Reader Response to 'On the (Gay) Fear of Holding Hands'
A short bonus post: a reader sent me a message after reading my essay on The Fear and I found it moving and interesting enough to republish. So, anonymously, lightly edited, and with identifying details removed, here is what she had to say:
I really appreciated this piece! To be honest, I don’t think your fears are misplaced at all. I was once on a date with a woman and we were approached by a man, who became incensed that I was with a woman, and proceeded to harass, threaten, and chase us. The experience scared me from displaying affection with a woman in public ever again.
We have made a lot of progress in the Western world, but being non-hetero will always be the non-default state, and there will always be some people who don’t like that. This is why I do not believe that gay rights have been “won”, nor are they ever “winnable” in the binary sense: it is a fleeting set of norms that must be re-affirmed through our actions every day.
That last sentence reminded me of Jonathan Rauch’s proposition from the 2013 afterword to his 1993 classic Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought that
minorities are the point of the spear defending liberal science. We are the first to be targeted with vile words and ideas, but we are also the leading beneficiaries of a system which puts up with them. The open society is sometimes a cross we bear, but it is also a sword we wield, and we are defenseless without it.
In his more recent book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Rauch makes the point that this burden on minorities is also a great privilege: we should defend free speech and the open society no matter what, for it is our first and last defence, the only way we will ever be able to possess and enjoy our rights.
All this to say: the reader’s last sentence above suggests another upside to the depressing scenario I presented in my original essay. Yes, The Fear, the gay experience, will perhaps always be with us—but this means we are the ones who feel the first, far-away stirrings of the cold winds of authoritarianism. We are those who register the threats to and decline of freedom most acutely. And in Rauchian vein, while this is a burden, it is also a great honour. We are the ones upon whom the protection of the free and open society, in which everyone can participate and from which everyone benefits, rests. We know most of all how fragile the open society is, how radical a proposition it truly is, and should therefore be the ones most resolute in defending it.
So thank you, anonymous reader, for prompting these further, heartening reflections. The fight goes on.