Staying in the closet to avoid rejection.

Feeling rejected is one of the most devastating emotions you can go through. In normal terms it is not an emotion, but a feeling that combines many negative emotions. The first and the most devastating form of rejection that any person can experience is being rejected by your mother as a baby. That form of rejection can take a lifetime to overcome, if at all. Later in life you can be rejected by family members, friends and in time, lovers, but rejection by your mother will always be the worst.
Being gay automatically makes you an expert on feeling rejected. As a minority group in any community we know what rejection feels like. As a small boy most gay men were called fags even before they themselves knew what being a fag meant. Gay boys tend to be different from an early age and being different always implies rejection, especially, but not exclusively, among kids. Kids can be extremely cruel and their rejection can be the second most devastating that you will ever experience. This is mostly because the pain is so much worse if you are a kid. If you come to the point where you realize what being a fag means and you realize that you qualify the fear of rejection is the obstacle in your way to coming out.
So what is it that makes people so afraid of coming out? It is only the fear of rejection and as I mentioned above, a queer knows exactly what rejection feels like. Your whole being warns you against that devastating feeling. Firstly you fear being rejected by your parents. If you can come out to your parents the worst is over. The fear of being rejected by family, close friends and colleagues are also devastating, but somehow the rejection by your parents is always the strongest.
Many queers end up saying “to hell with my parents” but that is only a form of denial. They are denying the importance of their relationship with their parents. The relationship with your parents is the foundation of all other relationships, whether we want to know it or not. Your parents do not have to accept your lifestyle, but you do have to make peace with them in order to have any healthy relationships at all, even if it means that you agree to disagree with them. And yet we know that a lot of us struggle with this problem and we know how many of us just can’t make peace with their parents. I know it is easier said than done, but believe me it is worth your while to give it every possible chance.
The second relationship might be even more important, although I do not think they are in opposition to one another and that is the relationship with you yourself. If your parents reject you chances are good that you will reject yourself as well. It is quite possible that you are oblivious to this rejection; many people do not accept themselves without really knowing it. You might think you have decided that you are going to live life to the fullest, but deep inside your soul you feel unhappy with who you are. In time this will grow into an aggression towards yourself and it will end up in a major depression. The result can be overindulgence in food, alcohol, drugs or sex with total strangers. If somebody tells me that they only go for one nightstands I always know there is a deep settled self-hate at the bottom of it.  
If you do not make peace with your parents or with yourself your chance of having a loving relationship with others are much smaller. Feeling loved by your parents and loving yourself makes it so much easier for others to love you as well. Although your relationship with your parents might be impossible to rectify you have no excuse to make peace with yourself. Accept yourself for who you are, what your sexuality is, what you look like and what your personality is. Acceptance will probably take years to achieve, but you should try your utmost to get to that point in your life. Coming out is a symptom of making peace with your sexuality. It means you are no longer fighting who you are. It is a difficult step and it can be more difficult for some than for others, but if you take that leap of faith in yourself you will never look back. Yes you might be rejected by some, but you will be rejected by far less people than you are afraid of. You will be amazed how many people will accept you for who you are and you will be amazed by who will accept you and who won’t. The fact is that coming out is the first step in accepting yourself and if you come to that point other peoples judgment will mean less and less in time. Staying in the closet is a form of self-rejection and self rejection is the most devastating thing that you can commit, even worse than suicide. So, in short, do not delay your coming out for too long; staying in the closet is self rejection and coming out is running the risk of being rejected by others. Believe me; self rejection will always be far worse than being rejected by others.

This week's Cobrabite

By Dr. Brand Doubell

Cobrabite

Dr. Brand Doubell

Cobragay

 

Can we believe anything we see or read on the Net of facebook?

