Hallmark Homophobia

So ... when I was in Vancouver a week or so ago, I wandered into London Drugs with Nutella (in her stroller - chick magnet extraordinaire, except of course that I am gay, and girls and little ol' grandmothers who peek down and say, "Oh, how beautiful," don't mean anything to me, except for the fact that I soak up their goodness, and breathe in the contentment of being) - and found myself in the Hallmark aisle. Valentine's Day cards.

What's a gay man to do?

I am drawn to the "husbands" section. I look around. No one is looking. I indulge. In front of me is a card that catches my eye. In large script is written across the top of the card, "You're the Man I Love." What could be more appropriate?

Except that this card is intended for a woman to give to her husband.

Except ... that the sentiments so exactly reflect what I feel for the man I love.

What's a man to do?

This card is about my man. About my feelings for him. For HIM. The *man* I love. The card couldn't express better my sentiments if it had been specifically designed for a gay man to give his lover.

Lost in the reverie of this moment, I suddenly remember I am standing right in front of the "him" section of Valentine cards. I look up, look around. My internalized homophobia has reared its ugly head again. I shuffle down a few feet to the "her" section and quietly tuck my man's card in the folds of Nutella's stroller, making sure it is face down with the scan code visible on the back so that the register clerk doesn't see what the card says.

OMG. I'm hopeless, I think. Even here in Vancouver! It's not like I'm in the Bountiful Smith's Marketplace.

But ... I'm not hopeless. Slowly, I'm getting better. I take to heart these words by Christopher Lee Nutter from his book, The Way Out:

"You must see homophobia for what it is: it is a fear, and fear comes from the ego, which is the human's belief that he or she is alone and cut off from the All. Therefore, like fear and ego, homophobia is an illusion. That is the truth. if you believe in homophobia, you project it onto other people and then think that you must resist homophobia [i.e., in others]. But if you eradicate evil [e.g., homophobia] in yourself it will be seen for what it truly is, an illusion, and it will then disappear."

Feeling Like a Faggot

I continue to learn from reading The Way Out, a book by Christopher Nutter that I wrote about last week.

We all learn to internalize messages that are conveyed to us about our self-worth, starting in our childhood. Some rare, fortunate children are taught – both through words and actions – that they are persons of infinite worth, goodness and light. Most of us, however, have varying degrees of negatives self-perceptions that are encoded into us from birth.

Most of the time, perhaps, these negative messages are conveyed unconsciously by parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. Sometimes, however – as in the case of child abuse – they are conveyed directly and dramatically. Some children literally have it beaten into them that they are not worth much just as they are. They learn that they have to be someone else in order to be accepted and loved, or in order to merely survive the trauma they endure.

These negative messages eventually become encoded, woven into the very fabric of our unconscious self. And we find that, as we grow older, we bring these messages with us from our childhood into the adult world, where they can create all kinds of havoc. 

Gay men and women typically have a whole other set of negative messages conveyed to them about who they are. As the truth about their sexuality begins to dawn on them, having already been recipients of vast amounts of societal disapprobation of homosexuality, their unconscious spews additional negative thoughts and fears, which control – to one degree or another – how such a person navigates his or her way through life.

Part of Nutter’s message is that the process of coming out should involve shining the light of consciousness on all these fears and negative self-perceptions; because until we do, these fears continue to control and shape us. As he comments, we end up carrying a closet around with us as we encounter situations where our sexuality “comes up" in case we need to temporarily duck back in.

As I try to become more conscious of such situations, I can more fully examine what is actually going on when I suddenly feel self-conscious or embarrassed about the fact that I am gay. Nutter points out that what I encounter in such circumstances are my own fears that I often unconsciously project onto others:

“You have no idea what people feel or think about you now or what they will feel and think later – it is only your own thoughts and feelings that you think and feel. It may seem as if someone else thinks you’re a faggot, but it can only be you who feels like a faggot. If you do not feel like a faggot, the term ‘faggot’ does not exist for you. End of story.  

