I was homophobic as a young man. It's true the logging town I grew up in wasn't the cultural nexus of the world, but that's an excuse, not a reason. The embarrassing part is that I kept being homophobic long after I left to get an excellent university education.
So the first lesson shall be:
Don't assume that bigots are ignorant, that they're "just doing what they've learned". It starts that way, sure, but if you're still doing it as an adult, something else is going on.
Something less innocent and more actionable.
What makes my case even less parsable is that I was always the kid who brooked no redneck crap from his peers. Bad-mouth any race or religion on my schoolyard, and you were in for a throw-down.
Homophobia is the only bigotry I ever went in for.
Figuring out how that happened took me a few decades, and is, for our purposes, peripheral. What's less mysterious is why it continued, long after I saw better, and how it finally ended.
The first is shamefully simple: into my twenties, friends and I bonded in part over regressive "jokes" – hack work that taxed our literary talents very little – and I was loathe to be "that guy", the one who takes exception, smashing the fourth wall and casting a pall over the party.
Sadly, it truly was as basic as that. And I suspect it's the same for most bigots: cowhearted fear of being excluded from a social cohort that defines itself, in whole or in part, by that reflex.
The end finally came when I just couldn't stand the ignominy anymore. One day in my early 30s, the rest of me sat the pathetic part down and said, "You're done. From this point, we're Queen's evidence on sexual orientation."
And that was that.
But here's the point of this post:
I thought I was doing this for my gay brothers and sisters: bringing them some greater measure of peace by leaving off my unsolicited judgement on matters well outside my jurisdiction.
But the instant I put that baloney down, a tremendous weight slid off my shoulders.
The relief was palpable – so physical I nearly wept. See, maintaining opposition against an entire demographic – any demographic, whether a certified target of the Right or Left – draws a killing amount of energy. You don't see it; you think your contempt and criticism hurt those other people. You think you're getting even, winning, reigning supreme, in your hammer-headed refusal to stand down from this fight that you picked.
While in reality your designated enemy doesn't even know who you are; the American expression "get over yourself" is germane here. So the only person out of pocket is you.
And the day you stop wasting yourself on that sustained tantrum sticks in your mind forever. That day you authorised yourself to invest all that capital in other, better, useful things. Now you can put those resources to ends that bring comfort, fulfilment, and satisfaction, rather than blindly incinerating them in the firebox of your petty anger.
And the next day, of course, I immediately discovered how many of my closest friends, even family, were gay. They'd been isolating me from that truth so as not to trigger the disdain that denied me their full companionship. And because my pouting kept me stupid, I was literally the last in our circle to know.
In other words, after all that concentrated rejection in the name of continued membership in my peer group, the odd man out was me. My friends, good people all, had given that rubbish up years before.
I think this early experience of clear-seeing primed me for the kensho that would make me a monk ten years later. Because convictions are worthless.
You can generate endless justifications for the unjustifiable, build palaces of pretext, rehearsing your case for a non-existent court that has no judge. But your efforts influence no objective outcome.
You don't change any law of physics; your hard frown wins no argument.
Because what is, is.
And unless you're an idiot, you don't resist it.
Perceiving how little the universe gives a damn about me liberated me from slavery to myself.
(Photo courtesy of Matthieu Bühler and Unsplash.com.)
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