What being gay means to me; People's News, March 6, 1979

I'm sitting here trying to write something on what it means to be gay. Hell, I'm no writer either. So, what does i t mean to be gay? It means wondering why this should ever happen to you. To me, it was growing up in Tiny-Town, USA with twenty in my class and being scared shitless someone would find out and make my life unbearable. To me, it meant never knowing anyone else who was gay and thinking I was evil. All I knew of gays were the locker room jokes told by others who were also scared shitless someone would know of their feelings but weren't honest enough to keep their mouth shut. It means being fired from jobs because the boss finds out. It means not getting hired because the boss decides that someone your age must be gay if they're not married, even though you lied when he asked if you were. It means watching boyhood friends fulfill their sexual needs and not even being able to figure out an honest way of fulfilling your own.

To me it has meant walking across the railroad bridge to find it fall away in the middle and a locomotive coming full charge. If you turn and try to flag it down, it's going to smash you to hell. If you jump, it's into an abyss of who knows what. Some have chosen the locomotive. Having never been too fond of being rundown by society's unthinking locomotive, I've chosen the abyss.

I fell for awhile, feeling lost, alone. Then, I found within myself an ability. The ability to walk, to run, to charge with my head held high. I am a man. I have the ability to care and to love. I am no different than those straight friends i thought I had. Only the object and the direction of that love is different. The ability to care and to love can never be evil. I am not evil.

So what does it mean to be gay? It means staying in small clusters of people who feel the same way, who are gay. It means being afraid your college classmates are going to find out and make your life unbearable and ruin your chances for a successful (?) career. It means subscribing to "Better Homes and Closets" sent in a plain brown envelope.

For me it means getting so damn mad I'd just like to start shooting assholes. But my Christian moral background won't let me do that. Instead, I keep coming out of the closet more and more until the Anita Bryant coalition stones me to death with oranges. I look at you my straight liberal Friends and say "thanks for the word service." I look at you my gay closeted friends and say, "Thanks for the boycott. She just saved those few to throw at me."

What does it mean to be gay? To me it means being mad as hell. Mad that I don't have the same rights as my straight liberal friends. It's being mad as hell at a potentially great country which votes away my rights and freedoms. It's being mad as hell at the religious do-gooders who insist I change the way I was created before I can enter "their kingdom." It means being mad as hell at my gay friends who can't even come out far enough to educate their straight friends as to what it means to be human and gay.

What does it mean to be gay? It means that I am a human being who happens to be physically attracted to other human beings of the same gender. I'm worth something. I have something to offer. I am able to feel hurt, pain and love. But, they are trying to push me back into the closet.

In Seattle and Portland when they tried to lock the closet, everyone asked, "Who's next?" If that train can smash my rights to hell, who is next as it plunges toward oblivion? Women have been struggling for awhile. Will they start to rescind some of your gains? What about the gains Black people have made? They're already rescinding ecological gains.

So my straight liberal and gay closeted friends, the turning point for all of us may be at hand. The paranoid, bigoted Bible-quoters are already at their texts justifying their insecurity. If I thought there was some backing on the train, I'd get on board myself. Together maybe we could get the train stopped, backed up and on a saner track before that unthinking machine smashes us all to hell.

D. David Soloman

The People's News was a publication of the progressive community in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. D. David Soloman was the Pen-Name I used during this time in most of my writings and activism. (O.M.)