Yesterday and the day before, while riding public transit in Ottawa, Canada, I've seen the same couple of twentysomething gay men openly displaying affection at the front of the bus -- leaning their heads on each other's shoulders, embracing, giving each other a peck on the lips.
I wonder if they realized the two middle-aged men next to them were also a gay couple, even though we did not engage in such an open, public display. I wonder if they realized that, at their age, to have done so might have put us at risk of being expelled from the bus, or verbally and physically harassed and abused.
I came out in 1974, five years after the Stonewall riots. I have been involved in the gay liberation movement, mainly in the mid-1970s and the late 1990s. I legally married my partner in 2005.
But, to this day, I do not feel comfortable holding hands with my husband in public -- let alone exchanging a kiss -- except in a darkened cinema, or the safety-in-numbers of a Pride celebration.
On the hit television show Glee, Chris Colfer is the poster boy for gay teens. He gets to be outrageously, screamingly, flamingly gay. His blue-collar father supports and goes to bat for him. But I notice that, even in the 21st century, poor Chris still doesn't have a boyfriend or a lover. Glee is about as realistic a portrayal of gay life as Queer as Folk was a decade ago, which is to say not at all.
Equal rights and same-sex marriage are laudable goals. But real equality, real freedom, will not come until gay men and lesbian women can walk down the street, arm in arm, hand in hand, and hug and kiss like any straight couple would do, without blinking an eye.
The words of the poet Robert Frost apply admirably to the gay rights movement:
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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