The Todd Glass Situation

by Todd Glass

  90 PERCENT ACCEPTABLE

  Obviously there will be some people who, no matter what I say here, will never let it sink in and affect them in the way that I hope. I’m talking about openly hateful people who refuse to let go of their preconceived notions and join the rest of us in the twenty-first century. My first choice, of course, is that they change, learn, or evolve past their hate. But if some people can’t be helped, maybe all we can do is wait for them to die and hope they don’t cause too much damage before they do.

  But there is a different group of people who I desperately want to reach out to—the people I like to call the “90-percenters.” These are people who consider themselves to be open-minded and forward-thinking individuals but are still, whether they’re aware of it or not, hanging on to some last little bit of prejudice or misinformation.

  Maybe you’re a person who doesn’t have a problem with gay people in general, but you still wish that they’d drop the marriage debate. Or, while you don’t consider yourself racist—you might have coworkers or even a few friends of different ethnicities—you’d prefer that your kids marry within your own race.

  This is a very dangerous line of thought.

  A while back I got an email from someone asking me if the fact that they didn’t support gay marriage made them homophobic. “I don’t have a problem with gay people,” the person wrote. “I just don’t know why they need to get married. What’s wrong with the civil unions?”

  First of all, the argument sounds a lot like an “open-minded” person from the 1950s asking why black people need to use the same bathrooms as whites. “Didn’t we give them their own bathrooms?” Doesn’t sound so open-minded today, does it?

  But the fact that you’re going to look ridiculous later isn’t the dangerous part. When you’re 90 percent okay with something, it’s easy to convince yourself that your beliefs aren’t really hurting anybody else. “Maybe I don’t support gay rights,” someone might say. “But it’s not like I’m tying kids to the back of my truck and dragging them to death.” That’s true. But the people who do commit this kind of violence aren’t necessarily drawing the same distinction between themselves and you. They think of themselves as directly aligned with you and your ideas, and that the major difference between you and them is that you don’t have the balls to do what they’re doing.

  “But Todd, I don’t have a problem with gay people—let them do what they want. My son’s roommate is gay and he’s a great guy. We had him over for Thanksgiving last year. I just wish they’d stop with the marriage thing—that’s between a man and a woman.” Fine. But do you know what a really homophobic person just heard you say? “Gays aren’t equal.” That last bit of hesitation on your part might be all the motivation they need to commit a horrible hate crime. And the worst part is that they feel like they’re doing it in your name. How does that make you feel?

  Now is the time to step up and get to 100 percent. Maybe you’re wondering exactly what that means. Shortly after I came out on WTF I got an email from a young father struggling to do right by his son. They were at Home Depot picking out a color to paint his son’s room. The kid wanted pink. “Why don’t you pick another color?” the father suggested. “Maybe blue? That’s a little better for boys.”

  When the boy refused to change his mind, they scrapped the whole idea and went home. Later that night, his father had a chance to think about what happened. Why does it matter what color he wanted to paint his room? All he was doing was trying to express himself. A really evolved parent would encourage this kind of free expression, not stifle or make him feel bad about it.

  Let’s be clear: What this father did was far from the worst thing in the world. This wouldn’t have been a monumental case of fucking with a child’s psychological well-being. But—and this is the part of the story that really resonated with me—why mess with your kid on any level? Why not strive to always be the best, most caring parent you can be, no matter how small the gesture?

  To the father’s great credit, he went back into his son’s room and asked him one more time which color he wanted his room painted. And the best part? Dad was hoping that it was still pink.

  Now if you’re already there, you should be commended for that. But even if you’re at 100 percent, you can still do more. Don’t sit quietly and wait for the rest of the world to catch up to you—give the world the help it needs to move along.

  Let’s say you’re at a dinner with your family or coworkers and someone says something—it doesn’t have to be overly hateful, but still narrow-minded or prejudiced. Why not correct them?

  “Well, because what they just said isn’t that bad and I really don’t want to ruin everyone’s night by making a big scene.”

  But what about the people at that table who are directly affected by those comments? Maybe there are gay people there. Maybe someone has a gay child. Or maybe they’re simply evolved, open-minded human beings. How do you think they feel?

  I can tell you from experience that standing up for them in that moment would make their night. Don’t worry about ruining dinner for someone who doesn’t give a second thought about ruining someone’s life. It doesn’t have to be a big fight that ends the night or a five-hour debate that spoils dinner—a well-placed sarcastic jab will let people know where you stand and make them less likely to make the same comment again, at least when you’re around.

  “Oh my God, how old are you? You sound like you’re eighty.”

  “Hello, the year 1962 called. It wants its social views back.”

  “Hey, what time is your lynch mob getting together?”

  Something I still hear a lot at the dinner table is the old “Is being gay a choice?” debate. Let me give you two quick ways to disarm these people: First, you can simply ask them when they chose to be straight. That one usually stumps them. But if you need more, there’s this joke by comedian Danny Bevins: “So if being gay is a choice, that means you can be talked into it, right? I guess you just haven’t met anyone persuasive enough.”

  Believe me, that will do the job.

