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June 26th, 2015 is a day that has implanted itself into the core of my memory. The United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, and with prismatic brilliance, yellows, greens, purples, oranges and blues infiltrated our amber waves of grain, swept across our majestic mountain passes, and turned all the eye can see – from sea to shining sea – Technicolor.
And I missed it.
Well, nearly.
No, I don’t live under a rock, but I did
have tunnel vision. I write screenplays, and I’ve been so consumed with my
latest project, that when I heard the news, I let it course through me. I
experienced the joy of prayers answered, called my mom, then filed the
celebration away neatly into its own compartment. I spent the rest of the
day absorbed in my work and – like the dead – hit my pillow in the middle of
the night.
At five this morning, I jolted awake. Had
that really happened, yesterday? Did the Supreme Court really legalize gay
marriage? In a trance, I flipped through my news feed and saw that I had missed
the party of the century. Friends I hadn’t noticed in months, years even, came
out of the woodwork with handfuls of glitter and even more love.
Facebook was a disco ball, and my friends
were swirling points of light.
Yet I’ve been bothered by my slow
response time to such good news. I heard the information, was pleased by it,
but refused to let myself bask in all the colors, all the life. I watched the
dawn, cigarette in hand, and interrogated myself. What I found, surprised the
hell out of me.
To explain, let me transport you back in
time.
Whoosh.
I lived most of my childhood and
adolescence brainwashed, confined to a miniscule interpretation of The Bible. I
was the kid who proselytized on the playground. I wandered up to every child in
my fourth grade class, and pleaded with them to ‘accept Jesus in their hearts.’
Invariably, my classmates would ask ‘why’ they should do
such a thing, I would respond with some version of: “To escape burning for
eternity in a lake of fire.”
I wasn’t very popular.
When I entered adolescence, my
brainwashing focused onto a singular issue: Homosexuality. I have always had
fair luck with women, and certainly a desire for them, but as my ‘sex bell’
(that’s what I call the pituitary gland) rang, feelings not only for women, but
also curiosity for men flooded my most private of thought. Man, I cannot tell
you the depth of self-loathing these feelings brought to a young Danny Warn – First
Citizen of Sunday School.
Around the same time, I read a passage of
scripture in the book of Romans that named homosexuals among a list of
‘God-Haters.’ I was confused, because I loved God, yet the passage stated, in
no uncertain terms that I, in fact, hated him. The paradox was too much for my
young brain to unravel, so I used the verse as armor: As long as I loved God, I
could not possibly have feelings for other men. As my teenage years hit, I
became increasingly aware of my same-sex interest, but at the same time, the
armor I used as a preteen, became a source of insurmountable denial.
My armor became camouflage.
I accepted my feelings for men in one
hand, and denied them in the other. The human brain is quite amazing, because I
compartmentalized my duplicity – my double life – so well that I wasn’t even
aware of the fact that I came out as bisexual to 300 of my peers at youth
group. My pastor had asked me to write a testimony about anger. I agreed
because I was ever willing to prove myself. I thought about anger, and I wrote
about the anger I felt at the world. In my testimony, I blamed my same-sex
attraction on the bullying I received in high school – in 9th grade
the upperclassmen labeled me ‘the freshman fag.’ I told the entire youth group
that I watched gay pornography, and was angry because the bullies made me
believe I might be gay. I thought I was talking about anger. I was really talking about the kind of
guilt a person feels when they despise a part of themselves.
I had a Rainbow Shadow, and I hated
myself for it.
It gets better (#2,000 and late?).
But first it gets worse.
I experienced one of my most cherished
romances my senior year in high school. I began dating a girl I’d had my eye on
since the fifth grade. We ruled our high school theater (or ‘theatre’ to the
cool ones out there) department together, attended prom together, and embarked
on a cross-country-separate-college-long-distance-relationship together (i.e.
that time when you realize you confused the words ‘love’ and ‘moronic’). No one
was a bigger fan of our relationship than me. I spent student loan money to
visit her multiple times, and even surprised her on our one-year anniversary
with a promise ring.
