Reflections

I was reflecting this morning on the current state of affairs. I think it's important to reflect back once in awhile. It gives you perspective on how life has changed over time. It's easy to miss that.

Today, we are trying to gain equal marriage rights for our relationships. We are in the heat of the battle. Yet, just a mere thirty years ago, if you were a gay teacher, you wouldn't keep your job long.

It was still fashionable for the police to raid gay bars just for the hell of it, I suppose to keep us in our place. Our place, at that time, was to keep our heads low and out of site. It's hard for us to imagine that today, even though many of us lived through it.

Everything evolves. I mean, EVERYTHING. There was a time that if you mentioned "gay marriage rights" to the gay movement, they would have dismissed it because marriage was of the "straight establishment". It took us a long time to realize that just because two people are together and want to share their lives together isn't a "straight" thing any more than it is a "gay" thing. It is the nature of people, perhaps most living things, to desire companionship.

It is with a great deal of irony that we are met with such great resistance from the straight world on gay marriage. During the years of police raids and gay bashings, so many said that we were different because we had no desire (or, "ability", as they put it), to form lasting relationships. Now, that we are proving them wrong, they have no idea what to do with that. That is the struggle we see today.

I was thinking how much I've changed over the last twenty or so years. When Harvey Milk was on the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, Kent and I lived just south of San Francisco, in the city of San Mateo. I was scared to death that people would find out that I was gay. I was sure that if people at work found out, I would be fired. I was sure that if my family found out, I would be disowned. I was sure that if society knew, I would be beaten up or killed.

Just across the street from us was a little market. In those days, there was a gay newspaper that gave monthly news of what was happening in the gay movement. Then, The Advocate was not the sleek glossy publication that is sent to you in the mail today. It was only available in news stands here and there. You had to know where to go to get it. As it turns out, the market across the street from where we lived had it.

The news stand was frequently the target of vandalism. I wanted to read what was going on in the gay movement, but was so scared to go over and publicly get a paper. I would actually wake up in the middle of the night, put my clothes on, and at 3:00 in the morning, would quickly go across the street, make sure no one was around, put my quarters into the news stand, grab an Advocate, and run back home, being ever watchful to make sure there were no bashers about. Once back inside my apartment, I would read the paper cover to cover.

This is the kind of fear that I lived with in 1978 - not so long ago. A lot has changed since then. You ask yourself, "how have I changed?". It's not something you think about consciously, but at times, things will happen in one's life to remind you that you have come a long way. One such thing happened to me a couple of years ago.

A former president of the company I now work for was known to be very bigoted against gay people. There were rumors of an employee who was thought to be gay. At the time I had just started working for the company. I was very insecure myself. Eventually, the president did more inquiry about the young man in question and found out that he "didn't like girls". He was fired a week later. At that time, there was no law in Connecticut making that illegal. The young man's parents found out and he relocated out of state.

Once the man was gone, it was open season on the "fag jokes" at the company. I was trying to do my job while all around me, people were making gay jokes. It hurt. It hurt a lot. These were people I would have lunch with and who I thought were friends. It made me feel more worthless. I remember Harvey Milk saying that "you have to give people HOPE because without hope, there's no reason to get out of bed in the morning". Shortly after that, Harvey was assassinated. When I heard the news, I remember thinking what Harvey had said: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

That was the beginning of my coming out. Eventually, I locked horns with the same person at work who fired the other gay man. Only, I was armed with words and knowledge, and... determination. If I was to be fired, I was not going to make it that easy for him. I came out in a very public way. We had a huge fight in front of many people, and a lot of things came out, exposing his bigotry. Of course, at the time, no one really cared if he was bigoted or not. But I got my say in. And, to my astonishment, I didn't get fired.

Years later, after he was relocated to another office, I had the opportunity of hiring this man's son as a summer intern. I didn't want to do it, mostly out of old anger. But then, I decided to let the anger go. What had his son ever done to me?

Within a day of his son working for me, his son waited until we are alone and said to me, "My Dad gave me the low down on you. I know everything about you." I said, "ok, I'll bite. What do you know about me?" He said, "Dude, YOUR GAY! My dad told me all about it." I said, "And your point is????"

The kid was shocked and at a total loss for words. I did not waiver one bit. I wasn't shocked. I wasn't scared. And I realized that that scared young man who scurried across the parking lot at 3:00 in the morning so long ago, was gone. I was different. And it was good!