Today's cartoon is based upon one of the photographs in the late Ambassador James Hormel's memoir, Fit to Serve, and a quotation which sums up the main point of the book written with Erin Martin.
While much of the book focuses on what Hormel went through to become U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg from 1999 to 2000, the lead-up to that point describes his process of coming out as gay — first to himself, then to his family, and finally as a public activist and philanthropist.
When Fit to Serve was published in 2011, marriage discrimination (DOMA) was still the law of the land, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act couldn't get through the newly Republican Congress. The literal LGBTQ-bashing that he also cites is still going on. Hormel concludes that progress only becomes possible when one is out and true to oneself.
"We have to be out. If not, we are complicit with the old order, the one that would have us remain invisible."
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