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As a student of adversity,

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I've been struck over the years
by how some people with major challenges

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seem to draw strength from them.

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And I've heard the popular wisdom
that that has to do with finding meaning.

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And for a long time,

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I thought the meaning was out there,

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some great truth waiting to be found.

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But over time,

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I've come to feel
that the truth is irrelevant.

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We call it "finding meaning,"

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but we might better call
it "forging meaning."

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My last book was about
how families manage to deal

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with various kinds of challenging
or unusual offspring.

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And one of the mothers I interviewed,

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who had two children
with multiple severe disabilities,

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said to me, "People always give us
these little sayings like,

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'God doesn't give you
any more than you can handle.'

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But children like ours
are not preordained as a gift.

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They're a gift

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because that's what we have chosen."

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We make those choices all our lives.

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When I was in second grade,

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Bobby Finkel had a birthday party

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and invited everyone in our class but me.

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My mother assumed
there had been some sort of error,

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and she called Mrs. Finkel,

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who said that Bobby didn't like me
and didn't want me at his party.

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And that day, my mom took me to the zoo

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and out for a hot fudge sundae.

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When I was in seventh grade,

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one of the kids on my school bus
nicknamed me "Percy,"

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as a shorthand for my demeanor.

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And sometimes, he and his cohort
would chant that provocation

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the entire school bus ride,

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45 minutes up, 45 minutes back:

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"Percy! Percy! Percy! Percy!"

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When I was in eighth grade,
our science teacher told us

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that all male homosexuals
develop fecal incontinence

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because of the trauma
to their anal sphincter.

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And I graduated high school
without ever going to the cafeteria,

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where I would have sat with the girls
and been laughed at for doing so,

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or sat with the boys,

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and been laughed at for being a boy
who should be sitting with the girls.

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I survived that childhood
through a mix of avoidance and endurance.

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What I didn't know then

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and do know now,

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is that avoidance and endurance
can be the entryway to forging meaning.

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After you've forged meaning,

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you need to incorporate that meaning
into a new identity.

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You need to take the traumas

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and make them part
of who you've come to be,

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and you need to fold
the worst events of your life

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into a narrative of triumph,

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evincing a better self
in response to things that hurt.

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One of the other mothers I interviewed
when I was working on my book

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had been raped as an adolescent,

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and had a child following that rape,

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which had thrown away her career plans

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and damaged all
of her emotional relationships.

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But when I met her, she was 50,

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and I said to her,

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"Do you often think
about the man who raped you?"

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And she said, "I used to think
about him with anger,

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but now only with pity."

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And I thought she meant pity
because he was so unevolved

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as to have done this terrible thing.

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And I said, "Pity?"

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And she said, "Yes,

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because he has a beautiful daughter
and two beautiful grandchildren,

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and he doesn't know that,

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and I do.

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So as it turns out,

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I'm the lucky one."

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Some of our struggles
are things we're born to:

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our gender, our sexuality,
our race, our disability.

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And some are things that happen to us:

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being a political prisoner,
being a rape victim,

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being a Katrina survivor.

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Identity involves entering a community

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to draw strength from that community,

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and to give strength there, too.

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It involves substituting
"and" for "but" --

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not "I am here but I have cancer,"

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but rather, "I have cancer and I am here."

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When we're ashamed,
we can't tell our stories,

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and stories are the foundation

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of identity.

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Forge meaning,

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build identity.

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Forge meaning and build identity.

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That became my mantra.

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Forging meaning
is about changing yourself.

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Building identity
is about changing the world.

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All of us with stigmatized identities
face this question daily:

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How much to accommodate society
by constraining ourselves,

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and how much to break the limits

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of what constitutes a valid life?

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Forging meaning and building identity

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does not make what was wrong right.

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It only makes what was wrong precious.

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In January of this year,

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I went to Myanmar
to interview political prisoners,

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and I was surprised to find them
less bitter than I'd anticipated.

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Most of them had knowingly
committed the offenses

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that landed them in prison,

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and they had walked in
with their heads held high,

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and they walked out
with their heads still held high,

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many years later.

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Dr. Ma Thida, a leading
human rights activist

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who had nearly died in prison

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and had spent many years
in solitary confinement,

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told me she was grateful to her jailers
for the time she had had to think,

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for the wisdom she had gained,

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for the chance to hone
her meditation skills.

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She had sought meaning

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and made her travail
into a crucial identity.

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But if the people I met
were less bitter than I'd anticipated

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about being in prison,

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they were also less thrilled
than I'd expected

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about the reform process
going on in their country.

