Do you ever wonder how you could possibly have emerged from the environment you were born into and brought up in? I wonder that all the time. Clearly some of my best traits I get from my father with a good bit of my mother’s zest for life and her interminable positive outlook mixed in to counter dad’s pathos. Dad had a strong sense of social justice rooted in the working class struggle and the anti-Catholic/anti-Irish prejudices that the Kelly/Casey families from which he sprang faced. I can see those elements in who I am….but so much else of who I am and what I value/believe is completely out of step with my family, many of my old friends, the communities I grew up in, and certainly in the Trump loving region I come from.  This really hit home recently when I reconnected with an old high school teacher – also gay, Catholic and from a rural Southern background. His most recent e-mail was filled with beliefs and attitudes straight from the conservative playbook on topics such as race in America, immigration ruining American culture, anger at what he experiences as white people being blamed for everything. He was espousing many of the same things my family of origin espouse. I was shocked as I had assumed our beliefs would be similar and not diametrically opposed. Dad used to say that our heroes do have clay feet – so I shouldn’t be surprised. 

I wish I understood how I escaped all of that value inculcation/indoctrination. If we are a product of our upbringing, how is it I am so different in my beliefs from my parents, my siblings, the teachers who shaped my education? I used to think it was my experience of being gay and Catholic in an incredibly homophobic and anti-Catholic KKK influenced culture. But as my old teacher demonstrated, being gay and Catholic does not necessarily help one understand other forms of oppression.  That shouldn’t be a surprise to me as I know many gay people who, for example, hold racist beliefs – any black LGBT+ person will be able to attest to the racism in LGBT communities. It really saddens me to know that people I love and cherish can hold such racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and transphobic beliefs and values (though most would vehemently deny they have those beliefs). I realise that some of those beliefs have entered my unconsciousness and they do emerge at times to my shock and embarrassment. But why can I acknowledge that is a part of me and not get defensive, when so many of the people who shaped who I am today and love dearly are not able to do that? Why have the scales been peeled from my eyes so I can see so much of the various forms of oppression in our societies? If I knew that I could be a real force for good in the world. In the meantime I continue to gently speak my truth to those I love despite their racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic beliefs. 

I sometimes worry that I become complicit in oppression by maintaining relationships with people with views I consider abhorrent.  But as I see the world becoming polarised, made up of echo chambers and unwilling to meaningfully engage with the ‘other side’ (whatever sides those are), I see fascism across the globe increasing. I wonder if there is a connection there?  I think one of the successes of the struggle for gay rights is that it became harder to ‘other’ and demonise gay people as we became visible. Through visibility and engaging with others, while being out, we became the gay brother, sister, uncle, aunt, neighbour, co-worker, politician, shop keeper, doctor, teacher, lecturer, street sweeper, delivery driver… Everyone, it turns out, had someone in their life who was gay. When allies started ’owning’ that they had positive relationships with gay people, that message got even louder. Demonising the ‘other’ is a powerful tool for oppression (just look at the anti-trans discourse for example), and through engagement we can disarm that powerful tool. So I will continue engaging with those I care about who also hold abhorrent views and gently speak my truth. It’s difficult to do this and I do experience moral distress, but perhaps my ability to love and gently confront at the same time is my superpower. I hope this superpower may put a few chinks in their echo chambers until the scales fall off their eyes. Now if I only really understood how those scales fell from my eyes…