“Realize this and you will realize the end of the reign of power your own internal, personal abuse system has over you that is trying to keep you down. Looking at the unconscious self in this way, it is just like an external abuse situation – as the abused you take it because you believe it’s true and you deserve it. Realize it isn’t true and that you don’t deserve it and the power the abuser has over you goes away.”

What we often don’t realize is that we are often our own worst abusers. We have internalized so many beliefs about homosexuality. Unconsciously, we tell ourselves that we are bad, we are immoral, we are corrupt, we are less than. We then punish ourselves because of these unconscious beliefs and live our lives controlled by the fears that these beliefs generate.

If, however, I can strive to become conscious of these beliefs and fears as I encounter situations in which they arise, then I can begin to dissolve their power. Nutter writes:

“If you come from a state of fear, that is what you will engender in others. Your whole point in coming out is to leave fear behind, so why in the world would you couch your freedom from fear in fear? Though being afraid will make sense to your internal abuser trying to keep you in the prison of fear and pain, it does not make sense to a conscious mind always working for liberation into sanity, opportunity and love.”

I have found these concepts tremendously enlightening as I myself continue my journey out, as I confront situations that challenge my sense of self as a gay man, as I strive to unravel negative thoughts, perceptions and fears. I also find these same concepts applicable to other areas of my life where I have too often let my unconscious fears control my destiny. In this respect, as I pointed out a week ago, being gay is a gift. I intend to embrace it and use it.

Fears and Beliefs About Being Gay

Continuing my discussion of Christopher Nutter’s The Way Out, I found enlightening his discussion of the roles that fear and beliefs play in the average gay man’s struggle to accept his sexuality.

In his book, Nutter described how his conservative religious upbringing in the Deep South molded his conception of himself as a gay man. Of course, I as well as most gay men, could relate to his experience. Societal and religious beliefs are imbibed and, consciously or not, believed, and these beliefs in turn cause fears. These beliefs and fears are clothed with a powerful reality by our unconscious (or even consciously) that is illusory, but the effects of such fears and beliefs are, unfortunately, not. Among other things, these fears and beliefs cause us to cleave our selves in half, separating the “gay” part from the rest of us, and to reject what IS real.

Some of these fears are related to our anxiety over what may happen to us if we question beliefs that exist within us. And these are not the beliefs of an institution or a religion, but personal beliefs. As Nutter comments, “A ‘religion’ cannot have beliefs – only an individual can.” 

Nutter points out that the first step toward consciousness is to give ourselves permission to examine our fears and beliefs and to accept that they are not “real,” i.e., they have a life of their own:

“In addition to beliefs that have clouded your self-knowledge, you may be afraid of what’s there, and that’s where the struggle will also take place … I don’t suggest that you must eradicate your fear, but rather that you disengage your faith in your fears. After all, your fears do nothing for you but wall you off into a narrow, little prison cell … As long as you hold on to the idea that your fears about what being gay means cannot be questioned because they are real, you will not be able to regain even one ounce of power over yourself or your life. Walk through these fears with faith [that] you yourself can in no way be diminished by the questioning and release of a belief … ”

As an example of the effects and power of beliefs, Nutter cites the example of a young child:

“As a child, before you had beliefs, you were utterly present and accepted everything for how it was in that moment. In that state you would have thought nothing about two men holding hands or living together. It was the belief systems you were indoctrinated into later and that you chose to agree with that created the judgment you have against men who love and have sex with one another. It was later on that you wound up judging yourself … and the way out of this judgment against yourself is through the process of questioning.”

The main point here is that, when examined carefully and mindfully – i.e., when the light of consciousness is shined upon them – we can see clearly where and when we invest beliefs with a reality that does not reflect Reality. And we really can have no idea how our beliefs affect us until we explore them:

“… It may take a while [to discover what makes up your personal belief system] – unconscious thoughts are often like the house in your neighborhood you’ve walked by a million times but somehow never looked at. Becoming aware of what you’ve never looked at requires that you be on full wakeful alert on your daily walks up and down your street 

… The first step in [the] journey is to explore your beliefs. You may have entire walls of beliefs that are so immense and so real that they rise before you in every direction, all the way up to the sky so that they even block out all light. You must first see them as beliefs and as fears [in order for] these walls standing between you and the truth of your perfect self to come crashing down into the pile of nothing that they really are.”

