Merry Christmas from San Francisco

[baraka]

Hello, and Happy Kwanzakkah!

Just wanted to say "hi" as I am new to the Forum. I live in SF, one of the gayest cities in the world, and am sitting at a cafe in the heart of the Gay Ghetto: the Castro district. In many ways I am spoiled to live in a place where being queer is not a big deal, and I am privileged to be a part of a very welcoming congregation: Glide Memorial Church.

By God's grace I've been able to integrate my spirituality and sexuality, but that has been a long journey. Along the way I have been blessed to be part of 2 Episcopal churches in Washington state that were instrumental in helping me to come out spiritually.

That said, it's not all a bowl of cherries here: I currently work at an extremely conservative evangelical mission agency where I cannot be "out" as a gay man. Oh, the irony of being closeted on the job in San Francisco!

Well, a blessed Christmas to all!

Baraka

[SolInvictus]

Welcome to the forum! Thank you and have a Merry Christmas too.

[Jamie McDaniel]

Originally Posted by baraka

I currently work at an extremely conservative evangelical mission agency where I cannot be "out" as a gay man.

Hi Baraka and welcome to Soulforce! I look forward to reading your posts.

Remember, we always have the choice to be out. It's just that sometimes our making that choice comes at a price.

However, there is a price to remain closeted as well. And I've come to see that, here in 21st century America, the cost of remaining closeted is much higher than the cost of coming out.

I think in our struggle for equality we all need to stick together and remind each other of that.

[Zerbie]

I respectfully disagree with Jamie that the cost of remaining closeted is ALWAYS higher than coming out. It completely depends on the person, every aspect of their life, and what is at stake if they come out. Baraka seems to have a pretty integrated life, and the work situation sounds like the exception. Maybe he is now in a position where he can 'give back' to the world through his work, and ideally we should respect his prerogative to make the choice he has. There is a huge difference between his situation, and that of someone utterly struggling in the privacy of his own heart, or between him and some closeted person working tooth and nail against our civil rights. So I don't think it's fair to pressure him to make a different choice.

[baraka]

Hiya;

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Thanks for welcoming me to the forum. Yes, I agree that coming out is always a choice, and that we must count the cost of choosing to be out or or remain closeted.

When I moved to SF, I had arranged for a place to live, but not a paying job. After working for a number of months at a low-wage service job and falling further behind in my bills, I took a better-paying job at the evangelical ministry I mentioned -- knowing that this was a big compromise with my values.

It was not the first time I made a choice for a measure of financial security at the expense of personal integrity. I can do some crazy things when my survival is on the line; believe me when I say that I struggle with all of this every day! I struggle with trying to be true to God, and myself & to live an authentic life without lying or telling only partial truth. And I struggle with trusting God to care for me & not let me end up on the street.

Landing on the street is not a far-fetched notion in SF, which is one of the most expensive cities in the country, and even if that happened, I pray I would entrust myself to God. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, tea, and sympathy! I'll let you know when I find a job where I can be OUT, which is on my agenda for 2006.

blessings,
baraka

[Zerbie]

I don't think you owed us an explanation for your choice to be closeted at work, but it does clarify a lot of things, and imo, it's the wiser choice. In order to live with the personal integrity you expect of yourself, first you have to BE LIVING. I am aware that San Fran is expensive - I would love to live there if I could afford it, but probably all I could afford there is a large cardboard box!
If you WERE forced out of this job and ended up on the streets, you'd have far bigger problems than whether or not you maintained your integrity - it is about survival. And while the survival instinct itself is a selfish instinct, also - you are no help to anyone else in this world if you aren't surviving yourself. You have to meet those needs. They're not negotiable.

It's exciting to see a job search on your list for '06 and I'm sure everyone here wishes you lots of luck finding the right fit for you, where you can make your living AND abide in the personal integrity you require of yourself.

Another thing - I have been where you are. For reference, I'm bisexual. Some years ago as a kid fresh outta school I was boarding with a homophobic landlady, IN her house in the room next to her teenage daughter. This landlady got me a job through her employment at a private school for troubled teens who had been thrown out of every other high school but needed to be in school as a condition of their probation. Many of these kids were gay-bashers. So there I was, babysitting dozens of bashers and speaking out, asking them not to talk about "stomping the fags," etc, and it became an issue at a couple of the faculty meetings. The other teachers were not asking the kids to stop the verbal bashings. I said we needed to at least all TRY to present them the idea that violence is wrong. The director said, "Oh, but Ms (my last name), society is never going to accept homosexuals." There ensued a series of gay jokes, one of them at my expense. Then the teacher who told it saw the look on my face, and said, "Oh, don't worry (my first name), we know you aren't a homosexual."