We have all come across fake profiles and most of us cannot stand it. Everything from fake pictures to complete fake profiles. We assume these can be anything from dirty old men and leaches to stalkers, cooks and paedophiles.  Most of us cannot even grasp what these people gain out of it. They can after all not meet up with anyone without revealing their deceit because the pictures do not match. I have come across several of these in the past few years where someone had created a fake profile, appeared extremely charming and then in the end – for some unknown reason that person staged their own death, creating a wave of shock and sympathy and a pouring out of condolence, the creation of sites in memory of lost ones or that person. We have had such a case in South Africa where a prominent attorney and the police led an investigation and discovered that it had all been a fake. Recently we were exposed to another such out of Australia. For some reason someone that is not sure of themselves believe that people out there will never like them for themselves and go about creating a fantasy life. They even go so far as to steal identities.  They do not even realise how charming they are until they realise that they have reached the limit of adds allowed by Facebook and spend hours every day chatting to people all over. It has even become so bad that once blocked for their popularity, they create new profiles on new emails so that they can continue getting their fix. Yet at some point, for whatever reason, they decide to end the lie. The tales vary profusely but inevitably they claim their own death. In many instances, like in South Africa there are tales of abuse or worse seeing that they need the sympathy. In such cases they do not realise that someone will seek justice and begin digging into the story and inevitably they are ousted.
Most of these people do not realise the trouble they can get into. By publishing anything on the net you are liable for whatever results it creates. You might as well have written it and published it in the local news paper or uttered it on international television. Lies are lies and in most countries any publication whatsoever needs to be backed up by proven facts. People have been sued and jailed for even minor lies or defamation of character so it can turn into a real shark frenzy. No one likes being taken for a fool and no one likes being lied to so who can blame them?
Yet I cannot help but wonder why people do this. What horrifying reasons lie behind this craving for attention or the realisation that things are getting out of hand and the need to stop it all. Unfortunately the liar has the tendency to want to cover up the lie with and even bigger lie to blanket all the others and it is in the lie to cover up that they are caught out and it then blows up in their face. Could they not have left well enough alone? Could they not just have deactivated their profiles without further lies? When will the lies stop?
However, I have recently encountered a new phenomenon that took me completely by surprise. One of these people actually apologised to me personally for his deceit. As you all know I utterly abhor deceit and lies. You all know that I am extremely harsh about this and that if there is one thing that hurls me ballistically into orbits of anger - it is lies, deceit and betrayal – all of which occurred in this instance. In my book, any lies, deceit and betrayal is intrinsically evil. Yet when someone goes out of their way and genuinely apologises, I am willing to forgive them and try and help them to fix what they did wrong. I have also come to realise that everyone has their reasons, no matter how misconceived, stupid or ignorant those reasons might be and that everyone deserves a chance to fix what they had messed up. After all I am human and have my own mistakes.  If that person genuinely feels regret and wants to mend their ways – who am I to deny them that chance to change? It is only my hopes that this story will prevent others from taking the same steps and that this person would genuinely strive to correct the things from the past and become a productive part of society, perhaps teaching others not to make his mistakes. Lies, betrayal and deceit always hurts someone, it infests our society with a cancer that corrupts on all levels. The Karma involved is enormous and insidious. Even white lies with the excuse of not trying to hurt someone will come out and hurt them even more at a later date. It is like walking with a tooth ache. Rather go to the dentist and fix it immediately than walk with it and it becomes an abscess that can become fatal. I believe so strongly in this that I speak the truth as I see it at any given and all times – and if I am wrong I will apologise, admit I was wrong and correct my process of thought. Even when I have a perception of something or someone I would rather discuss it with them personally, giving them ample opportunity to explain or correct my perception before outing them. No one deserves to be massacred emotionally or socially without the chance to correct either the perception or their ways. If they refuse to do so, I say bring out the guillotine!!!!
One thing I have to give to this chap is that he was honourable enough to apologise – even after being caught out.  He has suffered the shunning of the society he was lying to and felt the pain of utter rejection. Where others would have run and hidden, he had the guts to stand up and apologise. There is honour in doing that. Let us hope that he retains and builds on that honour by never making the same mistakes again. Honour has lost its weight in our society and it has suffered for it. I tip my hat to him for showing it and for the guts it took. I have decided to publish the letter he wrote me (obviously changing names and removed contact details as I do not want him to suffer any longer) and my response in the hope that it might help both him and others not to do the same and to assist the victims in forgiving so that they do not become bitter in their anger.
Here follows the letter he sent me:
February 17 at 5:39am <span></span>
<span> </span>
hi Benjamin

I owe you an apology!


