History

{ Sara Arnold }

Oh, what it is to be young -- sometimes.

When I knew I was bisexual at the age of 3 in the 1980s and came out when I was 13 in the 1990s, it was still hard to step out of the closet and say, “Here I am,” but easier than it ever had been.

         HIV/AIDS was considered a queer disease, allegedly starting with bisexual men and women giving it to gay and then straight people. Bisexuals lost their elders, leaving a community adrift that continues to this day.

         This compares nothing to the 1950s and 1960s, with outed people called a pervert, pedophile, disgusting, deviant, faggots, sodomites, and even worthy of a mental health diagnosis right out of the DSM. They were convicted in a court of law for having the gall to come out of the closet (or being outed by someone). They went to jail for buggery or for sodomy. Some of them died, or committed suicide, rather than see themselves and their families shamed.

         More perished in the 1940s. They were forced to wear pink triangles  -- yes, that iconography was from the Nazis, and some queers decided to reclaim the image. It is said that 6 million people died in the Holocaust. I’m Jewish, so with all respect to Jewry and what it went through during the Holocaust, it is more like 12 million people were killed, many of whom were LGBTQIA+. The Nazis persecuted transgender and disabled first, testing the Zyklon B poison that would kill so many Jews, on gays and lesbians first and throughout.

         But the world is different now for young people. It is the 21st century, with LGBTQIA+ and allies waving flags from their flagpoles off their houses, identifying themselves as member of the tribe. There are no closets, at least in this part of the world.

         Now kids come out as LGBTQIA+, a rainbow of an acronym for all. They leave space for the BIPOC folx and the disabled or neurodiverse. They do not see who tread the rocky shores throughout the 1900s, winning acceptance (or at least tolerance).

         All across America, LGBTQIA+ people can get married. They can adopt children or use IVF and a donor of sperm or eggs to have kids. There are endless books for the littlest ones to explain why someone has two mommies or two daddies, and YA readers about love and sex. There are periodicals to which anyone can subscribe or get for free. (This magazine, of course, is one of them.)

         History is written by the victors. We thought, finally, that we had been able to write our own in many academic papers, books, Pride, and freedom not afforded to the generations before.

         But now DEI in our educational institutions, workplaces, schools, and just about everywhere else is being erased, with undesirables either being deported or disappeared, and we slide into the same type of dictatorship under Trump that forces back people into closets that don’t feel as safe or usual than than the ones from long ago.

         We have become too free to be ourselves, like Berlin in the 1920s.

         My daughter has choices that I never had. She knew she was a lesbian at a very young age and has been very out since elementary school. I’m worried about myself as well -- a bisexual Jew with progressive leanings -- but my main concern is for the safety and wellbeing of my child.

         So, I wonder if it will stay that way. How far back will we go before those who hate people like me and my daughter push us to places we don’t want to go? She is so young. Will she get to be loud, proud, and here for it?