Last week's Supreme Court ruling -- the latest in the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" stupidity -- really pissed me off. Now, I have to tell you this reaction surprised me. I've always been biased on this issue; I believe that sexual attraction and action is a private matter. You, me, the President, the Supreme Court Justices and everyone else has no goddam business in the bedroom where consenting adults draw the curtains.

But I've never been an activist, and always sort of followed my "see both sides" instinct, but despite my noble principles, I've never been part of an oppressed minority -- until last week.

I've Joined an Oppressed Minority

So my reaction to last week's decision -- which, by the way, is not the last word on the matter, but only an interim step in which the Court has decided not to change the status quo until the lower court rules -- should have displayed equal patience with compromise.

But it didn't.

And I realize it's because -- though I'm straight with occasional fantasies about exploring  bisexuality -- for the first time I feel the oppression that pressures a person to close off a part of themselves and hide their true beings, in order to survive in our world.

It sucks.

I've chosen to be anonymous in taking a sex-positive approach to talking about sex in an open and explicit way because I don't want the inconvenience of losing my job (like one of our Owning Pink readers, Kendra Holliday). This is my choice. And it is a choice.

Did you hear that? I have a choice and I choose convenience. I recognize that my choice is made out of fear -- for my job, my family and my friendships -- and I am ok with that. I'm happy to have the choice I do.

But I have it easy. My sexual preferences and explorations are becoming a vital part of who I am, but my basic sexual identity is not what makes me vulnerable. I can be fully me and simply hide a bit of myself to pass for "normal" in our intolerant society, but homosexual men and women do not have this luxury. Their gender identity -- which is not a choice -- is what our culture says diminishes their fundamental rights to serve in the military, marry whom they choose and live free from fear of hate crimes are compromised by the very laws designed to uphold their civil rights. It's hypocrisy at its best.

Turning Joy Into Pain

The saddest irony is that the issue at the core of this situation is the physical expression of intimacy between human beings -- sex. The acts that make lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and sex-positive people targets include their personal, private choices for when and how they celebrate their body's greatest capacity for pure physical joy. For them, this act of joy and often love is too easily driven down below the shadows into shame, scorn and far too often, violence and death.

Our tolerance for this persecution can do a viscously efficient job of converting great joy into horrible pain for these people. That which can bring them pleasure, too often brings them fear. It's too easy for their efforts to be whole beings to be thwarted by social barriers bolstered by legal barriers to declaring their identity freely in a free society.

It's just wrong.

And if you're like me -- not homosexual, bisexual or transgender -- recognize that in their suffering we suffer too. The toxic institutional choices to suppress our LGBT friends' identities also keep us afraid of expressing our sexual curiosities and preferences. They chill our ability to express ourselves as whole beings and in so encouraging our silence they encourage our ignorance about who we really are and what we really feel.

It's just horribly, horribly sad.

What about you? Does the legal denial of civil rights for LGBT affect you? Do you struggle to unite your identity due to social and legal intolerance? Do you lament the distortion of pleasure into pain? What's your story?

Photo credit: AP Photo/Douglas Healey