So, I found out about the national kiss-in through facebook (although I carefully did not join the group) and decided that since my parents are still out of town that I could go to my first "protest" event. I thought - this won't be a big deal, since my parents were out of town, and anyone that they know who could tell them is unlikely to be downtown.
I also thought it would be a rather big event, as the description online said there would be kissing booths and GLBT vendors. I thought maybe I could buy a button or something while I was down there, and maybe meet someone, too.
So, I ride the train down there, but I'm running on gay time myself, so I'm a little late. As I get off the train, I notice some rainbow flags across the intersection, and I think (Oh, that must be the start of it) Little did I know, it was all of it. There were only about 30 people there, and no venders that I saw - same goes for the kissing booths. They did have a police presence protecting them, and a core group of people took turns with a megaphone. Every so often they would exhort us to find someone to kiss, and I kissed a couple of people that I don't know (first time *that's* ever happened) It was nice to feel part of a movement, and to feel that I was with people like me without having to go to a bar, and I got caught up a little in the rhetoric, so when they had an "open mic session" I stepped up and said a few words. I think I acquitted myself fairly well on the soapbox, but afterwards I noticed that there was a camera-man there from a local news station.
Suddenly I was freaked out.
What if, in their coverage of this event, they showed me in the background. What if, in their coverage of this event, they showed me *with the microphone* **calling myself a Lesbian in public** What if they showed this coverage, and people from my parents' church or work *saw* it. What if they saw it, and *said something* to my parents! Oh boy. That would be so not cool, since I'm living with my parents, economically dependent on them, and owe several thousand dollars on a student loan that my dad is a cosigner on (which he must remind me of, apparently at least once a day...) This would especially not be cool, since because of ... shall we say ... some bad decisions related to emotional instability, my parents are way into transparency (mine) recently, and would take finding out about my orientation through a coworker *badly* since they would see it as me hiding important things from them - which is what being in the closet is kind of about. And that, ironically, is what is mainly keeping me in the closet with them. I think they could deal with my sexuality better than the fact that I've kept it from them for years. I want to wait until at least I have a job, have paid off my loan, and live on my own before coming out to them, so I will have repaired their trust in me somewhat before landing this bomb on them. All that to say, while I plan someday to come out to them, today is not that day, and if someone told them before that point it would be *very bad*.
So I was moderately freaked out about the local news. I thought about calling them and requesting them not to run any segment where I was talking, because if I was just in the background I could simply say I was there in my "A" role (you know, the "A" from GLBTA) which I've developed to some degree in case of awkward questions. I was afraid of doing this, because knowing my luck, I'd run into some guy on a bad day who'd make sure I was in if I requested them not to show me. Such people exist - they aren't exactly following the SPJ code of ethics, but they exist none-the-less.
I ended up not calling. I figured that since there wasn't a reporter there, just a camera-man, that it was kind of unlikely to even show up on the news, and if it did, it almost certainly would be a clip of less than 30 seconds, and most likely contain the people that were running it, since they were at the mic a lot more than me.
So, reason triumphs over paranoia, and then I made a point to watch the news - where they didn't say one word about the Kiss-in, after all.
