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[Doi Dien] Perspectives [:When a Gay Brother Came Out]
Perspectives [: When a Gay Brother Came Out]
Nguyen Hong My-Linh (in collaboration with Nguyen Quoc Vinh)
I remember it was Xmas Day 1992. My brothers and sister had come
home on their holiday break. The longest of the few occasions for
the whole family to get together every year, Xmas break would be a
time of festivity and cheerfulness. Xmas Eve came, we went to church,
exchanged presents, and for once it seemed like business as usual, but
this time there were some palpable tensions that weighed rather heavily
over our home. On Xmas Day, my parents came back rather late from a
long drive with my eldest brother. They went in, didn't say anything,
headed downstairs and signaled to my sister to join them in the
basement. After a couple of hours, my sister came back up, in tears,
but said nothing in response to my repeated questions. After what
seemed like an eternity, my parents came up, also in tears, but also
said nothing. A deadly silence hung over my family for the rest of
that Xmas break. Though I could not be sure, I had a good sense of
what happened, but I also said nothing even as I kept thinking about
it. A few months later, my brother called home and talked with me on
the phone for several hours. The silence was once again broken, and
I heard from my brother that he is gay.
It was the first time that the issue of homosexuality was literally
brought close to home for me to witness. Sure, I have heard of gay
people before. But they have all seemed too abstract and remote; it
would be some name in the media, some fictional character on TV or
in the movies, some other people's relative and friend, at most some
schoolmate branded as a "faggot." Not my own brother. Not until then.
My brother explained to me that when he had come out to my parents that
Xmas Day, they had insisted on keeping me out of the discussion for fear
that I would be "too young to have to know about these things." But he
had felt otherwise. The reason he came out was that he did not want to
exclude his family from an important part of his life, and he did not
want an important part of his life to be excluded from his family.
And even though I'm the youngest, I am still my brother's sister and
a member of the family. He was right on both counts: I was neither
too young nor too uncaring to learn and accept the truth about my own
brother.
I had not so much known what homosexuality is, much less to think
about it in one way or the other. Christianity teaches that
homosexuality is evil and sinful. That was what I had vaguely learned
as a child and I never wondered why. When I was told that my brother is
gay, I could not help wondering if that would also mean that he is evil
and sinful. Sure, he could be somewhat cold and withdrawn; he might be
cranky and snappish at times for no apparent reason; he was spending too
little time home ever since he had gone away to school when I was only
10 years old, and who would know about what he had been doing away from
home all that time. But from what I have come to know about my brother,
he is not perfect but he is never so mean or terrible to be thought of
as evil or sinful.
If anything, my brother said that his only sin in the eye of others
was to want to love someone of the same rather than the opposite sex.
Could there be so much of a difference? How could such a love be so
evil and sinful when my brother's ideas about his "Mr. Right" aren't all
that different from my own ideas about my "Mr. Right", someone who is
handsome, intelligent, cultured, sensitive, caring and loving? How
could love in any form be evil and sinful when it is also the greatest
commandment of Christian teachings: to love God to the utmost and to
love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-32). The more I think about
it, and the more I've come to know of my brother's former suffering
from self-torture and self-hatred grounded in religious beliefs, the
more I disagree with the Church's hurtful judgments on homosexuality.
I believe that not Man, but only God knows and can judge what and who
is evil and sinful or not, and that the essence of religion is to teach
people to be good and to love rather than condemn one another. If my
brother can learn to live the life of a good person as he loves someone
of the same sex,then I too can learn to love him for the good person
that he is rather than to condemn him, as others are prone to do, for
the evil and sinful person that he is unjustly considered to be.
Unfortunately, I can see too much intolerance that has spilled over
from religion into society in its attitude towards gay people. Gay
people are too often treated as outcasts who must live in constant fear
of physical danger and of social and emotional rejection by others, even
their own families. I can only now begin to understand and feel how
much more painful and difficult it was for my brother to come out to our
family than for us to accept him simply for who he is. There is a great
deal of social prejudice and stigma against homosexuality, so much so
that gay people seem to be dehumanized into targets of such hateful
labels as perverts, queers, criminals and what not. What has happened
to the American sense of fairness, of its respect for the individual,
of its ideals about the equality of all men, and its safeguard of basic
human rights, including such unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness"?
Coming from an Asian background, where sexuality - much less
homosexuality - is a taboo topic, my family reacted to the coming out
of my brother with considerable hush-hush. My parents had wanted to
keep me out of this knowledge, and would naturally want to minimize its
exposure and impact outside the immediate family. While much of it has
to do with "face-saving," there were some elements of denial in there
too. Needless to say, there was understandable disappointment in the
fact that my brother will not take a wife and produce children to keep
the family line. Beyond that, there seemed to be an acute fear of
public embarassment by the shame of having a gay son. I find it hard
to understand how my parents can be so proud of my brother as a high-
achieving son, on the one hand, just as they can be so ashamed of him
as a gay person, on the other, when he himself needs no apology for it.
While they could resign themselves to the acceptance that it is my
brother's own life over which he has his say, my parents have yet to
accept the lifestyle that he has chosen for himself for who he is.
Just as they could courteously host my other brother's girlfriend and
my sister's boyfriend on extended visits, they remained distinctly
uncomfortable at the very idea of my eldest brother having a boyfriend,
even though he rarely talked about it, except for once after a break-up
that has thrown him into heavy depression for some times.
It is rather ironic that one of the meanings for "gay" is "happy."
I do wish my gay brother to be happy in life. It is not so easy to be
gay and happy in a world still full of prejudice and danger for people
like him. I feel sorry for my brother's sad lot as a gay person, not
because he might be doomed by the evil sins he is alleged to commit,
but rather by the evil treatment he must so often face in order to be
simply who he is. Just as my brother has learned to accept himself in
the name of a forbidden love, I also hope to learn to accept him in the
name of the sisterly love for a brother.
Whatever the real truth might be about my brother as a gay person,
his coming out to me has let me see better the truth about him as my
brother, and that is what truly matters to me. And I'm neither too
young nor too uncaring to know that.
[Doi Dien: Face to Face #3 (Fall 1995), pp. 33-34]
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