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[This talk contains mature content]

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My mother called to stage an intervention.

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She'd come across a few snippets[br]of my memoir, which wasn't even out yet,

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and she was concerned.

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It wasn't the sex.

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(Laughter)

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It was the language that disturbed her.

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For example:

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"I have been so many things

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along my curious journey:

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a poor boy, a nigger,

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a Yale man, a Harvard man,

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a faggot, a Christian,

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a crack baby, alleged,

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the spawn of Satan, the Second Coming,

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Casey."

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That's just page six.

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(Laughter)

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So you may understand[br]my mother's worry.

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But she wanted only to make[br]one small change.

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So she called, and she began,

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"Hey, you are a man.

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You're not a faggot,[br]you're not a punk,

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and let me tell you the difference.

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You are prominent. You are intelligent.

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You dress well. You know how to speak.

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People like you.

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You don't walk around[br]doing your hand like a punk.

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You're not a vagabond on the street.

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You are an upstanding person

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who just happens to be gay.

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Don't put yourself over there

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when you are over here."

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She thought she'd done me a favor,

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and in a way, she had.

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Her call clarified what I am trying[br]to do with my life

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and in my work as a writer,

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which is to send one simple message:

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the way we're taught to live[br]has got to change.

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I learned this the hard way.

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I was born not on[br]the wrong side of the tracks,

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but on the wrong side of a whole river,

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the Trinity, down in Oak Cliff, Texas.

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I was raised there in part[br]by my grandmother

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who worked as a domestic,[br]and by my sister,

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who adopted me[br]a few years after our mother,

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who struggled with mental illness,

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disappeared.

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And it was that disappearance,

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that began when I was 13[br]and lasted for five years,

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that shaped the person I became,

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the person I later had to un-become.

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Before she left, my mother[br]had been my human hiding place.

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She was the only other person[br]who seemed as strange as me,

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beautifully strange,

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some mix of Blanche DuBois[br]from "A Streetcar Named Desire"

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and a 1980s Whitney Houston.

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(Laughter)

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I'm not saying she was perfect,

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just that I sure benefited[br]from her imperfections,

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and maybe that's what magic is, after all:

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a useful mistake.

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So when she began to disappear[br]for days at a time,

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I turned to some magic of my own.

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It struck me, as from above,

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that I could conjure up by mother[br]just by walking perfectly

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from my elementary school[br]at the top of a steep hill

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all the way down[br]to my grandmother's house,

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placing one foot and one foot only[br]in each sidewalk square.

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I couldn't let any part of any foot[br]touch the line between the square,

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I couldn't skip a square,

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all the way to the last square[br]at the last blade of grass

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that separated our lawn from our driveway.

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And I bullshit you not, it worked,

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just once though.

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But if my perfect walk could not[br]bring my mother back,

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I found that this approach had other uses.

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I found that everyone else[br]in charge around me

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loved nothing more than perfection,

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obedience, submission,

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or at least if I submitted,[br]they wouldn't bother me too much,

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so I took a bargain

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that I'd later see in a prison,[br]a Stasi prison in Berlin,

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on a sign that read,

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"He who adapts can live tolerably."

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It was a bargain that helped ensure that[br]I had a place to stay and food to eat,

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a bargain that won me praise[br]of teachers and kin, strangers,

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a bargain that paid off[br]big time, it seemed,

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when one day at 17, a man from Yale[br]showed up at my high school to recruit me

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for Yale's football team.

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It felt as out-of-the-blue to me then[br]as it may to you now.

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The Yale man said, everybody said,

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that this was the best thing[br]that could ever happen to me,

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the best thing that could happen[br]to the whole community.

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"Take this ticket, boy," they told me.

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I was not so sure.

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Yale seemed another world entirely,

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a cold, foreign, hostile place.

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On the first day of my recruiting visit,

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I texted my sister[br]an excuse for not going.

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"These people are so weird."

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She replied, "You'll fit right in."

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(Laughter)

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I took the ticket,

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and worked damn hard to fit right in.

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When my freshman advisor warned me[br]not to wear my fitted hats on campus,

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she said, "You're at Yale now.[br]You don't have to do that anymore."

