Note: I wrote this about two years before posting it on LinkedIn. There is a bit of language I would update if I were doing a rewrite, but I am leaving it substantially as written for now.
When someone suggests that a gay or LGBTQ lifestyle is being “shoved down their throat” or “thrown in their face,” I like to imagine that they accidentally sleepwalked into the middle of a gay pride parade in San Francisco. That is because I want to think well of them. I don’t want to believe that they are saying what I think they are saying.
The thing is, I’ve met too many people who say, “I have no problem with people being gay or bisexual. I just don’t see why they have to shove it down our throats.” When what they really mean by “shove it down our throats” is just that they had to know about it at all.
“Shoving it down their throats” isn’t someone knocking on their door every five minutes to say they are bisexual. I can see why that would be bothersome, but it isn’t happening.
It isn’t a gay person living next door to a straight person and leaving their blinds open while they do intimate things in a not-so-heteronormative way. It isn’t their gay sibling having an adult movie night by projecting queer porn on the straight person’s garage. I mean, that would be “shoving it down their throats,” but no—that’s not the complaint.
To my knowledge, there aren’t dozens of gay neighbors decorating their straight neighbors’ houses, cars, or property with rainbow banners, or insisting that their straight friends watch every queer-related HBO show ever made with them. And it certainly isn’t making them stand in the middle of a giant pride parade and watching how wide their eyes get. I can imagine how any of those things would be a bit “in the face.”
It seems that “shoving LGBTQ lifestyle down their throats” isn’t really even being in that person’s face at all.
“Knowing” is “shoving it down their throats.” Knowing. So when you introduce your same-sex spouse, you’ve “shoved it down their throats.”
Knowing LGBTQ people exist because—Lord forbid—there is a gay character on their favorite sci-fi show is “shoving it down their throats.”
When the local courthouse flies a rainbow flag, the LGBTQ lifestyle has been “shoved down their throats” through the sheer horror of that flag reminding them that, out there in the world, someone not exactly like them also exists.
When the plus-one you bring to the party they encouraged you to bring a date to is evidently queer; when they see your gay-rights bumper sticker, T-shirt, or social media post; when you dare to casually mention to them that you are bisexual because they tried to set you up with their brother, but it turns out you’ve already got a third date with a girl you like—you’ve “shoved it down their throats.”
And why is this such a problem? I mean, why not keep those personal and relationship details to yourself?
Well, for one thing, these particular hetero folks do want to talk about dating. They do want to meet your spouse. They do want you to bring that plus-one to their party. They do want to set you up with their brother, friend, coworker, and so on. They want all those topics to be comfortably within bounds. They wouldn’t dare suggest that the hetero couples who showed up to their party were “shoving straight lifestyles down their throats.” They won’t get bothered when the millionth rom-com about straight boy meeting straight girl comes out, nor that nine out of ten of the couples they see on TV are straight.
They want LGBTQ people to pretend to be like them. They want the old days back—the days when queer folks fitting in with straight folks was a matter of survival, and heterosexuals could imagine that the whole world was comfortably just like them.
The implication is toxic. Deep down, they want you to hide yourself, lie about yourself, show up with a fake date, and pretend to be something you aren’t, while heteronormative relationships are openly discussed, celebrated, and welcomed.
They want the good old days of queer oppression back—the days when queer folks had to politely take the number of the brother or friend while not daring to inform their own friends, family, and neighbors that they already had a same-sex interest because they might be beaten, imprisoned, killed, or, at the very minimum, disowned and ostracized.
So I imagine when someone says that an LGBTQ lifestyle is being “shoved down their throat” that they must have wandered into the mother of all pride parades, or perhaps they have some overly zealous queer neighbors who didn’t ask permission before also decorating the straight person’s house in pride colors like their own. Because if it turns out that it is the other thing…
If it turns out that “shoving it down your throat” is the imposition you feel at queer folks being equally open about who they are dating and marrying as straight folks; if it turns out that it is the terrible imposition of occasionally seeing a queer couple on TV among the veritable flood of straight couples and rom-coms that revolve entirely around your own fully accepted lifestyle, then we have a problem.
Because if you want to know me, but expect me to fake mundane details about my life, family, and identity for the sake of your comfort and convenience, then there is a solid chance that I’d prefer not to know you at all.