That's very true, and very important, as your essay is. But on the flip side, wanting to live in peace is not the same thing as having the ability to live in peace.
Every member of a society is at least somewhat responsible for the state of that society. A theoretical willingness to engage for the common good is critical to societal health, according to some sociologists.
Of course, I say that as a gay man who survived the AIDS crisis and spent most of my life on a more activist track than some.
One thing notable about AIDS is that we absolutely needed allies, and we found them. They did a lot of the heavy lifting that our smaller numbers couldn't support.
On the other hand, we engaged those allies. We educated them. We elevated their consciousness. We pleaded for their help.
Also, many of us were involuntarily outed by HIV, which some experts say led to a sizable shift in public opinion. It's easy to hate strangers. It's much harder to hate a close friend or family member who comes home to die.
Multiply that by tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals, and you can see how big an impact those involuntary outings must have had — and how big an impact coming out really has.
Plus, let's not forgot that genuine LGBTQ equality progress has never been initiated by allies. In the UK, the US, Canada, and the EU, laws that have been passed to allow us to live in relative peace were pushed for by ... us. We often convinced our allies to support those laws, but they didn't come up with them, not one single time.
So, anyway. Yes, people should prioritize their safety and their health when it comes to coming out or educating relatives or friends. It's important to realize when a task is truly futile or too dangerous to justify the small good that could be done.
That's a balancing act that every person has to decide for themselves.
But we have to do the balancing as we understand that nothing will get better unless we fight for positive change.
At least, that's my view formed by my experiences as a former AIDS activist and an LGBTQ advocate.
