Coming out of the closet can be really hard no matter what.
After admitting to myself that I might be gay during my second year of college, I scraped up the courage one night to slink across campus to a free LGBT support group being held in my undergraduate university's student union.
Once I got there, however, I panicked. I knew the room I was trying to get to was on the fourth floor, but I couldn't find the proper stairwell. I started to sweat. I could have stopped someone and asked, but I was somehow convinced that if I did they'd look at me and say something like \Oh, the fourth floor? You must be going to that big ol' GAY meeting they're having up there. Is that it? ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ALL THOSE GAY PEOPLE UP ON THE FOURTH FLOOR'?""
Ridiculous, yes, but I was terrified. When I finally found my way, I ran up the stairs only to freeze again outside the room. I could hear voices inside, but I couldn't make myself go in. My God, they'd see me! They'd know! THE GAY PEOPLE WOULD KNOW! I couldn't move. I heard more voices on the stairs. More people were coming--uhhh. I panicked. I had to hide!
I ran over to the first door I saw (a closet, ironically) and tried to force my way inside. It was locked. I tried a second door and ended up bursting into a meeting of the African American Women's Prayer and Bible Study Group. I turned and ran, head down, past the people on the stairs and out onto the street.
The next week I went back. It wasn't bad. I got over it.
The point of that touching anecdote was that my coming out was a total piece of cake compared to what gay students go through on this campus.
My undergraduate university was an extremely progressive campus with a huge and visible gay community. While I was there, they were actually debating building a gay dorm and learning center so we queers could live together if we wanted, and more effectively do outreach and education about gay culture. That's visibility, baby!
Last week a campus newspaper ran an editorial both claiming that there's already enough of a queer presence at UW and implying that a university policy to do outreach to gay students doesn't really benefit the overall campus community.
OK--no. First of all, this is the straightest campus I have ever been on. Yes, one sees the odd sign for a Ten Percent Society dance, but UW-Madison still has a surprising lack of queer visibility for a large university.
I almost never see same-sex couples holding hands, I rarely see evidence of queer political organizing and I'm one of maybe three out gay teachers that I know of here.
Anyway, as to the question of who gay visibility helps?
Well, gay people, for starters. It's sort of nice not feeling completely isolated, frankly. Moreover, many of the students I've met are really homophobic, most of them unintentionally so. They hold inaccurate and damaging views about gays and lesbians, because they don't know any.
Learning to coexist with people from a range of different life experiences and backgrounds is actually an important part of one's college experience. Living diversity teaches tolerance and broadens horizons in way classroom theories simply can't.
