Today is the Day of Silence. In the words of their website (http://dayofsilence.org/content/getinformation_faq.html), “The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take some form of a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior. The event is designed to illustrate the silencing effect of this bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.”
I have participated in the Day of Silence every year since the beginning of high school, and today I woke up to my alarm at 7:45 and woke up Roommate J and the visiting prefrosh, all the while talking, and headed over to McCarter to hear Ban Ki-moon speak. And then I came back to the dorm and opened the New York Times online as saw this article (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/who-are-you-calling-gay/) and realized what day it was.
It’s too late for me to stop talking, but I felt last year that that tactic---especially in a college setting where it’s remarkably easy to not say a thing all day long without having to explain why or what it is you’re standing for---left a lot to be desired. I wrote about it for my final essay in my Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, concluding that, yes, silent protest is an effective tactic. For me, however, (a detail I left out of the article) the level of non-speech required for the Day of Silence is not that much above my regular daily dose so as to feel all that effective. I support the Day of Silence wholeheartedly, especially in high schools where silence on a Friday actually means something, but my own participation in it has become irrelevant.

My primary form of expression is fiction writing. That’s been the case since fifth grade, at least. If it seems that here are a lot of gay characters in my stories and plays (and soon, hopefully, TV shows) that’s because there are a lot of gay characters in my stories and plays. Well spotted. There are, as far as I can tell, a couple of reasons for this. The first is my conscious decision to use my fiction to, among other things, educate. By having gay characters that are, along with my straight characters, realistic and non-stereotypic I hope to normalize a sexuality that may not be familiar to all of my readers. My second reason is that when I write I draw on the people I know, which also explains all my French characters, my Catholic characters, my Asian characters, and my midwestern characters. Also the fact that I recently wrote a story about Mabel the switchboard operator in Walden, Colorado. She and her maybe-platonic-maybe-more affair with Westy, the owner of the cabin, is a large part of family lore.
What really interested me about the intersection of the Day of Silence and the New York Times article---which, for those of you who haven’t read it, addresses the tendency, particularly among middle and high schoolers, to use words like “gay” or “queer” or, most offensively “fag” in disparaging ways, even when they are describing someone or something who is not, in fact, gay---is the focus on speech and its effects. The Day of Silence draws attention to the inability of some to speak about themselves openly. The Times article talks about people whose ignorance takes on a harmful verbal dimension. In both cases, your decision to speak out or remain silent can literally make a life or death difference to someone else.
I, and many like-minded people I know, try to operate under the assumption that we never know everything about the people who are listening to us. Envision making a racist joke in racially mixed company. Who in their right mind would do that? Now imagine making the same joke in a racially homogeneous group. With the proper disclaimers (“I’m not a racist, but…” “Listen to this really funny joke! It’s pretty horrible, though…”) you might go though with it. (Or you might not. I don’t pretend to know that about you). I remember when I was in seventh grade, my mom told me a story about a situation like this while we were sitting in the car waiting for my piano lesson to start. A biracial woman who mostly took after her Caucasian parent was at a party like the second one I described. When someone made the joke, she went up to them and explained why she was offended and why anyone could have been.
The point is that, even more than race (and then, obviously, not all the time as that story attests) it is impossible to know everything about a person’s sexuality at one glance. The same goes for their politics or their medical history or their religious affiliation. Sure there are ways to outwardly manifest those things (wearing a gay pride pin or an Obama button or a Star of David, for instance), but for the most part these are things that are not as clear as a person’s ethnicity or gender (and even that can be an area of uncertainty). The point is that you never know who’s listening. When you use “gay” as a synonym for stupid (or tell Mormon joke, or a Catholic joke) you have no way of telling who among your listeners is inwardly cringing, or retreating a little farther within themselves.
The point is, there’s no need for silence, but there is a need to think before you speak. It is completely absurd, to me, that an entire group of people is reviled for a fact of life over which they have no control and shouldn’t have to change even if they could.
So yes, I am a proud ally of the LGBT community and I intend to write more and do more and, most importantly, say more.

And now it is time for my bike ride. The weather is lovely. Have an excellent weekend!