The Quiet Violence of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

What Matthew Shepard and My Cousin Taught Me About Being Out and Proud

My cousin—he’s gone now—lived his whole life by an unspoken rule: don’t talk about being gay. Not to the family, anyway. In his house, Pride candles graced the center of the dining room table, a small reminder that behind closed doors, he could be himself. He had stories—stories about a gay bar he frequented so often they gave him a key to the back door. He shared those stories with anyone who would listen, even with family members who knew, or must have known, but pretended not to.

When he wasn’t around, the whispers would start. Is he gay? people would ask. Even the ones who knew for sure would nod along, as if they too were wondering. It was easier that way, to keep it unspoken, to keep him included.

YES! I would shout like the little boy exclaiming the emperor had no clothes. HE IS GAY! And yet the wondering continued. As though the ambiguity—the not-saying—was the thing that kept him tethered to us. The not-knowing was a feature of our family system, not a bug.

As an Autistic person, I naturally take things literally so I was confused about why the question kept being asked - for decades! Now I see, they weren’t really questioning his sexuality—the questioning was part of the code of silence I was being taught to follow. It was wrong for me to out him, of course, but it was also painful to participate in the lie. Looking back, I realize that this ongoing game of don't ask, don't tell made me fearful of what would happen when I came out. Would I lose my family's love and support. This is a big part of why I didn’t come out until October 11, 2019, when my cousin was in hospice.

I didn’t understand why he didn’t just come out. It felt obvious, so what was the harm in saying it? I asked him this on his death bed, and he insisted he had come out and everyone knew he was gay.

That was true in part, but on some level it was revisionist history. He let the mystery brew because, he knew that in our family, there were things we just didn’t say out loud. Things that, when left unspoken, allowed everyone to live in the spaces between knowing and not-knowing. There’s power in those spaces, though not the kind that liberates. Silence never protects the one who’s silenced.

A few months before he passed, he asked me to help him write a book about his life. After decades of living in that space between, he wanted to finally tell the truth. He texted me, all hours of the day and night, pouring out memories, snippets of stories, confessions he had kept inside for too long. And I turned those texts into chapters of the book he always wanted to write, but never could. He wanted to come out on his own terms, spin his life into a story where the secrecy was nothing more than a delay—waiting for the right person, the right moment but this time with certainty he would have been loved for the full truth of who he was.

As I worked on his book, I realized something that shook me: I’d been playing by the same rules. I’d absorbed them, learned them as a child, practiced them every time I participated in the is he or isn't he conversations, playing my truth-telling role perfectly.

Like him, I hadn’t met anyone who forced me to break the rules, so I kept quiet about my truth even though everyone knew. I was dating a woman at the time, and had that relationship worked out, I know I would have had to come out. But in a strange twist of fate, as COVID unfolded, I ended up back with my husband. And suddenly, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rule was available to me again.

But this time, I chose differently.

This time, for my cousin, I broke them.

The rules in our family are so deeply embedded, so heavily enforced, that even now—even now—five years after his death, after publishing a book about being gay, a book you could buy and read literally right now, I know that writing and sharing this story is still against those rules. But I do it in his honor. I do it because he didn't and it hurt. I do it because someone has to.

I’ve been exiled for it. But that doesn’t stop the family gossip. Only now, it’s not Is she gay or autistic? It’s why does she keep talking about being gay and autistic?

They know who I am. But I’m not allowed to talk about it. Not really. If I shut up, like my cousin, I am rewarded with love and acceptance.

My cousin thought he’d come out when he met someone worth sharing his life with because he knew, it was only with that kind of love that he could withstand that kind of loss. Me too, cuz.

So just to recap - in our family, it’s not wrong to be gay, it’s wrong to talk about being gay because that forces the homophobic people in the system to confront their bias which doesn’t feel good. It’s more convenient, or maybe the word is comfortable or pleasant, to those inside the system for the outliers to stay quiet.

