With her trademark sharp-edged tongue, Fran Lebowitz’s enlightening remarks on gay marriage have yet to leave me.
“Do you think gay marriage is progress? Are you kidding me? This was one of the good things about being gay. I am stunned that the two greatest desires apparently of people involved in the gay rights movement are gay marriage and gays on the military. Really? To me these are the two most confining institutions on the planet.”
Not to undermine a landmark year in LGBTQ+ rights, with the Obergefell vs. Hodges case legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States, and an increase of representation and spotlighted explorations of trans issues with the television series, Transparent. But between the place we should’ve been decades ago and where we are now, we seem to be lost in translation.
Marriage doesn’t bring us very far when leaden clouds of prejudices, bigotry, and discrimination loom over the LGBTQ+ community and burgeoning youth find themselves at odds with internal blooming and external oppression. Marriage wouldn’t have saved the LGBTQ+ corpses that continue to pile up every year. Not all of them are even accounted for.
We shouldn’t need any confining and conformist institution that continuously oppresses the community to be the source of our validation. Only we can do that by loving those who do not understand, in hopes that one day they will.
Focusing on the West’s “success” would be insulting, when seemingly no progress has been made overseas and love and loving can still result in a death sentence. Not forgetting the cultural pressures that minorities face with their sexualities, trekking in unknown territory often leaves you in the dark, as it is not as simple as it seems for the white world.
It’s the same way that being anything other than a straight white male puts you in a vulnerable place in society. Different sexualities will never be fully accepted and integrated, which is okay because assimilated difference is no longer difference.
Different to what though? Straight? To me, straight is the different sexuality. It’s different to me. We cannot let ourselves get lost in a language that aims to bring us down. Change your perspective.
As you peel back each layer of skin in this supplement, reading between the lines and finding your own meaning within them, you will get a sense of the emotions and turmoil that bubbles beneath our skin for the entirety of our lives. We can only reveal so much to you, as we only just met.
From personal accounts of praying the gay away to the trials and tribulations of online dating, this supplement will provoke, amuse, and educate you on things you may not have known before. Because the more you know…
There are no solutions that I can offer you, but I can shed a light on stories of youth who are learning about themselves and sharing what they have learned to you. Fear of something comes from not knowing, so before you judge the guy who wears lipstick in your class in Curtis Lecture Hall, or the transgender woman sitting on the 196A, or your friend who comes out to you in the middle of the night, it is important to understand that we all have and struggle with our own identities.,Tand to marginalize someone due to a “difference” to your own is asinine.
Change is learning to understand, adapting to accept, loving and moving on to live full and rich lives void of oppression. Change can only happen between human beings, not in law or the media or by placing a rainbow filter on your Facebook profile picture. It’s at a ground level between each other.
If Joan Didion’s famous line goes, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live,” then we are also living in order to tell you these stories.
I’d like to thank all the editors at the Excalibur team for being accepting and generous with their time, and for giving me the opportunity to coordinate this supplement. The utmost gratitude and appreciation is due to the volunteers who, on their own accord, submitted pieces of substance that expressed their beautiful identities. Thank you.
With the doorknobs on your right, open the closet doors. Open your mind, come out of the closet, and get under the skin. Try to understand and support the voices in these pages, and you will find yourself connecting with them to, as people are eerily similar in ways you wouldn’t like to imagine. This is what little we could do with our voices, the rest is up to you.
Enter the void.
Nirris Nagendrarajah
Supplement Coordinator
