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| Pete and Chasten Buttigieg with Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg |
I come from a time and place when gay people hid their sexuality from themselves and others. Part of this was shame, plain and simple. Part of it was practical necessity. To come out in most places in the U.S. back in the 1950s and 60s, back when the nagging thought that I might be "inherently disordered," to put it into the language used even today by the official Roman Catholic Catechism for gay people, would have been to invite scorn, sneers, shame, and possibly physical violence. Some people, I later learned, came out to parents who took their children's gay sexuality in stride, whatever it was, and assured them it made no difference. But I did not have that assurance. One of my earliest memories of the taboo topic ("Where'd you hear about that sort of thing?!") was sitting in the back seat of a car. My father was driving and telling his brother, also in the front seat, about a hitchhiker he had picked up who had put his hand on his knee.
"Should have cut his balls off and shoved them down his throat," my uncle said. My father would never have done such a thing, but he didn't protest. He just sat there in silence, and the message came through to me for future reference there in the back seat.
Fast forward to 2021, past the decades of what I have referred to as the "long hard slog toward gay liberation." Nearly three-quarters of a century have gone by since that time in the back seat. I was able eventually to shed the self-loathing that came with the first realization that we were talking not about "them" but about "people like me." In time, I built a wonderful chosen family among people, some gay, most straight, for whom my sexuality was if anything part of what made me interesting, evidence that I was able to form intimate relationships with people that included sexual attraction and activity.
These days I swing comfortably between "oh, who cares" and "nice to know" when a person is identified to me as gay or lesbian or bi. It's taken a while longer, but I'm also there with people who identify as trans. Have fully embraced the view that you don't tell a person what their sex or their sexuality is or should be; you listen and if they choose to, they will tell you.
The time came when I would hear myself expressing jealousy or envy over the way young gay people could be so openly gay. "They've got it so easy...back in my day..." - you know the stories old people tell about having to hike to school and back for miles through the snow, uphill both ways.
Not any more. These days, I find myself charmed when I see healthy young gay people being healthy and young and gay. I share in their good fortune: to have discovered and embraced their not "normal" sexuality, to have realized that "normal" is not synonymous with "good" or even "desirable," to have found somebody to love and share their lives with. And I celebrate the fact that where in Iran they may still be throwing gay people off of roofs and in Uganda and Ghana and parts of Texas evangelical clerics are still preaching to the masses that gay people are spitting in the face of Jesus, here where I live, gays are all over the place, regular characters on sit-coms, in fashion, in sports, and on school boards. President Biden has even put one of them in his inner circle, to run the Department of Transportation.
I've made a big deal about my respect and admiration for Dustin Lance Black, for his work to advance the gay liberation movement, particularly in his writing, which includes the script for the movie on the life of Harvey Milk. And about the fact that when he teamed up with Olympic diver, Tom Daley, my admiration turned me into some kind of teenager-type fan, who never fails to tune in to their latest YouTube vlog, especially when they feature their adopted son, Robbie. If I were going to change places with another human being, the first person who comes to mind would probably be Robbie.
And now comes another couple to charm my socks off - that Secretary of Transportation I just mentioned, Pete Buttigieg, and his husband Chasten. In the news this morning was the announcement that they had adopted not just one, but two children, a little girl named Penelope Rose and a boy named Joseph August. Charmed they would pick a four-syllable name for a little girl. Charmed they would pick an old-fashioned macho name for a boy like August. Charmed to the point of silliness.
Welcome to the world, Penny Rose and Joe August. May your lives be at least as blessed as the years go by as they would appear to be at the very start.
Your arrival brings smiles from ear to ear.
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