I should point out here that Nutter is not talking about dogma. He’s talking about what we believe about ourselves and our world. He carries on his conversation in the context of beliefs we have about being gay, but the same principle applies to other aspects of our selves as well.

“Ask yourself what it is that you believe. Do you believe that you can’t be gay because you want to be straight? Because you didn’t choose it? Because if you pretend to be straight it will eventually come to pass? Because you are a real man, and real men are not gay? Because you have not met the right girl yet? Because you don’t WANT to be gay? Because there are no gay men in your ethnic group, religion, or from your region of the world? Because you are nothing like gay people you know or see on TV? Because it would mean that you are weak? Because you have a girlfriend or a wife or a child? Because accepting it would be against God’s will?  

“Does what anyone else says cause or change whom you are sexually attracted to? If the answer is no, then you must be willing to let go of that belief; otherwise, you are literally doing the insane, which is to reject what IS, not to mention squandering your life energy on a lie about yourself that hurts you.”

I think one of the most pernicious and tenacious beliefs that a gay man who was raised in the Mormon belief system (or any other conservative belief system) carries embedded deeply within him is that being gay is a choice. So much flows from this. If it is a choice, we can change. If it is a choice, we can choose not to be gay. If it is a choice, we can overcome “temptations,” just like we can overcome a temptation to drink or smoke or view pornography. If it is a choice, then there is something very debauched about us that makes us want to give into it. If it is a choice, then the consequence of choosing it is shame. And on and on.

But the primary casualty of this belief that gay is a choice is what it does to our basic sense of human dignity, of self, of our very connection to what IS. We live in a Matrix far more removed from Reality than the one I have been discussing for the past few days. 

And this is just ONE belief, which generates untold numbers and types of fears, that can and do reside in the neighborhood of one’s unconscious. 

Identifying and neutralizing such beliefs in the light of consciousness, in the light of what IS instead of what is BELIEVED, is a huge step toward self-acceptance, higher consciousness and happiness. Writes Nutter:

“Once you have disempowered enough of your belief systems … you can actually perceive what IS in a state of acceptance and sanity. The thing about the nature of what is actually real beneath your beliefs and fears, is that it doesn’t require any thinking and it doesn’t need you to believe it – you can believe all day that the world is flat but that doesn’t make it flat. And the world doesn’t need you to believe that it is round to be round. Similarly, you can believe all day that you are straight, and you don’t need to believe that you are straight or gay in order to be either one – you just ARE.”

Pondering and meditating on what I have been reading in The Way Out has helped me to say, “I just AM.” I am a gay man. I just AM.

Homophobia, Consciousness and Coming Out of the Attic

My partner and I went out to eat last night, something we don’t do that often, but which we enjoy. The food was fairly good – not outstanding – but what we enjoyed most was the experience of being out, tasting something different from our normal at-home fare, and absorbing the ambiance of the restaurant.

We also enjoy being able to go out as a gay couple and not feel like we have horns growing out of our heads. 

There weren’t that many people in the restaurant, a place on the east side of Salt Lake, and our waiter was very attentive. I think he figured out fairly quickly that we are a couple, and, though our gaydar wasn’t going off, we deduced that he was either gay or wanted a nice tip. How? When he brought the check back after having run the credit card, he briefly rested his hand on my shoulder as he thanked us.

We gave him a nice tip.

This experience came to mind as I was reviewing passages which I had underlined in the book I wrote about yesterday, which I’ll refer to by its abbreviated title, The Way Out, by Chris Nutter. As I explained yesterday, a gay men’s book club I have joined is currently reading this book.

The particular passages I had underlined refer to “the closet.” Nutter described the process that the vast majority of gay men, even today, undergo, to one degree or another, when he wrote:  “Believing that [being gay was abnormal] didn’t change my sexual nature, and so I began to create a system of denial and separation from it, which was how and when I first stepped into the closet …”

This short sentence is pregnant with meaning. First of all, most gay men are taught that being “queer” is abnormal and wrong. However, that doesn’t change the fact of whom such men are attracted to. 