  One last thing: Not everything is clear-cut. We’re all on the fence about certain issues. That’s okay. Educate yourself. Discuss the issues with your husband or wife, your friends, and the people you trust in your life. Talk to experts who can bring more than just loud opinions to the debate—facts are our friends.

  And to whatever extent you can, try to work through your struggles before talking to your kids. Look at it this way: If you’re wrong, and they find out (which eventually they will), it will undercut your authority with them for the rest of your life. You probably have plenty of wisdom in other areas to share with them; don’t mess it up by getting something so important so wrong.

  It’s okay if you’re not all the way there yet, but can’t we let our kids grow up in a world where other people’s rights are not up for debate? Let’s give them the chance to be a 100-percenter from day one.

  THE WORDS YOU “CAN’T” SAY

  I was lucky enough to have been surrounded by a lot of warm and kind people who accepted me for who I am with open arms, especially my family. Which kind of begs the question: Why did I stay in the closet for so long?

  There are a lot of reasons, but one stands out above all others: From a very young age I continuously heard the word “gay” used as a pejorative term. It was used to express dislike or distaste, a substitute for words like “different,” “weird,” or “out of the ordinary.”

  So even though I didn’t grow up in a “fuck queers” environment, the seemingly innocuous “gay” remarks have left their scars—the death of my self-esteem by a thousand cuts. And by the way, you don’t need a thousand—all you need is to hear it once from someone you respect to leave you apprehensive about your sexuality. I like to use this analogy to help people see my point: It doesn’t matter how many times you use an ATM without any problems; you only have to get robbed once to make you scared of using it again for the rest of your life.

  That
’s what happened to me—hearing the word “gay” as an adjective to describe something in a negative way made me withdraw and hide my secret even deeper. What made it even worse is that these remarks often came from people who considered themselves open-minded, forward-thinking individuals who would argue that their use of the word “gay” didn’t represent any ill will toward people who were actually gay. These people would never go up to a gay person and say, “Hey, fag!” But for some reason they desperately want to convince you that somehow there is a difference between doing that and using “gay” as a shorthand for “weird” or as the punch line of a joke. I like to take these people down memory lane. It wasn’t too long ago that a lot of good people made similar distinctions between calling someone a “nigger” or “kike” and using terms like “nigger-rig” and “Jew me down.”

  I’ve got to admit that in my lifetime we’ve come a long way. Using the word “gay” as a punch line or a pejorative isn’t nearly as acceptable as it used to be. But there are still similarly contentious words in our lexicon today. I learned my lesson early in my career when I made an easy joke about a waitress who dropped a tray of drinks while I was in the middle of my act. “Oh, I see we’ve got one of Jerry’s Kids waiting tables tonight!” It was a hacky joke I’d heard countless times, one that played on the widely accepted stereotype that Jerry’s Kids are clumsy people who can’t do things the right way. The joke got a laugh and I moved on. Fortunately, not everyone else did: A comedian by the name of Dwayne Cunningham took me aside after the show.

  “Look, Todd, Jerry’s Kids aren’t stupid or slow. They have muscular dystrophy. They aren’t clumsy because they’re not paying attention. It’s a physical disease.”

  You want to know the funniest part about what I said? I was taking an ignorant shortcut. Sometimes it seems easier to use stereotypes to get a point across. Instead of saying “clumsy,” “cheap,” or “lazy,” we look for a group that, for whatever reason, has been identified as clumsy, cheap, or lazy. Not only is this practice offensive, but—when you stop to think about it—it’s not a shortcut at all. It’s way more work. JUST USE THE ADJECTIVE! It will save you time and effort.

  There are many reasons why we use certain words in certain ways. But how and why you chose to use these words in the past is irrelevant here. Once someone educates you or makes you look at something from an angle you weren’t privy to before, it’s on you to evolve.

  It’s a situation I see a lot with “retarded.” You don’t have to be a language scholar or an anthropology professor to figure out why you should stop using the word. All you need is a little empathy to figure out that using any word that defines someone else’s existence in a pejorative way is wrong.

  “Not so fast, Todd—what if I’m referring to someone who is actually mentally challenged”? Well, why not use “mentally challenged”? There are a lot of medical terms used to describe this particular condition—let’s use the ones that they, their doctors, and their caregivers use.

  Yes, you might find some loopholes that let you continue down the path you’re on now, especially if you’re really looking for them. But why do that? Why try so hard to hang on to something that won’t stand the test of time and, in the meantime, is hurtful toward other people? How long are you going to wait before you decide to evolve? Do you really have to say “retarded” at a party and have everyone stare at you in disbelief for you to get that it’s over? I’m not talking about supersensitive, politically correct Hollywood liberals—I’m talking about your friends who simply evolved faster.

  Or as one of my listeners, Andrew McClain, pointed out in an email: “I just want to give a big shout-out to all the super-cool, courageous men and women who still call things retarded. Keep fighting that fight—any ridicule that you’ll face will be worth it, I promise. History will remember you as brave and principled warriors of free speech.”

