Staying the Closet Carries A Huge Cost

Coming out of the closet can be difficult and traumatic - something that I know first hand and which many blog entries on this blog in its early years give witness too.  I still receive e-mails (and occasionally even telephone calls) from men who are struggling in the closet that want advice but who are too afraid of what they will lose if the are honest with themselves and their families.  Unfortunately, these individuals too often do not factor in the costs of not coming out: self-loathing, strained family relationships, spouses deprived of a straight spouse, and much more.  I can honestly say that I think I'd rather die than ever go back in the closet and live the way I once did.  Hopefully, with societal attitudes changing, it will be easier for future generations to avoid the trap of the closet.  But for many already denying who they are, comments by Lord Browne, former chair of British Petroleum are worth listening to.  Gay Star News reports on Browne's remarks about the closet.  Here are highlights:

Lord Browne of Madingley, who was outed by a newspaper in May 2007 after it discovered details of his relationship with a man, spoke movingly today at a leading business and diversity conference in London.

The annual EurOUT 2014 conference – now in its fourth year – was held at the London Business School, Regents Park. The event is aimed at tomorrow’s business leaders; both students and recent alumni.

A British peer, Lord Browne remained professionally in the closet for his entire business life. Away from work, he also chose to reveal his secret to very few people in his personal life either.

Since that time, he has spoken out about the huge amount of energy it took him to remain in the closet. He has also recently published a book, The Glass Closet, exploring his business life, his decision not to come out, and interviewing others – both those in and out of the closet – who work in the business world.

To a packed auditorium, Lord Browne was asked by one student whether he could understand some of those assembled choosing to stay in the closet. Lord Browne’s advice was unequivocal:

‘I would say to them it is not a valid choice. Think of the cost of it. The cost will be huge, and it’s an unnecessary cost in today’s environment. The cost is unimaginably high, and it changes everything.’

Reflecting from his resignation from BP – a company that he is widely credited with transforming during his time as Group Chief Executive (1995-2007) – he said that he felt the newspaper revelations would prove the end of him. Instead, he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the huge number of letters he received with message of support.

‘Thousands of letters. Tragic letters. Some from straight people that had been roasted by the press, others who’d been in jail in the 50s for being gay – it was a year of experience reading those letters. Humbling. All those fears I'd had of losing everything … nothing changed. People continued to invite me to things. Suppliers still approached me about doing business.’

‘I was born when being gay was illegal and my mother, a holocaust survivor, had rules: never tell anyone a secret as they might use it against you, and never reveal being part of a minority as when the going gets tough, the majority bash the minority.

‘When you’re in a high-profile position, you have a duty to be authentic and clear on who you are. I wasn’t.’

He said that he felt business schools have a duty to teach students about the value of diversity in a business context.

‘Schools need to instill in them how long it takes to build teams of people, and to understand what inclusion means. And that it’s not something that can merely be delegated to HR. The moment they take charge of it, as opposed to the CEO taking charge of it, it goes wrong.’

In the world of global organizations, he acknowledged that some sectors, such as finance, were doing better than others when it came to diversity and inclusion, and that gas and oil companies were among the worst – partly because some are state-owned by countries that have poor records in regard to LGBT rights. However, he said that he felt things were slowly changing, and singled out his former company, BP, as one organization that had made great progress since his departure.

 Despite the upheaval of my coming out, I believe that I've come a better parent.  It's hard to be genuine when you are filled with self-hate and lying to the world about who you are.   And when you are happy with who you are, that comes across in all of your relationships.

The Shattered Closet

In a couple of recent posts, I have been attempting to describe my experiences and mindset during my many years in the closet. In the wake of the Lord Browne resignation from BP, Andrew Sullivan has a great column in the Sunday Times of London (see the Timesonline at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article1752275.ece) that does a good job in describing Lord Browne’s apparent mindset and my own back then. The pertinent quote is as follows:

“Try to think of it from his perspective. Think of the world that the 59-year-old Browne has inhabited in one lifetime. When he was a teenager, homosexuality was literally unspeakable in polite society. British authorities were injecting the great Alan Turing with hormones to “cure” him of his orientation just as Browne was leaving primary school.

For the first 19 years of his life Browne could have been imprisoned for a relationship with another man. During his formative years of adolescence, Browne learnt what every gay boy or girl had to learn at the time: if you do not keep this a terrible secret you will perish.

Even after being largely de-criminalized in 1967 the culture remained a strong force sustaining the stigma that Browne internalized. In the 1960s and 1970s it was far from easy for an ambitious scientist and businessman to have a life – that is, a mature relationship with another man – while having a serious career. The secrecy and fear that were soldered onto a gay man’s psyche were not as easily detached from the world as a piece of Victorian legislation. And as the gay rights movement first blossomed as a countercultural force, it did not easily include Browne and his ilk – Establishment, mannered, private men and women. . . .

Gays are a unique minority because we are almost all brought up as if we were heterosexuals in heterosexual families. We learn what it is to be gay from the general culture we imbibe as children and teens. As it changes, gay kids change. And quickly.

The difference between a culture that can safely mock “the only gay in the village” as comedy and a culture that would have beaten that gay to a pulp five decades ago is a vast one. And yet we have forgotten it so easily. A gay man who has lived through each of those decades is not in such an easy position.”

One of the commentors on Andrew’s article also had insightful remarks the power of denial and of the self-imposed closet:

“These influences on behaviour are difficult for heterosexuals to understand and even many gays (particularly gay rights radicals and younger gays) have little time or patience for understanding how one's formative experiences can create a glass (or in some cases, concrete) closet of one's own making from which it becomes impossible to break free due to - by adulthood - fundamentally ingrained psychological and behavioural traits.”

While I am not as old as Lord Browne, I am more or less of that generation and can identify closely with some of the societal and emotional constraints that kept him feeling that he could not truly admit parts of his life. Here in Virginia, until the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, homosexual sex, even in the privacy of one's home, was a felony. I will continue my posts about my own experiences and, perhaps if I am successful in my narrative, the mindset of that shackled me and, I suspect many others.