Gay students should come out, break silence

Rolling Stone reported recently that "gay students at Yale no longer feel that being gay is a primary part of their identity" ["To Be Gay at Yale," RS, 10/11/01]. This attitude was best articulated by a Yale College junior, who told the popular entertainment magazine, "I'm not a `gay person.' I'm a person who happens to be gay." If the speaker of these words meant that his homosexuality is only one trait among many, and that sexual orientation should not be the criterion by which his worth as a human being is judged, then I agree entirely. I fear, however, that this adamant unwillingness to identify as a "gay person" is part of a broader and woefully misguided understanding of being gay, one that finds its most succinct expression in a statement recently published in the Herald: "Homosexuality," John Reindl, BK '03, said, "should only involve what you do in the bedroom" [YH, "Staying inside on National Coming Out Day," 10/5/01].

Sadly, I think this opinion has a sizeable following among queers on Yale's campus. Many gay men and lesbians here refuse to admit the countless ways in which their sexuality has informed the most fundamental parts of their identity: how they think, what they think, with whom they socialize and why. Rolling Stone successfully showed that, after three decades of vocal activism, many gay Yalies now think themselves comfortable and mainstream enough to revert back into political invisibility. This is a delusion.

The notion that one can be out in private life but not-quite-so-out in public life constitutes, if not a contradiction in terms, then the self-imposition of a political closet. Mistaking tolerance for acceptance, it wrongly interprets a lack of hostility to be an outpouring of support. It advocates preaching to the choir and does not accept any responsibility for engaging those who have not yet been convinced. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Co-op, according to this view, should do little more than sponsor social events, and this is unfortunately the policy that currently prevails in that organization, which spends almost all of its time, money, and energy on dances and "support groups" geared toward its own members. Coming Out Day, one of the few events that galvanizes the LGBT Co-op to really go public, is ridiculed by some out students as "a spectacle."

Reindl admits his indulgent attitude toward the closet, saying the Rolling Stone article "almost made it look"-brace yourself-"like you should come out at Yale if you're gay." I have great empathy for those who still find themselves in the closet on a campus like ours, but Reindl expresses more than humane understanding. He seems to question the very notion that coming out is a moral imperative, a private need, and a public good. I refuse to believe that, on this question at least, he speaks for the majority of Yale's gay community. Many of us interpret the distressingly large number of closeted undergraduates as a suggestion that we are not, in fact, all comfortable and mainstreamed. We understand that the internalized homophobia that keeps our peers in the closet is, essentially, the same force that diverts the LGBT away from activism and real visibility.

Evidently, hundreds of closeted Yalies are not enough to compel us to publicly challenge a society that demands silence. But what about the situation in the rest of the country, the rest of the world? It pains me that we offer so little challenge to the difficult realities of life for the millions of gay people who are not privileged to live in a relatively safe haven like Yale. We should take our cue from Harvard's LGBT group, which actively involves itself in the issues that are most pressing to our national community.

There are opportunities for such participation if one looks for them. Myles Gideon, MC '02, works with the Connecticut chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, an organization that seeks to end homophobia in public schools. And I have been working to form a Yale Coalition for Marriage Equality, which will unite various parts of the University's student body in an effort to prepare Connecticut for an inevitable fight for same-sex marriage.

Rolling Stone called Yale "the forefront of gay campus culture." Being on the forefront means taking a place at the front lines. We bear an ethical responsibility to lead the collegiate gay movement. We cannot afford to delude ourselves into thinking that "gay" refers to sexual acts and not to identity, that we've achieved all we seek, that activism hurts rather than helps. We cannot afford to be complacent. Michael Boucai is a junior in Trumbull.

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