A few days ago the morning paper was full of stories about the Supreme Court's decision concerning marriage equality. A number of those stories concerned wistful gay rights advocates who found themselves grieving the loss of their oppressed status and fearing the ramifications that the end of their legal repression will have for Art and gay culture. There was surprise expressed about this seeming disconnect between the joy of a legal victory and this discouraged outlook for the future of their community both in the stories themselves and by those they interviewed.
There is no disconnect. Even when one hates an identity it is hard to see it go. I've been through this myself.
When I shed one-hundred twenty pounds of excess weight in early 2010 I lost my identity as the fattest guy in the room. For the previous twenty years I had always been easily identifiable by that very tag. It was very, very very rarely not the case.
One of the most shocking moments of my life was when a work colleague I met in mid-2010 told me that "obese" was not a word he would use to describe me to someone else. I will never forget. I was stopped dead in my tracks for a moment. I remember the ochre color of the wall and the brown trim around the door I was looking at when he said this. He had never known the fattest guy in the room, but he knew me.
Over the years of living as a very large man in a world that largely shunned and ridiculed me I become adept at explaining to myself and others what my limitations were and why I had them. Comfort is a scarce commodity in a four-hundred pound man's world, but I could comfort myself with the notion that my isolation, celibacy and stunted professional success were the product of being in a world that unfairly and impersonally shamed fat people.
Similarly, I think, thought leaders in gay culture have used their status as an oppressed minority to explain their limitations. They now find themselves, as I did a few years ago, in a new situation now that the oppression, at least in this singular but important official sense, is being lifted. All of the advantages of operating as a legal repressed minority with regard to marriage and family have vanished.
Take it from me, this is profoundly disorienting in a way that is so subtle it is almost hidden. It is a time of reckoning, and it is not simple. I wish them well.
