Uncloseted

I was sitting around with some peers when someone said Did you hear why she is getting a divorce? After 20+ years of marriage she decided to become gay.

Sometimes I think about all the people I knew in high school and in college and how none of them were gay.

I realize now of course that that was statistically impossible. 1 in 16 people are homosexual or bisexual—and that is a conservative number. Roughly that means that in every classroom I ever sat in in all my years in school one or two of my classmates played on the opposing team.

That’s a lot of people not to know about.

And when the person sitting next to me used the phrase “decided to become gay” I felt compelled to correct her. Because people do not become gay—it is not a recruitment decision. People are born gay. And for a thousand different and same reasons they simply chose to lie about who they are—to not identify or to live on the “down low.”

And it is our job to get the message right----and to avail keys to the fearful, because a closet is no place to live.