I told you a porky on Facebook but it was only a small lie that got out of hand, but I only ever thought of it as being fantasyland. I created him and his lunchbox so I assumed it was alright to get rid of them. Maybe it was not the right way to do it, but it’s too late to reverse it now.

I don’t think you will read any of this so I don’t expect a reply either but if you do reply please be patient as I don’t have access to a computer and I can’t afford to go out and buy one. I need to find a place to live before I think about computers or stuff like that.

Who is Henry (I have changed the name)– is good starting point – he is a gay guy in a relationship here in Australia and works as a SSIT – satellite security installation technician, who does he work for – buggered if I know.

No he is not on Facebook, but he did find out that I was sort of impersonating him ( not sort of) . The photos that I used were his, and yes I used to be a friend of his until a couple of weeks ago, but that friendship is gone. I can now count all my friends on one hand and sum of them don’t know why they are still friends with me after the way I used Henry  – he got lots of friends and they all respect him despite him being gay and all that shit.

I owe him big time and all I could do was kick him in the guts and use his name.

Me – well you sort of know who I am and where I am from – I am Joe, aged 16 years and 9 months and I be a street-kid from Cairns in north Queensland. I met Henry when he was on holidays 3 years ago and he brought me down to Whyalla for a new start in life – my family don’t care for me and I had no friends in Cairns anyway, so it was no great loss to move, I lived on the streets up there and Henry made friends with me.
– is he a good guy, yep
– is he good looking, yep
– is he kind and generous, yep
– is he good in bed, yep

– will he ever be mine, nope
– will we ever be friends again, probably not – I fucked that up good and proper!


I made some REALLY good friends on Facebook, but under Henry’s name but then the REAL Henry found out and I had to get rid of both of us – so in the process I lost everything I had gained on Facebook. I REALLY DO LIKE YOU too, and after this APOLOGY I know you won’t want to be friends again, but never-the-less I owe you THIS apology for deceiving you for so long – if you had known the truth in the beginning you probably would not have talked to me ever.

I needed friends desperately back then and it was only a little lie at the time, but in the process it became a big lie and then I had to get rid of him and his lunchbox and everything went arse-up real quick.

I had to do it coz the real Henry threatened to punch me lights out if I didn’t. And he would be so pissed if he realized that I have reactivated both profiles again, BUT it’s only temporary this time. I need to get the email addresses of all the people that I have hurt along the way and of those that I WANT to desperately apologize to and then I will delete both profiles permanently. I don’t need the constant reminder of how wicked I have been to ALL those people I LOVED so dearly but lost in the end anyway!!!

I have only one really good friend left that has stood by me through all this and even though I have hurt him too coz it was his computer that I used. I know he don’t trust me anymore – it’s a bastard of a way to go when you really think about it. And it’s no wonder that everybody don’t want to know me anymore!

Am I gay – buggered if I know. I like what gay people do to one another but I still like girls too – although I haven’t been to bed with one yet. Girls won’t pay like fat old married men do so I will probably never find out and when you trying to live off the streets, male sex pays big dollars most times.

In the beginning I thought I would apologize to everybody just to stop being nagged by the only real friend I have left. But that was before I realized just how much I REALLY missed not being on Facebook and all the friends I had to ditch along the way, including you.

In the last fortnight my life has been a hollow shell and I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I spent a lot of time sitting on top of one of the hills around here just watching life pass me by and many the day that I slept rough coz I got wet from the rain and I had an aching empty belly, all because I had done the dirty on everybody I EVER cared about.

It brought back the memories of living on the streets of cairns as a street-kid again and how bad things really were up there, and how Henry actually took all that pain and guilt and worry and suffering and me having to fight to survive, he took it all away for me!!!