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Ma Thida said,

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"We Burmese are noted
for our tremendous grace under pressure,

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but we also have grievance under glamour."

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She said, "And the fact that there
have been these shifts and changes

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doesn't erase the continuing
problems in our society

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that we learned to see so well
while we were in prison."

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I understood her to be saying

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that concessions confer
only a little humanity

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where full humanity is due;

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that crumbs are not the same
as a place at the table.

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Which is to say,

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you can forge meaning and build identity

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and still be mad as hell.

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I've never been raped,

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and I've never been in anything
remotely approaching a Burmese prison.

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But as a gay American,

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I've experienced prejudice
and even hatred,

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and I've forged meaning

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and I've built identity,

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which is a move I learned from people

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who had experienced far worse privation
than I've ever known.

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In my own adolescence,

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I went to extreme lengths
to try to be straight.

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I enrolled myself in something called
"sexual surrogacy therapy,"

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in which people
I was encouraged to call doctors

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prescribed what I was encouraged
to call exercises

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with women I was encouraged
to call surrogates,

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who were not exactly prostitutes

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but who were also
not exactly anything else.

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(Laughter)

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My particular favorite
was a blonde woman from the Deep South

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who eventually admitted to me
that she was really a necrophiliac,

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and had taken this job
after she got in trouble

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down at the morgue.

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(Laughter)

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These experiences eventually
allowed me to have

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some happy physical
relationships with women,

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for which I'm grateful.

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But I was at war with myself,

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and I dug terrible wounds
into my own psyche.

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We don't seek the painful experiences

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that hew our identities,

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but we seek our identities

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in the wake of painful experiences.

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We cannot bear a pointless torment,

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but we can endure great pain

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if we believe that it's purposeful.

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Ease makes less of an impression on us

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than struggle.

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We could have been ourselves
without our delights,

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but not without the misfortunes
that drive our search for meaning.

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"Therefore, I take
pleasure in infirmities,"

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St. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians,

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"for when I am weak, then I am strong."

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In 1988, I went to Moscow
to interview artists

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of the Soviet underground.

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I expected their work
to be dissident and political.

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But the radicalism in their work

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actually lay in reinserting
humanity into a society

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that was annihilating humanity itself,

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as, in some senses,
Russian society is now doing again.

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One of the artists I met said to me,

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"We were in training to be
not artists but angels."

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In 1991, I went back to see
the artists I'd been writing about,

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and I was with them during the putsch
that ended the Soviet Union.

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And they were among the chief organizers
of the resistance to that putsch.

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And on the third day of the putsch,

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one of them suggested
we walk up to Smolenskaya.

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And we went there,

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and we arranged ourselves
in front of one of the barricades,

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and a little while later,

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a column of tanks rolled up.

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And the soldier on the front tank said,

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"We have unconditional orders
to destroy this barricade.

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If you get out of the way,
we don't need to hurt you.

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But if you won't move, we'll have
no choice but to run you down."

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The artist I was with said,
"Give us just a minute.

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Give us just a minute
to tell you why we're here."

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And the soldier folded his arms,

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and the artist launched into
a Jeffersonian panegyric to democracy

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such as those of us who live
in a Jeffersonian democracy

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would be hard-pressed to present.

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And they went on and on,

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and the soldier watched.

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00:11:04,808 --> 00:11:08,072
And then he sat there for a full minute
after they were finished

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and looked at us,
so bedraggled in the rain,

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00:11:10,718 --> 00:11:14,820
and said, "What you have said is true,

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00:11:14,844 --> 00:11:17,519
and we must bow to the will of the people.

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00:11:18,238 --> 00:11:20,847
If you'll clear enough space
for us to turn around,

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00:11:20,871 --> 00:11:22,725
we'll go back the way we came."

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And that's what they did.

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Sometimes, forging meaning
can give you the vocabulary you need

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00:11:30,100 --> 00:11:32,036
to fight for your ultimate freedom.

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00:11:33,254 --> 00:11:36,090
Russia awakened me to the lemonade notion

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that oppression breeds
the power to oppose it.

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00:11:38,995 --> 00:11:43,695
And I gradually understood that
as the cornerstone of identity.

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It took identity
to rescue me from sadness.

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00:11:48,576 --> 00:11:50,851
The gay rights movement posits a world

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00:11:50,875 --> 00:11:53,248
in which my aberrances are a victory.

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00:11:53,915 --> 00:11:56,818
Identity politics
always works on two fronts:

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to give pride to people who have
a given condition or characteristic,

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00:12:01,957 --> 00:12:04,792
and to cause the outside world
to treat such people

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00:12:04,816 --> 00:12:06,598
more gently and more kindly.