A week later, I broke her heart.
I was at a Huey Lewis and the News concert when my fortress of denial came
crashing down. I had told this girl I was bisexual, but I was an addict to my
own compartmentalization. It was as though I intellectually acknowledged my
feelings for men, but refused to accept them on a base level. Huey was singing
his heart out, and it hit me all at once. My duplicity. My hypocrisy. My
confusion. My doubt. My guilt. All the self-loathing, all the anger, and all
the miss-placed shame enveloped me. I remember thinking that my brain was a tornado
of emotion, destructive and omnipotent. On impulse, I broke things off with my
first love.
Let me be clear: I dumped her a week
after I gave her a promise ring.
The phrase ‘dick move’ is a woefully
inadequate understatement.
I found myself on the phone with her,
late at night telling her everything that didn’t work in our relationship,
everything she had done wrong. I attacked her with the immature, cowardly hope
that she would accept our parting. She pleaded with me to give her another
chance, and something snapped within me. I blurted: “But what if I’m gay?” We
ended our conversation, our relationship and our friendship that night.
I dated exclusively men for the next
three years. I knew that I had feelings for women, but out of misplaced and
insulting loyalty to my first love, I opened one of my handy-dandy compartments
and filed the information away. I thought I could win back a friendship with
her if I proved to everyone, especially her, that the only reason I left her
was because I was a 100% hardboiled-homosexual, born that way, baby. I became pretty
stockerish. I contacted her frequently, hoping that the next time we spoke, or
maybe the next time, or maybe the next time… she would finally forgive me. I felt entitled to her forgiveness, yet I
never gave her an apology from a place of truth.
During all of this, I befriended a girl
named Margaret Bezold. We were fast friends, and confided much in one another.
She was there through all of my mistakes, and I was there as she found the
courage to come out to the world as bisexual. Bolstered by her acceptance, and
her command of her own vulnerabilities, I grew confident in my new identity.
I felt as though I had finally come home.
I was acquainting myself with a part of me that I had starved for too long.
However, I have found that inauthenticity, if not dealt with head-on, has a way
of transferring. I became obsessed with gay culture to the extent that I
transferred my neglect from my same-sex attraction to my opposite-sex
attraction.
Hypocrisy
has tended to disguise itself as authenticity in my life.
I wore my rainbow shadow as a cape. It
flowed loud and proud, yet concealed half of me.
About one year before I accepted that I
might not be gay, but bisexual, I told Margaret that I loved her as more than
friends. I freaked out when I told her, and continued dating men for twelve
more months. (I know, I’m a freaking head case! It’s okay, you can laugh. It’s
funny. I promise.) We moved away from each other, and I spent three challenging
months confronting my feelings – trying to piece together the shards of my
broken authenticity. I came back out as bisexual.
Just call me the come-out-kid.
A DOUBLE RAINBOW!
I gained enough courage to pick up the
phone. I called Margaret and I told her I loved her. She told me to wait a
month and tell her again. I waited a month and told her that beyond a shadow of
a doubt, I believed that we would wed.
Fast forward two years, and we stood before
a host of witnesses and said our ‘I dos.’
Whoosh.
Now we’re in the present again.
I decided to write this post because I am
still working toward my most authentic self. I believe that the Supreme Court’s
most recent decision hit me in waves, because I haven’t known how I stood with
the gay community since I married Margaret. I was ashamed for calling shark,
and then dolphin, and then sharkphin. (“Dolphins are just gay sharks.” - Glee)
But shame of any kind cannot survive when
millions of voices cry out in glee: “Love wins.”
This morning, a heavenly chorus of people
from all walks of life greeted me as they celebrated love in all authenticity.
Every celebration, every rainbow, every unexpected ally, touched me to my core.
Now I realize that my rainbow could never
have been a shadow. Light pierces all darkness. In light, there is no darkness
at all.
Sometimes, the obvious is the hardest
thing to find.
Love this, Danny!!
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