So Ken Mehlman has come out. 

It's not shocking to me to find out that someone who has been backing right wing views against all things gay actually is gay.

Homophobia is alive and well in our societies and internalized homophobia is no exception.

I'm sure the question has arisen in many minds "how could he be part of the RNC and their agenda as a gay man?" and this is what I'd like to talk about today.
  
Because I'm sure a lot of people don't get it.
  
Coming out publicly is the only part of this process that is seen - because it involves other people. Coming out as a public figure is probably many times more stressful. But before someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender comes out to the people they know and love (and in this case, the world..) they first have to come out to themselves.
And that - in a society that still tells us it's wrong and bad to be gay, in a country like the USA where you can still be fired in some states for being LGB or T, where you have no rights to marry the person you love in most states, and where you can still be imprisoned in some parts of the country for being intimate with that person - is not an easy thing.

Everyone has their own journey Ken Mehlman is quoted as saying. And he is right. The process of realizing, recognizing, and then accepting that you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is different for everyone. But the messages and laws in many countries make this journey much harder than it needs to be.  Even in a country like Canada, with good human rights laws, homophobia and heterosexism continue to shape how (and if) we are seen and acknowledged.

So it is possible to deny that you are gay until the cows come home - if it means the difference between having and losing everything and everyone you know - or even the risk of that. It is possible to try to convince yourself you are straight, because it would be so much easier. And we can cultivate the art of pretending we are okay with a life that is not really ours.  Because the alternative seems worse - and sometimes is. And when we do this, we choose roles that fit the role we have chosen. If not to prove to others we are not gay, then to bolster our hope that it could be true.

Internalized homophobia is painful. It means you cannot love yourself, because you don't like who you are. Of course you would want to be someone else under those circumstances. if only because of the erroneous belief that you will feel better.

Ken Mehlman's journey is his. I have no idea what it was like. But I can imagine the torture of denying who you are, and of supporting a cause that continued to drill it into your head that who "those people" are (who you are) is fundamentally flawed.

It's no shock to me that Mehlman also said that he is happier and wishes he had done it sooner.

© Annemarie Shrouder 2010
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