Envisioning Big Lives
By: Gary Hollander - Posted on: 12/29/2003

A farmer was shoveling acorns into a bushel and dumping them over a fence to feed his pigs, when he stopped to pick one up and examine it quite closely. His neighbor, who happened to be passing by, saw this and called out in jest, “What is it? A special acorn? One that is shinier, fatter, more round? Is it’s little cap at a special angle?”

The farmer called back, "No, my friend. As you know, fat, shiny, round acorns – even with jaunty little caps – are only of interest to the animals that eat them. This one is no acorn at all; it’s sprouting. It is an oak tree in the making.”

Most lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth today dream of survival, of becoming better at being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. As a population, their aspirations have increased significantly in the past four decades, from a time when survival was not assured and invisibility seemed the best course.

But today most LGBT youth still hope to be more of what they’ve been led to believe they are: defensive, confrontational, self-effacing, over-achieving, ghettoizing, product-consuming, assimilating LGBT people. These limited life goals, while a product of a homophobic society (and in no way the fault of LGBT youth) must be challenged by young people themselves.

These behavior patterns are not bad, wrong, disgusting or sinful. But they are also not culture. Nor are they a rational approach to find our full humanity. Instead these are residual patterns of survival struggles with which each living LGBT person has had to grapple; they have been reified as gay culture.

The new vision of Diverse and Resilient Youth is young LGBT people flourishing in the firm knowledge of their full humanity: their goodness, power, interpersonal connections, beauty, flexibility, creativity, and brilliance. With this knowledge in place, their dreams will exponentially expand to include new contributions to the fabric of society. Youth LGBT people will end the paralysis in a community that is alternately pre-occupied with heterosexual approval or obsessed with homophobia. Breaking this impasse will enable meaningful coalitions with progressive people everywhere, independent of sexual orientation. It will result in LGBT youth redefining themselves and their culture where trust, interdependence, initiative, industry, intimacy, generativity, and integrity are prominent features.