Henry brought me down to South Australia and gave me the opportunity to have a new life, to make new friends, to have a home to go to and food on the table and never having to worry where the next meal was coming from. All he ever asked of me in return was that I didn’t tell him any lies.

But I was angry at my past, for who I was and what I was and what I wanted/needed SO DESPERATELY to have what Henry had - to be happy and someone to love me for who I am. I didn’t tell him any lies I just kicked him in the guts and used his name instead.

But since ditching the Facebook profiles I had nothing to do but mope around and after sitting on top of Mt Laura for nearly 3 days I realized that WHAT I WANTED was to be friends with all the people I had hurt along the way! And the only way that was going to happen was for me to apologize to them from the bottom of my heart and let them know that I too shed lots of tears when I killed off BOTH Henry and myself together and that I ripped a big chunk of my heart out and threw it together with my life, into the abyss.

And it’s with this realization that I knew what was wrong with me this last fortnight, I missed not being on Facebook and all the friends I had made along the way. Then I knew that the apology HAD to come from me and it HAD TO BE MINE even though it was SUMBODY else that planted the seed!


– As I said before, this is just an apology, coz I at least owed you that if nothing else!!!

SORRY I DIDNT TELL YOU THE TRUTH

from Joe
as this re-activation is only temporary, if you still want to remain friends,

my email address is > ………….

but its only going to be good till the end of march this year when I will delete that address as well. If you decide you want to remain friends with me I will give you my new email addresses from there - ...Joe


 And my response Follows:

Joe,
I hoped you learned that covering a lie with another lie just made it worse. The smallness of the ‘porky’, as you call it is greater than you realise. It broke the innate trust that people grated you. It would have been better if you had just let it be. Lies always blow up in your face; they tend to reveal themselves no matter what one does to hide them. Lying to cover up another lie perpetuates the cycle and it snowballs, growing bigger as it rolls. Rather be yourself. In order for you to have created that person you had to show some of yourself in it. Everyone loved that personality and it has nothing to do with the money or anything, just the ability to converse and make people laugh. Perhaps it is time for you to realise that being yourself is much less stressful and will gain you far more friends than you have realised. Yes you fucked up and it is understandable that everyone is upset. Would you not be if you had been lied to? Next time just be yourself, stop living in a fantasy world and rather create that life in your own by being the honest, fun loving fellow that you created and so many people experienced. Yes, this lie will follow you and next time you will have to work harder to get people to believe you, but in the end they will see honesty, the regret and that you are truly sorry and then enough will forgive you.

You might think that the character that you created is better, sexier or smarter than you, but I cannot see that anyone would pay for a bad looking chap or have enjoyed hours of conversation with you if some part of you were not in that character. Be yourself, use your own picture and be honest. You will find that you can attract your own group of friends. This dishonesty is one of the greatest concerns about meeting up with people on the internet and by doing what you have, you have perpetuated it. Fix it by learning from your mistakes and the fact that you have hurt so many people. This is not the first time this has happened and probably not the last. I just wish that people would realise that everything that you send out on the web can be traced and that there is no way anyone can hide from the truth once someone really wants to dig. Anything that you post is a publication and you can be held liable for it in a court of law. Trust me, it can all be traced legally. There is no way that anyone can separate themselves from any factious character that they create as they use details that they know.

My second concern is your addiction to Facebook. If you can be that charming on Facebook you might as well be charming in real life. Get out there and make new friends in the physical world. One does not need loads of money, helicopters, fancy cars or boats to make friends. I realise that in the world you have been living in deception is probably a given as there is probably a lot of role playing involved, but you can change that in your own life. Learn to be scrupulously honest and even if people make misuse of that – never become the one that inflicts it ever again. You know what the results are. It makes you no better than the others that inflicts such heartache and pain.  There is nothing wrong with chatting on Facebook – unless it withdraws you from the real world. Rather use that time and effort to create a life for yourself.

