A number of you emailed or commented to help me get out of my funk over the past month or so. I greatly appreciate your words of encouragement. Here is an email that I found especially uplifting.
I’m sorry to read in your blog that you’ve been “in a funk” lately, so I thought I’d send you a note to let you know how helpful GayPatriot has been to me, and to thank you and Dan for your blog.
I am 47 years old and live in a small in rural Canada, and I teach at a nearby high school. I have been deep in the closet for my entire adult life, and had been trying to lead a “normal” heterosexual life and hiding my real identity, even from myself (fortunately, I never married, despite the opportunity to do so). This all came to an end in January when I saw Brokeback Mountain it was like a dam burst and after a period of severe depression, I came out to some of my immediate family and to my close friends. I feel much better now, although I’m not out at work (the community where I teach is very rural and “traditional” and a lot of people automatically equate gay teachers with pedophiles) or to my parents. I realize that it’s a long process, but I’ve taken the first steps.
One of the main obstacles to my coming out, even to myself, was that I am by nature a conservative, and am a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party of Canada (more or less equivalent to the Republicans in the U.S. and currently the federal governing party here). I follow U.S. politics fanatically, and I admire President Bush (which is not a popular position in Canada, believe me). In my mind, I thought being a conservative and being gay were mutually exclusive; I didn’t feel like I fit in to the “conservative family” here, since there are elements of the federal party which are very hostile to homosexuals. I didn’t feel like I identified with “gay culture” either, which in my mind I equated with flamboyant in-your-face Pride Parades and TV shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I just wasn’t like that, so I must not be gay, right? It was a real problem for me.
When I came out, I did a lot of research. I read Bruce Bawer’s A Place At The Table and I discovered websites like Independent Gay Forum and blogs like GayPatriot. I even found a few gay conservative bloggers right here in Canada. Wow! There really are conservative homosexuals out there! I’m not the only one!
Your blog has been a big help, and if it helps pull you out of your funk, I would like you to know that I check your blog daily to experience being part of a bigger community of gay conservatives that helps with the downside of living in rural isolation out here. Keep it up – we need it.
Thanks Eric!! We need you too!!
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
**UPDATE: There were some technical problems with this original posting so I’ve reposted it.**
Bruce,
My name is Andy and I live in Boston, aka Liberal Hell, with my partner Chris. I’ve recently come out to my family, I’m starting to take politics and history very seriously and have found great fascination with the mechanics of this great nation of ours.
Now, I find I’m in the closet once again! Not as a homosexual, but as a Republican. There is no way for me to express my conservative views amongst my friends, who are all card carrying Democrats, without being treated like a child who doesn’t know any better. “Oh, you watch too much FOX news.” “Why are you speaking out against the people who have fought for YOU and your rights?” “You’re not a Republican are you? You’re GAY! Why would you do that to yourself?!” I’ve heard it all.
Keep up the great work you guys are doing! This blog is my favorite and I’ve been a loyal reader since your spot on Tammy Bruce Show where first learned that being gay AND a republican isn’t an illness as many of my “friends” imply it is. I would start a blog myself if I was as articulate as you!
Again, keep up the great work and, Eric from Canada, hang in there, man!
Andy
Boston, Ma
I need both of you too… until I found this blog I spent alot of time trying to communicate my view with liberal gays who just do not understand how I could not support John F. Kerry in 2004. Thanks for sharing your stories and Bruce, you are a hero to many of us who are conservative, gay and patriotic. I hope you get out of your funk and continue your excellent work.
I think there is something wacked going on in this blog, and for a change it isn’t the politics.
The blog formatting seems to be screwing up. First it shows, then hides the entries. An picture from blogstreet seems to be loading in on top of everthing. I could only get to the latest post by going through the permalink.
hahaha, this is pitiful way to express one’s feelings.
Thanks for making my day. Not.
