The self-destruction that accompanies closet life

Part 6 of The Harmful Effects of the Closet

Preamble to each post: There is no doubt that "the closet" is the most harmful result of continuing to deny LGBTs a legitimate and equal place in society. By not acknowledging them, heterosexuals force them into hiding. The results are often catastrophic. What is also not in doubt is that the closet is of heterosexual making. Rather than wag our fingers and preach our condemning sermons, we should be doing all we can to eliminate this despicable situation. For a simple fact remains: if we eliminate the closet, we eliminate all those things that we negatively associate with gayness. Even better, LGBTs are freed from the inhumanity of closet life. 

"The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit."   ~  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

According to the gay bloggers at Revel & Riot, 

A closeted person is someone who has gay relationships, but hides that fact from everyone that they know and love. In Beyond the Closet; The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life, being in the closet is described as a “life-shaping pattern of concealment.” Being closeted is linked with high-anxiety, low self-esteem, increased risk for suicide and general lack of fulfillment (though closeted people rarely admit to not being fulfilled while they’re in there, though they always remark about it when they finally come out!)

David Van Leer characterized it as, "The Beast of the Closet,"  (Critical Inquiry 15 (1989) and you don't want to be confined in a small space with a beast.

I don't mean to be judgmental, but in stark terms to live in the closet is to live a lie.  It is to live deceitfully.  It is to be forced to deny one's true self, and to deny oneself the integrity that only comes from living in the open.  Readers of this blog know that I do not place the blame on those who feel the closet is their only option.  Rather, the blame is squarely on those who make life so miserable for some that they are convinced that life in the open is too risky, even life threatening.

Dr. Gary Gates of the Williams Institute think tank at UCLA, describes the closet this way: "My personal definition of the closet is... pathological, as it is associated with discordance in people’s lives between ...how they behave or how they feel. In this case, the closet is not the discordance, per se, but rather the pathology that the discordance creates."  Gates is no homophobe; he lives an out gay life.  His concern is for those caught up in the pathology that the closet creates and what to do about it. 

In its extreme form, pathology results from years of what Dr. Jack Dresher calls dissociation. This is the result of a perceived lack of "[T]ransparency, invisibility, losing one’s voice, being an outsider, etc., are some of the terms used to describe the subjective experience of dissociative detachment." (Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man)  In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanisms in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress or conflict. This leads to LGBTs inability to be themselves, and their true selves disappear into a public facade. Feelings of insignificance caused by their inability to express their true feelings, leads to very low self-esteem. This may culminate in deep depression that can lead to suicide in the most severe cases.

Did you know that there is such a thing as a "self-loathing gay"?  No wonder.  If your world was filled with messages of inferiority, threats, degrading insults, religious denunciations, and the like, you might not have a very high opinion of yourself, either.  And recent studies show that often homophobics are actually closeted gays.  Through the coping mechanism of projection, a person subconsciously denies his or her own negative attributes and ascribes them to others.  

Jesus' insistence that we love our neighbors as ourselves must mean that straight Christians cannot tolerate the existence of the closet.  No one in the closet has a chance to love themselves in a healthy way.  Even if self-protection is a form of self-care, it falls very short of ultimate self-respect and full human dignity.  Even so, as a straight man I have no standing to say that all LGBTs must come out.  I can only urge you, for your sake and for all our sakes, to give coming out serious consideration.

This ends the series on The Harmful Effects of the Closet

The intense loneliness of not having a life companion openly at one's side

Part 5 of The Harmful Effects of the Closet

Preamble to each post: There is no doubt that "the closet" is the most harmful result of continuing to deny LGBTs a legitimate and equal place in society. By not acknowledging them, heterosexuals force them into hiding. The results are often catastrophic. What is also not in doubt is that the closet is of heterosexual making. Rather than wag our fingers and preach our condemning sermons, we should be doing all we can to eliminate this despicable situation. For a simple fact remains: if we eliminate the closet, we eliminate all those things that we negatively associate with gayness.  Even better, LGBTs are freed from the inhumanity of closet life. 

