“A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Martin Luther King

Dear Karen Markham:

I am a straight person in Texas and that makes me reluctant to respond to your letter. Not because what happens in Maine is none of my business and my state certainly has enough issues of its own to trouble me. But because, like you, when I hear a generalization that I question, I like to confirm it by going to a source that might have firsthand experience that can refute or support it.

However, for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that a homosexual doesn’t feel like making himself or herself a public target by responding to you. Let’s assume that you either don’t know anyone who’s gay or lesbian, or if you do, they have never experienced anything but love and support and tolerance and acceptance in matters of housing, employment, and medical care.

I have personally worked at a company with gay people who never once told any coworker their sexual orientation. They knew–and I know they were right–that there would have been reprisals. Based on my own observations of that particular company culture, possible reprisals included being subjected to rude remarks, being passed over for promotions, getting bad performance appraisals, being the first to go in a staff reduction, and perhaps even outright termination without cause. Not because they were bad employees or difficult to work with, but because the truth would have made people in positions of power at that company uncomfortable. And if any of those reprisals had happened, there would have been no recourse, either via state or federal law, for these employees to get their jobs back, seek redress, or keep the details private from future employers.

Now you may be thinking: But why should anyone discuss his or her sexual orientation in the workplace? It’s a private matter. And indeed, if by that you mean their sex lives, I certainly agree with you. Many times I myself have been made uncomfortable in a work environment by hearing far too many details of my coworkers’ intimate lives. Of course, those coworkers were all heterosexual.

But I also remember being in the lunch room and hearing coworkers excitedly discussing a date, a birthday party, or watching with a coparent while a child performed in sports, a school play, or a band concert. I have sympathized with them through a spouse’s illness, an in-law’s difficulty, or a death in their family. I have seen photographs of their vacations, their home renovations, and their gardens. I have been asked to donate money for gifts celebrating a coworker’s birthday or wedding or to buy a plant for a spouse’s funeral, and I’ve signed many sympathy and anniversary cards. I willingly did all of this, and felt special when these things were done for me, because these gestures bond us and humanize the environment where we spend eight to ten hours a day.

Unless, that is, our coworker is a gay man, and he fears the fallout from sharing too much about his life. So he doesn’t have lunch with his coworkers, or if he does, he sits quietly. He doesn’t tell us that his partner of eight years has just been diagnosed with cancer and he is terrified. Or the lesbian in the next cubicle doesn’t tell us about the incredible Alaskan cruise she just took with her girlfriend. We never see the photos documenting their lives. Indeed, there is not even a picture of that “someone special” on their desks. If they talk about the new puppy they just got from an animal shelter, they may tell us that a “roommate” is helping train it or was the one who named it. In any detail of their lives they share with us, they painstakingly guard every word to be gender-neutral or as impersonal as possible.

Can you imagine what it must be like to constantly censor even the most casual remark about your life? To never tell people that you see forty or more hours a week the most innocent details of your living situation? To never share wonderful news or seek comfort over losses because you are afraid? Wouldn’t we all rather work in a place where no one experiences that?

Laws that protect people from being fired or harassed at work because of their sexual orientation are not magic solutions for bigotry, hate, ignorance, and homophobia. But they do offer a segment of our workforce the reassurance that as long as they do their jobs, they will enjoy the same degree of security that any of us have.

And you are right. Homosexuals are not the only group of people who suffer discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. There really are people who will get rid of an employee because that employee is elderly, disabled, overweight, of a non-U.S. national origin, or is a person of color. But if that employer is foolish enough to harass or terminate someone for those reasons, the employee has recourse. We have laws to protect people so that they won’t have to work in an environment of fear and unfairness.

We have laws that allow our next-of-kin access to our vital medical information or the right to sit next to our hospital beds and the privilege of helping make decisions about our healthcare. We have laws that keep a landlord from evicting us because we are seventy years old or refuse to rent to us because we are female. Sometimes we make these laws to undo legalized discrimination–such as that against people of color–or because there is the potential for discrimination against a member of a marginalized or minority group. We have these laws because valuing all people is and should be important to us as a nation. As a democracy. As human beings.

So, while it may be costly to keep trying to obtain or maintain equal protection under the law, while it may be tiresome to you to have to keep voting on it, while you may think it is a non-issue, that is minimal compared to the cost of devaluing people. Of having people live in fear of being honest about who they are. If you are tired, I’m sure those who live secret lives know an exhaustion you can’t even imagine. And to these people, as well as to those of us who know them, it is one of the most important issues of justice and fairness we will ever face in our lifetimes.