I hope that Eric’s letter cheers you up, GP. To me it’s critical that gay lefties not get away with bullying gay conservatives into silence. (And bullying is exactly the right word for it.) I appreciate your sticking your neck out on this site day after day, with little appreciation and a lot of snarky abuse. It’s important that you keep going, as Eric’s fine letter amply demonstrates. There are a lot of good gay and lesbian people out there, outside the comfortable gay ghettos, who think as you and Eric (and I) do but don’t have a voice.
Bruce – thanks for the letter and the blog.
Amazing to me that so many can’t seem to comprehend that their mocking and rejection of conservatives is little different than those who reject gays overall. Why is it so difficult for people to listen to one another, and realize that we don’t all have to think – nor act – monolithically.
Hope all this helps lift you out of da funk! 🙂
Something that most conservatives instinctively intuit and that few lefties rarely, if ever, figure out is that there’s no need to condescend to others who are struggling, with their sexuality or anything else. There’s no need to shame them for having a “state of self-awareness” that doesn’t measure up to our own demands.
The notion that lefties have some innate advantage over conservatives when it comes to self-awareness is absolutely laughable. Want to see a disturbing lack of self-awareness? Drop into one of the meth-fueled dance clubs in any major American city on any Saturday night. You’ll see an appalling lack of any kind of awareness, self or otherwise. I wonder how many of those whacked-out party boys are conservatives.
Eric, I’m glad you had the courage to come out – it takes a lot of courage in a small, rural town. Gay men in urban gay ghettos sometimes forget that. I think your experience is very typical, and who cares if you’re 47? I’m 51, I’ve been out for almost 40 years, and I struggle with some of the issues you raise. There’s nothing – nothing at all – that’s shameful about that.
#7: Thank you Dan! I find it astounding that in the 21st century in Canada, there is a 47 y.o. gay teacher with Internet access whose only concept of what it means to be gay is “Pride Parades and TV shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” This is the country where for the better part of a decade, committed gay couples have been pushing very publicly for government recognition of their relationships. And our 47 y.o. teacher is unaware of this? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s coming out but I’d be surprised if he wasn’t fully protected against anti-gay job discrimination wherever he is in Canada. And he can be sure that it wasn’t his buds in the Conservative party who came up with that protection. Sheesh!
Eric (original posting) —
Don’t let the intolerant Leftists get you down. Normal people realize that the coming out process is very long, personal and difficult. It depends on your upbringing, family acceptance and where you live.
I have most recently come “fully out” at work. And I’ve been with the same company for over 12 years.
So pay them no mind. They just hurl insults as their natural instinctive reaction to anything written here.
You are a brave Canadian Patriot!
“The blog formatting seems to be screwing up. First it shows, then hides the entries. An picture from blogstreet seems to be loading in on top of everthing.”
I’m seeing the same things.
What’s wrong?
Loads fine for me. Are you using IE, could that be it?
No I’m not using IE.
Suddenly it’s cleared up.
Hmm
I’m not having the problem anymore either. Had something to do with the heading I think.
#8 geez Ian….cut Andy and Eric a little slack eh?
I think lots of young gays…growing up to young adult hood the past 10-12 years, have no idea what it was like to be gay pre internet. Prior to what …1994, the way you met other gays was limited to bookstores, rest stops or traveling to san francisco or SoHo. In the 80’s not everyone had a computer, much less a lap top. And few had internet access. So these stories of coming out in rural Canada or rural America touch a cord with me as well.
Hey Bruce, I realized part of the reason for my reoccuring funk is the constant list of media sponsored crisis’.
1. Haditha killings…usmilitary out of control
2. Hurricane season..day 2
3. Bush approval ratings continue to plummet, now at 28%
4. Global warming worse than first thought
5. Gore “told u so” 91 today in ft lauderdale
6. Alligatores on rampage death tol now 3
7. Defense of marriage bill…full steam ahead
8. Iraqi govt …yeah but no sec of interior yet
9. Iraqi govt …yeah but its still hot w/o AC 24 hrs a day.
10. Iran to get nukes any day now…
Now on any given day I have to decide how to rank the top 10 crises…
and that gets me down. That’s my Friday list anyway. Just wondered how your list might look?
Good for you Eric. Too bad it took you so long.
