My LGBT Hero: You!

Every out LGBT person
Too many trades, talents and types to mention

In one of his most impassioned and powerful speeches Harvey Milk called on us all to come out: to fling open the doors of the closet and let the world know exactly who we are and be counted. It’s much more difficult for people to be homophobic when they know one of us: when they see that we aren’t the evil stereotypes peddled by the likes of the Daily Fail.

Lets be honest: while the straight world is in your face from the moment you open your eyes, there’s nothing quite like us gayers. Everything and everyone is right there, from twinks to drag queens, bears, cubs, otters, dykes, femmes, trans, queers, those into sports (water- or field-based), and those into clubbing. We are all right there. Yes, it’s in your face, and yes it can be as scary as hell when you first discover it, but it’s our culture. We may bitch, sneer and raise a judging eyebrow across a bar, but like all families it’s fine for us to joke about ourselves. Just don’t cross us: when it comes to it we stick together.

As shown by Pride, the Stonewall Riots and the anti-hate crime vigils, together we are stronger than bigots. Together, we send out a message to our LGBT brothers and sisters in countries like Uganda that things can get better.

But even if you’ve never shimmied through your town in pink hotpants blowing a whistle, if you really are the only gay in the village, then you have made a difference. In fact even if the notion of Pride is ridiculous to you, just by being you, you have changed people’s opinions. You have made people think twice before voting against us. You have changed hearts and minds.

In university I was the only out gay man in the whole hockey club, and, for all I knew, the only out gay man across most of the sports teams. Okay, there were several lesbians, but that’s another stereotype altogether! At the start of the year, this was new, and not every single reaction was positive – but by the end of the year it no longer mattered. I had made life-long friends across several teams, and the banter, teasing and laughing was all in good fun if not good taste. I may not have written a letter to an MP, but the rugby and hockey boys no longer viewed gays with fear, and when I was punched in the street for being gay it was one of those boys that came to my defence.

So to you, the lesbian primary school teacher and her teaching assistant fiancée, to the comms director of a hospital with a penchant for bubbles, the councillor who screams down the roof at football, the volunteer manager with a naughty mind working for an international charity, the upcoming author working to raise HIV awareness, the PR boy with the dirty rhythm, the secondary school teacher who teaches ‘little bastards’, the foundry worker, the quarryman, the copywriter, the former dancer, the jeweller, the barman, the designer, the adult film performer, and everyone else, I say: thank you.

We may all stand on the shoulders of yesterday’s giants, and they were indeed giants. But we are the shoulders the next generation will stand on, and, even if you don’t notice it in your day-to-day life, you are making things better. Simply by being you in your everyday life, by no longer saying ‘they’ when you mean ‘he’, by correcting someone when they ask about your ‘husband’ and you say ‘wife’, by having the courage to use the toilet of the gender you are rather than the one you were born into, you are making things so much better. Bit by bit, you make leaving that closet easier. It was easier for our generation to come out than almost any before us. Thanks to you it will be easier for those that follow.

Sometimes we forget just how much of a difference we make. This LGBT History Month, remember where we’ve come from, what we’ve achieved, and where we’re going. It’s something to be proud of, whether you exploded out of the closest in an explosion of glitter or you are quietly getting on with things in your own way. You are making a difference and you are making things better. You are an LGBT Hero.