I am part of a group of councillors that help young people on a Help site and I think your story can help a lot of others that think so little of themselves that they even consider doing this. Of course - if I use your story I shall not reveal anything that can tie you to it, but would like your permission to use it as an example after changing the names. I am going to email this letter along with the altered version of your original message to you and want you to change any details that you think are still too close to the places and names and then you can send if back for publication. As I do not know all the places and mountains in the area, please change names as you see fit.
Look at your talents and abilities, even the ability to steal someone’s identity. You are smart. Now use that for good instead and swear off the lies. By being yourself you will not have to waste energy on keeping up pretences and remember what you said to whom. Instead you can use that energy to build a new life and real friends in the real world. Please note that I am repeating the last so that it can sink in. We all make mistakes. What are you going to do to fix it and make up for it in your life and future?


Kind Regards,
Benjamin Breden

The Masks that people wear.

If the Fears of every man could be seen, written on his forehead, how many who now incite envy would appear to be objects of pity?

This seems to be the crux that lies behind so many problems that we face in life. If we could read others minds and understand not only what they do but why they do it – many of the issues that most of us would be sorted in a flash. However, we cannot, so the next option for people like Andrew, Jim, Corniel, Brand and I that are in the profession of trying to help people understand themselves and others, is to ask and pace things together.

The other day Brand had a status update that triggered memories of my days when I did my thesis about the masks that people wear, psychologically that is, not as in the festivals of Venice or for Pride and the Festival of the Dead. Even though there are times when masks come in handy, they, like most psychological defence mechanisms that kick into overdrive, can become a major problem in the way that we function in society. Personally I think that in Gay Society we have taken them too far.
Yes, under the old government we had to be careful what we revealed about ourselves and to whom, but since 1994 a great many things have changed and we are now fairly well protected by our constitution in comparison to then. Yes it is still not perfect, but we can get away with a great deal more than we used to and no one, either Ray McCauley or our current President are easily going to succeed in removing our new rights that we have fought for all these years. Unfortunately the habits that we learned to protect ourselves then still seem to be prevalent in our society today and have in some ways sought other means of outlet.

As children, we learn from those around us how to function in society. We have certain rules of engagement that are imposed on us by our families, society, our communities and the religious groups that our families belong to. Some people refer to these unspoken rules as social graces. Some have their origin in religious circles. While there are many that are openly preached and if we do not follow them we are punished until we do. That punishment need not be physical. Amongst the Koi San the harshest punishment that can be dealt someone is ostracization or shunning. They do not necessarily ban a person from the tribe, but completely ignore them as if they do not exist. Most people do not realise the effect such a strategy has on us and yet it is used to force people to comply with their idea of how they expect us to act. In some – especially the Mediterranean communities, the guilt that mothers use on their children and families as a weopon is notorious.

What is the result? We tend to hide certain parts of who we are and we begin to wear masks, act in certain ways that we know they might approve of – even though this is not who we are, even though it hides our own happiness from us. We begin to make use of this technique in various other situations in order to prevent others from judging us – we start wearing psychological masks. This has become so prolific that we all accept the idea of a first impression and the affect it has on our chances in achieving whatever goal we might have.  We dress correctly, act, say and do things in a certain way so that others might like us, approve of us. Being a pack animal, humans have an innate need that other humans should like them, especially in the pack. Some people even develop a phobia where they cannot handle anyone not liking them. We seek the approval of all those around us to the extent that it could cripple us. In some extreme cases some in the gay community have decided: Well if they refuse to accept us we shall reject all they stand for. Effectively these people have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. This especially happened in regards to the various churches or religions that people grew up with. They not only lost entire sets of morals and values, but they also lost a point of refuge, a calm place in the storm of life in doing so.

Yet this is where a further problem arises.

