I went to a birthday party on Saturday.
It was a casual birthday party at a bowls club. The invitation stated that we would play bowls, have a few drinks, and then head elsewhere for dinner. It should have been simple, fun, and relaxed. But it ended up being a bit more complicated than that.
It was Kristy's birthday. Kristy is Alice's partner, and Alice used to date my partner H. Just so you're all up to speed: we're all women. Anyway, when H. and I first arrived, I was struck by the mix of family members and friends at this party. Actually, I am always struck by the number of family members at Alice's parties. Most of my friends socialise with their friends, and not so much with their siblings or extended family, as a result of physical or other kinds of distances. But Alice's sisters and parents and nephews and nieces are often around; H. and I know them all by name. And so I sat there in New Farm at the bowls club in the late afternoon sunshine. I sipped my beer, and wondered whether I would like to have siblings and nieces and nephews with whom I socialise. (I have brothers, but they live far away, and I don't socialise with them.)
The gentleman teaching us the rules of barefoot bowls was funny, engaging, made jokes about rolling the jack (the white ball) as straight as possible down the centre line of the green ("there's not many straight things in New Farm", he joked, and I laughed along with Kristy's other friends, because what he said is true, and we are all as bent as the bias on those bowls).
Later on, I found out that one of Kirsty's friends was having the worst possible night. Let's call this friend Beth. Beth had shown up to the bowls club to celebrate Kirsty's birthday. And she was one of perhaps 15 lesbian or queer women who had come to celebrate this event. Most of Kirsty's friends would identify as lesbian or queer, including H. and me. The problem was, Beth realised the minute that she arrived at the bowls club that Alice's 14-year-old niece was there. And Beth teaches at the niece's private high school. Instantly, Beth knew that if she went outside and hung out with her friends, she would be outing herself to Alice's niece.
Beth stayed inside for most of the next couple of hours. She did not want to be outed at school. There was a chance she would lose her job--it's a Christian school. She feared that Alice's niece would out her to the other kids. The potential ramifications were serious, career-ending, reputation ruining.
And I thought about my own history, then. I grew up in a smallish town--small both in size and in its openness to difference. I did not meet a single gay or lesbian person until I was nineteen years old, and living in Brisbane.
If school teachers can't be gay--and let's face it, they can't; not in this climate--who can the queer kids look to for role models, for proof that they can live in this world? Celebrities, fictional characters, whichever gay adults that they might be lucky enough to know.
Sometimes the world seems so to have changed so much in the last twenty years. It's important to hear stories like this. It's important to know that some places are still locked in a different time, like the trophies in glass displays at that bowls club, like the black and white photographs on the wall, and like our schools, which educate children on all sorts of things, but cannot allow a queer teacher.