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I figured, this was just one[br]of the small prices

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that must be paid to make it.

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I paid them all, or tried,

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and sure enough they seemed[br]to pay me back,

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made me a leader[br]on the varsity football team,

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got me into a not-so-secret society

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and a job on Wall Street[br]and later in Washington.

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Things were going so well[br]that I figured naturally

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I should be President[br]of the United States.

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(Laughter)

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But since I was only 24,

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and since even presidents[br]have to start somewhere,

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I settled instead on a run for Congress.

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Now this was in the afterglow[br]of that great 2008 election,

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the election during which a serious,[br]moderate senator stressed,

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"The message you've got to send[br]more than any other message

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is that Barack Obama is just like us."

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They sent that message so well

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that their campaign became[br]the gold standard of modern politics,

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if not modern life,[br]which also seems to demand

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that we each do whatever it takes[br]to be able to say at the end of our days

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with peace and satisfaction,[br]"I was just like everybody else."

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This would be my message, too.

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So one night, I made on final call[br]to my prospective campaign manager.

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We'd do the things it'd take to win,[br]but first he had one question:

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is there anything I need to know?

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I held the phone, and finally said,

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"Well, you should probably know I'm gay."

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Silence.

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"Hmm. I see," he nearly whispered,

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as if he'd found a shiny penny[br]or a dead baby bird.

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"I'm glad you told me," he continued.

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"You definitely didn't make[br]my job any easier.

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I mean, you are in Texas.

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But it's not impossible, not impossible.

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But Casey, let me ask you something:

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how are you gonna feel when somebody,[br]say, at a rally, calls you a faggot?

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And let's be real, OK?

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You do understand that somebody[br]might want to physically harm you.

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I just want to know:

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are you really ready for this?"

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I wasn't,

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and I could not understand,

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could hardly breathe

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or think or say a word.

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But to be clear,[br]the boy that I was at that time

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would have leapt[br]at the chance to be harmed,

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to sacrifice everything,[br]even life, for a cause.

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There was something shocking, though,

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not that there should[br]have been, but there was,

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in the notion that he might be harmed[br]for nothing more than being himself,

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which he had not even tried[br]to do in the first place.

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All that he, all that I,

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had tried to do and be[br]was what I thought was asked of me.

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I was prominent for a 24-year old,

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intelligent, I spoke well, dressed decent,[br]I was an upstanding citizen.

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But the bargain I had accepted[br]could not save me after all,

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nor can it save you.

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You may have already learned this lesson,

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or you will, regardless of your sexuality.

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The queer receives[br]a concentrated dose, no doubt,

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but repression is a bitter pill[br]that's offered to us all.

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We're taught to hide so many parts[br]of who we are and what we've been through,

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our love, our pain, for some, our faith.

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So while coming out[br]to the world can be hard,

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coming in to all the raw, strange magic[br]of ourselves can be much harder.

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As Miles Davis, "It takes a long time[br]to sound like yourself."

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That surely was the case for me.

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I had my private revelation[br]that night at 24,

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but mostly went on with my life.

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I went on to Harvard Business School,[br]started a successful non-profit,

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wound up on the cover of a magazine,[br]on the stage at TED.

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I had achieved, by my late 20s,

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about everything a kid[br]is supposed to achieve.

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But I was real cracked up,

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not exactly having a nervous breakdown,[br]but not too far off,

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and awful sad either way.

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I had never thought of being a writer,

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didn't even read, in earnest,[br]until I was nearly 23.

0:10:11.948,0:10:15.159
But the book business[br]is about the only industry

0:10:15.159,0:10:17.047
that will pay you to investigate[br]your own problems,

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so (Laughter)

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I decided to give it a try,

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to trace those cracks with words.

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Now, what came out on the page was[br]about as strange as I felt at that time,

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which alarmed some people at first.

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A respected writer called[br]to stage his own intervention

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after reading a few early chapters,

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and he began, much like my mother,

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"Hey, listen.

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You've been hired[br]to write an autobiography.

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It's a straightforward exercise.