I mentioned he had come out though and this is the real lesson of his life and the soul of his book. He fell in love at 19, completely, irreversibly, and couldn’t wait to tell his mom. He was terrified to tell his dad—rightly so—but his mom, he knew, would find a way to understand. He was so sure, she would never reject or turn away from the boy she loved so much.

It didn’t go well. His mom was between a rock and a hard place. Her son, or her husband. Still, my cousin knew she's come around. He called on Sundays and held onto hope that, eventually, his parents would come around. Meanwhile, he was caught up in the wild beauty of all encompassing summer love.

And then, to his shock, in a blink, and with almost no explanation, it was over. His relationship with the one and only love of his life ended, and when he moved back home, he moved back into the closet, shutting the door so firmly that he never opened it again—at least not until a few months before his death. He never made it to the end of the test of his mother's love. She got a pass never having to confront the truth of him being gay while he was really living.

My family probably wonders why I wouldn’t follow the unwritten rules my cousin did. I’m married to a man. I could easily mask my identity. I could play the game he played, and I could play it even better.

But the silence eats away at me. The pretending, the not-saying—it suffocates. It feels like a creeping fungus, covering me until I’m unrecognizable even to myself. It turns me into someone I don’t want to be. Someone I can’t be. For me, it’s not a question of why I break the rules; it’s a question of survival.

Masking being Autistic and masking my queerness go hand in hand for me. It's not like I could be partially unmasked about who I am. Surviving my Autistic burn out meant realizing I could no longer stay quiet and play the don’t ask, don’t tell game. My choices had narrowed. I could choose the full, messy, technicolor truth and live, or I could leave.

Don't ask, don't tell was no longer available. I mourned. I still mourn all I have lost from not playing the game. My cousins choices have an elegance to them.

If you haven’t had the truth of who you are shut down by those who claim to love you, it’s hard to understand the pain of this choice. It’s one of those two ways to lose, no way to win situations.

I know someone reading this might be in the same place, caught between silence and truth, wanting to share their own story but afraid of upsetting the fragile balance of family dynamics. Maybe they’re masking, pretending, staying small to keep the peace. I hope knowing that someone else has chosen to live fully, even at the cost of family, might give them a little more strength to keep going.

On his deathbed, my cousin talked almost incessantly about how much he loved his niece and nephew. How much he regretted not having a family of his own. He wondered why, after that summer when he was 19, he never fell in love again. I think I know. I think he never feel in love again because he was never fully himself again. The fungus of masking his truth turned him into a version of himself that was incapable of truly being seen in a way that is required for love.

I think about the regrets I’ll have on my deathbed, and all of them stem from living a life of pretending in order to make others comfortable. I want to be surrounded by people who know me, not the version of me that fits comfortably into family gatherings. But not everyone has that choice. Some can’t come out—not because of fear of judgment, but because of real, physical danger. They could lose their kids, their homes, their jobs.

But what my cousin feared losing was the delicate relationship he had with his mom, and really our whole family. There was always a bigger reason not to come out than to live his full truth.

When you come out—whether as queer or neurodivergent or whatever marginalized identity that you could choose to hide—you start seeing people more clearly. The ones who say they love and support you, but then stand by as the world tries to erase you. You see how hard it is to sit at the table when you’re the punchline of the joke, or the target of the policy. It’s not politics. It’s personal.

He was spared all of that.

What strength it must have taken for him to stay silent, to play along, to keep those in power satisfied.

It’s a strength I reject because it comes with the poison of self-hate. And that’s a poison I won’t pass down to the next generation.

Matthew Shepard was murdered 26 years ago in one night of unimaginable violence. But my cousin died slowly, over 40 years, one day at a time. Both are acts of violence against Gay people, but one is a violence we participate in against ourselves — because the alternative feels unbearable.

I know I'll never win my family over. I know I’ll always be the subject of whispered conversations, probably about this post too. Why not? It’s easier than introspection or the hard work of growth. But at least I know this: I’ve got my own back and I am surrounded by friends and family who have my back too. That’s what I wish my cousin had, and it’s my wish for future generations who want to pick up the keys to their prison cells and let themselves free.