Navigating hate.

"You can be right, and you can be dead," my friend's Israeli father always used to say. In the wake of Matthew Shepard's funeral, that's a slogan to live by because even now, at the dawn of an enlightened 1999, living as an out homosexual can mean condemning yourself to death. For some of us living our largely liberated lives in gay ghettos, the notion of dying for who we are is nearly beyond comprehension. But even the mostly tolerant worlds we urbanites live in can turn sour and violent at the drop of an epithet. It happened to me last Christmas in a movie theater near Detroit. My family and I were sitting in the back of the theater, in front of a row of boisterous teens. They were shouting at the film and each other for at least 15 minutes before I lost patience, turned around, and told them to be quiet.

Immediately, the guy directly behind me began shouting at me and calling me a "fucking dyke" and all the rest of what you get called when you're a bald woman in motorcycle boots and a pea coat. Then, as the rest of his friends were chiming in with their expletives, the incensed guy leaned forward, pressed the point of a knife into the back of my seat, and said, "As soon as you leave this place, dyke, I'm going to kill you." I bolted upright, as did the rest of my family and the entire back row of teens.

We rushed out to the lobby, where a shouting match ensued. Before long, the theater's security guards were standing between us, keeping us apart. Exasperated, the thugs pushed their way past the guards and out the back exit, all the while threatening to "get us" in the far reaches of the capacious and unpopulated lot where our cars were parked. In the end, fearing for our lives, we had to be escorted to our cars by the local police.

Now, you could say that I should have kept my mouth shut. And you'd be right. But you could also say that telling someone to be quiet in a movie theater isn't a far cry from holding hands in public when you're a recognizable homosexual. The response in both cases, whether provoked or not, might very well be the same and, for some people of my acquaintance, has been. And that's when, as a homosexual, you have to choose either being right and being dead or being discreet and saving your skin. Some gays consider it an act of civil disobedience to hold hands with their partners in public. And again, they're right. It is. But in certain neighborhoods and under certain circumstances, getting shot or stabbed is too high a price to pay for malting a point. You'll be a more effective soldier in the war against homophobia if you survive your Saturday night stroll.

Gay people can and should be out under all circumstances, except when their lives or physical wellbeing are at stake. The Hollywood types (we all know who they are) who hide behind straight facades are moral cowards because the most they have to lose is their stardom, and losing that is by no means a certain consequence of coming out in Hollywood, one of the most liberal enclaves in America.

But what about those conservative enclaves, you ask? The same holds true. Be out, even when it's uncomfortable--except, of course, when you're in Klan country. As a rule, even the most placable right-wingers cleave to the notion that homosexuality is a sin, and they probably always will. Frankly, trying to persuade these selective biblical literalists that they're wrong is a waste of energy. Your time is better spent simply existing in their midst as a solid, redoubtable human being. Because if sin is pervasive in the human race--as the Judeo-Christian tradition insists that it is--then for all practical purposes, this "love the sinner, hate the sin" argument is moot. We're all in the same purgatory.

Being out--being visible as the banker, the plumber, the lawyer, the teacher, and the gift next door--is perhaps the most important and loudest political statement a gay person can make. It's the practical equivalent of nonviolent resistance, and it's an act of great courage that we can all practice daily. But if discretion is indeed sometimes the better part of valor, maybe you should drop your partner's hand on certain blocks or resist giving a homophobic street urchin the finger simply because then, when it counts most, you will be able to stand up with the rest of us and be counted.