In all this growing up and learning how we are expected to act, with so many people telling us – especially the gay ones, how bad we are, how evil, how stupid, that we cannot be saved or that we are going to hell or whatever they might see fit to sub-judicate us to their will forcing us into the submissive role, for whatever reason they might have, we tend to remember the negative programming far more than any compliments we might receive. At that stage we are too young to realise that they might feel inferior and feel better about themselves by looking down at others or that they just get a kick out of making someone else feel as they had all their lives. They might not have intelligence enough to raise a child or speak to a child as an intelligent human and find it easier to dominate by negative suggestion. And so the child tends to develop a low self esteem, seeing every failure in their life as proof of the negative that had been imprinted in them. They begin to see themselves with self loathing, afraid that anyone else would see themselves for what they see themselves as, so they once more begin to wear masks, acting the opposite of who they believe themselves to be. They tend to push away people in the fear that they might catch a glimpse. They reject others before they themselves can be rejected. It is after all better to do the shoving away, rejection and breaking up that having it all done to you, right? All this happens out of fear or overcompensating for an insufficient or inferior image of oneself.


Behind all the masks that we wear, who are we really? Have we begun to lose track of who we really are? And those that have the distorted self image live their masks so diligently that they begin to believe that some of what they are living is them. Yet, at the end of the day, who are we really?

I have seen people walk into clubs and tell me they are that they are putting on their hunting face. There seems to be an entire shift in personality, their attitude and posture – even the way they speak, changes as they put on the mask. I have seen people that change as they enter certain groups; change the person that I have gotten to know in a certain way. These people tend to like what those around them like – even if it contradicts what they said last night, dress like the crowd that they are about to spend time with dress. They become social chameleons. They blend in. They tell you precisely what they think you want to hear. Yet there is never any glimpse of the person they truly are – and if there is, one is never sure if it is real, if one can rely on it. Why is it necessary for someone to do that? Can this be healthy? Do they despise themselves so much? Yet it is done every day in our community to various degrees and extents.

How many times have we not gone out and put our best foot forward? (An accepted practice) How many times have I not heard the complaint that someone was not the person that you had met? That the person had changed? Surely one has to realise at some stage that constructing and maintaining these masks take an enormous amount of effort and energy – which could have been used far more constructively if it was not required? It takes so much infact that these masks cannot be maintained indefinitely, hence the fact that once we spend more time in that person’s presence the cracks begin to appear, contradictions begin to show. We see through all the sweet talk, smoke and mirrors.

In other instances, I have seen people criticise others in order to appear superior, yet in truth they are distracting everyone from looking at their own back yard. They hurt others in order to feel superior – even if it might be for a moment. Hypocrisy in its evilest form.  Yet I do not believe that these people do so intentionally. I believe that these people do so to hide behind masks – to hide the person they believe themselves to be. In doing so they leave behind the same destruction and pain that they have been through. They are unaware that they are acting exactly like those that hurt them in that way in the first place – they are no different whatsoever. They have become carbon copies.  It is learned behaviour that can be changed.
How, you ask? By beginning to let that person that one has buried beneath all those masks and recrimination out into the sunlight. After so long in the dungeon,  I am sure that person could do with a tan. By getting to know that person, by giving that person a break. We are our own worst critics – is a term that is most apt here. By getting to know that person and questioning every negative programmed word ever spoken about that person – by others or ourselves. By getting to know what that person likes or dislikes. By making friends with them and getting to know their strengths and weaknesses – not as others have pointed them out, but for what they truly are. By allowing oneself to integrate that person into ourselves and by knowing who we truly are. That way, we might not have a host of plastic friends, but we will begin to attract people to ourselves that like what they see and experience, like us for who we truly are. A handful of true friends. There will be far less judgement that affects us as we realise that others opinions do not truly matter. We will be able to look in the mirror without having to avoid our own glance. We will be able to spend a weekend or holiday in our own company without feeling that we need to have others around so that we do not need to think about personal issues or fears.  We begin to realise that there is no way we can keep everyone happy, for by satisfying one group – we will inevitably upset another. We begin to realise that the only important person to keep happy is ourselves. That way we will not harm ourselves or others in order to get along. By accepting ourselves for who we are and actually liking ourselves for once I believe we will suffer less depression, less fear and less unhappiness. One begins to find that core that is far more solid, less prone to tumbling down like a house of cards, begin to believe in oneself and have the possibility to find inner peace without having to join a Buddhist monastery. When one has become more self assured one has no need for fads, for overcompensation, for hiding. You know then what and who you are and the opinion of others or the rumours that tend to fly in our community no longer affect us because we know our own worth and we know the actual truth. Only when we love ourselves will our relationships begin to last because there will no longer be a need for jealousy, insecurity or unfounded anger. We will be able to approach people and ask if we misunderstand before making snap judgements. And in the instances where we lose, we will be able to recover so much sooner from such loss, because in being secure in ourselves we tend to recuperate so much faster.  We then find that we have no need to pick up the battle axe at the drop of a hat, but rather save that energy for when we actually need it. We will no longer feel the need for superficial intimacy in row upon row of one night stands, wasting all our intimacy on strangers instead of the ones that care for us.

