Today I had lunch with someone I have known for a long time who is very plugged into the community. I will call him R. My big idea, one I want to fulfill, is to have a really important, meaningful National Coming Out Day in 1999. With eleven-plus months to plan, I think it's a real possibility. So R and I did a little brainstorming and kicked around some ideas, and are definitely going to pursue doing something big for National Coming Out Day. We also both agreed that the Anti-Violence Project has really dropped the ball with the Matthew Shepard killing and the subsequent need for information and an event.
I also considered a three-pronged approach concerning my alma mater, and doing something that I wish someone had done for me back then. Mentor and reach out. There were countless gay people at Hofstra University--both fellow students and teachers--yet all that knowledge pretty much came later, as I saw people around Gay New York after I graduated. It would have been nice to have had some gay friends back then, instead of having to learn everything on my own. It might have helped me when I was entrapped and falsely accused of public masturbation in August 1984 by NYC police. Imagine going to court and trying to fight that completely on your own. Having a gay friend or teacher to talk to would have been very helpful. Luckily, the entrapping officer did not show up to my hearing and the words "case dismissed" were very welcome that day after Christmas 1984. The two friends I told about this were straight, sympathetic, and completely ill-equipped to give real help. My naivete at the time is astounding in retrospect.
So my three-pronged approach? Write a column for my beloved Hofstra Chronicle. Look into founding a gay and lesbian alumni association. Reach out to the gay and lesbian association Hofstra has now. They sound better than the poorly run Lambda Club, which resulted in a specious M&M embezzlement scandal and the end of the club.
Later that night, I was talking with someone who declared, "I'm not an activist." My reply, unspoken to him, is, "you are and you aren't." Looking at the dictionary definition, we have:
ac-tiv-ism: n. the doctrine or policy of taking positive, direct action to achieve an end, esp. a political or social end.
I suspect people only think of activism only in terms of the political. I think they forget that when you are out, you are an activist. If you have your little pink triangle button up at work, or a rainbow flag on your desk, or you mention some gay activity or function you attended over the weekend to your co-workers, you are an activist. The more people, straight and gay, know you are gay, the more you are actually working toward social change. Being counted lets straight people know that you are here to stay, and it lets other gay people, maybe the ones who are not so out, know that maybe you are someone who they can talk to, or from whom they can draw inspiration.
Sometimes, merely being yourself means you are being an activist. Every single conversation a gay person has with a straight person about some gay issue is a moment of activism, if they are proud of their lives, and want people to know they matter.
One thing I have noticed, and this is one of those unpopular observations I make from time to time because I take people to task, is that it often seems that people comfortable in their relationships and their bourgeois lives are the least activist. They have it all, and they feel safe. For some reason, whatever reason, they have had a long-term relationship, they have a nice home, tolerant and accepting co-workers and neighbors, but "they are not activists" and they are not completely out about things. Yet it's the activists who are helping them secure this tolerance and comfort. Perhaps it cocoons them from feeling they have to do anything to help or further the cause. Writing a nice check is good, but I have a very Chekhovian belief about working toward a goal and having a purpose.
I think of a particular co-worker who had a lover and a pretty nice life, but I didn't envy him. He would, in my presence and those of other tolerant people, refer to his lover in euphemisms, and expected me to happily kowtow to the understanding that he had a secret he did not want fully revealed. This led to me being a bit disgusted with him and completely unsympathetic. I understand the fear and the trepidation, but there was a real absurd quality to this expectation that we respect his secretiveness while he happily made snide, hurtful comments to and about others.
So I think we realize he was not an activist. He had just about everything a person could want, but he didn't have an ounce of pride or kindness. He wasn't furthering or bettering anything. He did spend an awful lot of time running to the unisex bathroom to make sure the mirror was still there, though. He might have had a lover (he has a new one now, by the way), but I didn't get the sense he would do just about anything for him. He wouldn't even refer to him openly when it was safe. As the song says, "who needs love like that?"
So think of the small things you can be doing, or saying, or being, and consider doing, saying, and being them a little more. Be yourself, but do better and do more. Think about what you can do, however small. Think about it, and commit to doing it now.