We tell queer youth “it gets better” so they can survive adolescence to what they hope will be an adulthood free of homophobia and transphobia.
Sorry kids — that’s a lie. It might get better for wealthy, famous LGBTQ+ people, but for most queer and trans people, living an authentic out life is fraught with a relentless fight to be seen and respected and not be victimized by schools, employees, housing, businesses, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and random people on the street. Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people is at an all-time high as are hate crimes. It might be easier to come out and there might be more out LGBTQ+ people than ever before, but that reality has provided no security — and in many instances has only inflamed the haters.
A teenage coming out
I didn’t come out as a teenager — I was outed to my high school principal by a girlfriend’s parents at 15. It was the worst thing imaginable at that time and it set a trajectory in motion that devastated my young life.
They called the school, Philadelphia High School for Girls — Girls’ High — to tell Dr. Klein that I was a threat to their daughter and to other girls. They presented an ordinary teen love affair as one of predator (me) and prey (her). Never mind that she was a year ahead of me. Or that it was a consensual relationship between two teenagers. My girlfriend’s very Catholic parents were horrified that their youngest child could be a lesbian. It must be someone else’s fault, not theirs.
They had evidence: lesbian pulp novels I had given her. Our letters scrawled on paper torn from notebooks and stuffed in lockers at lunchtime. Books of poetry inscribed with messages of adolescent love.
Her parents also called my parents, creating a family crisis and scandal. My mother and grandmother had attended Girls’ High. My sister was also a student. My being expelled for being a “bad moral influence” on the other 3,000 girls and deemed a “subversive” figure was something my mother couldn’t imagine. On the ride home in the car, my father expressed his own confusion: “But you’re pretty, and boys like you.”
Two weeks later, after my parents were unable to find another Philadelphia high school willing to take the now-damaged and dangerous teenager, I was admitted to the adolescent unit of a local mental hospital for conversion therapy in an attempt to fix me — cure me of lesbianism.
The trauma it inflicted led me to attempt suicide. It didn’t cure me, but conversion therapy has impacted my entire life.
Coming out is not one-and-done
When your experience of coming out is so traumatic you think “at least that’s over” — you’ve been outed. You will never have to go through that again.
Except coming out is a constant and ongoing process. And you have to decide regularly if you have the wherewithal to do it yet again. And again.
I have cancer. It has been a brutal and unforgiving journey in which I have nearly died twice in the past six months, had five surgical procedures since November and faced a distressingly uncertain future, as I battle for my very life.
Before my diagnosis, my beloved wife of 23 years — whom I first met at Girls’ High and fell in love with as teenagers — was diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 cancer. She was incredibly brave and endured a myriad of surgeries and treatments all so we could stay together and continue our story.
But she died suddenly during her treatment of a heart attack, likely caused by one of the drugs she was taking. She died in my arms in the bed next to me and the grief of losing her will never leave me.
Throughout her cancer journey, we had to come out again and again to so many health-care people. I had to repeatedly explain I was her wife and medical power of attorney and take charge of her care because the cancer had robbed her of her speaking voice.
And now I am having to come out to a slew of health-care professionals myself, never sure what the response will be. Sometimes I have thought I had a rapport with a nurse only to discover they don’t like gay people and asked to be transferred. One doctor was so homophobic, I had to file a complaint.
It’s been hard. And it has made a difficult path so much more difficult.
Homophobia is not over
The focus on anti-trans legislation in recent years has mistakenly led many to believe that homophobia is somehow over. Yet it was homophobia that jump-started the Don’t Say Gay movement among GOP legislators and even the U.S. Supreme Court has discussed overturning the signature landmark gay rights case, Obergefell v. Hodges.
The ongoing fire crisis in Los Angeles has highlighted how hated and distrusted gay people are by huge swathes of our country as LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, an out lesbian, has been targeted as a DEI hire. Never mind that she is a career firefighter with 24 years of experience who was the deputy fire chief before achieving her current rank.
Mark Zuckerberg, who owns and operates three of the top social media platforms through Meta — Facebook, Instagram and Threads — has both cut any DEI programs and allowed hate speech against gay people: you can now claim queer folks are mentally ill sans TOS repercussions.
Homophobia’s real-life consequences
This slippery slope of homophobic targeting has real-life consequences. When I am asked about my sexual partners and sexual history and if I have used birth control pills by medical professionals, the answers, if truthful, require coming out on medical forms or to a person taking that history.
On Tuesday, I was having a conversation with the two EMTs who had brought me to Fox Chase Cancer Center for yet another surgical procedure. I was strapped to a gurney and they were sitting in the waiting area with me. We had a rapport. They — two 30something Black men — and I were talking about the racism they face from both clients of the private ambulance service they work for and police.
It was a serious conversation in which I talked about my parents’ Civil Rights work and my own fight to combat police brutality against Black men. I said, joking, that I was grateful that I had no Republicans in my family and said how dangerous Donald Trump is.
One of the men said Republicans had a lot of good ideas and the other said Kamala Harris was more invested in boys in girls bathrooms than anything else. A closeness that had developed over an hour as we talked about very personal issues to them and to me suddenly faltered for me.
Had they voted for Trump? I didn’t want to know. But as they said, Harris never should have been the candidate — to which I had initially jokingly said, “don’t be dissing Kamala to me” — I realized that they hadn’t perceived me or my two friends sitting in a different part of the waiting area as lesbians.
While I tried to explain the trans issues and Harris’s stance in what I hoped was a non-threatening way, I realized from what they were saying that both men were also deeply homophobic and felt a real antipathy toward gay people. That meant I would never be able to be as open with them as they were with me.
Homophobia is a painful reality
The irony was not lost on me that these two men who I genuinely liked and who had been talking so openly about how they couldn’t understand hating someone for the color of their skin had both talked about gay and trans people in much the same way — hating them for who they are.
The painful reality of these daily incursions of homophobia into our daily queer lives cannot be ignored or dismissed. And for those of us dealing with life and death consequences, that factor could alter our care.
I can hide my queerness from the two EMTS and even accept that since both men were religious, that might have fueled their anti-LGBTQ+ feelings. Knowing how they felt was a disappointment, but it didn’t change how I felt about them — I still liked them and valued our long exchange about racism.
I had made an effort to explain queer and trans issues to them in a way that was neither condescending nor angry. But knowing the strongly bigoted feelings they harbored toward LGBTQ+ people was such a vivid reminder that we never know who our allies really are — and who they aren’t.
Would it have changed their minds to know I was a lesbian? Or would it just have put me at unnecessary risk? I couldn’t afford to take the chance of finding out.
So when they tell us it gets better, there’s a big asterisk attached. It can get better to find community and caring LGBTQ+ people who love and support you. But people who seem to be the closest of allies — or who you need to be your ally — may not be an ally at all. That is a reminder that homophobia is not over and its power to harm us is very, very real. And sometimes that could actually mean the difference between life and death.