No I am not saying that cleaning the pipes is wrong, I am saying that at some point one needs something more solid, more permanent.

Self image is therefore essential in finding ones balance. It is essential in the treatment of so many of the psychological disorders that develop from normal defence mechanisms that kick into overdrive, thereby disrupting our everyday functioning in society or of our society itself. So many of these things are tied into one another and we all use them differently, yet remain unaware why or what effect they have on those around us. They affect the ones we love worse than those that we consider our enemies because our enemies shake it off and carry on, but the ones that love us cannot just do that as we are far too important to them. By integrating our full selves we not only help ourselves but the people that truly love us. By being and healing ourselves we do the world, our society, our loved ones and ourselves a favour.
By Benjamin Breden

Me, you and Elton John

I was born in 1967. I have many gay friends that were born in the same era. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The best because it was the year in which   Elvis Presley and Priscilla got married, Elton John and Bernie Taupin started working together as songwriting partners, the Beatles released  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and  Pink Floyd released their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The worst because France launched their first nuclear submarine, the People's Republic of China shot down United States planes violating its airspace, an Egyptian surface-to-surface missile sinks the Israeli destroyer Eilat and  Israel retaliates by bombing Egyptian refineries along the Suez Canal. In short, it was a year like all others, but those of us who were born in that time struggled much more to come out than those who were born 25 years later.

Why am I telling you this? Because I get the impression that gay youngsters today do not understand why the older generation of queers got married and had kids. We did not do it because we were afraid, we did not do it because we wanted revenge, we really did it because we thought it was the right thing to do (With “we” I am merely showing my sympathy, I never took that road). I am writing this as an apology dedicated to the children born in those families that later broke up because mom or dad came out.

Twenty years earlier in 1947 Elton John was born. If you think you understand what it was like for a fag to be born in 1967 then you would be able to imagine what it was like 20 years earlier. Just to jog your memory that was two years after the end of the Second World War in which Jews and queers were killed for being themselves in a “civilized” Europe. Believe me, Little Elton John had no choice and he got married.
In 1976 Elton told the Rolling Stone that everybody was bisexual to a certain degree. When he got married to Renate Blauel 8 years later there were speculation that the marriage was a cover and 4 years later in 1988, after their divorce, Elton came out of the closet.

You have to remember we are talking about Sir Elton John here, somebody with his stature are allowed to have a few screws loose; he is after all an artist and not just any artist. In his career he has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. With 9 number 1 world hits and more than 50 top 40 hits he is not just another musician. A guy like him can afford to have his own kind of lifestyle and still he only gathered enough guts to come out in the open in 1988 at an age of 41. If it took Elton John, a rich artist (estimated wealth: $265 million), 41 years to come out of the closet you can just imagine how difficult it was for normal folk like you and me.

On 21 December 2005, another 17 years later, Elton married (went in to civil union with) his partner David Furnish, a Canadian filmmaker. They met in 1993 and were together for 12 years. Looking at the life of a gay icon like Elton we see a guy that needed 29 years to admit he had bisexual urges, 41 years to admit he is gay, 43 years to get into a long term gay partnership and 55 years to get married to a man. What a life story! What an example for queers like you and me and yet, what a sad story of a guy that was forced by society to waste 55 years of his life pretending to be someone else. Do not judge before you can do what Elton did;  in 1992 he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation as a charity to fund programmes for HIV/AIDS prevention, for the elimination of prejudice and discrimination against HIV/AIDS-affected individuals, and for providing services to people living with or at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. So you could say that he didn’t hold back after he came out in 1988; he really went for it and gave it his all.

