution, the closet, once again. The general feeling in the LGBT community, as far as I can tell, is that no one should have to come out, that it is a personal decision. That makes us very different from most minorities who see "passing" in a negative light. The idea of pretending to not be Jewish, or not be African American, is offensive to those who choose not to, or are unable to, pass. One reason for that is that people in those communities grow up in their respective community. They are out the moment they are born. If they decide to "pass" as adults, it is a rejection of their friends and families. We’re in the opposite situation, where we are born into the majority and at some point in our adolescence or early adulthood realize we don’t quite belong there. Then we’re torn. Being honest and coming out could then be seen as a rejection of our families and friends. And while staying in the closet might be a rejection of the LGBT community, those people are for the most part strangers, not a group we have always been part of. Also, one reason we have more empathy for those in the closet is that, in addition to us all starting out there, the overwhelming majority of us have had the option of staying there. Only a comparative handful of us are unable to pass for straight. In the African American community, for example, it’s the opposite, with only a handful able to pass. Decades ago, I had a fantasy where no one could hide in the closet. One morning all lesbian, gay, and bisexual people
would wake up purple, a different shade depending on where on the Kinsey scale one fell. Myself, I’d be the color of eggplant. (I know, this wouldn’t work for those whose skin pigment is already dark, but bear with me — it’s a fantasy, after all.) Can you imagine a world where everyone, gay or straight, could identify every single LGBT person in their life? Where even Ahmadinejad would have to admit there actually are gay people in Iran? I would imagine our society and our politics would change rather rapidly. There would be other positive results of this. Whatever else we think of staying in the closet, it takes a psychological toll on us. We’re always aware and working at it. It would be nice to be able to just relax and be who we are. And, if we did run into problems, we would be able to easily see who was out there in the same situation, who might be able to help, or at least understand. That’s just a fantasy of course. We’re not all going to come out at once. But over the past couple of decades, LGBT people have been coming out at an everincreasing rate. Who knows what the next ten or twenty years will bring? The closet may become an anachronism. People will just grow up and naturally be whoever they are. As we keep moving in the right direction, that's a fantasy that has a good chance of becoming reality. (Editor's note: as of press time, the judge in the Tyler Clementi case has ruled in favor of the defense regarding the name of the other man in the room.)
Inside Challenge Challenge Information.... ................................ page 2 GAAMC Events.............................................. page 2 The Bulletin Board......................................... page 3 This Month's Contributors................................ page 3 Gleanings: Queer news from around the world .... page 4 Shopped for a Cause .......................................page 5 Poem: Images .............................................. page 5 Getting Personal............................................ page 5 Dancing to Architecture music reviews............... page 6 Calendar ..................................................... page 7 The Masks We Wear ...................................... page 10 To the Rescue: A Boxer Love Story.................... page 12 10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked, part 4................. page 13 GAAMC Information...................................... page 14