High Fidelity: Change for no one

“OMG! Miguel has made his relationship status Facebook official?!”

No one wants to admit that they put stock behind being “Facebook official,” but let’s face it: What we post on social media is a record of our lives. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m one of the main offenders of living my life out on social media. I may be narcissistic, but it’s nice to look back and see the happy moments, even the mistakes, of yesteryear. That’s why it’s such a shame when sometimes we have to hide life changing moments in our lives.

Sometimes as gay people, we don’t have that luxury. We can’t always recount the nights out with the boys, or the gay brunch at Hamburger Mary’s because someone might show a boss that might not know that you are gay. What a shame.

I have changed names and locations to protect the innocent (once again – what a shame that I have to do that). I know a best friend’s cousin’s brother’s mother’s auntie’s uncle who was recently in a crappy situation at work. Let’s call him Mr. Prince.

Mr. Prince was called into his boss’ office. Another employee went behind his back and snitched on Mr. Prince about his new Facebook profile picture. Because of the nature of his job, Mr. Prince has done his due diligence and has his Facebook profile on lockdown. You can only see profile and cover photos. Much to his delight, Mr. Prince has met an equally good-looking man off of Tinder. Things are getting serious. So serious that Mr. Prince changed his profile picture to a perfectly good-looking black and white photo of him and his new guy.

Sitting in the boss’ corner office, wondering why he was summoned, Mr. Prince starts to think over everything he’s done recently with his job. Has he dropped the ball on a big project? Did he accidently steal Martha’s protein shake out of the community fridge? Sitting in his lush chair, the boss innocently looks at Mr. Prince and says, “An employee found this as your profile picture. I have no problem with this,” as the boss pulls out their phone and shows Mr. Prince’s Facebook profile photo to him, “but just know that if I can find your Facebook, everyone else can. Is this what you want our clients to see?’

And just like that, Mr. Prince realizes that he can’t live his life openly and honestly like everyone else at work. Martha posts pictures of her cross-fit workouts, but Mr. Prince can’t post anything about the new love of his life. This is a reality so many of us have had to live through. You can be gay, you just can’t let us know about it.

Have we not moved past comments like that? We have marriage equality for all. You can be open in the military. You can put a ring on it if you are gay. Yet we have to change our Facebook profiles to make other people more comfortable? Now, I’m not advocating you lose your job over social media. You still need to feed your new pet lizard! BUT, we must begin to make other people understand that their discomfort over our lives will not be tolerated.

After chatting with Mr. Prince about his situation at work, it was brought to my attention that he had other co-workers who showcased their spouses in profile pictures. Can we start to see the double standard here? You should be able to post that cute picture of you and your boo-thang without judgment.

Please know that I’m not sitting on a high throne of being the most open gay person in the world. I am very fortunate to work in a business where my differences are celebrated. I haven’t had to stifle who I am. But it wasn’t always easy. As a radio personality, my goal is to bring in listeners and, in return, give our advertisers ears to hear their message. If I don’t do that, I don’t make a living. I have been in situations where businesses have decided not to air on the radio station I was on. The station was pushing the scary “gay agenda” by having me talk about Kim Kardashian. Thankfully, I’ve worked for companies that looked at the bigger picture and realized that there are more advertisers that embrace diversity and want to be attached to the message than the small minded ones that want to run away from the future.

So with all of this, what would you tell Mr. Prince to do? Change his Facebook profile picture to his favorite inspirational quote to appease work or keep the picture to reflect his life with his great new boyfriend?  My advice: Be brave. Be a trailblazer. Let’s be the change.