Ha! And what did I say? Absolutely nothing. I judged my job AND my housing to be potentially on the line. So I let it go and stopped bringing it up at faculty meetings, but I still ran into confrontations with my students, who I was sure were once on the point of asking me when the bell rang. Considering these kids were going out on Friday nights with baseball bats, I was leaning towards lying about it if they ever asked me directly, but they never asked, so I don't know what I would have said. That time in my life, when I was most closeted at home and work, ironically, was the longest I ever had a girlfriend in my life. And she worked with gay bashers too, in her position as a probation officer.

[baraka]

hiya zerbie!

thanx for your compassion & empathy. it's sounds like you've indeed been thru some similar stuff. i endured 6 closeted years in the military, too, and getting out & STAYING out of the closet is more work than i counted on!

on an almost daily basis i have to listen to homophobic statements from my "Christian" co-workers -- one of whom fantasized aloud about going to the Castro district and inflicting justice with a knife. mostly though, it's mocking and ridicule, rather than the threat of violence.

howzabout "separation of Church and Hate" ???

-- baraka

[Zerbie]

Wow, lots to chat about here! Edited because, oops! it's hard to read. . .heads up! My responses are in the grey highlighted part of the text where your quote is!

Originally Posted by baraka

hiya zerbie!

thanx for your compassion & empathy. it's sounds like you've indeed been thru some similar stuff. i endured 6 closeted years in the military, too, and getting out & STAYING out of the closet is more work than i counted on!


YES! "Staying" out is the hard part. In your case, given those colleagues at your job, it's gotta be daunting, and no wonder you're "in" at the moment! How is the job-hunt strategy coming along? Any leads? I bet your days would be far more pleasant without colleagues making jokes about assaulting gays.

I find it practically impossible to stay "out" now, being married to an opposite sex partner. People just assume. I walk around all day covered in rainbows (well, an HRC bumper sticker, a rainbow plastic wristband, a gay marriage button on my jacket) and people just assume I'm straight because of the wedding ring and the hubby. People only find out I'm a non-hetero nowadays if they ask about it.

on an almost daily basis i have to listen to homophobic statements from my "Christian" co-workers -- one of whom fantasized aloud about going to the Castro district and inflicting justice with a knife. mostly though, it's mocking and ridicule, rather than the threat of violence.

THIS story is horrifying. That's Christian? Why would she suggest going out to the Castro to assault gays? Was that some kind of HaHa joke? Or was she feeling genuinely angry at gays at the moment? My god! It sounds like your situation is terrible! Go send out some resumes, post haste! Wishing you luck speedily finding a much more suitable job situation.

howzabout "separation of Church and Hate" ???

I LOVE IT! Never heard that before - is that your original slogan? It oughtta be a bumper sticker - I would buy it!!

-- baraka

[hippie]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

I respectfully disagree with Jamie that the cost of remaining closeted is ALWAYS higher than coming out. It completely depends on the person, every aspect of their life, and what is at stake if they come out. Baraka seems to have a pretty integrated life, and the work situation sounds like the exception. Maybe he is now in a position where he can 'give back' to the world through his work, and ideally we should respect his prerogative to make the choice he has. There is a huge difference between his situation, and that of someone utterly struggling in the privacy of his own heart, or between him and some closeted person working tooth and nail against our civil rights. So I don't think it's fair to pressure him to make a different choice.

I have to definitely agree with you here. Especially with children/teens whom are dependent upon monetary support from parents (ie. myself w/ college coming up - they're paying ish-half). I've read over and over at support sites that you should have "good reasons" for coming out - which is part of the reason I haven't, because, honestly, I don't think it's that big a deal unless I'm dating (which I'm not because I'm uber-time constricted & a little socially phobic), and therefore it's unnecessary. I hate to measure everyone by straight standards, but I don't see non-gays feeling pressured to tell friends and family "by the way, I like [insert opposite sex]." Moreover, I don't think I need to come out to be closer to the people around me because I don't talk about personal things anyway, so it wouldn't be like I was opening up a "hidden" part of my life. And I just feel like I'm afraid of stereotyping myself and being stereotyped: I don't want to be pressured into lesbian circles because I'm more than my orientation and it's awkward to connect with people just based on that. Here, there's common politics and morals and such, but at my high school, most lesbians are porn-obsessed and constantly high/smoking. That's not me, and I don't want it to be me.