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It's got a beginning, middle, and end,

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and is grounded in the facts of your life,

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and by the way, there's a great tradition[br]of autobiography in this country,

0:11:03.131,0:11:08.116
led by people on the margins of society[br]who write to assert their existence.

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Go buy some of those books[br]and learn from them.

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You're going in the wrong direction."

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But I no longer believed[br]what we are taught,

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that the right direction[br]is the safe direction.

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I no longer believed what we are taught,

0:11:24.126,0:11:27.741
that queer lives or black lives[br]or poor lives are marginal lives.

0:11:27.741,0:11:31.720
I believed what Kendrick Lamar[br]says on "Section.80."

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"I'm not on the outside looking in,

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I'm not on the inside looking out,

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I'm in the dead fucking center[br]looking around."

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That was the place

0:11:42.818,0:11:45.580
from which I hoped to work,

0:11:45.580,0:11:48.702
headed in the only direction worth going,[br]the direction of myself,

0:11:48.702,0:11:52.571
trying to help us all refuse[br]the awful bargains

0:11:52.571,0:11:54.944
we've been taught to take.

0:11:54.944,0:11:56.981
We're taught to turn ourselves

0:11:56.981,0:12:01.210
and our work into little nuggets[br]that are easily digestible,

0:12:01.210,0:12:04.563
taught to mutilate ourselves[br]so that we make sense to others,

0:12:04.563,0:12:08.065
to be a stranger to ourselves[br]so the right people might befriend us

0:12:08.065,0:12:11.214
and the right schools might accept us[br]and the right jobs might hire us,

0:12:11.214,0:12:13.278
and the right parties might invite us,

0:12:13.278,0:12:16.686
and someday the right God[br]might invite us to the right heaven

0:12:16.686,0:12:21.296
and close his pearly gates behind us so we[br]can bow down to him forever and ever.

0:12:21.296,0:12:23.819
These are the rewards, they say,

0:12:23.819,0:12:25.790
for our obedience:

0:12:25.790,0:12:28.868
to be a well-liked holy nugget,

0:12:28.868,0:12:30.923
to be dead.

0:12:30.923,0:12:35.527
And I say in return, "No thank you."

0:12:35.527,0:12:39.568
To the world, and to my mother.

0:12:39.568,0:12:43.324
Well, to tell you the truth, all I said[br]was, "OK, mom, I'll talk to you later."

0:12:43.324,0:12:44.863
(Laughter)

0:12:44.863,0:12:48.287
But in my mind, I said, "No thank you."

0:12:48.287,0:12:52.585
I cannot accept her bargain either.

0:12:52.585,0:12:54.656
Nor should you.

0:12:54.656,0:12:59.041
It would be easy for many of us[br]in rooms like this

0:12:59.041,0:13:01.961
to see ourselves as safe,

0:13:01.961,0:13:05.718
to keep ourselves over here.

0:13:05.718,0:13:08.767
We speak well, we dress decent,

0:13:08.767,0:13:13.672
we're intelligent, people like us,[br]or act like they do.

0:13:13.672,0:13:19.319
But instead, I say that we[br]should remember Lot's wife.

0:13:19.319,0:13:22.729
Jesus of Nazareth said it[br]first to his Disciples:

0:13:22.729,0:13:25.976
"Remember Lot's wife."

0:13:26.549,0:13:29.825
Lot, in case you haven't[br]read the Bible recently,

0:13:29.825,0:13:33.491
was a man who set[br]his family down in Sodom,

0:13:33.491,0:13:38.534
in the midst of a wicked society[br]that God decided he had to destroy.

0:13:38.534,0:13:41.122
But God, being cruel,[br]yet still a sap in part,

0:13:41.122,0:13:45.605
rushed two angels out to Sodom[br]to warn Lot to gather up his folks

0:13:45.605,0:13:47.792
and get out of Dodge.

0:13:47.792,0:13:50.981
Lot hear the angel's warning, but delayed.

