In November, Peter was presented the “Equality Award” by the Human Rights Campaign at a garden ceremony in Palm Springs.  What follows are Peter’s speaking notes:

When HRC called to tell me that they would like to give me the Equality Award, I thought, No, no, that can’t be right.  I haven’t done anything so very special.  I should tell them no, let them get on about picking someone more important, more powerful, more famous.  And then I thought, Fuck that.  You wanna give me an award?  Hell, yes.  Tell me when to be there.

So here I am.  It’s interesting to me (well, everything about me is interesting to me – I am, after all, my favorite subject), but it’s interesting to me that my first response is always that I don’t deserve something.  And we could sit and analyze it and I’m sure my therapist would have something to say about my mother and her narcissism and my father and his absence, blah, blah, but the truth is I don’t think I deserve things because I grew up gay in a world that told me every day that I was not okay.

This is not meant as some type of self-aggrandizement: “Poor me, I had it so bad, nobody understood me or loved me or respected me but I showed them…  Look, I got an award.”  Not at all.  In fact, lots of people loved me and some of them even respected me, but no one knew enough to tell me what I most needed to hear, and I certainly couldn’t see it anywhere in the world around me – and that is the most fundamental lesson we all need to be given:  That I was okay.  That straight or gay, I deserved anything I wanted from this life, that I could accomplish all I dreamed, that I could love whom I chose, that my worth was as innate as everyone else’s.

This is called the Equality Award, and for me, what it is, is a reminder - a reminder that it is my job to deal with my past, deal with my demons, find my way to the truth – the truth that I am entitled to be here and so are you and so are the countless number of gay and lesbian youth behind us on this walk.

I have always believed that the personal is the political, and vice-versa.  Never has that been truer than in the case of the gay community.  We are a community that was decimated twenty years ago by a disease, and now we find ourselves facing rising rates of infection and the fetishization of barebacking.  We are a community so stuck in its adolescence that we are “partying” into our thirties and forties and fifties, so focused on escaping the realities of our often wonderful lives that we dabble deeper and deeper with alcohol and sex and drugs like coke and crystal meth.  We are a community that believes that you are what you look like, you are what you drive, or what you make, or what you do.  We are a community so unsure of our place at the table that we forget that we’re all in this together, whether we want gay marriage or not, whether we care about soldiers or trannies or those fucking party boys or those goddamn dykes.

Once we see our way clear to caring for ourselves, to loving ourselves (I know this is getting dangerously woo-woo, but ride it out), once we can finally look in the mirror and say, ‘Dig you, you’re a rock star,” once we can do that, everything else will follow.

Because once you understand, once you know your value, you can no longer settle for second-class status.  When you know your worth, civil unions suddenly don’t seem any better than the “separate but equal” schools this country offered people of color in the first half of the last century.  When you know your worth, job and housing discrimination are no longer simply the hazards of navigating this life – they are deeply unjust situations that cannot be accepted.  When you know your worth, being “tolerated” by those around you just ain’t gonna cut it anymore.  I don’t want to be tolerated, I want to be respected, because I have something valuable to offer, and so do you.

Perhaps I am preaching to the choir here, perhaps the very fact that you are here in this garden on this sunny afternoon speaks volumes about where you’ve been and where you’re going.  Perhaps.  But I’m willing to risk redundancy on the off chance that you, like me, could use some prodding.  So here it is…

I could tell you to vote – and you should.  I could tell you to write checks – and you should.  I could tell you to mentor and give time and be kind and show your pride.  But here’s what I really want to tell you.  Get yourself together.  Sort out your bullshit.  Undo the damage that was done to you and make sure no damage comes to those behind you.  Become the person you always wanted to be.  Share your astonishing self with the world, without hesitation, without apology, without retreating into shame or addiction or fear.  Take up the space that is meant for you on this planet, in this life – because in so doing, you invite everyone else to take up his or her own space.  And isn’t that what this is all about – this garden party, this amazing organization, this movement?  Isn’t that the whole fucking point?  We’re all entitled to be here, to live the lives we want, with the people we choose.  It’s that simple.  Believing anything else is a crime.

So thank you.  Thank you for this reminder.  Thank you for getting up every day and engaging with the world.  I’m pretty sure it was Emile Zola who said, “If you ask me what I came to do, I will tell you, ‘I came to live out loud.’”

Me, too, Emile.  Me, too.  Thank you.