#14: Gene, my main point with Eric’s story was his suggestion that his only conception of what being gay was like was Pride parades and Qeeer Eye. Canada in particular has had close to a decade of discussion of the rights of same-sex couples with very public highlighting of committed gay couples. Did he miss this? It was all over the MSM in Canada.
Look, we all know how hard it can be to come out. I knew I was gay even before Stonewall. I know how hard it was to go into a gay bar for the first time and to attend a social at a gay community center more than three decades ago. But I was able to educate myself long before there were the resources we have today. I knew there was gay life beyond pride parades and the bars because I sought it out. Rural life can be a problem but we’ve had access to the Internet for a decade; surely it was possible to find more than pride parades and Queer Eye as representative of what it means to be gay.
If I was too harsh, I apologize. It is to celebrated when anyone comes out, even a conservative. 😉
Bruce:
Well, it’s been enlightening reading the comments to your post of my letter. Most of them have been supportive, and I thank your readers, but I wasn’t prepared for the condescending critics which you must have to deal with on a daily basis.
Let me try to tell you latte-swilling city dwellers what it’s like to be a gay man in his 40s in a small rural community. Let’s say our hypothetical subject grew up in the late sixties and early seventies in a small town with no openly homosexual role models in his community, surrounded by a homophobic adolescent culture at his high school, with bigoted parents who think that “fags” and “fairies” are ruining society. At university, he started to realize that he might be gay, but in those days it was still unusual for students to be openly gay and there was hostility to homosexuals on campus (a campus gay support group once held a dance, but did it deliberately on the Thanksgiving weekend when the school was all but empty to avoid confrontations). So, like many people who are struggling with their sexual identity, he clung to the hope that he might at least be bisexual and suppressed his homosexuality.
Fast forward twenty years; he is now a respected professional in a very small and isolated rural community, and is still struggling with his sexual identity because even in this day and age, it is difficult to be openly gay in a small town. He doesn’t know a single gay person he can talk to.
The local “gay community” is non-existent – he has to drive for 45 minutes just to get a decent cup of coffee, and the nearest “gay ghetto” is a two-hour drive away in an unfamiliar big city. He doesn’t have a family doctor, because his last doctor couldn’t cope with the strain of a rural practice and moved to the U.S. and no one has been found to replace him. He thinks about going to a mental health clinic in a nearby town for counselling but finds that someone who works in the office has a student in his class. He is worried about how a gay teacher would be received in the community, since he still has parents complain about the teaching of evolution in science classes. He is very lonely, but there are several single women who ask him out, and once again he clings to the hope that he is bisexual and tries to make it work just for the hope of some kind of intimate relationship.
Being a politically active libertarian by nature, he joins the local chapter of the Conservative Party to meet like-minded individuals, but finds that the priority of the local party executive is to stop “special rights” for homosexuals and to repeal Canada’s gay marriage law (which, by the
way, was passed by a Liberal government that was last elected with only 37 % of the popular vote, for those of you who think Canada is some kind of liberal gay utopia). The “enlightened” view of homosexuality which has been the product of much debate in Canada is still largely confined to the cities – it’s a different world out in the countryside.
So, why doesn’t he move to a city and change his life? Maybe it has something to do with the beautiful Victorian house he bought for a song and is restoring, or the fact that he can walk to the nearby river every summer morning and swim in beautiful clean water, or that he drives to work every day through a landscape that would make Wordsworth weep tears of joy. So he represses his homosexuality, gets a dog and lives a life of dignified celibacy until it gets to be too much for him and in his late 40s he finally breaks down and comes out of the closet in a limited way.
After all this, he reads “You’re 47 and this is the state of your self-awareness?? You know, if this guy had said you were 18 years old…… I could see. This is a typical conservative. Liberals look at people like this and marvel at the sad obtuseness, the remarkable lack of knowing
oneself. It’’s comical in some respects, but basically tragic.” He knows himself plenty, pal, and let me tell you that it took a lot to emerge from this situation relatively intact. At least now he knows that he can’t take the support of all of his fellow homosexuals for granted.