0:13:50.981,0:13:52.559
They didn't have all day to wait,

0:13:52.559,0:13:54.727
so they grabbed Lot's hands

0:13:54.727,0:13:57.170
and his two daughters' hands[br]and his wife's hands

0:13:57.170,0:14:00.717
and hurried them out of Sodom,[br]and the angels shout,

0:14:00.717,0:14:04.548
"Escape to the mountain.[br]Whatever you do, don't look back,"

0:14:04.548,0:14:08.380
just as God starts raining down fire[br]on Sodom and Gomorrah.

0:14:08.380,0:14:10.866
I can't figured out how Gomorrah[br]got dragged into this.

0:14:10.866,0:14:13.824
But Lot and his folks are running,

0:14:13.824,0:14:15.777
fleeing all that destruction,

0:14:15.777,0:14:18.763
kicking up dust while the Lord[br]rains down death,

0:14:18.763,0:14:25.143
and then, for some reason,[br]Lot's wife looks back.

0:14:25.143,0:14:28.977
God turns her into a pillar of salt.

0:14:28.977,0:14:33.727
"Remember Lot's wife," Jesus says.

0:14:33.727,0:14:36.935
But I've got a question:

0:14:36.935,0:14:39.626
why does she look back?

0:14:39.626,0:14:42.766
Does she look back because[br]she didn't want to miss the mayhem,

0:14:42.766,0:14:46.827
wanted one last glimpse of a city on fire?

0:14:46.827,0:14:50.045
Does she look back because she wanted[br]to be sure that her people

0:14:50.045,0:14:53.172
were far enough to danger[br]to breathe a little easy?

0:14:53.172,0:14:57.058
I'm so nosy and selfish sometimes,[br]those likely would have been my reasons

0:14:57.058,0:14:59.152
if I'd been in her shoes.

0:14:59.152,0:15:06.011
But what if something else was going on[br]with this woman, Lot's wife?

0:15:06.011,0:15:11.189
What if she could not bear the thought[br]of leaving those people

0:15:11.189,0:15:14.458
all alone to burn alive,

0:15:14.458,0:15:17.037
even for righteousness sake?

0:15:17.037,0:15:19.355
Isn't that possible?

0:15:19.355,0:15:24.810
If it is, then this backward glance[br]of a disobedient woman

0:15:24.810,0:15:27.115
may not be a cautionary tale after all,

0:15:27.115,0:15:29.884
it may be the bravest act[br]in all the Bible,

0:15:29.884,0:15:33.588
even braver than the act[br]that holds the whole Book together,

0:15:33.588,0:15:35.278
the crucifixion.

0:15:35.278,0:15:38.402
We are told that up on Calvary,[br]on an old rugged cross,

0:15:38.402,0:15:42.401
Jesus gave his life to save everybody,

0:15:42.401,0:15:46.058
billions and billions of strangers[br]for all time to come.

0:15:46.058,0:15:47.990
It's a nice thing to do.

0:15:47.990,0:15:51.432
It made him famous, that's for sure.

0:15:51.432,0:15:53.788
But Lot's wife was killed,

0:15:53.788,0:15:56.627
turned into a pillar of salt,

0:15:56.627,0:16:01.250
all because she could not[br]turn her back on her friends,

0:16:01.250,0:16:04.340
the wicked men of Sodom,

0:16:04.340,0:16:09.166
and nobody even wrote[br]the woman's name down.

0:16:09.166,0:16:13.340
Oh to have the courage of Lot's wife.

0:16:13.340,0:16:16.850
That's the kind of courage we need today,

0:16:16.850,0:16:20.090
the courage to put ourselves over there,

0:16:20.090,0:16:23.605
the courage to says that either[br]all of us have to be faggots

0:16:23.605,0:16:28.129
or none of us can be faggots[br]for any of us to be free,

0:16:28.129,0:16:32.559
the courage to stand[br]with other vagabonds in the street,

0:16:32.559,0:16:34.929
with all the wretched of the Earth,

0:16:34.929,0:16:37.493
to form an army of the least of these,

0:16:37.493,0:16:41.901
with the faith that from[br]the naked crust of all we are,

0:16:41.901,0:16:44.883
we can build a better world.

0:16:44.883,0:16:47.094
Thank you.

0:16:47.094,0:16:50.779
(Applause)