Secondly, most people usually think of the closet as being merely a place of hiding, which it is of course; but the metaphor also implies to most people that once it’s ok to come out, everything will be fine – like a game of hide and go seek: we’ll just hide in the closet for a while, then come out when it’s safe and rejoin the game of life, only this time we’ll be fabulously and openly gay.

What most people who have never lived in the closet don’t realize, however, is that living in the closet creates, in Nutter’s words, “a system of denial and separation”: denial of and separation from who we are. Nutter then points out the obvious: “By hiding [in the closet], you do not change your nature [i.e., your sexual orientation], you only put it out of sight from yourself and from others.” 

In discussing his own experience, Nutter then made a statement that literally took my breath way when I read it for the first time:

“I became … an Anne Frank in the attic of my own being, only I had to hide from myself, too.”

The imagery was so powerful, of the Frank family sealing themselves off from the world, a world in which they were no longer welcome or tolerated. But Nutter takes the imagery further, to the point of sealing oneself off in the attic of one’s being, hiding not only from others but from one’s own self.

It is comparatively easy to come out of the closet, but it is much more difficult to come out of the attic and deal with the years, or even decades, of psychic and emotional separation and hiding. Nutter points out that the key to navigating this process is to shine the light of consciousness on the fears that are buried deep within us:

“The degree to which you do acknowledge [your sexuality] to others is based entirely on the degree to which you realize the deep truth underneath all the lies about yourself that you absorbed from the world around you – that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and, therefore, there is no reason to hide it … [Coming out is really a matter of having] transcended the closet altogether – you no longer have to be ‘out’ because no part of you is ‘in.’ You simply are.”

In his book, Chris Nutter talks about his own journey, about how he came out in a big way, of how he started living the life of the party boy, diving head first into the fabulousness of gay life. But he eventually came to see that life as shallow and misleading and devoted himself to some serious soul-searching that led him, metaphorically, back up into the attic:

“When it comes to coming out, there are two essential intents. On the one hand is the intent to do as little self-examination as possible in order to get what your ego – i.e., your identification with the part of you that lives in fears – wants from being out … without having to more substantially come out of unconscious living.  

"On the other hand is the intent to stay conscious about being out for the rest of your life in order to utilize the endless challenges to your authenticity as endless opportunities for healing … The point is to keep these intents in mind so that you are always aware of which one is guiding you … [However,] the point isn’t to make a political statement or convince homophobes that you’re just as good, but rather to help heal the part of you that is still judging yourself to be wrong because you are gay. 

"Of course, we all feel the pressure to recede into the background even once we’ve come out – to, in a sense, stay where we’re told to stay in our neighborhoods or in our bedrooms. This pressure to recede is exercised in the form of fears … which are instilled in us in adolescence and which so many of us accept as true. But fear only emanates from the unconscious mind, and like all unconscious thoughts, it is on an endless journey to prove itself true. So the problem here is that if you have fear in any form – and homophobia is itself a fear – then you will indeed see it everywhere because it is your own that you see” [bolding emphasis added].

Last night when we went out to eat, as well as other times we’ve done this in Salt Lake City, I didn’t and haven’t felt self-conscious at all, i.e., about being gay. If, however, we were to go to a restaurant in Bountiful – where my children live – it would be another story. (In fact, it has been another story. Mark and I took the younger kids out for dinner at Applebee’s in Bountiful then to the theatre in Centerville, and I could feel the eyes looking at our large table and at us as we sat in the theatre, trying to figure it out.)

What I realized about our experience last night, especially as I meditated upon what Nutter had written, is that I and other gay men project our fears, our own internalized homophobia, onto others. I decided that I am going to follow Nutter’s advice and, whenever I feel self-conscious about being gay, I will reflect on the “two intentions,” and try to be mindful of my internalized homophobia and to heal that part of me that is still judging myself to be wrong because I am gay.