I’ve told you guys before, but I’ll say it again here:
My first foray into blogging came about with my irritation of the Liberal Gay Media. I was looking around the web one night going through gay news articles from different sources. Of course they all had the usual liberal action lines of doom, gloom and Bush sucks.
Even though I’m not a member, I e-mailed LCR Tampa and vented my frustration. Didn’t know who else to vent to at the time. Whoever answered suggested Gay Conservative blogs. I did a Google search and found GayPatriot and have been around since. I think it was shortly after you switched from Blogger, though I can’t remember.
As far as being in the closet, I’m out selectively. Mainly because I don’t believe that it’s really anybody’s damned business and also because I don’t define myself based on my sexuality. I’m also fairly selective about who I allow to know “all about me”. As far as politics discussions in the workplace goes, though you wouldn’t think so by my posts, I sorta tend to stay out of it. Oh I’ve been tempted to chime in, but I choose not to engage because I have to work with those folks. I generally listen to the conversation but largely stay out of it.
As you may or may not have figured out, by and large I don’t care what other people think of me. However, I won’t provoke people that I know and have to be around on a regular basis. If I were to encounter a team killing fucktard in the workplace, though, I would let him know about it. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of the far-left/Neo socialist kooks at work.
Keep up the good work. I know how easy it is to slip into the doldrums and I suppose sometimes it’s best to take a break, but don’t stay gone for ever.
Thanks a lot Bruce and Dan! We need you!
Now on any given day I have to decide how to rank the top 10 crises…
and that gets me down. That’s my Friday list anyway. Just wondered how your list might look?
So why do you feel compelled to join in the doom & gloom and let it get you down? Why participate? You’ve a list of the top ten things that make liberals’ panties wet lately. Why join it?
Eric, you tell ’em.
Everybody makes choices in life – or has to prioritize their own values. You listed some wonderful values that would be totally off a Gay Left Urbanite’s radar – just incomprehensible to them. They accuse others of narrowness while really not having a clue as to their own. It can be interesting to watch (at times – equally often, I may find them banal / boring).
#20: “As far as being in the closet, I’m out selectively. Mainly because I don’t believe that it’s really anybody’s damned business and also because I don’t define myself based on my sexuality.”
So if it’s nobody’s business, why be out at all? It seems to me it would be hard to keep track of those you’re out to and those you aren’t.
He knows himself plenty, pal, and let me tell you that it took a lot to emerge from this situation relatively intact. At least now he knows that he can’t take the support of all of his fellow homosexuals for granted.
It was difficult for me to emerge from my situation (growing up in Texas in the 1960’s) with my self-esteem intact, and so I fully understand how difficult it’s been for you, Eric.
It’s an ugly realization, but no, you can’t take the support of the entire gay community for granted. The condescension and finger-wagging in some of the responses to your fine letter were shocking. Some of these boys need to get out of the gay ghetto more often.
I hope you can meet some other guys in your area and build a supportive group of friends. And I hope you’ll always feel welcome posting here.
I would be in a funk too, if the Dear Leader I have salivated over for the last 5+ years was going on an all out PR against gay citizens.
“Duh…” [slap on head]
#23
So if it’s nobody’s business, why be out at all?
Indeed. What is the point in coming out?
It seems to me it would be hard to keep track of those you’re out to and those you aren’t.
Not when you have true friends instead of ass loads of MySpace.com “friends”. I’ve never had a habit of advertising or sophomoric bragging about my weekend conquests. Those who know that I am gay are a few that I feel I can trust and only know because I introduced my partner to them. Most of them are gay themselves. I’ve never felt the urge to wave rainbow flags, march in parades or tell everybody who crosses my path about my sexuality just so I can feel good about myself. In other words, whom I sleep with doesn’t define who I am and I don’t need validation and approval from others.
#26: “Those who know that I am gay are a few that I feel I can trust and only know because I introduced my partner to them.”
