My initial coming out, my declaration, was accomplished. The new meeting time conflicted with a section meeting, which I did not reschedule, so I did not go back the rest of the year. I had signed the HRGSA mailing list, and I received regular announcements of speakers, parties, dances, and meetings. But as far as I knew, my absence went totally unnoticed. Certainly no one ever made any effort to reach me. I suppose no one knew that I wanted to be reached.

This has been a big year for me. I have continued to grow, to work out my thoughts, and to come to know and accept myself. I have begun to like myself.

Anita Bryant finished for me last June--and I suspect for many other gay people--what I had been building for nine years. Ms. Bryant brought gay rights out of the closet--she focused the issue very well: the issue was whether or not our society would treat homosexuals as inferior and as dangerous. She made many straights realize how stupid they sounded, and by sounding amazingly like Wallace in 1961 or Goldwater in 1964, she made many straights realize that they had not thought out their positions on gay rights very well.

But best of all, Anita gave me gay pride, and gay rage--pride in myself, for who I am, and rage at the society that refuses to recognize the value of one of its own.

I lived in the Boston area last summer, and I marched in the huge Boston Gay Pride March, June 18, 1977. More than 7000 gay men and women marched from Copley Square to Boston Common, where we held a rally, largely aimed at showing support for the Massachusetts anti-discrimination bill which would have allowed gays to hold civil service jobs. The bill passed the Senate that week, only to be amended into oblivion and then soundly defeated by the House four months later.

The day of the rally was one of the most beautiful days of my life. There were seven thousand of us--men and women, black and white, old and young, and so on. We heard speakers and chanted slogans as at all good political rallies. Then we were asked to hold hands with those beside us--I held the hand of the black woman to my left and the white man to my right--and raise them to the sky, and sing in unison "We Shall Overcome." And as we sang the verses, 7000 strong, swaying to the tune, a black singer poured his soft, improvised, falsetto blues accompaniment over us, soothing, reassuring, strengthening. We Shall Overcome, we sang, and we believed. How could we not believe? We were too strong, too good, too beautiful to be turned under again.

My parents were in the Boston area for a weekend three weeks later. The first evening. I told my mother I was gay; when my father joined us the next day, I told him. I loved my parents, and I felt that I should tell them first of all straight people--if for no other reason, because I did not want them to hear it from someone else. I had not expected it to be easy, and I was right.

My mother is an educated woman, and a very good public school psychologist. I had expected better from her. My father's reaction was only somewhat better. Although he said that he was unconcerned, because he did not believe that homosexuals were "inferior," he has been unable to speak to me about my homosexuality in the four months since I told him. Of my siblings, only my 15-year-old sister, apparently too young to be burdened with society's foolish conceptions of masculinity and prejudices about sexuality, was able to speak to me without great awkwardness. Only she shared any gut feeling of injustice concerning society's treatment of gay people. The rest of my family treated my homosexuality as an imposition upon them and their phony peace. I am acceptable only as long as I keep my sexuality at a distance from them, "play straight," and speak not thereon. Out of sight, out of mind.

Eventually, they will come around. They are my family. I am one of theirs, and their caring will eventually defeat their hangups in their battles to reconcile their feelings for me with their feelings about homosexuality. I only have to give them time--and an occasional nudge to keep them thinking.

Some people need less time. Before coming back to Harvard for my senior year, I had decided that I was not going to hide my sexuality anymore--from anybody. So by now, most of my friends--all of my really close ones--know that I am gay. Their reactions have been comparatively good. They are non-hostile and, even if cautious, somewhat approving.

Surprisingly to me, women have dealt with my homosexuality no better than men. I would have expected that a woman would have been relieved not to have to fear a man, his strength, his physical dominance, and the usual male-rapist sexual mentality. But I have found among my female friends an element of contempt for a man they regard as incapable of being threatening. One woman I know quite well reluctantly agreed that, although for opposite reasons, neither women nor men know how to deal with the opposite sex when on equal grounds.

A straight friend of mine asked toward the beginning of the semester where I went on Wednesday nights. So heavy is the presumption that any given person is heterosexual that when I told him I went to Gay Students Association meetings, he asked why. Any gay person would have thought it rather obvious. This friend had known me only casually for more than three years, and I was afraid he would become cool toward me. In fact, he has become my closest friend.

He seemed to grasp a certain continuity: I was a nice guy when he thought I was straight; the fact that he now knows I am gay does not change that. I did not rape and molest him before, I would not now.

In fact, he wanted to know about homosexuality and what role it has played in my life. We have talked, not just about my sexuality, but also about his, at some length. He is sympathetic and interested, open and unworried. To some extent he is even protective--he would take personal offense, I think, if someone were to attack homosexuality in general, or my homosexuality in particular. My experience with him convinces me that while ignorance of homosexuality is almost universal among straights, even at educated Harvard, and while ignorance often appears as unwitting viciousness, behind the ignorance can be compassion, or a capability for it.

In the process of coming out, I have learned a great deal about how people work. I used to have an innocent belief that one grows up by progressing toward a point of maturity. Beyond that point, I thought, though one might continue to change, the surprises are over. I thought of growing up as Preparation For Life--once the real game begins, the rules stop changing.