Revelation--The Key to Our Revolution by Pat Gourley

Yes, Dorothy, there is a homosexual agenda. It is not, however, fueled by the paranoid fantasies of the homophobic that we are in the business of recruitment. No it is something much more powerful than that. Our true agenda is one of personal revelation and the ripples of awesome change that naturally occurs as a result.

If you pull the religious mysticism crap out of the definition of “revelation” what you are left with at the root is “the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge.” It does seem to me that the coming-out process is one of the purest and certainly most powerful forms of revelation.

Another “R” word that I think is closely tied in here with our true agenda is revolution. A lesser definition of this word but one quite applicable to my beliefs here states that revolution is “a dramatic and wide-ranging change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.”

Homosexuality it seems is certainly undergoing such a major paradigm shift in how it is perceived by the larger society. Oh sure Neanderthal pockets of reluctance to accept the inevitable still exist as very dramatically demonstrated by certain members of the state legislature’s of Kansas and Arizona and a couple of African nations to say nothing of the Russian State. The crazies in our neighboring state to the east are certainly being motivated by a sense of desperation. They have to invoke a convoluted sense of victimhood; we queers are impinging on their religious freedoms by asking them to bake us a cake. How ridiculous is that? They can play with poisonous snakes all they want just keep them away from the kids and I’ll bake my own damn cake, thank you.

The desperation of these folks is indicative that they now realize they have really lost the battle. The reason the scales have tipped so much in our favor is very clearly due to “revelation” on our part. I am firm believer that is has been the individual coming out process repeated and repeated millions of times over the past nearly fifty years that has created this tipping point. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the acceptance of gay professional athletes, queers on TV and all the favorable marriage equality rulings are the result not the cause of this dramatic national “sea change”. And let me add I am not speaking about the coming out of the famous sports person, politician, TV or movie personality as the fuel that has sustained this change, but the coming out of the very average queer in every corner of the world. Revealing often with gut wrenching courage their true selves to friends, co-workers and family.

I wrote a piece in August of 1983 titled “Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are”. It can be found in its original form on my web site www.pjgourley.com, in the Radical Gay Politics section. In a moment of laziness this weekend I thought I might just bring that piece to read but I have rested on my laurels perhaps a few too many times in this group by reading old shit and besides I kind of felt the need to rant a bit.

This article from 1983 was a feeble attempt on my part to try and rally the troops if you will and goose along the need for continuing our waves of revelation that had marked the 1970’s in particular. This was the early days of the AIDS epidemic with fear starting to really creep into the core of the gay male psyche; doubts in the minds of some that maybe the homophobes were right all along and nature was finally going to take care of this “homosexual problem.”

My exhortation was not to retreat into our closets but to start coming out in even greater force. I open the article quoting a Gallop Poll cited in Newsweek magazine from August of 1983 back in a time when Newsweek was actually read by large numbers of people. One question asked in the poll was “Do you have any friends or acquaintances who are homosexual?” 26% answered “Yes” while 74% answered “No.” There was clearly still lots of revealing to do on our part. With AIDS just beginning to creep into the national consciousness and no causative agent yet identified, Jerry Falwell was calling for the quarantining of gay men and I quote “like cattle with brucellosis.”

As it turned out though the community didn’t need my feeble cheerleading with the LGBTQ response to the epidemic being in the long run phenomenally community building and empowering, tragic and horrific as it was.

Harvey Milk
Photo taken in SF Public Library in2010

My personal efforts at “revelation” in this area of my own queerness started in 1967 and after several fitful starts and stops really took off in 1976 with my involvement with an organization called the Gay Community Center of Colorado located on Lafayette street just a block and a half from our current location. So here I am 38 years later still hanging out in this local community center. I ask myself what at this stage of the game I could possibly still have to reveal? Well you see my own personal growth and the ongoing ripening of my own queerness continues to be enhanced by listening to all the revelations here each week and sharing a few of my own. Love and hugs to you all!

© February 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Read more of Patrick's blogs at www.pjgourley.com