Who are the gay heros?

So, who are the gay heroes?

I recently finished reading a book about gay men growing up. The premise was gay men writing not their coming out stories, but stories about their upbringing. As I read this book the common theme was trauma. Trauma about being gay. Trauma about hiding being gay. Trauma of having to pretend to be interested in women. Trauma. Had the book focused on coming out I'm sure there would have been trauma about that as well. Now, I don't mean to say these are not important stories or that these stories don't need to be told, just that there has to be more to the gay male experience than being traumatized. Books about the gay male experience, at least the ones that are not about hooking up, tend to focus on the trauma. I could choose to spent my life focusing on the everyday trauma of being a gay man in the conservative corporate engineering world, but that would not get me anywhere. Certainly not to the boardroom.

So, who are the gay heroes? Exploration of just that question is what this is about. More often than not, the heroes are not gay but straight. Straight and willing to take a chance, take a stand or sometimes just forget that gay exists.