On Rainbows and Other Manifestations

I'm layin' on the gay today.

Certain parts of the media and the blogosphere will be full of this story in the coming days, and while I'm not usually one to get on bandwagons, the subject is one I've been thinking about recently and the two happen to dovetail perfectly. The name of Leslie Hagen will become famous in some circles, and not for reasons that Ms. Hagen ever sought. She is the attorney at the Department of Justice with consistently outstanding job ratings whose contract was not renewed because of "rumors that she is a lesbian."

Those of you with more tolerant attitudes are thinking, "in this day and age???" Those of us gay people who are coasting along comfortably in what some are calling the "post-gay" 2-aughts are also saying, "in this day and age???" This story brings us up short.

I worked my entire career at the Peace Corps, which is famously (some say notoriously) gay-friendly. During the Clinton years the office I worked in might as well have had its walls painted lavender. My immediate boss was a lesbian, and her "big boss," the White House appointee heading our division, had made her political name in Colorado spearheading opposition to an anti-gay state constitutional amendment that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her name is Judy Harrington and you might have called her a "professional lesbian" in those days. Judy encouraged gay staffers to make themselves known in an effort to show Peace Corps' entire diversity. She tapped me to do a training session for new recruiters on how to deal with sexual minority applicants. The Peace Corps has a very active gay and lesbian returned volunteer organization, one of whose main functions is to mentor new members who need guidance on how to navigate sexual orientation issues in the developing world, on a country-specific basis. The gay/lesbian Peace Corps employee organization once hosted a reception and lunch for Mark Gearan, Director of the agency (another White House appointee), at which in welcoming remarks I told Gearan that I had witnessed changes at the Peace Corps, from the time when, as a volunteer, I nearly quit my assignment early because of a gay issue I was afraid to discuss with anybody, to that moment, when the Director of the Peace Corps was having lunch with me simply because I was gay.

Those heady times were not to last, of course, but we gay Peace Corps folk could never completely closet ourselves, nor were we ever asked to, even by Bush II. Gay Pride Month continues to be observed at the agency, with invited speakers and agency-wide events. One of the Bush appointees, the director of the legal office, did take offense at posters publicizing some related event, and had the temerity to order them removed. That didn't last long.

Blessed as I know I was in my workplace, I had, and still have, frequent reminders that I was in a luxurious coccoon. Two of my best gay friends are very highly placed career federal employees. One is open about his sexual orientation in his respected and nationally recognized AIDS work. He has been in line for a directorship for years and is constantly passed over. He is never given any direct feedback, and you're left with only one conclusion about why his career is stalled: he rubs some Bush appointee the wrong way. Another is a lesbian (now retired) who refused to come out. I constantly took her to task for this reticence. She was so competent, so professional and so well-loved by her colleagues, I told her, that she had reached a pinnacle from which she could not be dislodged. I reminded her that the gay people among her rank and file desperately needed her example. But she remained steadfast in her refusal. Given the story of Leslie Hagen, I concede her point.

Steve and I are not ones to make a huge point of the fact that we are gay. For most gay people, it's easy not to make such a point, since we are the ultimate invisible minority. Unless we do something that obviously bends the genders, or go around carrying signs, the everyday world passes us by assuming nothing out of the ordinary. And so, "to out or not to out" remains an issue for many and is often discussed at dinner tables when it's just us gay folks getting together. I still lose patience with obdurately closeted people, until I hear their reasons. Then I step back once again, chastened.

I often think that being gay is something like being left-handed--something integral to who you are happens to be different from what the world expects. The world is by and large made on the assumption of right-handedness, and so it is on the assumption of a heterosexual response. Make no mistake, there is much more danger associated with a non-hetero response than with left-handedness, and those dangers are very serious, running the gamut from the physical to the emotional to the professional. But if a gay person is lucky enough to negotiate those pitfalls successfully, s/he gets used to the difference; the necessary adjustments become automatic responses to the world and are given no more thought than breathing. It's only on some rare occasion when tables may be turned that we suddenly realize what we have been missing. The first time I had that experience was in April of 1993, at the time of the first big Gay Pride march on Washington after the start of the Clinton administration. The city and its suburbs turned into a parallel world where for one weekend, everybody seemed to be gay. It was like San Francisco on steroids, if you can imagine that. You straight friends would have felt in the distinct minority, and would have had to get used to seeing same-sex couples walking around really acting like couples. Holding hands, going arm-in-arm, maybe the occasional affectionate peck on the cheek. Completely innocent, completely lovely expressions of affection, and completely unseen in public, usually. We gay people had to get used to it ourselves. It was mind blowing, but a very pleasant adjustment to have to make. And here's a place for me to mention my cultural hero, Rufus Wainwright. I can't describe to you the feeling of utter liberation I get every time he stands up and sings one of his gorgeous love songs. All of that articulate beauty is about me! I never thought I would live to see such a thing.

Wainwright calls himself "post-gay." He came along after the big demonstrations, stands on the shoulders of the Stonewall heroes, and simply proceeds as who he is with neither apology nor explanation. Good for him and good for us. But we forget the Leslie Hagens of the world at our peril. "We are everywhere" is a favorite chant at rallies. But snipers are everywhere, too, and duck-and-cover is still a necessary maneuver. That's why Steve and I, post-gay or no, will not be putting our rainbows away just yet.