Comments Elsewhere

Wayne Besen: People will learn how destructive the closet is, not only for gays, but also on the people caught up in the sham families created to protect these closets.

I understand Besen’s temptation to put things this way, but it seems like there’s something importantly wrong here. The heterosexual families that closeted gay men and lesbians created were not “sham” families; they were real families made up of real people, and they suffered genuine pain when those families were betrayed. The tragedies here were tragic precisely because real families and real commitments were built on sham feelings.