WEBVTT

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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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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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and said, "What you have said is true,

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and we must bow to the will of the people.

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If you'll clear enough space
for us to turn around,

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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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to fight for your ultimate freedom.

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Russia awakened me to the lemonade notion

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that oppression breeds
the power to oppose it.

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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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The gay rights movement posits a world

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in which my aberrances are a victory.

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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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and to cause the outside world
to treat such people

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more gently and more kindly.

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Those are two totally
separate enterprises,

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but progress in each sphere
reverberates in the other.

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Identity politics can be narcissistic.

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People extol a difference
only because it's theirs.

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People narrow the world
and function in discrete groups

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without empathy for one another.

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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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Identity itself should be
not a smug label or a gold medal,

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but a revolution.

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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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And I now like being myself better

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than the idea of being someone else,

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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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But if you banish the dragons,
you banish the heroes,

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and we become attached
to the heroic strain in our own lives.

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I've sometimes wondered

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whether I could have ceased
to hate that part of myself

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without gay pride's technicolor fiesta,

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of which this speech is one manifestation.

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(Laughter)

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I used to think I would know
myself to be mature

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when I could simply be gay
without emphasis.

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But the self-loathing
of that period left a void,

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and celebration needs
to fill and overflow it,

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and even if I repay
my private debt of melancholy,

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there's still an outer world of homophobia

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that it will take decades to address.

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Someday, being gay will be a simple fact,

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free of party hats and blame.

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But not yet.

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A friend of mine who thought gay pride
was getting very carried away with itself,

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once suggested that we organize
Gay Humility Week.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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It's a great idea.

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(Laughter)

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But its time has not yet come.

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(Laughter)

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And neutrality, which seems to lie
halfway between despair and celebration,

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is actually the endgame.

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In 29 states in the US,

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I could legally be fired or denied housing

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for being gay.

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In Russia, the anti-propaganda law

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has led to people being beaten
in the streets.

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Twenty-seven African countries
have passed laws against sodomy.

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And in Nigeria, gay people
can legally be stoned to death,

00:14:43.951 --> 00:14:45.894
and lynchings have become common.

00:14:46.578 --> 00:14:48.652
In Saudi Arabia recently,

00:14:48.676 --> 00:14:51.549
two men who had been caught in carnal acts

00:14:51.573 --> 00:14:56.089
were sentenced to 7,000 lashes each,

00:14:56.113 --> 00:14:58.672
and are now permanently
disabled as a result.

00:14:59.337 --> 00:15:01.560
So who can forge meaning

00:15:01.584 --> 00:15:03.094
and build identity?

00:15:04.118 --> 00:15:07.593
Gay rights are not primarily
marriage rights,

00:15:07.617 --> 00:15:10.688
and for the millions who live
in unaccepting places

00:15:10.712 --> 00:15:12.557
with no resources,

00:15:12.581 --> 00:15:14.399
dignity remains elusive.

00:15:15.106 --> 00:15:17.686
I am lucky to have forged meaning

00:15:18.261 --> 00:15:19.741
and built identity,

00:15:20.438 --> 00:15:22.321
but that's still a rare privilege.

00:15:22.821 --> 00:15:25.524
And gay people deserve more, collectively,

00:15:25.548 --> 00:15:27.876
than the crumbs of justice.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:28.714 --> 00:15:30.117
And yet,

00:15:30.141 --> 00:15:32.933
every step forward is so sweet.

00:15:33.815 --> 00:15:37.684
In 2007, six years after we met,

00:15:37.708 --> 00:15:40.536
my partner and I decided to get married.

00:15:41.311 --> 00:15:45.315
Meeting John had been the discovery
of great happiness

00:15:45.339 --> 00:15:48.207
and also the elimination
of great unhappiness.

00:15:48.707 --> 00:15:53.772
And sometimes, I was so occupied
with the disappearance of all that pain,

00:15:53.796 --> 00:15:55.561
that I forgot about the joy,

00:15:56.148 --> 00:15:58.945
which was at first
the less remarkable part of it to me.

00:15:59.764 --> 00:16:02.371
Marrying was a way to declare our love

00:16:02.395 --> 00:16:05.322
as more a presence than an absence.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:06.451 --> 00:16:08.410
Marriage soon led us to children,

00:16:08.839 --> 00:16:10.381
and that meant new meanings

00:16:10.775 --> 00:16:13.706
and new identities -- ours and theirs.

00:16:14.849 --> 00:16:17.018
I want my children to be happy,

00:16:17.689 --> 00:16:20.713
and I love them most achingly
when they are sad.

00:16:21.390 --> 00:16:26.188
As a gay father, I can teach them
to own what is wrong in their lives,

00:16:26.827 --> 00:16:30.916
but I believe that if I succeed
in sheltering them from adversity,

00:16:30.940 --> 00:16:32.896
I will have failed as a parent.

00:16:33.830 --> 00:16:36.789
A Buddhist scholar I know
once explained to me

00:16:36.813 --> 00:16:38.983
that Westerners mistakenly think

00:16:39.007 --> 00:16:43.389
that nirvana is what arrives
when all your woe is behind you,

00:16:43.909 --> 00:16:46.458
and you have only bliss
to look forward to.

00:16:47.021 --> 00:16:49.163
But he said that would not be nirvana,

00:16:49.187 --> 00:16:51.188
because your bliss in the present

00:16:51.212 --> 00:16:54.097
would always be shadowed
by the joy from the past.

