If the only people you can readily identify as lesbians are the most obvious ones, which let's be honest means the "bull dykes," then the wide variety of lesbians who pass your way will go marked in your head as straight, leaving your mind with the impression that most lesbians are bull dykes.
Those of us who do not fall in line with the culture's stereotypes of our group (whether gay, lesbian, black, Hispanic, etc.) can be great illuminators. Gay people are in the simultaneously better and worse position of not necessarily being immediately identified as gay. This means that we can choose to get to know someone (whether for 30 seconds or 30 years), allowing them to conceive their own opinions of us without the coloring of cultural stereotypes, before outing ourselves.
Perhaps it's a good thing that Cooper didn't talk about his sexuality for a good while. Mothers all across America have fallen in love with this sauve, classy guy, and because mothers have acute denial skills, those who are so inclined have chosen to remain ignorant to the obviousness of Anderson's sexuality.
A lesbian was telling me the other day about how her mother had been shocked and refused to believe it when she told her mother that of course AC was gay, that everyone knew that. Her mother said she was mistaken. This is one of those mothers who are more or less accepting of their children's sexuality in theory, but are against homosexuality on moral grounds and/or when push comes to shove it turns out they don't feel as progressively as they think.
But now Cooper has come out of the closet, and I'd love to hear what the mother has to say. Will she continue watching the show? Is there a new chink in her homophobia from the realization that someone she adores is gay and that his "lifestyle" has not ruined him?
For my mother, this was Clay Aiken. My mother loved Clay Aiken. Clay Aiken was losing to that other dude during the same time in my life that I was starting to come out of the closet to my peers - not to my mother. We watched American Idol together, rooting for our beloved belter as he blew us away with his "Bridge Over Troubled Water." My mother and I didn't discuss his sexuality, but I watched him closely and thought, "Surely."
A few years later, when I had just come out to my mother during a Christmas break, she was driving me back to college for the spring semester and was listening to Aiken's autobiography on CD in the car. She had been going on and on to me about how much she loved hearing about his life, from his childhood (they're both from North Carolina) through his degree in special education and road to American Idolatry.
I was listening for the secret codes of the gays that would tell me that yes, of course he is. I don't remember all the details, but he started talking about "being different from the other boys" and "being bullied by the other boys for not being 'manly enough'" etc. After enough of these, I finally said, "Mom, you know what's funny about how much you love Clay Aiken?"
"What?"
"You know he's gay, right?"
She wouldn't listen to reason that day, but of course he eventually came out outright.
Has it helped my mother to evolve on the issue? Maybe a little. In conjunction with a number of other gay people she's met and been impressed with. Maybe little by little she's coming around. I just hope it's in time for the day I ask her to meet a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
So pass. Do it until they like you, then make sure to let them know that this wonderful, unique, smart, funny, attractive, interesting and talented person in front of them is, indeed, a gay.
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