Shadows

As a gay man in my sixties, I know all too well what living in the shadows is like. It stunts the human mind and twists human emotions. The shadows of my adolescent closet never felt safe. While living there I was fearful, defensive and dishonest. My relationships were stunted or poisoned.

Emerging from the shadows was just as terrible as I feared it would be. Perhaps worse. For years in the shadows my inner voice told me my parents would kill me if they found out I was homosexual. This turned out to be nearly true in reality. Several previously good friends turned their backs on me when I revealed myself to them after lecturing me on how I had offended them by being in the closet.  In other words, they told me they would never have associated with me in the first place if they had known I was gay. Their voiced disappointment in me was simply embarrassment and shame that they had let themselves feel warmly toward someone they considered less than equal.

I learned an important lesson from all this. The shadow life is never worth it in the big picture.

The daily cost of living dishonestly is bad enough for the individual. However, the cost of a life in shadow which impacts many other lives can be devastating. Look at the current Penn State case of child molestation. Look at the state of the U.S. Congress.

One of the joys of secular humanism is breaking away from the imagined dark forces which encourage living in the darkness with normal human thoughts and feelings. Fundamentalists are the enforcers of shadow living. Demagogues of any stripe offer conformity as an alternative to shame about normal individuality.

I consider being honest with myself and others the core of humanist practice. This is the great liberation, explained as The Truth over The Lie by thinkers as far back as Zoroaster. When the light of truth is taken up by a committed group of liberated people, human rights and dignity are always fostered. When those in power feel threatened, they always reach for The Lie. They rule and oppress the human impulse to do good from the shadows.