Animadversions

The former RNC head, Ken Mehlman, whom everybody knew was gay, has just announced that he's gay. From the left, seething rage, from the right, mostly yawning. And I will note here, as part of my theme, that I have never heard the gaydom elites dedicate 5% of the hatred they spew out against traitor homos or Christians or GWB on the people who orchestrated and celebrated 9/11. One very popular gay blog opened up a thread of invective about this guy for his crimes* and then proceeded to contemptuously regard anyone against the GZ Mosque as a bigot. Sharia, anyone?

Mr. Mehlman's current drama reminds of perhaps the funniest response I got when I came out, back, as the witty black phrase has it, "when God was a child." I had decided to come out to my six siblings, as a preparation for coming out to my parents. Since I lived in another country, it took some time. And it was very draining, very dramatic for me. I have been out so long now that it's hard to retrieve the feeling of coming out of the closet; the anxiety, the adrenaline. I know people well, grown men, who are still in there; it's a complex geography**.  Anyway, when I told my sister Allison, she said that it was a great relief to her. Not what I was expecting. When I asked her what she meant, she said, "Well, I've known you were gay for a long time. I was afraid that you might never figure it out."

*Crimes. Such transcendent evils as not supporting gay marriage (like Obama), or supporting DADT (which Bill Clinton enacted) or adding homosexuality to the list of hate crimes (well, you know what I think of the whole idea of hate crimes), etc. Wow. Move over, Pol Pot. But a religion of holy law, whose divinely inspired legal system demands punishment and death for homosexual activity, well, that's a First Amendment thingy. A lot of the yapping among gays these days about their sufferings reminds me of wealthy American Jews who want you to think that Auschwitz is just around the corner because they can't get into a country club.

**I once had a boyfriend who took holy umbrage at two friends of mine in the closet, in a very complicated relationship, because they would not come out. When I had the temerity to point out that he himself, who'd been married and with children, only came out when his mommy and daddy died, I think that was the beginning of the end of our relationship. It's hard to forgive people who do things you are sorry you once did. Believe me, I know. Life can be very messy.

I have changed my mind about a lot of things in my life. I don't know if that's a sign of intellectual honesty or psychological instability. But there it is. While I have always valued and been attracted to the images, institutions and idea of stability, my own choice and actions have shown me to be a restless man. I wish I weren't, but one of the conditions of being my age is that you have your actual history to deal with, not, as when young, identifying yourself with your idea of who you think you are.