For most of us, our families are the center of our lives.  We live in constant awareness of and with high purpose for those we call family.  We hardly do anything outside of work that doesn't involve them, directly or indirectly.  Few decisions we make are made without reference to their well-being.  And if we are happily married, our spouse is the most significant person in our life.

But for those who live their lives in the closet, who marry for the sake of self-protection, or who chose to remain single, life lived without the most satisfying relationship a human may enjoy, loving and being loved by a deeply devoted life partner, is denied them.

For Christian LGBTs, this is a heightened problem, for the church, almost universally, condemns any effort they might take to relieve the loneliness that constantly dogs them. Nonreligious out LGBTs have found satisfying life partners and live lives not much different from straight couples, enjoying the ebb and flow that accompanies all relationships.  But closeted LGBTs, Christian or not, are denied such a life.

Let’s be clear about what we are asking of Christian nonheterosexuals.  Richard B. Hays, in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament, writes,

Heterosexual persons are also called to abstinence from sex unless they marry (1 Cor. 7:8-9).  The only difference, admittedly a salient one, in the case of homosexually oriented persons is that they do not have the option of homosexual marriage.  So where does that leave them?  It leaves them in precisely the same situation as the heterosexual who would like to marry but cannot find an appropriate partner (and there are many such): summoned to a difficult, costly obedience, while groaning for the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23).  

Gay Christians, according to Hays, are essentially no different from would-be married heterosexuals.  Both of them are asked to hold their natural sexual impulses at bay.  This ability to be chaste for life is considered a gift from God, not a natural condition, and is rarely granted.  Even when it is, it is not without its challenges. Even so, straights and gays are far from being on an equal footing, because the heterosexual— let’s call him Greg— has the hope, even the strong possibility of some day being married.  Greg can hope, and hope makes all the difference for him.  But Norman, a gay man, has no hope.  He is denied the possibility of ever having his greatest longing fulfilled—that of a marriage partner.  Let us be clear about this.  We are not asking Norman to deny himself sex.  We are demanding that Norman deny his humanity.  In effect, we are asking Norman to commit suicide of his spirit. This I find to be profoundly unchristian and unworthy of a compassionate God.

More and more congregations and denominations are finding this situation needlessly burdensome for their LGBT members and are holding marriage ceremonies for them.  In many cases, these are marriages "in the sight of God" only, as the state has yet to legalize them.  But they are, nevertheless, just as fulfilling to the gay couples as any straight marriage can be.

But the closet is still the enemy of those it continues to house.  As long as they remain safely inside, the possibility of a complete life is beyond their grasp.  They will languish, continuing to seek furtive, incomplete alliances which will only remind them of what they will never have.  Their human longing for the one who can make all the difference in their lives will go unabated.  They shrivel and die.  As one who left the closet for good told me, "The oxygen in there grew thin and I could hardly take a breath."

The sooner we, as a nation and church, make marriage available for nonheterosexuals, the sooner will the loneliness of the closet and its consequent inhumanity be eliminated.  After all, doesn't the Golden Rule, "Do to others that which you would want done to you," demand that?  Imagine for a moment, if you are straight, life without your significant other.  Why would we want anyone else to be forced to live that way?

In this video, five gay couples talk about their anticipated marriage ceremonies

TOMORROW: The self-destruction that accompanies closet life

Why the Closet?

The Harmful Effects of the Closet, Part 2: 
"Heterosexism, the Begetter of the Closet"


Preamble to each post: There is no doubt that "the closet" is the most harmful result of continuing to deny LGBTs a legitimate and equal place in society. By not acknowledging them, heterosexuals force them into hiding. The results are often catastrophic. What is also not in doubt is that the closet is of heterosexual making. Rather than wag our fingers and preach our condemning sermons, we should be doing all we can to eliminate this despicable situation. For a simple fact remains: if we eliminate the closet, we eliminate all those things that we negatively associate with gayness. Even better, LGBTs are freed from the inhumanity of closet life.

