Halloween

So, I've told a few people that I'm not very into Halloween.  I don't do much to celebrate the holiday and I try to let it pass by with as little involvement as possible.  I don't live in an area where kids go trick-or-treating, and  a lot of the traditions seem silly to this old-man-in-training.

But it wasn't always that way.   When I was a kid, Halloween was the coolest.  I trick-or-treated and two of my neighbors established an outdoor haunted house every year.  And when I was old enough I worked at the haunted house.  I got braces on Halloween and I could eat without difficulty until trick-or-treating time, and I was devastated.  But that didn't shake my appreciation for Halloween.

When I was in high school, there was a workplace shooting near my town, at the office of one of my neighbors who ran the haunted house, and he was killed.  After that, it was too hard for the neighborhood to host the haunted house.  And Halloween became a sad day for me.  And it's still sad.  The joy I used to associate with community on Halloween was transformed to mourning.  So, forgive me if I'm not full of holiday spirit.

Even When It's Not News

Zachary Quinto made headlines last week when he came out casually during the course of an interview.  I have long been wondering why celebrities have coming out press conferences still.  Quinto, like most people his age, neither feels the need to talk about his sexuality when it is not relevant, nor feels the need to treat his identity as abnormal.  But the media felt like Quinto had duped them into believing he was straight and he pulled a fast one on America.  Quinto talked about his experience as a gay man.  When will the media learn not to be more heteronormative than the rest of the country?

Sukkot

Sukkot and Simchat Torah are now over, at least for me.  The holidays are not widely observed, at least not in more than a token fashion, by Reform Jews in America.  Somehow the time of Sukkot, the Season of Our Joy, makes me feel at home in ways I haven't yet been able to describe.

It's odd: Sukkot is a time where Jews set up a transitory space in which to live.  And it is in this temporary shelter that I find not only the Jewish community but myself alive with purpose.  I don't know whether it is the commandment to be happy or the sense of community that the holiday cultivates, but something makes me appreciate life in a new way during Sukkot, and it's not because of an increased appreciation of inside space.

National Coming Out Day

This year, I hadn't even absorbed that the day was happening until it was almost over.  I have so blocked National Coming Out Day from my life and my consciousness that it wasn't until I read the onslaught of Facebook status updates of my friends coming out again.  These cursory reiterations of queerness and other identities are the confident statements of those who hare secure in their understandings of those aspects of themselves.

The most "celebration" I have ever done for National Coming Out Day has been attending the Matthew Shepard Memorial March put together by Chicago's Gay Liberation Network that used to be a much better organization called Chicago Anti-Bashing Network.  There is enough pressure within the queer community to come out without dictating a magic day to be ready.  And there is enough pressure outside and within the queer community to stay in the closet.

As one of my friends from NUJLS would say, coming out is a continual process.  Once you start, you're never done.  There is always someone new to come out to, and identity is complex and changes over time, so there's also always something new or some more nuanced way to come out.

I started thinking about coming out after my love died, and I don't think I told anyone until a year and a half later.  And it wasn't until after my first year of college that I came out to my supportive parents.  If National Coming Out Day had the prominence that it does now, I would have been pressured to come out before I was ready, and I think many people who have started the process of coming out are pressured into declaring their insecure identities to the world before they are ready.

So, if you're reading this and you're considering coming out, know that you are not alone.  You can talk to me or someone else who will maintain your confidentiality while you think your identity through.  Know that even in the closet, you have the support of an amazing network of people who care about you and you are already accepted by the LGBTQ community, or at least the people in it who will matter to you.  We are here for you whatever you decide and whenever you decide.

Cher!

So Chaz Bono is on Dancing with the Stars.  It's not a show I watch.  Much buzz has surround Cher and whether she is a good mother of her trans son.  Activists and pundits think that Cher using incorrect pronouns or referring to Chaz as a lesbian indicate that she is a transphobic hater of her own child.  This is an absurd analysis.  Cher puts a public face on all the supportive parents of transfolk that stick up for their children despite being largely uniformed themselves.  So when Cher messes up a pronoun, I try to have the same compassion with her I extend to my own parents when they mess up a pronoun because I know that they spend the rest of the day at least feeling awful that they screwed up.  And I think: such a loving parent who is not afraid of saying something supportive because the pronoun might come out wrong due to years of habit.  So Cher: thank you for continuing to be a strong ally for the queer community.  And everyone else: lay off and note that Cher is a loving and supportive parent.

Republicans and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a failed Democratic policy.  Enacted during the Clinton Administration, its purpose was to allow lesbians and gay men to serve in the military.  At all.  In addition to fears of homophobia from higher-ups in the military, it was thought in 1993 that divulging the sexual orientation of a queer service member would leave that service member vulnerable to torture.  There is no evidence that the second is true.  The most prominent group pushing for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a Republican group, the Log Cabin Republicans, who were arguing in the courts that the policy was unconstitutional.  The Obama administration pushed for a legislative repeal to avoid embarrassment in the courts.  And they got a legislative repeal.

And now the Republican candidates are all pushing each other out of the way to be the first, loudest, and best proclaimers that if elected president they would reinstate the policy.  This has recently been magnified by the audience at a debate booing a gay soldier serving in Iraq asking a question while all the candidates stood idly by.  Rick Santorum, to whom the question was addressed, did not even thank the soldier for his service until a political pressure steam roller forced him to two days later.

Either the candidates all lack a basic understanding of the separation of powers or they want to abuse executive powers and/or the bully pulpit to enact unconstitutional policies.  Unconstitutional policies military won't last even under Republican authority.  Just look at segregation.  And if Republicans choose to be public faces of homophobia over public faces of supporting soldiers, they're going to lose the support of their base.

Home for the Holidays

I'm living in Chicago which is a short train ride away from where my parents live.  It's too close to try to stay in my adopted home for the holidays when my parents extend an invitation to their home.  While my broader synagogue family in South Bend is warm and loving and it's good to see people, going home, especially for a major holiday has its disadvantages.  It's not an appropriate time to come out to people, in large part, though a member of the synagogue once came out publicly on Yom Kippur afternoon.  I have an established rule that if I don't ask people to change which name or pronouns they use for me, then I don't take offense if they use the "wrong" ones.  Of course, it's still stressful and somewhat foreign by now to spend a lot of time being addressed by a name I haven't used in years over and over.