So the ones you’re not out to don’t know you have a partner? What happens if you and your partner run into someone you’re not out to at say the Home Depot? Do you introduce your partner as a “friend” or just pretend he’s not with you at all? That’s why I think it must be tricky being out “selectively.”
#26 – “Indeed. What is the point in coming out?”
Fighting anti-gay prejudice, TGC. We will never change the 1% hardcore of gay haters – but, as for the general population, studies have shown that knowing someone in their lives who is gay is a major influence in softening people’s anti-gay attitudes.
And why is that important? Because, in decades past, anti-gay majorities really have had discrimination against (or unjust restrictions on) gay Americans.
America 2006 is very much improved (for gays) over America 1976, and it’s all of us who come out, who have stimulated that improvement for you.
#28 Well put. Being out is probably the most important factor in changing individual minds. But IMHO it’s also just a lot easier in dealing with people when you don’t have to censor what you say about your partner and gay friends to folks you’re not out to.
#28
Fighting anti-gay prejudice, TGC. We will never change the 1% hardcore of gay haters – but, as for the general population, studies have shown that knowing someone in their lives who is gay is a major influence in softening people’s anti-gay attitudes.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t share your enthusiasm for advertising and sharing my business with everyone I come in contact with. I’ve never felt compelled (and I dare say that I never will) to share information about who I sleep with when I meet other people. The folks that mean a damn to me know, so I can’t say for sure about the Home Depot hypothetical.
However, if I were to guess, I would introduce my partner by his name and perhaps what he does for a living. I wouldn’t say “This is Javier. He’s the guy whose ass I bang on a regular basis” just to make others feel good. But that’s just me. I don’t worry about “keeping my story straight” because I don’t have a huge circle of “friends”. I have a small group of friends who know and a larger group of associates whom really don’t need to know. If they figure it out, who cares?
As far as studies go, I’ve never had any desire to bend over and let studies run my life. If I provided a study which showed more people would like you if you let yourself be feltched by horses, would you run out to the stables tomorrow? Again, I have little interest in whether or not somebody likes me.
I doubt that a quarter of the people I interact with on a daily basis could tell you that I’m a conservative Presbyterian (PCA) who grew up in Mississippi and whose favorite color is purple. Either topics don’t come up or I avoid them. But that’s just me. I don’t tell people right off the bat what my favorite color is.
But hey, if you want to tell everybody you meet that you’re gay so that they will like you, whatever creams your Twinkie. Knock yourself out. Quite frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
#29 – Yes, that as well!
But I can’t believe you agreed with a post that contains the sentence, “America 2006 is very much improved (for gays) over America 1976.” I had thought that, by your version of the world, we were supposed to be living in the End Times where it’s never been worse than under this eeeeeeeeevilll Administration and there is no greater threat, etc., etc.
#30 – I’m totally sympathetic to dignified privacy and not having one’s life pawed over by people who don’t deserve to know. You asked a question, I just tried to give an answer.
“However, if I were to guess, I would introduce my partner by his name and perhaps what he does for a living. I wouldn’t say “This is Javier. He’s the guy whose ass I bang on a regular basis…””
Quite correct.
As long as people know the basic fact that he’s your partner, you’ve been honest or “come out” to them. They don’t need or deserve further details. I would never, ever give sexual details, in coming out to someone.
It’s the equivalent of a heterosexual guy letting you know about Cindy, his wife/girlfriend. He doesn’t, or at least he shouldn’t, ever tell you sexual details. But, however coolly done, he damn well makes sure you know the basic fact of Cindy.
In other words: Heterosexual people come out all the time. I’m not saying gay people should do anything different.
“But hey, if you want to tell everybody you meet that you’re gay so that they will like you…”
Since that’s not my own way and never has been, you must have still not understood my explanation. I hope my additional comments have clarified things.
#30 I agree. It’s no-ones business. And although, I think it’s important for everyone be true to themselves, one can’t ignore the danger. Take Eric McComick for example. I don’t believe that he’s ever come out and said “I’m gay”. He can’t. Hollywood may love Ellen, but they don’t love gay men. It’s career suicide. So why not just be private?
It must be like that in MANY fields.