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00:12:07,201 --> 00:12:10,458
Those are two totally
separate enterprises,

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but progress in each sphere
reverberates in the other.

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00:12:14,613 --> 00:12:17,640
Identity politics can be narcissistic.

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00:12:18,290 --> 00:12:21,335
People extol a difference
only because it's theirs.

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00:12:21,849 --> 00:12:25,144
People narrow the world
and function in discrete groups

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00:12:25,168 --> 00:12:26,927
without empathy for one another.

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00:12:27,546 --> 00:12:31,493
But properly understood
and wisely practiced,

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identity politics should expand
our idea of what it is to be human.

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00:12:36,223 --> 00:12:42,001
Identity itself should be
not a smug label or a gold medal,

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but a revolution.

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00:12:44,848 --> 00:12:47,809
I would have had an easier life
if I were straight,

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but I would not be me.

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00:12:50,182 --> 00:12:52,859
And I now like being myself better

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than the idea of being someone else,

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00:12:55,017 --> 00:12:56,642
someone who, to be honest,

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I have neither the option of being
nor the ability fully to imagine.

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00:13:01,257 --> 00:13:05,285
But if you banish the dragons,
you banish the heroes,

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00:13:05,879 --> 00:13:09,658
and we become attached
to the heroic strain in our own lives.

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I've sometimes wondered

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00:13:11,829 --> 00:13:14,588
whether I could have ceased
to hate that part of myself

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00:13:14,612 --> 00:13:17,445
without gay pride's technicolor fiesta,

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00:13:17,469 --> 00:13:20,115
of which this speech is one manifestation.

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00:13:20,139 --> 00:13:21,732
(Laughter)

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00:13:21,756 --> 00:13:24,689
I used to think I would know
myself to be mature

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00:13:24,713 --> 00:13:27,143
when I could simply be gay
without emphasis.

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00:13:27,834 --> 00:13:31,636
But the self-loathing
of that period left a void,

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00:13:31,660 --> 00:13:34,914
and celebration needs
to fill and overflow it,

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00:13:34,938 --> 00:13:38,774
and even if I repay
my private debt of melancholy,

252
00:13:38,798 --> 00:13:41,689
there's still an outer world of homophobia

253
00:13:41,713 --> 00:13:43,813
that it will take decades to address.

254
00:13:44,530 --> 00:13:47,798
Someday, being gay will be a simple fact,

255
00:13:47,822 --> 00:13:50,123
free of party hats and blame.

256
00:13:50,678 --> 00:13:51,828
But not yet.

257
00:13:52,602 --> 00:13:56,775
A friend of mine who thought gay pride
was getting very carried away with itself,

258
00:13:56,799 --> 00:14:00,053
once suggested that we organize
Gay Humility Week.

259
00:14:00,077 --> 00:14:01,465
(Laughter)

260
00:14:01,489 --> 00:14:05,586
(Applause)

261
00:14:06,752 --> 00:14:07,943
It's a great idea.

262
00:14:07,967 --> 00:14:09,331
(Laughter)

263
00:14:09,355 --> 00:14:11,182
But its time has not yet come.

264
00:14:11,206 --> 00:14:13,167
(Laughter)

265
00:14:13,551 --> 00:14:18,569
And neutrality, which seems to lie
halfway between despair and celebration,

266
00:14:18,593 --> 00:14:20,285
is actually the endgame.

267
00:14:21,388 --> 00:14:23,831
In 29 states in the US,

268
00:14:24,211 --> 00:14:27,356
I could legally be fired or denied housing

269
00:14:27,380 --> 00:14:28,705
for being gay.

270
00:14:29,352 --> 00:14:32,095
In Russia, the anti-propaganda law

271
00:14:32,119 --> 00:14:34,735
has led to people being beaten
in the streets.

272
00:14:35,316 --> 00:14:40,167
Twenty-seven African countries
have passed laws against sodomy.

273
00:14:40,191 --> 00:14:43,927
And in Nigeria, gay people
can legally be stoned to death,

274
00:14:43,951 --> 00:14:45,894
and lynchings have become common.

275
00:14:46,578 --> 00:14:48,652
In Saudi Arabia recently,

276
00:14:48,676 --> 00:14:51,549
two men who had been caught in carnal acts

277
00:14:51,573 --> 00:14:56,089
were sentenced to 7,000 lashes each,

278
00:14:56,113 --> 00:14:58,672
and are now permanently
disabled as a result.

