It used to be that parents would think, “That lifestyle is going to be a horrendous struggle, so I am going to do everything I can to prevent my child from becoming gay.” Which from my father meant, saying shitty things about gay people to try to convince me not to choose to be gay. Now parents know, I think, that you cannot prevent your child from being gay. The problem is not that your child is gay; the problem is the way some people are going to treat your child because your child is gay. The focus has shifted from making the gay children the problem, to making assholes like Rick Santorum and Tony Perkins the problem.
I have this really distinct memory of my dad praising Anita Bryant. This is ancient history, right? She was this antigay crusader, the very first really high-profile one, saying that gay people were a threat to civilization. A threat to the family, to the economy. That was my dad’s argument too. We were a threat to the economy, because gay people did not settle down. They did not have families, so they did not buy cars and houses and washing machines, and so GE would run out of money, and the economy would collapse. That was his theory. Of course, we did not get married or have families because you would not let us, as opposed to we did not want to. We wanted to, but we could not. Ironically, of his four children, I am the one, I think, who has bought a new washing machine in his lifetime. We shop. Gay men without children shop.
My dad had encountered a lot of gay murderers and murder victims by the time he was really seeing it in me, seeing that I was gay.
When I came out, he apologized for anything he might have said or done that made me feel uncomfortable. He was the last one I came out to in the entire family, which was easy because he had moved away; he had moved to California.
My mom has six siblings, my dad has eight. I have three siblings. There are eight million cousins. Everybody lived pretty close to home base at Rogers Park in Chicago, or nearby. There were a lot of people to tell when I started coming out.
I did that shitty thing that some people do when you come out: I told my mother, and told her not to tell my father. Then my mom and dad came to see me act in a play, because I was doing plays then. There was a wedding scene for my character in this play. It was a comedy, and my mother is bawling her eyes out because she thinks, “Danny is never going to get married. This is the saddest thing I have ever seen.” My father is like, “What is wrong?” and she cannot tell him. I really did not come out to my mother—I dragged my mother into the closet with me. I did that for about a year and then she was like, “We cannot keep doing this, and you have got to start telling more people.”
I came out to my siblings. Then my mother basically told all of my aunts and uncles, and there were problems. I had one uncle say that he would never speak to me again, or be in the same room with me again. He is great now, and he loves me. That was the importance of actually having a big family. Maybe for five minutes it turned into two warring tribes, like “on my side” and “against me.” The “on my side” tribe utterly defeated the “against me” side. My mother went to everybody and said, “If you have a problem with Danny, you have a much bigger problem with me. Got it?” My mom was tough that way.
When you come out to your family, all of a sudden they have to picture you with a dick in your ass. I hate to be crude, but that is it. When you are straight, people do not see you having sex. Coming out to my mom and dad meant burdening them with a mental image; I could see it on their faces. You tell them you are gay and they are picturing a dick going into your mouth. When my sister had a boyfriend, they do not picture her giving blow jobs. “She is straight, she has a boyfriend. There is probably something going on, but I do not have to think about it, because their relationship could be about dating and marriage and family and a future. It is about so much more than the blow job.”
If you are a gay kid in the 1980s, your relationship is not about marriage, it is not about family, it is not about the future—it is about a blow job. It is about sex only.
MELISSA ETHERIDGE—MUSICIAN
When I see kids now who are openly gay, like eighteen, nineteen. Oh God, to not go through those horrible years in the closet.
SIR IAN MCKELLEN—ACTOR, ACTIVIST
The British government was passing a particularly nasty antigay law, which I took very personally. In debating this particular law, I got angry and I kicked the door open and announced on a BBC radio program I was gay.
It was Section 28 of the Local Government Act and it said because gay people have only pretended family relationships, it will be illegal to talk positively about homosexuality in any school. On the grounds that if you were to do that you would be promoting homosexuality. You would be encouraging kids to become gay, as if such a thing were possible any more than it’s possible, in my view, to encourage gay kids to become straight. It was a horrible law. It is insane and cruel and unfair and ridiculous and antisocial in every possible way. In debating that with someone who approved of this new law, it was only too easy for me to say, “Will you stop talking about ‘them.’ You’re talking about me.” That shut him up. Of course I haven’t shut up ever since.
It was hugely important to me because it was a great relief. I didn’t understand that I had been censoring myself. I assumed that that’s the way it was. You’re gay. You may not show your affections in public. You may not hold hands with the person you’re sleeping with. You can’t put your arms on them, you can’t kiss them, you can’t do any of the normal things like that. You can’t talk about it. You’re different. Of course, when I started out being sexually active it was actually against the law to have sex. I have friends who were put in prison. Scars you for life, knowing that’s a possibility. Then you restrict yourself and you see other people doing the same thing and you think this is the way that life is. You buy into the lie that homosexuality is unnatural.
It’s living in a closet. It’s living in a place that’s dark and dusty, with old things that aren’t used anymore. You certainly don’t like yourself, nor do you like society that makes you like that. Once you stop all that, the relief. The joy. Proud to be gay? No, proud to SAY I’m gay. Glad to be gay. Wonderful word, “gay.” Before that it was “queer,” you know? Some clever activist said, “It’s not working, this calling ourselves queer. Let’s choose our own word. What about blue? No, that’s not right. Yellow. Gold. Gay! ‘Gay’ is a nice word.” There we go.
Everything in your life becomes better. All your relationships are improved. Better actor, I would say. A different actor. Acting became no longer a release for emotions that I wasn’t allowed to have elsewhere in my life.
Marc
Do you think that maybe some of your desire to act was around that shame?
Ian
I do. I can now cry onstage. I could never cry before. It was fake. My acting was fake. My acting was disguise. Now my acting is about revelation, truth. Everything’s better. I can’t stop talking and telling people, “Come out. Join the human race.”
DONNELL RAWLINGS—COMEDIAN, ACTOR