Like most gay men I’ve dealt
with a lifetime of homophobia. From the
hallways of Marshal Simonds Middle School to the streets of New York City, I’ve
been called every gay slur in the book.
I have an attuned inner gauge that sets off an alarm when a possible
threat is within thirty feet. Whether it’s teenagers just out of school on the
C train or a group of rowdy straight boys coming from Madison Square Garden, my
guard is always up when it needs to be.
But the one time I let it
down is when I take my best friend Aidan for a walk. He’s half-Chihuahua, half Japanese Chin. The official name of his breed is a Chin-wa,
which I hate. It sounds like a new vegan
Asian dish, as in “please pass the chin-wa.” So instead I call this designer hybrid by a
more appropriate name: a Chi-win-win. It’s
a “Chi-win-win situation” is my dumb joke that always kills in the dog park.
Shortly after adopting Aidan
I met my boyfriend Jonathan. At the time
I was renting on the Upper East Side and Jonathan had just bought a condo in
the gentrifying neighborhood of South Harlem.
When Jon and I were ready to take the plunge and live together, my dog
and I moved uptown.
Three times a day I escape
with Aidan into Morning Side Park for some sniffing, running, leg lifting and
skipping. Yes, my dog skips. We’re both very social and say hello to
everyone. Aidan gives them a sniff, and then
it’s on to the next tree.
One day I saw a very sweet-looking,
older black woman walking her Havanese several feet away. Her dog began pulling his owner our way,
bursting with excitement. I of course obliged by walking Aidan over and said,
“Hello.” Both dogs did what dogs do:
they sniffed each other’s butts. The
nice older woman said, “Is that a boy or a girl?” To which I replied, “A boy!” She yanked her dog away from Aidan and yelled,
“Get away from him, you’re two boys. You don’t do that, that’s disgusting.” And
she walked away.
I stood there shocked at her
blatant display of not only homophobia – but quite possibly canis-phobia. Then that all too familiar feeling of shame washed
over me as I watched her drag her Havanese, who looked just as confused as
Aidan and me, through the park. I
dropped my guard and was blindsided in the last place I ever expected. “Seriously?” I said aloud.
I thought it was an isolated
incident but a few days later, it happened again. But this time it was a
middle-aged Hispanic woman. Then it happened again with an Asian guy. All of them were projecting their disdain for
homosexuality onto their innocent dogs by ripping them away from their most natural
instinct.
A dog’s sense of smell is its
greatest sense, and dogs have anal glands that give off strong odors. By sniffing those glands they can tell the
sex of another dog, if that dog is in heat, what they had to eat and other very
typical social information. When a dog sniffs another dog’s butt it’s like two
humans shaking hands. Or is it?
Humans manipulate first
greetings all the time. Can you always be certain that someone is gay or
straight when you meet them? To some I
appear obviously gay but to my prejudiced neighbors did I mask as
straight? Would they have made those
remarks if they knew I was “disgusting” too?
The more it happened the
angrier I became. One day, yet again,
another seemingly nice older black woman pulled her dog away and said, “Oh, two
boys don’t do that.”
This time I replied, “Honey
there is nothing wrong with two boys doing that.” Her eyebrows shot up higher than Joan
Crawford’s and she walked away, clearly embarrassed. I couldn’t help myself. I was tired of standing in silent shame while
people unknowingly dehumanized me.
I began to wonder why now, after more than
fifteen years in New York, was I discovering an underground world of gay-hating
dog owners? The answer is I caught them
off guard. I’m sure not one of these
people would ever say what they really thought out loud in New York in front of
another gay person. But their true
feelings came out – deep within Morning Side Park and behind their dogs. And I was there to see it.
I also wondered why they were
mostly African-American and Hispanic women.
Well, I did just move to a neighborhood where the dominant religion is
Christianity and many of these women emigrated from other, less tolerant
countries. Plus, until recently, they
probably haven’t had to live side by side with openly gay neighbors in Harlem.
In a post Trayvon Martin
world, where African-American and Hispanic communities are demanding change
concerning racial profiling, it’s interesting that in some neighborhoods they neither
see gay profiling nor discrimination in the same light. I go out of my way to make sure that no black
or brown man or boy feels uncomfortable around me. I am careful not to look at
them with suspicion and treat them with respect as I would anyone else.
As the co-chair of GLSEN-NYC
(Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network) and the founder of my own
anti-bullying organization Life After Bullying, every day I explore ways in
which children and adults can treat each other with more respect and
compassion. It has taken a lot of
patience and tolerance for me to accept that since I moved to a new
neighborhood and became the minority in a city I’ve lived in for most of my
adult life I’m going to have to help change people’s views about gay people. How do I do that? By simply going to the park
everyday with Aidan to show them how alike we all are.
