On gay leadership, visibility and coming out- twice

“Do you want me to arrange for someone to see you?”

That was my dad’s response during my first ‘coming out’ conversation with him in 1998. Two days before, I had rushed to the post office to send him a letter explaining that I am gay. I had just returned to university after the mid-year break, which included my maiden gay trip to Cape Town. I was in my second year of university, and had recently met a boy on-line. We persuaded his parents that I was a school friend coming to visit for a week. It was an exhilarating experience, travelling all the way to Cape Town to meet a stranger. Everything was perfect – in fact, we are still pretty good friends some ten years later. So my decision to put pen to paper, and share with my family my newly affirmed identity, felt easy. I have no recollection of what detail I wrote on so many pages of writing pad, but vaguely recall including a plea that my dad should not think that my sexuality casts aspersions on him as dad. Why I focused on him, and not my mother, is a mystery I have yet to solve. Two days later, a fellow student at my university residence knocked at my door, and told me that my dad was on the line. I rushed downstairs, and in a conversation that lasted thirty seconds – interrupted by tears – I fielded a couple of clumsy questions, before hanging up.

“Are you sure?” Yes dad.

“Is it not just the friends you hang out with”? No, most of them are straight.

“Do you want me to arrange for someone to see you?” No.

Tears followed, and a muffled agreement that we would chat again. I walked painfully slowly up the stairs, and collapsed on my bed, filled with a mixture of relief, and fear. Fear, not of rejection, but of acceptance. There was nothing I wanted more at that moment than him calling me back to say that he never wanted to see me again. That, I figured, would give me enough moral high ground to be justified in turning my back on him and the rest of the family. I feared that his sincere attempt at acceptance, complete with tears and ignorant questions, would simply make me feel guilty about his emotional grappling. Fortunately I had already been wrestling with tough questions about the moral acceptability of homosexuality for a while, and had happily concluded that there is no reason why I should desist from embracing my same-sex attraction. I resolved never to legitimise anyone’s homophobia by giving them ‘space’ to decide whether or not they are happy with me being me. My family’s homophobia was no exception. Their journey, I decided, is not mine. After all, I was not asking them to accept me as a paedophile, and it would therefore be an act of self-hatred to give them space to ‘deal’ with my authenticity.

Yet, I also felt a sense of relief. Having grown up in a conservative working-class Catholic community, I had to put a secret lid on desire. In fact, for years after my first coming out I had spasms of recollection about early experiences of same-sex attraction going back to primary school. In a sea of conservative lies, however, gay teenagers are rendered invisible. I too was invisible - even to myself. The freedom of a liberal university campus – I attended Rhodes University – saved me from a life of self-hatred and dishonesty. Thinking the words “I am gay” for the first time, felt honest, and overbearingly liberating.

But I am lucky. The majority of gay and lesbian men and women, and teenagers, in this country of ours with its much celebrated liberal laws, might never set out on a journey towards self-actualisation, let alone reaching that destination. ‘Coming out’ is not easy when your lived reality is imbued with homophobia. I have had the dual benefits of a very stubborn personality that places principle and argument above practical consequence, and a dash of middle class power that affords me the option to only live within our pockets of liberalism. Black lesbian soccer stars in townships around the country are confined to a more violent reality. The question this raises, is what we can do to move our society closer to a place in which gay rights are enjoyed substantively by all gay men and women, not just those able to buy equality. How, in other words, can the liberal vision of the constitution become a felt reality for gay men and women living outside the confines of middle class South Africa?

Visible black gay leadership is a critical part of the answer. By leadership I do not mean that grand, national parades should be organised. These help, but homophobia lurks most perniciously in our homes, our offices, our coffee shops, and our hearts. Leadership therefore includes micro acts, such as gently engaging homophobic attitudes when they manifest themselves in the actions and conversations of those around us. This is not to say that gay men and women, and their allies, should become thought police. But it does mean that we should demonstrate courageous personal leadership by doing our bit, within the social spaces we move, to challenge and engage false beliefs about, and pernicious attitudes towards, gay people. A talk at a school, by an openly gay person from that community, can potentially be more effective in engaging that community’s attitude towards gay people, than dishing out copies of our beloved constitution.

Visibility is key. One of the falsehoods that are believed throughout the continent is that gay persons do not exist. Some vary this claim by believing that only Westerners are gay and that any gay activity in Africa results from immoral Western influence. The most powerful tool for dealing such views a deathblow, is visibility. This is not easy when violence and ostracisation stare you in the face. But it would be needlessly pessimistic, and even condescending, to imagine that every single person with homophobic views, are beyond the pale. The power of staring someone in the face, and speaking to your feelings and desires, should not be underestimated. This will not result in homo-tolerance on the spot. But, the truth of visibility – the truth of seeing a gay man or woman still being the same character you have always known, ‘despite’ their being gay – is the best tactic for debunking the false belief that gay Africans do not exist.

I have seen the effect of this visibility on my own family and friends. My father has successfully travelled from a position of deep denial to a place of warm embrace. While I do not regret demanding that he ‘deal’ with his homophobia without my assistance, it was no doubt the realness of my visible gay self that enabled, and perhaps even compelled, him to shift from a discourse that medicalises my identity, to one that accepts it as a nonchalant fact about me. And of course it was not easy. I had to come out a second time, years after my first coming out. Parents often console themselves with the belief that their teenage kids are going through a phase, and that a blissful straight life, complete with 1.5 kids, awaits them on the other side of experimentation. It is after coming out a second time (like when boyfriend comes home for Christmas), that the gay penny finally drops. This is why visibility is crucial – it challenges the assumption that our same-sex attraction is temporary, like a passing headache. By remaining invisible, one inadvertently reinforces the very belief you wish to dismantle, the assertion that you, gay man or lesbian woman, do not exist.

Last, it is important that this visible leadership be taken up by black gay people in particular. It is not effective to have a Londoner arrive in Soweto and give a soliloquy on homosexuality. Black men and women need to take the lead, especially since most of the violent expressions of homophobia prevail within black communities. It would help immensely if black gay persons in business, entertainment, the academy, politics, media and sport, started living open lives. My personal challenge to fellow black gay men and women who quietly occupy positions within these public spheres is to reflect on the transformative power of visible black gay leadership that lie in your hands. Visibility can result in greater acceptance of gay persons, beyond the confines of liberal middle class enclaves. It can, and will, save lives also.