When does privacy become a cop out and how closet are YOU?

Being a “closet” is such a modern luxury. Before 1967 in the UK - and, as I type, in many parts of the world - you would scarce call a guy a closet for hiding what might destroy his very life and livelihood and put him in jail or worse.

In recent decades, in the UK at least - and not to downplay the hardships many still face, from remote religious community to macho inner-city ghetto - it is the element of (relative) choice about whether to be open or not that has truly engendered the term “closet” and - in so doing - raised interesting issues.

Few would now query the right of gays to out hypocritically closeted homophobes, not least in the name of self-defence. Beyond that, many - in the UK in 2006 - will claim extreme queer privacy to be a selfish cop-out; and that closets unwittingly collude and are in fact complicit in perpetuating a discriminatory status quo, holding us all back whilst riding on the tails of those more brave!

However, in mitigation…

There is the question as to the degree of being out. Before too many stones are cast, aren’t many of us - whether at home or work, with doctors or complete strangers - merely “selectively out”? Don’t many of us surprisingly regress into the closet, when least expected.

There is then the question of the manner of being out. Are “straight-acting” gays - those that choose more to “assimilate” with mainstream culture - in any sense “selling out” some more radical queer vision, jumping though hetero-hoops as if to prove the norm? Or can you over-out yourself, ramming your sexuality and perhaps differing lifestyle down unsuspecting throats, in arguably irrelevant situations, like some in-fact-ill-at-ease one-track Diva who doth protest too much?

Of course, the very notion of “coming out” implies you were once in a closet you came out of, whether during adolescence or on point of death. We may all await a world where there are no closets to ever need exit in the first place - where sexuality is a genuine non-issue. However, the truth is that - in historical terms, and until social attitudes vastly change - the luxury of the closet has really only just arrived, is surprisingly all-pervading and going nowhere fast.

Top 10 reasons cited for staying in the closet…

1. “I don’t like labels - plus it’s no one’s business.”
2. “My parents will kick me out; or disinherit me and leave everything to their church.”
3. “I’m famous – I’d loose fans and my fortune.”
4. “I’m too young - next year.”
5. “I’m almost dead - it can wait.”
6. “I’m bisexual (honest).” [Note: There are lots of genuine bisexuals]
7. “I’m asexual or celibate; actually I’m a priest.”
8. “I’m not gay, I just screw men (either for money or just before I beat them up).”
9. “I’d be the only gay in my village.”
10. “But I’m nothing like Graham Norton.”

Adrian Gillan