I ask you, if you are a heterosexual, do you (ever)…

...fear holding hands with your lover in public?
...fear your sexuality will be held against you at work?
...reject thoughts of having children and grandchildren out of hand?
...get apprehensive upon leaving a straight bar?
...hide your sexual identity from your family and friends?
...send out false signal regarding your sexual identity to appear otherwise?
...think that your heterosexuality is a burden in any way?

Or do you...

...remember fighting against your initial fears you may be heterosexual?
...loathe yourself for being “unnatural”?
...resent your feelings of attraction to the opposite sex?
...keep your sexual identity from your friends and family for fear of rejection or condemnation?
...often wish you were not heterosexual?
...ever consider entering therapy to try to reverse your heterosexuality?
...hope that your sexuality might rise to the level of acceptability, but never imagine it would be held in high esteem?
...live deep in the closet because you are afraid to live openly as a heterosexual? 

Of course, Mr. and Ms. Heterosexual, you never were confronted by any of these situations. You have lived your life free from the burden of orientation pretense and openly pursued your life. How very different from our LGBT friends and family members. In order to keep their jobs, their standing in social circles (including churches), even their sanity, they must keep their true sexual orientation from us.  For if they don't, the personal and economic consequences are often very harsh, even life-threatening.  It's no wonder many choose to live a closeted existence.

So, just what is it that set up such conditions that LGBTs feel it necessary to hide from us? It's called heterosexism.

Heterosexism is an acculturated system of bias regarding sexual orientation. It encourages values in favor of heterosexual people and enforces prejudiced actions against LGBTs.

In other words, heterosexism is a means by which heterosexuals maintain their power. It is not unlike White racism in that regard.

Gregory Herek, professor of psychology at the University of California, distinguishes between two manifestations of heterosexism:

Cultural:  The stigmatization, denial, or denigration of nonheterosexuality in cultural institutions ranging from the church to the courthouse.
Psychological:  A person’s internalization of this worldview which erupts in antigay prejudice and homophobia.

Virtually every society has in-groups and out-groups. For keeping minorities subjugated to the dominant culture, two operations are used:  prejudice and discrimination. This results in the singling out of individuals or groups of people as targets of hostility even though they may have little or nothing to do with the evils for which they stand accused. Scapegoating is the result, with the closet as the only defense against heterosexism and homophobia.

This is why heterosexuals are responsible for creating and maintaining the closet. We like it this way. We maintain our power and keep opposition at bay.

How do heterosexuals further the heterosexist agenda? In ways both overt and covert. "That's so gay!" "You throw like a girl." "Marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman." "The Bible condemns homosexuality." "If you must have a same-sex relationship, keep it in private."

I once referred to myself as an "avowed heterosexual." The idea is silly on the face of it! I said it in response to someone who referred to another as an avowed homosexual, as though that was too horrifying to contemplate. We went on to discuss heterosexual privilege. I asked him why it was okay for him to show affection to his wife in public, but not for gays.  I asked him why we aren't allowed to discriminate in job hiring and housing against racial minorities, but it's perfectly fine to discriminate against gays.  I asked him why we keep straights in the military, but give gays bad conduct discharges. I asked him why straight couples are allowed to adopt children, but in most states, gays cannot.  I asked him why sodomy between straight couples was fine, but not with gay couples.  You get the picture; that's heterosexism doing its work.

My coming postings will feature aspects of the closet that no one appreciates.  Our tendency as straights is to  blame the situation on gays and attribute these offenses to their moral inferiority. However, the stark reality is that, by virtue of heterosexism, straights created each and every condition that we so easily condemn, when the accusing finger should be pointing at us. People of good will throughout the world are realizing the harm the closet perpetuates and are working diligently to dismantle it. Why not; we made it in the first place.

This video elaborates on heterosexism and explains it better than I can:

TOMORROW: The Closet and Inappropriate Marriages