But what does that have to do with you and me? To me personally it means that no queer’s life is easy and I should think twice before I judge another person’s journey through life. Can you ever stand in another's shoes and presume that you know what he/she went through? It reminds me of the movie Good Will Haunting where Robin Williams asked Matt Damon: “do you think I will understand the life of an orphan by reading Oliver Twist? It is easy to judge a life while you are reading a biography in the comfort of your living room, but try living that live where the tires hit the gravel; not that easy any more is it?
So boys and girls think twice before you have anything to say about the life of another. It might be easy to give advice 25 years later, but standing in front of a choice, a fork in the road is never the same, never that easy.

by Drs. Brand Doubell & Andrew Blade

Taken from the
Cobrabite column
in the Gayly Mail.

God save the Queer

And when the Union Jack flew in our Country, weren’t you proud of it? Didn’t you stand up and sing “God save the Queen”?
And why did it flew in South Africa? ; Because we were once a part of the British Empire. The British Empire had 3 times as much people as the United States, 33% of the world’s inhabitants were under British rule and so many countries were part of this that there was not a single second on Earth where the Sun didn’t shine on one part of the empire; hence the slogan: the sun never sets on the British Empire. And we were proud of being part of this enormous Empire, proud to have the Union Jack as our flag and therefore we sang “God Save the Queen” from the debts of our hearts.
Naturally everybody wasn’t proud to be part of this and that was the Empire’s downfall; mot sticking together. Like the slogan says: If you can’t stand by your colors then get yourself a new flag and so they did; the new South African flag. But South Africans could not stick together and after 30 years another new flag flew. The downfall of another empire is in the air, because not all South Africans want to join the new colors in the air. A flag represent something, it shares a meaning it sends a message, a message of unity, but if the unity is only a dream; the empire falls.
In 1960 a gay flag was created; a flag that sends out a message of unity among queer people. That is Lesbians, gay men, transvestites, transgender, transsexuals, bisexual, hags, stallions, bears, queens, dikes and all other counting among the queers of our world. Our Empire might not be that big, but if you calculate the statistical 4 out of every 100 theory, our group is at least as large as the United States. Yes, you heard me right, if 4 out of every 100 people are queer (that is the general theory) then there are at least 240 million queers on this earth. So we deserved a symbol and at last we could be proud of our colors; we could stand by our flag and sing: “God save the Queer”.
Our queer community has one problem and that is sticking together, if we did a group of 240 million would hardly be a minority. In stead of sticking together we divide in the leather community, the bear community, the chubby community, the lesbian community, the bisexual, the transgender community, the drag community, and the rave community; to name but a few. How silly is that? We complain about discrimination, but we do not stand together as a group.
A while ago Cobragay sent out invitations to a free get together for the like-minded. Do you know what the biggest reaction was? The reaction of the average member was no reaction at all; the second largest reaction was “Please take us of your mailing list”. Maybe you could think that the venue was wrong, the theme or the wording, but you would be wrong; this is the reaction that most queer organizations get.
When I talk to individuals within our community they always complain about getting to know other members of the community and yet if you try to arrange something for the community the majority just ignore the invitation. I wonder how great the discrimination should be before we start to join hands. Individualization always predicts the downfall of every empire in the history of mankind, but discrimination always made an empire stronger. Maybe the general acceptance by the straight community wasn’t good for us at all.
Let us stand by our colors, let us raise our flag, let us stick together and let us join in singing “God save the Queer“.

Andrew Blade  


http://www.facebook.com/cobragay

-Andrew Blade’s Weekly Cobra-bite-
Taken from Andrew’s Column in

The Gayly Mail