Putting our own house in order
Ace Pryhill has a beautifully-written post up about gay advocacy:
I fully understand the psychological conflict that coming to grips with my sexuality has had on me; it’s strong and it’s real. I could have very easily gone down some wrong paths because of it. Almost any gay person will tell you they didn’t choose to be gay, but the element of choice always remains when it comes to actions. You can choose not to cheat, you can choose not to do meth, you can choose to avoid tempting situations, you can choose to talk about a problem before it tears you apart, you can choose to get professional help before you make a decision you’ll later regret. Instead of letting other people fix our problems, let’s do what we can to fix ourselves…the rest will follow.
You can also choose not to hang out with the kinds of people who encourage you to be dissolute. (That includes straight friends who think it’s gays’ job to add color to their boring, settled lives with stories of sexual adventure and political shenanigans.) Coming out is often an explosive finish to years of carefully-concealed torture; but it simply isn’t possible to make up for that by relying on other people to make adult choices easier for us from then on. Nor is it wise to go overboard on the now-I’m-going-to-live-just-for-me bit, which is a poor long-term strategy for productiveness and happiness.
That includes straight friends who think it’s gays’ job to add color to their boring, settled lives with stories of sexual adventure and political shenanigans.
Ouch. More people need to hear that one methinks.
Well, to be fair, it takes two to do the dysfunctional tango. It’s hardly unheard of for gays to relish their status as social outlaws, after all. But no matter who you are, eventually you have to decide what side of you you want your friends to bring out. If you associate with people who encourage you to be adversarial all the time, you can’t complain that you end up feeling isolated; similarly, if you treat your friends as if it were natural for them to live on the edge, you can’t affect a solemn expression and go all “if only he’d confided in me, I would have done anything to help!” when they wreck their lives.