Back in the 1980s an elementary school teacher in Florida decided one day to tell his students that he was gay. It was apropos of nothing. None of the kids had asked and it wasn't relevant to anything on the curriculum. He was fired and it became a bit of a cause célèbre.
I used to teach children swimming, sailing and canoeing in the summer in those days and one of my colleagues and I had a big discussion about it. I wasn't particularly interested at first and just humoured her in her discussion of something that was obviously very important to her. And then she said that for the guy not to tell his students would be to "live a lie". That struck me as ludicrous.
She said, "It's easy for you, you're a heterosexual, you don't have to come out to your students." (This was a little odd, by the way, because she was heterosexual herself.)
And I thought, I don't want to come out to children in my care. I wouldn't want them thinking of me as a sexual being. I want them to think of me as the guy who teaches them valuable boat and other water skills. Nothing in the ensuing three decades has inclined me to change my opinion.
Ina sense she was right, I didn't have to come out and it strikes me as tremendous blessing that I have never felt any such need. The Oxford Concise Dictionary says, Closeted means "shut away in private conference or study." And that strikes me as exactly where one should keep ones sexuality.
I agree with you. I've never understood the need some gay people have to come out to the whole world. One's sexuality--everyone's sexuality--is a private matter. IMHO I think it stems from a desire for validation of their sexual preference, but in fact the only validation of that which is necessary for each of us is our own.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by and for your kind comments.
ReplyDeleteI'm not used to having people agree with me :-)
LOL, me either!
ReplyDeleteWhat they don't realize is that no matter what field they're in--teacher, doctor, carpenter--once they come out they'll always be thought of as "the gay one," not, for example, the teacher whose students have a great understanding of history or literature, or the doctor who has the best outcomes, or the carpenter who does the finest woodworking. They don't see that they're more than who they have sex with, maybe its part of our sex-obsessed culture. And that's sad.