Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990                   TAG: 9007020261
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SAM GARRISON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

PRIDE ISN'T IN BEING GAY, BUT IN RESPECTING ONESELF

That definition no longer satisfies me. I'm not so sure a person can legitimately take pride in the achievement of someone else simply by virtue of having something, such as sexual orientation, in common.

I am neither proud nor ashamed to be gay. I did not choose to be gay, and I couldn't stop being gay even if I wanted to - which I don't. I just am gay, like I am white, and short, and right-handed, and brown-eyed, and an American. All of that is equally OK with me.

To me, "Gay Pride" means being able to like oneself and accept oneself as a person with dignity and worth, despite the negative brainwashing that inevitably occurs growing up lesbian or gay in this predominantly straight society. It means recognizing such brainwashing for what it is: not as truth or wisdom, but as the product of widespread fear of the unknown and, like racism, of hostility toward those who are harmlessly different.

"Gay Pride" means overcoming the cumulative effects of persistent ridicule and indignities suffered at the hands of fearful people, by realizing that they are sick and need help - including help from us - in finding a cure for the hatred that gnaws at their insides and surely makes their lives miserable.

We lesbians and gays are not the only members of an oppressed minority who have to fight for our God-given right to be ourselves, harmlessly, without penalty or interference from the surrounding majority. This country has made great progress in recent decades, but we have a long way to go before tolerance of individual differences is a universally shared value.

And we are certainly not the only people who have to struggle to gain self-respect because we were taught in our earliest days to hate ourselves. The greatest single problem in the whole world is too many people thinking too little of themselves. It causes just about every social ill you can name, including, probably, war.

But how do we, or anyone else, shed those unwarranted feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred that weigh our spirits down like sandbags? How do we gain that self-respect - that healthy pride - we must have to realize our full potential as useful, productive, valuable members of society?

The starting point, I believe, is a humble submission to the will of God. As a teen-ager, rebelling aginst the dogmas and authority of the Roman Catholic Church in which I was reared, I used to brag about being an atheist. Today, I am deeply ashamed of ever having been so arrogant, so "proud" in the most unhealthy sense.

In the more mature Unitarian faith of my later life, I look at the majestic panorama of the cosmos, and at the marvelous intricacy of the human cell, and I see with crystal clarity the undeniable handiwork of an ultimately superlative Architect.

The origin of my self-respect, my "Gay Pride," is the knowledge that the same God which made most people straight made me gay. I do not understand exactly why I am gay, and I doubt I ever will. But if that's the way God wants it, then that's all right with me.

The next step toward "Gay Pride" is to give one's life a greater purpose than the mere selfish pursuit of material wealth, comfort, power or prestige. Each of us can help make this a "kinder, gentler society." We can devote our time, energy and talents to some worthy cause greater than ourselves; we can be or become community-centered rather than self-centered.

There are plenty of worthy causes that should attract, and need, the support of gays and lesbians. Within the gay community itself, for example, we must come to grips with the reality of pervasive substance abuse. I know; I am a recovering substance abuser who will have to work at staying sober every day for the rest of my life.

There are also ways in which lesbians and gays are especially well-suited to work for the benefit of society as a whole. Knowing so well what it is like to be oppressed for being harmlessly different, we should be - and, indeed, many of us are - in the forefront of efforts on a broad front to fight racism and other forms of irrational prejudice.

The gay- and lesbian-rights movement is but the latest phase in that grand march toward social and political equality which began in this country when our Declaration of Independence made the revolutionary statement that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." There is no asterisk there, with a footnote saying "*except Gays and Lesbians."

But while we gay people now focus, understandably, on the realization of this American dream for us, we must not lose sight of the fact that true equality still eludes others. Whether or not they acknowledge our fight to be theirs, we must acknowledge their fight to be ours. Our self-respect does not depend on being reciprocated, only on doing what we know is right.

The third indispensable prerequisite to "Gay Pride" is coming out of the closet, our intellectual and emotional prison. "Gay Pride" without openness about one's sexual orientation is an oxymoron.

In my late 30s, I began coming out to family members and close friends. When I was 40, I came all the way out by discussing my homosexuality in interviews with The Associated Press and the Roanoke Times & World-News. That, without question, was the single most important and best decision I have ever made in my life.

I had been publicly disgraced because I had committed grievous breaches of ethics, and crimes. I had been to prison and had been disbarred from the practice of law. I had been fired from a job with a Fairfax County law firm because my substance abuse made me unfit to be employed there. I had lost a replacement job when I disclosed my gayness to my sponsor. I was unemployed, and broke.

But I had another kind of security, emotional security, built on a much more solid foundation. I had the love and steadfast loyalty of my son and daughter, my parents and the other members of my family, and my good friends. I had my unshakable conviction that there was nothing at all wrong with my being gay. And I had my faith that those who meant the most to me would continue to love me, and sooner or later, come to accept me as I am, as indeed they have.

In the process, I learned something very important: There is more desire for knowledge, more capacity for understanding and tolerance, more simple human decency and good will toward us among the heterosexual majority than one could ever tell from listening to the loudmouths who, whether from their own sexual hangups or from other motives, seem driven to persecute us because we are involuntarily, harmlessly "different."

Tolerance is not universal, but neither is bigotry. Most heterosexuals do not hate us or wish to oppress us, I firmly believe, but simply don't understand how we can be the way we are and do the things we do because it is all so foreign to their own physical and emotional drives and experience.

They do tend to remain silent when the outspoken make fun of us, and are often reluctant to come to our defense even when their basic sense of fairness tells them they should. But in this, they are mostly acting out of fear of sharing our oppression rather than malevolence.

Only when I began to deal honestly with my straight friends about my sexuality did I give them any real chance to show the understanding and tolerance of which they are capable. Only then did I become a good friend to them, and they readily reciprocated.

And only then, when I stopped living that lie, did I discover a life truly worth living, and put in place the final pillar upon which to build a healthy self-respect. That did not bring instant happiness, but I think that without it real happiness was impossible.