Blasted by our first blatant bash with discrimination, my wife and I have returned to her hometown to regroup. Thankfully, her father is a civil rights attorney and is able to help us navigate the aftermath.

Still, the first few days here were pretty hard for me. I think it may have been because we had spent several months planning for our move to the southwest. Everyone we had told about the move had experienced our news as a no-brainer. Everyone knew she belonged in wilderness therapy. Everyone knew she belonged in the desert. She felt like she was finally ready to take flight, only to land flat on her face. We returned home hopeful, but even though we knew we hadn’t done anything wrong, we quickly came to feel the almost inevitable pangs of disappointment, humiliation and that certain je ne sais quoi feeling you get being openly gay in small-town USA.

So what gives?

I know the last time we lived here for any length of time, we ended up in self-censoring ourselves to protect the town soccer moms from witnessing unsettling expressions of gay affection. My wife (then fiance) loved working with the kids so much that for a time she decided she would rather not be in a relationship at all then to have to face the awkward conversations and potential scrutiny that might arise from our being out. In a town where if everyone didn’t know each other, they sure seemed to know her, it meant that I ended up feeling like some random vagabond/lingerer/hanger on with no identity of my own and no known reason for hanging around her or her family. Can we say lame? I think we can.

Our lens is totally different this time, but I can’t help re-living some of those sorrier moments in self-awareness (or lack thereof) as I question the deceptive comfort of these familiar streets. I experience a ominous anonymity every time her father introduces me by first and last name instead of by a title that implies some relation to the family, and disheartened by the diatribe about “temperance” he offers upon inquiry. “We have to move slowly with these people. I have a sense about these things. If you want to be seen as partners, why don’t you act like it? How about a song and dance?” Yes, this coming from a civil rights attorney and known community activist.

Now, I know a lot of the people reading this are already in my choir, but before the choir starts singing back at the preacher about the nature of these comments, let me remind you that he is not alone when in comes to people with integrity professing less-than-enlightened rhetoric around managing the “queer” issue. Even the dreamy, brilliant, forward thinking president we swore in yesterday appears to have no commitment to truly honoring “gay” commitments. Why is it that the even the strong of heart have a hard time seeing us as people, and speaking accordingly?

Last night at the dinner table, my wife’s 18 year old brother questioned his mother’s reference to Rick Warren as “homophobic” on the grounds that Rev. Warren’s stance on homosexuality is based on biblical teachings and that speaking out against homosexuality is Rev. Warren’s duty as a minister to his followers. He further argued that the term homophobia implies fear, and that Rev. Warren has not demonstrated fear of gay people. Now if you want to speak technically, which my brother outlaw was in fact attempting to do, “homophobic” would mean “fear of man,” and in broad terms I believe we’ve all been afraid of our species at one point or another.

Knowing this is not the kind of fear he had in mind, I had to agree with him that disdain, intolerance and ignorance are indeed not the same as fear. In fact, the people I know who are most afraid of gayness are gay people, at least that’s true where I’m from. It doesn’t mean we hate ourselves, but it does mean we often carry a visceral fear around what it means to be gay in a persistently hostile environment.

For example, ask your average straight, god-fearing, “homophobic” person the worse thing they could imagine happening if they were to inadvertently stumble upon a gay person. Perhaps they might suffer the awkward circumstance of an unwanted advance from someone for whom they hold no attraction. Worse yet, perhaps they might experience an earth-shatteringly unexpected urge for reciprocity. Suppose some extra hot dyke was in fact able to seduce your virginal, pious daughter. Is that really so bad?

If the tables are turned and a reverse question is asked of queer people (especially of the transgender variety), many will tell you they fear being beaten, stabbed or killed. Ask a closeted teen why they haven’t brought their new boyfriend home to meet the ‘rents and find out how many of them hold the fear of losing their home or family. Ask your discreet friend at work why they never bring their partner to the company picnic. Ask your flaming choir director why he never brings his lover to church. There are immeasurable fears being held by innumerable people at this very moment. You may know their faces but may not have registered the experience of living their truth as warranting fear.

So I agree that “homophobia” may be a misnomer, and I’ve taken to using another word from the grand American lexicon: bigotry. It’s short, simple, to the point. It cuts clean like “fag,” “dyke,” and “queer.” Everyone can infer its meaning without having to look it up, and it saves me from conversations like the one at last nights dinner.

Wait. That’s not what I want, because something amazing happened at last night’s dinner. In the face of our little conflict, my wife’s father sat in his seat at the head of the table and started waxing poetic about the Jungian symbolism present in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Quoting Robert Donington, he said “The self is the totality of the psyche, and its interests require us to accept as much of ourselves as we can, not least on the shadow side.” He said we are all purposed here and no journey or point of view is greater or lesser than any other. Now again, choir, you are nodding your heads because you know this one… “Yeah yeah, golden rule, etc. and so forth. I got that.” But this phenomenal ideal always manages to mean something revolutionary when invoked in applicable context.

That being the case, everyone found their own subtle ways to vacate the table until I was the only one who remained, captured by the weight of his words and staid by my inner-self’s yearning to rise to meet their meaning: that each of our stories, mine, my punk brother outlaw and all the others, have their own place; that no one, not even a bigot, can diminish the purpose or display of my being, and furthermore, that it is not my place to seek to diminish anyone else’s. As the 44th President boldly suggested in his inaugural address yesterday afternoon, I will not apologize for my way of life, for my journey is great and the great “I” is required to accept as much of itself as it can, not least on the shadow side.