Andrew Sullivan last week, wrote about the new Pew Research study about LGBTQ persons, where one of the results was that 40% of the respondents identified as bisexual. There are a few comments that can be made about Sullivan’s commentary overall, but in this post, I want to focus on a letter Sullivan received and shares from a man who describes himself as a bisexual, but claims he isn’t closeted. He compares himself to a young man A small conservative town. That kid is closeted, but he isn’t.

I think that’s hogwash. These two may have different reasons to reman in the closet, but they are both closeted. Closeted simply means a person doesn’t share openly their orientation or sexual behavior. They keep it a secret for one reason or another, and compartmentalize their lives. Everyone makes a choice to either be open about their orientation or not, and this choice is everyone’s to make. Even someone who would be open to ridicule, harassment or violence chooses to remain in the closet or to be open about their orientation.

I want to write about this, because this notion of “the closet” is an important concept. Some see being in the closet as a bad thing. Others portray it as a badge of victimization. I think the closet is not a place but rather a choice about self-disclosure, and therefor, it connects to the issue of self-empowerment. We are empowered when we realize the choices we make, and consciously choose to whom and how much we disclose. This guy expresses his reason to stay in the closet, as ” it is nobody’s business…” This is both very true and there is a problem it creates.

First, how it is true. At face value, each of our sexual proclivities are no one else’s business. Our culture doesn’t operate with those types of details being front and center in our everyday life. This is one of the useful arguments used to support same-sex couples and equal rights when the far right crazies are on their soap boxes. Our lives are not much different from anyone else’s. We get up, eat breakfast, do laundry, pay bills, shop, take the kids to school, pick up the kids, cut the grass, check if there is milk in the frig, etc. Nowhere in all the things that make up the litany of daily life, does our sexual orientation really come into the discussion. Because it isn’t a part of our culture, the way in which we operate as a group.

He is also right because our culture is one of personal freedoms. And there is case law to support that you or you out there, don’t have a right to know or judge what I do in the privacy of my home or my bedroom.

But here is the problem, and why choosing the closet is not helpful to the LGBTQ community or to the larger community and culture. One aspect of the “sexual orientation” discussion in general, is that it often gets condensed into a binary of gay or straight when sexual orientation is far more fluid running between these two different ends. Kinsey knew this, yet because of how political the issue has become, and how it has been framed by the most vocal advocates of change, this binary seems to have taken hold,and most everyone frames the issue in their head as gay or straight.

With this binary as the starting point, bisexual gets understood as someone who is attracted to both the same sex and the opposite sex, and we wonder, are bisexuals equally attracted to one or the other, or is is more of one than another? This guy’s experience doesn’t fit this binary-controlled model of attraction at all. In other words, bisexual may mean or encompass a far broader scope than we tend to consider, and when a person is closeted, then their experience doesn’t help to broaden the general understanding of bisexuality specifically and sexual orientation in general.

Here is the conundrum about the closet vs openness. It is essential, in my opinion, that everyone retains the right to self-disclosure which means it must remain acceptable for a person to be in the closet, yet it is, at the same time advantageous for individuals as well as the community at large for everyone to come out. These two can seem at odds with each other.

In my opinion, this guy remains closeted, because he thinks coming out as bisexual will create expectations or assumptions that he can’t relate to, nor wants to confront. Nor should he have to. He gets to make choices about self-disclosure which make sense for him.

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