On Closets and Me and the Televangelist...

Being in the closet will fuck you up.

That's the honest truth.

I'm sitting here watching Oprah's interview with Ted Haggard and that's the first thing that came to my mind. That and a saddening remembrance.

What he's saying sounds crazy and ridiculous and makes no sense, but I understand. I understand believing so much in something that says what you feel, essentially what you are, is bad. I understand believing that if you pray enough, are good enough, ignore it enough, deny it enough, God will make it go away. I understand being afraid of losing all that you know, your family and friends and community, your life for something that you think is bad and want nothing to do with. I understand hating yourself. I understand all that.

I guess what I he a hard time understanding is how, after Haggard says he's come to grips with who he is, with his sexuality, how he can still basically find fault in it. In him. He said he understands who he is. He said he accepts who he is. He said he is a heterosexual man with homosexual attachments.

What the hell is that?

You know, I'm no proponent of boxes and labels. I agree with Haggard, in that they are only something used to make people feel comfortable, to let them kow how to identify you and interact with you. They have nothing to do with the person being labeled as much as the person ding the labeling. I get that and I agree with it. However, there is something to be said by giving voice to one's own truth. Giving name to it. If he said, I'm not heterosexual, but not homosexual, and left it that. I'd be cool. If he said I prefer not to use labels, but I recognize that I have attractions to both women and men, I'd be cool. What I'm not cool with is that he's still clinging to this heterosexual identity, in essence, placing more value on that identity than on who he truly is. It makes me sad.

At the end of the interview, he said that he thinks the ideal is monagamous, heterosexual relationships. He said God accepts everyone, but that there is still this ideal to achieve. Basically, he's still saying that who he is, is still not quite good enough. Because, no matter who he chooses to be with, how he chooses to identify, how he chooses to behave, the truth of who he is will never change. He will always be a queer man.

That's why being in the closet will fuck you up.

I think when people deny who they are, when they can't even be honest with their selves about who they are, then that is the sickness. It's not being gay, that's not the sickness. The sickness is the shame and self-hatred and the lies. The sickness is not being able to give voice to who you are. The sickness is not seeing your inherent value, but that of something that you will never be.

That sickness will kill you. If not physically, then certainly mentally, emotionally and yes, spiritually. I truly believe that when people repress their sexuality, it finds ways - often unhealthy ones - to seep out. For me it was promiscuity and a deep self-loathing. For Haggard, it was prostitution and drugs. For others it make be something equally as danderous to self and to others.

It's ironic that I could see so much of myself in this fundamentalist, Christian televangelist. Seeing him today brought back memories of much sadder, much younger me. I feel sorry for her and for him and for anyone else who believes choosing the closet, choosing self-hatred, choosing to not to give voice to one's truth, choosing to operate and identify from a place of other is a better option than choosing to love and accept self.