  What do you do when you’re around people who still use these terms? It isn’t always easy to correct them—many of them love to act like indignant victims of an unfair prosecution:

  “What are you, the Word Police?”

  No, I’m not the Word Police. I just know something you don’t. Let me put it a different way: If you want to pull down your pants and take a shit in the middle of a crowded mall, that’s your business. But what you can’t do is look at the shocked and appalled people around you like there is something wrong with them. And you certainly can’t get offended if someone politely points out that there is a bathroom nearby. They aren’t the Shit Police—they’re just trying to do the right thing.

  Sometimes I like to blindside people with analogies. I used to be a big fan of hypotheticals: “So you want to use the word ‘retarded’ to mean ‘clumsy’? Well, how would you feel if instead of ‘retarded,’ we used ‘woman’?”

  The problem with hypotheticals, however, is that they usually don’t work. They’re gimmicky. People know that you’re using them to make a point. When you’re dealing with a stubborn person—someone who insists on using “retarded” in a certain context despite efforts to persuade them otherwise—the hypothetical is going to seem like a full-frontal attack.

  So you have to blindside these people. Go into secret agent mode. Let them think you’re on their side. “I’m not the Word Police,” you can assure them. “I think it’s so funny that you say ‘retard’ whenever someone drops something. In my house, when I was growing up, we just used ‘woman’ ” (or “bald” or “Mexican” or whatever adjective describes the person you’re talking to—you get the point).

  Immature? Maybe a little. But if you make it subtle and play it real, I guarantee that eventually you’ll get through to them.

  A good rule of thumb, whenever you’re in doubt as to what a group of people should be called, is to just call them whatever THEY want to be called. Sure, sometimes members of a particular group will adopt the slurs used to describe them and try to take the sting out of them by using these words to describe themselves. Trust me when I tell you this: That’s their second choice. If it was up to them, they’d rather that word didn’t exist or was never used in a negative way in the first place. Since that’s not an option, they’ve found the second-best way to deal with it.

  All of this is especially important if you’re a parent. I can almost guarantee you that your kid will hear the word “retarded” used to put someone down, but does he really have to hear it from you?

  So you can make the call now and spare yourself the embarrassment down the road. Evolution isn’t just a favor to society; it’s a favor to yourself.

  NOBODY IS COOL WITH EVERYTHING

  I was having a conversation with friends one night when somebody brought up the idea of having a father who was transgender. As I started to play this hypothetical situation out in my mind—imagining my dad, dressed as a woman, coming to one of my shows, being introduced to my friends—I think I surprised everyone there—especially me—when I confessed that I would probably be uncomfortable.

  There’s part of me that’s embarrassed to admit that I’d be embarrassed. I’ve spent a lot of this book preaching tolerance, and it’s difficult for me to recognize that I might not be the 100-percenter I hope to be.

  But I’d like to think that I would be self-aware enough to realize that the problem didn’t lie with my hypothetical cross-dressing dad, but with me. That I wouldn’t try to convince him to hide or change who he was just so I would feel more comfortable. That I would seek professional help and learn how to have a kind, caring relationship with him just the way he is. That I would recognize and admire his courage to be himself and hopefully even learn from it.

  We’re all confronted with people and situations that take us outside of our comfort zones. Sometimes they can be a lot to deal with. But if you can recognize that maybe the problem isn’t what the other person is doing, but rather the way you are responding to it, then you’ll be helping to create a world that’s more comfortable for everybody.

  “HI, GLENN!”r />
  I notice a lot of people get upset about what I call “fake arguments.” One of my favorite ones is the so-called War on Christmas—“You can’t even say ‘Merry Christmas’ without someone jumping down your throat!”

  Let’s say you own a store, and one of your employees insists on saying, “Hi, Glenn!” to everyone who walks in:

  “Hi, Glenn!”

  “Hey there, Glenn!”

  “Good morning, Glenn!”

  This might not bother you. The employee is taking the time to be friendly, and most people, even if they’re a little confused, will accept “Hi, Glenn!” as a nice gesture and move on with their day. But would you be wrong to correct your employee? “You might not want to say ‘Hi, Glenn!’ to everyone, because not everyone is named Glenn. You can just say ‘Hi,’ can’t you?”

  And how ridiculous would your employee seem if he snapped back at you? “That’s bullshit! You can’t even say ‘Hi, Glenn!’ anymore!”

  Of course you can . . . if you’re talking to Glenn.

  As a Jew, I really don’t mind if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas. I appreciate the sentiment. But “Happy Holidays” is a way of expressing the same sentiment that tries to include everybody—it’s not a provocation to war.

  EMPATHY IS NOT A COMPETITION

  Pick any point in history and you’re going to find a group of people who are fighting for equality. But the details of each plight are different, leading some people to insist that you don’t compare their movement to yours.

  I’ve heard some people say, for example, that you can’t compare being gay to being black, because being gay is something that you can hide. Yes, that particular aspect of the struggle is much easier for gay people. But how about the fact that if you’re black the whole world might be against you, but at least you don’t have to worry about your parents hating you as well? You’ve got to admit that the gays have a tougher time in that regard, don’t you?