279
00:14:59,337 --> 00:15:01,560
So who can forge meaning

280
00:15:01,584 --> 00:15:03,094
and build identity?

281
00:15:04,118 --> 00:15:07,593
Gay rights are not primarily
marriage rights,

282
00:15:07,617 --> 00:15:10,688
and for the millions who live
in unaccepting places

283
00:15:10,712 --> 00:15:12,557
with no resources,

284
00:15:12,581 --> 00:15:14,399
dignity remains elusive.

285
00:15:15,106 --> 00:15:17,686
I am lucky to have forged meaning

286
00:15:18,261 --> 00:15:19,741
and built identity,

287
00:15:20,438 --> 00:15:22,321
but that's still a rare privilege.

288
00:15:22,821 --> 00:15:25,524
And gay people deserve more, collectively,

289
00:15:25,548 --> 00:15:27,876
than the crumbs of justice.

290
00:15:28,714 --> 00:15:30,117
And yet,

291
00:15:30,141 --> 00:15:32,933
every step forward is so sweet.

292
00:15:33,815 --> 00:15:37,684
In 2007, six years after we met,

293
00:15:37,708 --> 00:15:40,536
my partner and I decided to get married.

294
00:15:41,311 --> 00:15:45,315
Meeting John had been the discovery
of great happiness

295
00:15:45,339 --> 00:15:48,207
and also the elimination
of great unhappiness.

296
00:15:48,707 --> 00:15:53,772
And sometimes, I was so occupied
with the disappearance of all that pain,

297
00:15:53,796 --> 00:15:55,561
that I forgot about the joy,

298
00:15:56,148 --> 00:15:58,945
which was at first
the less remarkable part of it to me.

299
00:15:59,764 --> 00:16:02,371
Marrying was a way to declare our love

300
00:16:02,395 --> 00:16:05,322
as more a presence than an absence.

301
00:16:06,451 --> 00:16:08,410
Marriage soon led us to children,

302
00:16:08,839 --> 00:16:10,381
and that meant new meanings

303
00:16:10,775 --> 00:16:13,706
and new identities -- ours and theirs.

304
00:16:14,849 --> 00:16:17,018
I want my children to be happy,

305
00:16:17,689 --> 00:16:20,713
and I love them most achingly
when they are sad.

306
00:16:21,390 --> 00:16:26,188
As a gay father, I can teach them
to own what is wrong in their lives,

307
00:16:26,827 --> 00:16:30,916
but I believe that if I succeed
in sheltering them from adversity,

308
00:16:30,940 --> 00:16:32,896
I will have failed as a parent.

309
00:16:33,830 --> 00:16:36,789
A Buddhist scholar I know
once explained to me

310
00:16:36,813 --> 00:16:38,983
that Westerners mistakenly think

311
00:16:39,007 --> 00:16:43,389
that nirvana is what arrives
when all your woe is behind you,

312
00:16:43,909 --> 00:16:46,458
and you have only bliss
to look forward to.

313
00:16:47,021 --> 00:16:49,163
But he said that would not be nirvana,

314
00:16:49,187 --> 00:16:51,188
because your bliss in the present

315
00:16:51,212 --> 00:16:54,097
would always be shadowed
by the joy from the past.

316
00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:57,407
Nirvana, he said, is what you arrive at

317
00:16:57,431 --> 00:17:00,027
when you have only bliss
to look forward to

318
00:17:00,051 --> 00:17:04,722
and find in what looked like sorrows
the seedlings of your joy.

319
00:17:05,426 --> 00:17:07,178
And I sometimes wonder

320
00:17:07,202 --> 00:17:10,899
whether I could have found
such fulfillment in marriage and children

321
00:17:10,923 --> 00:17:12,488
if they'd come more readily,

322
00:17:13,115 --> 00:17:17,046
if I'd been straight in my youth
or were young now,

323
00:17:17,070 --> 00:17:19,538
in either of which cases
this might be easier.

324
00:17:20,585 --> 00:17:22,047
Perhaps I could.

325
00:17:22,071 --> 00:17:24,278
Perhaps all the complex
imagining I've done

326
00:17:24,302 --> 00:17:26,577
could have been applied to other topics.

327
00:17:26,601 --> 00:17:30,254
But if seeking meaning
matters more than finding meaning,

328
00:17:30,278 --> 00:17:34,851
the question is not whether
I'd be happier for having been bullied,

329
00:17:34,875 --> 00:17:38,260
but whether assigning meaning
to those experiences

330
00:17:38,284 --> 00:17:39,981
has made me a better father.