00:16:54.600 --> 00:16:57.407
Nirvana, he said, is what you arrive at

00:16:57.431 --> 00:17:00.027
when you have only bliss
to look forward to

00:17:00.051 --> 00:17:04.722
and find in what looked like sorrows
the seedlings of your joy.

00:17:05.426 --> 00:17:07.178
And I sometimes wonder

00:17:07.202 --> 00:17:10.899
whether I could have found
such fulfillment in marriage and children

00:17:10.923 --> 00:17:12.488
if they'd come more readily,

00:17:13.115 --> 00:17:17.046
if I'd been straight in my youth
or were young now,

00:17:17.070 --> 00:17:19.538
in either of which cases
this might be easier.

00:17:20.585 --> 00:17:22.047
Perhaps I could.

00:17:22.071 --> 00:17:24.278
Perhaps all the complex
imagining I've done

00:17:24.302 --> 00:17:26.577
could have been applied to other topics.

00:17:26.601 --> 00:17:30.254
But if seeking meaning
matters more than finding meaning,

00:17:30.278 --> 00:17:34.851
the question is not whether
I'd be happier for having been bullied,

00:17:34.875 --> 00:17:38.260
but whether assigning meaning
to those experiences

00:17:38.284 --> 00:17:39.981
has made me a better father.

00:17:40.878 --> 00:17:44.714
I tend to find the ecstasy
hidden in ordinary joys,

00:17:44.738 --> 00:17:48.300
because I did not expect those joys
to be ordinary to me.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:49.265 --> 00:17:53.324
I know many heterosexuals who have
equally happy marriages and families,

00:17:53.348 --> 00:17:56.292
but gay marriage
is so breathtakingly fresh,

00:17:56.316 --> 00:17:59.633
and gay families so exhilaratingly new,

00:17:59.657 --> 00:18:02.754
and I found meaning in that surprise.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:03.772 --> 00:18:07.262
In October, it was my 50th birthday,

00:18:07.286 --> 00:18:09.828
and my family organized a party for me.

00:18:10.420 --> 00:18:13.205
And in the middle of it,
my son said to my husband

00:18:13.229 --> 00:18:14.976
that he wanted to make a speech.

00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:16.158
And John said,

00:18:16.182 --> 00:18:20.241
"George, you can't make
a speech. You're four."

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:20.265 --> 00:18:21.946
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:21.970 --> 00:18:26.491
"Only Grandpa and Uncle David and I
are going to make speeches tonight."

00:18:26.515 --> 00:18:29.110
But George insisted and insisted,

00:18:29.134 --> 00:18:32.582
and finally, John took him
up to the microphone,

00:18:32.606 --> 00:18:35.455
and George said very loudly,

00:18:35.479 --> 00:18:37.899
"Ladies and gentlemen!

00:18:37.923 --> 00:18:40.395
May I have your attention, please?"

00:18:40.419 --> 00:18:42.514
And everyone turned around, startled.

00:18:43.135 --> 00:18:44.446
And George said,

00:18:45.327 --> 00:18:47.207
"I'm glad it's daddy's birthday.

00:18:47.976 --> 00:18:49.713
I'm glad we all get cake.

00:18:51.284 --> 00:18:53.729
And Daddy, if you were little,

00:18:54.312 --> 00:18:55.692
I'd be your friend."

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:55.934 --> 00:18:57.084
(Gasp)

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:57.958 --> 00:18:59.494
And I thought -- (Applause)

00:18:59.988 --> 00:19:01.139
Thank you.

00:19:01.163 --> 00:19:04.851
I thought that I was indebted
even to Bobby Finkel,

00:19:04.875 --> 00:19:07.517
because all those earlier experiences

00:19:07.541 --> 00:19:09.956
were what had propelled me to this moment,

00:19:09.980 --> 00:19:12.489
and I was finally unconditionally grateful

00:19:12.513 --> 00:19:15.667
for a life I'd once have done
anything to change.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:16.719 --> 00:19:20.956
The gay activist Harvey Milk
was once asked by a younger gay man

00:19:20.980 --> 00:19:23.060
what he could do to help the movement,

00:19:23.084 --> 00:19:24.678
and Harvey Milk said,

00:19:24.702 --> 00:19:26.289
"Go out and tell someone."

00:19:27.138 --> 00:19:30.637
There's always somebody
who wants to confiscate our humanity.

00:19:31.011 --> 00:19:33.266
And there are always
stories that restore it.

00:19:33.816 --> 00:19:35.371
If we live out loud,

00:19:35.395 --> 00:19:37.392
we can trounce the hatred,

00:19:37.416 --> 00:19:39.622
and expand everyone's lives.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:40.569 --> 00:19:41.785
Forge meaning.

00:19:42.222 --> 00:19:43.580
Build identity.

00:19:44.169 --> 00:19:45.731
Forge meaning.

00:19:46.393 --> 00:19:48.379
Build identity.

00:19:49.228 --> 00:19:52.135
And then invite the world
to share your joy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:52.675 --> 00:19:53.874
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:53.898 --> 00:19:56.916
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:56.940 --> 00:19:58.158
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:58.182 --> 00:20:00.200
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:00.224 --> 00:20:01.403
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:01.427 --> 00:20:04.125
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:04.149 --> 00:20:05.302
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:05.326 --> 00:20:10.357
(Applause)