Thanksgiving in a big Midwestern family can be a confusing time when you’re gay (or bi/queer/etc.). There are conflicting emotions, hesitantly nagging worries, and a perfected ambiguity of speech.
“My ex, yeah, they also really love apple pie.”
In an age of social media, everything is heightened by the fear that a relative will out you - intentionally or not - to family you’d rather not have in the know.
"Well, maybe my uncle already knows. Maybe someone told him! Maybe that’s why he hasn’t ranted about ‘the damn queers’ in a couple years."
These thoughts followed by the companion feeling of relief, then immediately by:
“But if he knew, this would definitely be more tense. Surely he’d have words to say, no, he can’t know, and he must continue not knowing,” and the consequent rebubbling of fear that goes along with that pleasant assurance.
Some personal background: I am a 23-year-old woman who calls herself gay but is really more bi/pan/something of that ilk. I grew up in the heart of the Midwest, St. Louis, Missouri, in a very large, very German-Midwestern family. We embody the epitome of the Protestant Work Ethic in an Illinois town whose population is 950.
I went to school in the big city of Chicago, where I studied humanities and steadily came further and further out of the closet (the opposite of the Protestant Work Ethic). I told my parents in stages, and my sister, and then a cousin, and eventually made it explicitly obvious on Facebook as opposed to just heavily implied. My extended family’s reaction was exceedingly loving and supportive. I breathed easy, but obviously not all of them are “on the web,” so holidays continued to be semi-stressful ordeals. I occasionally shut down and let my ears buzz, pretending to sleep, as my uncle or grandfather would rant about people like me.
But here’s the thing: I love my family. That uncle who speaks hatefully of the queers? My favorite uncle. My grandfather? The most quietly supportive and loving person I know. This is where my confusion comes in.
I do not know if other people have struggled with this as much as I do, but I’d be willing to bet they have. It’s not easy, seeing your generous, compassionate family members spew words of hatred, or at least of intolerance. It’s not easy, listening to the man you just hugged tell your mom to “turn that shit off” the TV, because Ellen DeGeneres came on. Not easy, when the uncle you just shared a meal with says things that leave you frozen on the floor, clawing back tears. It’s not easy because you cannot hate them, but you do not know if they could hate you. It may be that if you told them who you were, they would change their views, lose some of their ignorance and come around to the side of love. It may be that they would not. Since you love them, this is not a risk you are willing to take.
So you keep quiet. When they rant, you keep quiet, because standing up for your LGBT+ brothers and sisters might blow your cover. When they hate, you love yourself a little harder to make up the difference so you still have enough left in you to love them. You wonder if you are hypocritical or if it is your moral responsibility to speak up, but you cannot bring yourself to do it because you do not want to upset them.
You know all of the problems with this line of thinking, but you do not care. Because you are afraid of being actively hated, you learn to live with the passive, unknowing hatred of cruel words and convince yourself that it’s okay because they’re just words. Convince yourself that if they knew, they would change, but you never convince yourself wholly enough to test that. Convince yourself just enough to allow hope and love to continue to flow through you for these people because if they wipe the love out of you, then they will have won. You feel you must prove you can love in spite of hatred even when it is unbearably painful and hope that one day, you will have the courage to use your love to kindle theirs.
In the meantime, you write, putting words to this deep, internal conflict in hopes of giving voice to the parts of you and of others which have not yet found the words. continue to hope and remain thankful for those who poison their love with hate so that you remember not to adopt their hate yourself.