331
00:17:40,878 --> 00:17:44,714
I tend to find the ecstasy
hidden in ordinary joys,

332
00:17:44,738 --> 00:17:48,300
because I did not expect those joys
to be ordinary to me.

333
00:17:49,265 --> 00:17:53,324
I know many heterosexuals who have
equally happy marriages and families,

334
00:17:53,348 --> 00:17:56,292
but gay marriage
is so breathtakingly fresh,

335
00:17:56,316 --> 00:17:59,633
and gay families so exhilaratingly new,

336
00:17:59,657 --> 00:18:02,754
and I found meaning in that surprise.

337
00:18:03,772 --> 00:18:07,262
In October, it was my 50th birthday,

338
00:18:07,286 --> 00:18:09,828
and my family organized a party for me.

339
00:18:10,420 --> 00:18:13,205
And in the middle of it,
my son said to my husband

340
00:18:13,229 --> 00:18:14,976
that he wanted to make a speech.

341
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:16,158
And John said,

342
00:18:16,182 --> 00:18:20,241
"George, you can't make
a speech. You're four."

343
00:18:20,265 --> 00:18:21,946
(Laughter)

344
00:18:21,970 --> 00:18:26,491
"Only Grandpa and Uncle David and I
are going to make speeches tonight."

345
00:18:26,515 --> 00:18:29,110
But George insisted and insisted,

346
00:18:29,134 --> 00:18:32,582
and finally, John took him
up to the microphone,

347
00:18:32,606 --> 00:18:35,455
and George said very loudly,

348
00:18:35,479 --> 00:18:37,899
"Ladies and gentlemen!

349
00:18:37,923 --> 00:18:40,395
May I have your attention, please?"

350
00:18:40,419 --> 00:18:42,514
And everyone turned around, startled.

351
00:18:43,135 --> 00:18:44,446
And George said,

352
00:18:45,327 --> 00:18:47,207
"I'm glad it's daddy's birthday.

353
00:18:47,976 --> 00:18:49,713
I'm glad we all get cake.

354
00:18:51,284 --> 00:18:53,729
And Daddy, if you were little,

355
00:18:54,312 --> 00:18:55,692
I'd be your friend."

356
00:18:55,934 --> 00:18:57,084
(Gasp)

357
00:18:57,958 --> 00:18:59,494
And I thought -- (Applause)

358
00:18:59,988 --> 00:19:01,139
Thank you.

359
00:19:01,163 --> 00:19:04,851
I thought that I was indebted
even to Bobby Finkel,

360
00:19:04,875 --> 00:19:07,517
because all those earlier experiences

361
00:19:07,541 --> 00:19:09,956
were what had propelled me to this moment,

362
00:19:09,980 --> 00:19:12,489
and I was finally unconditionally grateful

363
00:19:12,513 --> 00:19:15,667
for a life I'd once have done
anything to change.

364
00:19:16,719 --> 00:19:20,956
The gay activist Harvey Milk
was once asked by a younger gay man

365
00:19:20,980 --> 00:19:23,060
what he could do to help the movement,

366
00:19:23,084 --> 00:19:24,678
and Harvey Milk said,

367
00:19:24,702 --> 00:19:26,289
"Go out and tell someone."

368
00:19:27,138 --> 00:19:30,637
There's always somebody
who wants to confiscate our humanity.

369
00:19:31,011 --> 00:19:33,266
And there are always
stories that restore it.

370
00:19:33,816 --> 00:19:35,371
If we live out loud,

371
00:19:35,395 --> 00:19:37,392
we can trounce the hatred,

372
00:19:37,416 --> 00:19:39,622
and expand everyone's lives.

373
00:19:40,569 --> 00:19:41,785
Forge meaning.

374
00:19:42,222 --> 00:19:43,580
Build identity.

375
00:19:44,169 --> 00:19:45,731
Forge meaning.

376
00:19:46,393 --> 00:19:48,379
Build identity.

377
00:19:49,228 --> 00:19:52,135
And then invite the world
to share your joy.

378
00:19:52,675 --> 00:19:53,874
Thank you.

379
00:19:53,898 --> 00:19:56,916
(Applause)

380
00:19:56,940 --> 00:19:58,158
Thank you.

381
00:19:58,182 --> 00:20:00,200
(Applause)

382
00:20:00,224 --> 00:20:01,403
Thank you.

383
00:20:01,427 --> 00:20:04,125
(Applause)

384
00:20:04,149 --> 00:20:05,302
Thank you.

385
00:20:05,326 --> 00:20:10,357
(Applause)