The psychology of diversity.

What if being a lesbian or a gay man turned out to mean you are imbued with special powers, that you have the ability, over and above that of nongay human beings, to withstand hardship, to survive your enemies, to create great beauty, to hear others like you through the silence, to find others like you in the darkness, to invent new riddles with your life that puzzle the experts, who never catch up to you or on to you, who are never able to figure out where you came from or where you might be going?

The year is 2027. The planet is shrinking as everything is brought close-up by the global media, ordinary people travel the world, and the Internet puts the universe at our fingertips. Diverse images bounce off satellites around the world, prompting constant reorganization of how we should look, act, talk and relate in order to be OK.

Differences among people are no longer stigmatizing but appreciated and integrated. Demanding conformity to combat difference is rejected as retro thinking. Gay and lesbian people are accepted as just another variation of the human species, no longer scapegoated as a moral threat by a now-defunct religious-right movement.

Differences between men and women are not as pronounced as they were before. (That's been happening for some time.) Being a "real man" or a "real woman" as a major basis for validation in life has lost its rigidity so that the gender fluidity of gays is considered by many to be enviable.

Generations of students have attended college with openly gay people around them: As a result, the norm is that gay people belong in the family, the workplace, friendship circles, and in every other situation of daily life.

For gays, these changes mean the enemy within is more easily challenged. There's no need to hide sexual orientation, to be afraid of attack, or to cooperate with others' homophobia. In a deluded effort to gain their approval. The norm among gays is to be out of the closet. There's no longer an ethic, supported by many during the 20th century, that the closet must be protected. Outraged by outing, these people reinforced the reluctance of many to come out--"everyone should come out in his or her own time." Now the ethic is "the closet has no privilege; everyone should be out, taking responsibility for who he or she is."

If the future were ours to design (isn't it?), what trends already developing, or hinted at today, should we expect to see as features of gay and lesbian life 30 years from now?

Thanks to the work of molecular geneticists and biologists, it's possible in 2027 to determine sexual orientation at birth. Discovering that one has a gay child is not the shock it once was; parents of same-sex-oriented (SSO) babies find it easier to accept that their infant is gay or lesbian because there's not the same sexualization of identity to cope with upon learning that an adult or adolescent child is gay or lesbian.

Because so many SSO babies are being identified, the gay and lesbian community has developed a parent-proficiency training program to assist families in providing a supportive emotional environment for their SSO child to grow up in. SSO children feel especially,valued as they become aware of the thoughtful attention being paid to their unique needs.

Another community-generated project makes it possible for the older SSO child to attend a special after-school program in which the focus is on developing a positive gay or lesbian identity. The Education for Same-Sex Orienteds curriculum offers segments on gay and lesbian history and culture, heroes of the struggle for gay rights, and current issues of concern to gay men and lesbians. At appropriate points in their development, SSO children are assigned personal mentors, take relationship preparation seminars, and are introduced to the idea of a lifetime commitment of service to their community.

Adults who have grown up in the ESSO model are self-valuing, fun-loving, altruistic people whose lives are built around a successful partnership, productive work, and the enjoyment of the new recreational options that 21st century technology has to offer. Though integrated into society at large, the ESSO graduates maintain a strong sense of gay and lesbian identity. They continue to innovate with their lives, as gays have always done.

Berzon is a psychotherapist and the author of The Intimacy Dance: A Guide to Long-term Success in Gay and Lesbian Relationships.