Grappling with your sexual orientation isn’t really fun, easy, convenient, or conducive to long-term happiness. At least for me it wasn’t. I’d characterize the whole experience as rather anxiety-inducing and stressful. I’m sure many of my LGBTQ counterparts would agree. I tackled coming to terms with being gay by eventually waking up one day and saying enough already, who cares? I was exhausted with grappling with that identity crisis and decided I had enough. But I was lucky; I confronted coming out of the closet from a position of privilege. Many members of our community don’t have that luxury.
After all, I’m a white man, from an economically stable and relatively progressive household. My mother, a native New Yorker, has long-been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights. During the Windsor and Obergefell years, when I think LGBTQ rights really started gaining national attention and public support, she would always rant about it and ask, “what’s the big deal?” So while coming out was incredibly liberating and transformative to me personally, I also didn’t have to grapple with any sort of significant reckoning with key people in my life. A lot of LGBTQ folks, including some close friends, can’t say the same. Continue reading “Pride and Privilege”