So, yeah! I agree with Zerbie haha

[Jamie McDaniel]

Sometimes topics that get introduced as part of the discussion in one thread grow into their own thread. So I think we could have a good discussion sometime on "coming out" in the main forum. It is certainly an issue that we all face and we each experience it differently.

I do have to say that my opinion remains pretty much the same. Although yes, I do agree with your comment, hippie, about young glbt people and those who are finanically dependent on another. I said that myself in my article.

Returning your thread to you now, baraka. Here's the rental fee.

[baraka]

hi folks:

in response to your question zerbie, no, i haven't got much of a job-hunting strategy yet (that's the short answer). the longer answer opens up a whole 'nother topic, but i'm working with a therapist to get past old patterns of underearning, procrastination & other self-defeating junk.

yay for craigslist, which is a great resource for jobs/housing/personals, etc.

i wish i had thought up the phrase "separation of church & hate" - but i read it or heard it someplace recently (don't remember the source). it would make a good bumper sticker, huh?

the co-worker who made the "slasher" remark is actually my supervisor! God only knows what he was thinking to make a remark like that in public, but he's pretty freakish in general, so that was just one more manifestation in a chain (albeit the most horrific) of outlandish things he says.

it does get rather old to listen to such crap, and sometimes i can feel my face flush with repressed outrage -- because although the homophobic comments are not a daily occurence, they do catch me offguard sometimes when they come up out of the blue.

as you can imagine, with all the publicity that "Brokeback Mountain" is getting these days, there are plenty of negative comments being made.

because s.f. is a place where glbt people are so high-profile & OUT, perhaps this riles up those with "homophobic tendencies? it's a fact that people come from out of town to do their gay bashing (especially during hallowe'en).

sigh. thanks again for your kind attention!

-- baraka

[Zerbie]

Yep! The bashers I worked with always went to the gay district in town to go *look* for gays to assault. Gay meccas can actually be dangerous because of the tendency bashers have to come prowling around looking for opportunity.

Sorry about the work sitch. It does sound a lot worse than I originally thought.

Good for you for having the guts and perseverance to work through your self-defeating "stuff" with a therapist. Having been through all kinds of problems in the past (and still dealing with a bit o' residue) I can attest that it is worth it - you suffer less and less, the more you face down the garbage-y stuff. Wish you the best of luck with *that* too. Hang in there - things the way they are, they can only get better with time.

[cris]

How's life? I know you posted this some time back, but I only just started, so here is my 2-cents worth, hopefully more than what it appears to be worth.

I saw that you're in San Fran. Wonderful city, isn't it? Are you native to SF? It doesn't surprise me that there are homophobes there too (aaauuuuugghhhh! They're everywhere!). I remember a survey of high school students that reported out of the greater Bay area the number who witnessed gay bashing (verbal or otherwise) on a daily basis, and it was upwards of 75%...DAILY! Then, the number who speak up regarding this a disappointing 4%. The bashers want to inflict fear, and, well, it seems to work most of the time.

You seem to have a supportive church. I had heard about Glide Memorial because of their work with homeless. In particular I was searching out who exactly is reaching out from OUR COMMUNITY to OUR YOUTH. Can you talk more about your church? Seems like a pretty amazing story from what I read online.

As for your work situation, I remember all too well my work in a Christian school, where we were terrified to come out. I say "we" because it turned out that a good percentage (I'd say 20%, that is TWICE the quota, isn't it?) were GLB(T?). Anyway, I finally served my time and got out, but I look back now and realize it was all part of the 'journey.' I became more and more uncomfortable with that closet and have progressively come out of MANY closets since then, many of which I didn't know had closed me in.
I still can't help but believe that those guys like your super who are bashers and put up a good front are dealing with some pretty uncomfortable feelings about their own sexuality. Seems like they're a bit too interested or caught up in the topic to be 100% hetero. We're challenged on the other hand to love our brothers and sisters, even those who hate or abuse us! That is a challenge at times, isn't it?

Anyway, I wish you peace and wisdom in your situation.

God bless you,
Cris

[PostGenXtian]

The first thing that came to mind when read that you can't be 'out' in your job - is that maybe you're there because that's exactly where God needs you to be - maybe there is someone there who needs to be changed. Know what I mean? Not that you need anymore pressure on you than is already existing...but the instant vision I had was that you are a witness to the witnesses