Outside the Closet

I read and re-read Glenn Cashmore’s words, “Wouldn’t it be a better world if I weren’t alive, if there weren’t any gay people at all to get everybody so upset. . . . ?” (“Self-Respect Forged From Pain of Death,” Jan. 19). The ache in my heart is overwhelming. It is painful to read that anyone in this world should feel expendable, worthless. It is devastating to confront the reality that so many of our children must live in and out of the closet, switching behavior like so many old hats.

As the mother of a gay son, a man past 40, I cannot imagine life without the happy infant of long ago, the wonderfully growing boy of yesterday, the young man who accepted our embrace and emerged from his closet.

Today, as I read Glenn’s words, I wanted to apologize to him and to our son as well. I allowed bigotry and ignorance to erode my teaching, my child raising. Our son, subsequently, taught me that he needed fulfillment and success, love and friendship, just like the rest of us. He taught me that he worried and suffered frustration and fear just like the rest of us.

But he also taught me that no life is expendable, wasted. He fought his way through hard times and today, he fights AIDS, all with a zest for living. Despite the jobs he did not get, those he lost, the snubs and the name calling, the insidious, low-key discrimination and even the awesome HIV virus, Jeff does not consider himself expendable or his life wasted. He has consistently chosen life. He does so now.

To Glenn I say, there are many of us who have never seen the inside of the closet, but we have learned to understand its darkness. We are eager to support your efforts to get out of those shadows and stay out. We stand with you to strengthen your resolve to achieve respect, dignity and first-class citizenship. We are eager to fight with you to eradicate the ignorance and its partner, bigotry. The world is a better place because you, Glenn Cashmore, are in it, to teach us about resolve, tenacity and life.

AGNES HERMAN, San Marcos