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Head's spinning......
May. 12th, 2014 05:14 pmA year ago or three, a magazine article proclaimed "Gay is the new Black".
There were people who found this offensive. A close friend, who's both black and gay summed it up his take, "the experience of being gay has much in common with being black, except I never had to come out as black."
I'm second generation in this country and out of a large Jewish family, not that I look it. I never set out to pass, but in general, pass I do. Relatively few recognized me for who I was as a kid, including many within my community of origin. Many in our neighborhood assumed Mom, a blue-eyed fair-skinned blonde, was a gentile girl who'd stolen the heart of a nice Jewish boy. I remember following my parents one Saturday into synagogue and hearing two middle aged biddies - "Vus mit der shickseh mit de shayneh boychick? Und give nar kik mit der kinder!". (What's with that gentile woman and the nice handsome Jewish guy? And LOOK at those children!) My own Yiddish was minimal, but I knew enough that I understood what had been said. My sisters were spared that indignity. I didn't understand what mom said to those two, but I saw the smoke rising. I think that may have been my first awareness of being an invisible minority. I was 7 or 8 at the time.
That was also at about the time I came to understand the devastation of the holocaust, of what had been perpetrated on my community, of why my mother's parents, whom I idolized, had almost no family, unlike Pop's folks, who'd come to the US en masse, leaving almost no one behind.
Coming to understand myself a decade later as a teenaged queer person, dovetailed right in to that experience. Stay hidden and while it hurts, you might be safe.
So here I am 4 decades later, the closet door isn't just open, it's off its hinges. Marriage if legal for same sex couples in17 18 states here in the US, with easily another 9 working their way thru the federal courts, every initial ruling in our favor. Another 18 nations either preform or recognize our marriages.
Not only am I a married gay man, I've been one for almost 6 years.
Don't ask, don't tell is over. An open lesbian was elected to the Senate. The heads of state of Iceland and Luxembourg have been openly gay.
And this past weekend, a gay man was picked in the NFL draft, while in Europe a drag queen won the Eurovision international competition for song of the year.
No longer are young people short on potential role models to look to, no matter what field of endeavor.
For the kid in me, the one that was starting high school in the same neighborhood as the Stonewall riot, 2 months after the fact, my mind is boggled. Life is good. Change is good. But sometimes I feel like I need to catch my breath.
There were people who found this offensive. A close friend, who's both black and gay summed it up his take, "the experience of being gay has much in common with being black, except I never had to come out as black."
I'm second generation in this country and out of a large Jewish family, not that I look it. I never set out to pass, but in general, pass I do. Relatively few recognized me for who I was as a kid, including many within my community of origin. Many in our neighborhood assumed Mom, a blue-eyed fair-skinned blonde, was a gentile girl who'd stolen the heart of a nice Jewish boy. I remember following my parents one Saturday into synagogue and hearing two middle aged biddies - "Vus mit der shickseh mit de shayneh boychick? Und give nar kik mit der kinder!". (What's with that gentile woman and the nice handsome Jewish guy? And LOOK at those children!) My own Yiddish was minimal, but I knew enough that I understood what had been said. My sisters were spared that indignity. I didn't understand what mom said to those two, but I saw the smoke rising. I think that may have been my first awareness of being an invisible minority. I was 7 or 8 at the time.
That was also at about the time I came to understand the devastation of the holocaust, of what had been perpetrated on my community, of why my mother's parents, whom I idolized, had almost no family, unlike Pop's folks, who'd come to the US en masse, leaving almost no one behind.
Coming to understand myself a decade later as a teenaged queer person, dovetailed right in to that experience. Stay hidden and while it hurts, you might be safe.
So here I am 4 decades later, the closet door isn't just open, it's off its hinges. Marriage if legal for same sex couples in
Not only am I a married gay man, I've been one for almost 6 years.
Don't ask, don't tell is over. An open lesbian was elected to the Senate. The heads of state of Iceland and Luxembourg have been openly gay.
And this past weekend, a gay man was picked in the NFL draft, while in Europe a drag queen won the Eurovision international competition for song of the year.
No longer are young people short on potential role models to look to, no matter what field of endeavor.
For the kid in me, the one that was starting high school in the same neighborhood as the Stonewall riot, 2 months after the fact, my mind is boggled. Life is good. Change is good. But sometimes I feel like I need to catch my breath.
