A Note to Tony

This entry is in response to a comment left by Tony.

Tony,

I do very much feel a lot of the time that I’m living in a dream world, if you can call it that. It’s very difficult for me... actually, it’s really impossible for me to understand the animosity that society has for us. I thought at one time that we were making progress, before marriage became something that I thought was in our grasp.

You see, I always accepted that I was going to be second class. I never asked to be equal to anyone else. It wasn’t by choice. It was something that I assumed came with the territory of being gay. I never once thought that I would live long enough to be equal to heterosexuals.

So, years ago when I was called a “faggot”, I actually thought that I was a faggot. That’s how I felt. I felt that it was my lot in life to be that - a faggot. When one of us was beaten up, and others of us would take care of those who had been beaten. I accepted that.

Then, Harvey Milk, the first gay supervisor of San Francisco, was assassinated along with then Mayor George Moscone, in 1978. The person who killed Harvey and George was supervisor Dan White. For this, Dan White received seven (7) years in prison. Seven years for killing two men in cold blood! There was talk at the time that he was given such a light sentence because one of the victims was gay. I don’t if that’s true or if the justice system simply failed. What resulted from that was what was called the White Night Riots, where many gays rioted upon City Hall. I was angry and wanted to do something, but I didn’t. I thought, well, this is what we get.

Then, my friends started dieing of AIDS. And astonishingly, no one cared. NO ONE CARED. We made, my community, made a support system for people with AIDS. We did it for them, so they would feel that someone cared. And, as more and more of my brothers died, I became withdrawn, depressed, and at some point, didn’t really give a damn what happened to me. It was the lowest point in my life.

At that point, we left San Francisco and moved to Connecticut. Two weeks after arriving in Connecticut, I received a phone call informing me that one of my best friends, Stan, had passed on from AIDS. I remember thinking through all the love I had for him, “Well, at least it’s over for him.”

We were trying to start our lives over again. I kept things low key. That means, I tried to pass for straight in an effort to find a job. I did find a job, but suffered some pretty severe harassment. It was the only job that I quit without giving warning. I just stopped going to work one day.

Between that job and the one I hold today, I volunteered for the AIDS project in Hartford. I was a “buddy” in the buddy support group. That meant, I cared for people with AIDS – all gay men. Then, we started seeing heterosexual IV drug users coming to us for support. Our first reaction was to turn them away. We built our support systems to take care of our kind, and we did it without the help of anyone else in society because THEY DIDN’T CARE. But then I thought, we can’t turn them away. They have no one but us. It occurred to me at the time that the measure of a person is the strength of his compassion at the time when everything inside is telling him to seek revenge. We did help those people because it was the right thing to do. They are just like us – all of us – they are just people. It would have been easy to lash out at them and do nothing. But I believe that love and compassion must win the day, even to the point that it would mean my demise; I WILL NOT HATE.

And, I always hope that people will some day choose to be compassionate to those viewed to be the least in society. I always come back to what Jesus said: "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." Is that not the essence of compassion and love?

Over time we eventually got a civil rights bill passed in Connecticut. That was the first time that I felt that we might be treated equally. Then, the concept that we could enjoy the same benefits as heterosexual couples came along. It gave me new hope that maybe I could have it all. Maybe I didn’t have to struggle so hard to make everything in our lives as good as it could be. Maybe we could actually be married and be equal.

Then, it started happening. The incredible backlash against us. The hatred. How dare we ask for marriage? I’m weary and I’m so tired of trying to achieve this. I tell myself to be strong, and I write about it day after day, even though it brings me down because I honestly don’t think we will ever be equal. So, I write.

Why do I write all of this? Because someday I will be gone. My life will be over. I want the young wonderful gay people who come after us to know the struggle – our struggle - our history. I want them to know what it was like and how we were made to feel and what we went through. I hope that some of this survives me – this chronicle of my life with Kent – a gay couple who just wanted to be equal.