Uncrossing The Wires
Jun. 22nd, 2014 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947Somehow the wires uncrossed, my tables were turned.
Never knew I had such a lesson to learn.
I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes.
Know where I’m going, and I know what to do.
I tied it up, my point of view:
I got a new attitude!
(New Attitude: Patti LaBelle – 1985)
The idea for this essay grew, as so many of my ideas do, from a conversation Kathy and I had while traveling in the car and listening to an NPR radio story. The report featured an interview with a law school president who had written a book on the one sentence that constitutes the basis of the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms. It was the author’s premise that our view of the Second Amendment had evolved, and that it has always been the subject of fighting and political debate. The framers of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers interpreted it one way, post-Civil War politicians another way, and the settlers of the West still another way. In other words, the author said, “The right to keep and bear arms, from the beginning, was something that was not an absolute right. It was based on public need and public safety, as well as individual freedom.” He ended by citing Abraham Lincoln as having said that “with public sentiment, everything is possible. Without public sentiment, nothing is possible. Moving public sentiment, in some ways, is more powerful than being a judge or legislator, because you create the context for what judges and legislators can do.” It was at that point of the story when Kathy made a comment that shifted our attention away from the Second Amendment.
Kathy agreed with the concept that public sentiment often guided public policy and laws. She saw this clearly in today’s American society where equality and civil rights are finally being guaranteed to gay, as well as heterosexual, citizens. She would never have believed such a sudden shift in attitudes was possible in so short a time; and she ascribed the influence of young Americans as pivotal. I countered by suggesting that the power of the younger generation had also been manifested during our own youth. Although the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 declared “de jure”, or legal segregation unconstitutional, “de facto” separation of the races, on the other hand, was still practiced in the United States of the 1960’s. It was not until the nonviolent demonstrations of the Civil Rights Movement that the inherent racism and injustice of segregation were finally exposed. Soon public attitude began changing and new laws, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were passed.
Until that point, our discussion had been pretty theoretical – but then Kathy made it personal. She said that in the 50’s and 60’s many Americans accepted de jure and de facto segregation because racial and ethnic differences were visible and obvious. Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, and Filipinos looked different, spoke different languages, and practiced different customs. She understood how Americans could fool themselves into believing in these inherent differences if they never had contact with them, but what happened when those people became co-workers, church members, fellow students, or friends? How were they different then? What she found totally incomprehensible was the intolerance toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
“If your son or daughter tells you that they’re gay or lesbian,” she asked, rhetorically, “do they suddenly become different? Do you stop treating them as your son or daughter? I don’t understand how people can believe that their friends, relatives, and children don’t deserve the same rights, benefits, and privileges of all Americans, simply because they are gay?”
I was struck by Kathy’s questions. They obviously hit a nerve, because the more I tried responding, the more befuddled and confused my thinking became.
“Tony,” Kathy interrupted with a smiling prediction, “I feel a blog coming!”
I like to believe that I was always tolerant and accepting of LGBT men and women, and that I recognized their plight for civil rights and equal protection all along – but that wouldn’t be true. My feelings, attitudes, and beliefs on the gay issues of the new century have changed, grown, and evolved over time, and my gay friends, my gay relatives, and my children have clearly influenced them.
In 2010, when my nephew Billy invited a group of his aunts, uncles, and cousins to dinner at a Manhattan Beach restaurant during one of his regular visits to Los Angeles, I thought it was just one more of his many thoughtful and considerate actions. Despite having attended John Hopkins University in Baltimore, living in Washington D.C., and joining the Army after 9/11, Billy had always kept in contact with his relatives in Los Angeles and Southern California, especially with his cousins. But when Kathy and I questioned our ability to attend the dinner on a Friday night, our daughter Prisa intervened. She stressed that it was vitally important that we go because Billy had something very important to announce. The fact that Kathy was his mother’s sister, and we were both his Godparents, made our presence essential. Then to add further mystery to the occasion, Prisa insisted that we be open and accepting to anything Billy had to tell us. At the time, I thought it was a curious request, and it made me determined to attend.
When Billy told us his story of sexual awakening and of his love for Jeff, his partner, nothing changed – but me. Billy was still Billy, the boy we watched grow up, and the man we knew, loved, and cherished. If anything, he made me aware of the terrible burden of keeping secrets, while knowing that society, churches, and the government were judging him as a mental aberration or as sinful. Our subsequent conversation gave me the opportunity to finally ask questions that Billy was eager and anxious to answer. You see, up until that night I had always dealt with homosexuality as an abstract concept that was never mentioned or discussed. Long before the Clinton Administration coined the phrase and the practice of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell”, homosexuality was “the Love that dare not speak its name”. That was the way “enlightened” men and women dealt with it, especially those in the educational fields, and so I never brought it up. I pretended it didn’t exist, even though I had friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that I “knew” were gay. We never talked about it. Yet Billy was not the first person to honestly admit to me that he was gay. That distinction goes to my long-ago friend Wayne, who stunned me and two other friends with that revelation in 1970.
Wayne was my crossroads friend in high school and college. Before meeting Wayne, friendships were seasonal. The “best friends” I made in 8th grade were different from my best friends in each successive grade. That changed with Wayne. He became a soul mate who refined friendship into an honest and expanding relationship. Wayne and I first met in our sophomore year as political outcasts on the school’s running track, running punitive laps for supporting Barry Goldwater. We were the only students foolish enough to raise our hands when asked who was voting for the conservative Republican candidate for president in 1963? Our youthful libertarianism and self-inflated intellects united us, and we maintained a casual acquaintance until our senior year. That year Wayne asked me to join him as editor of the school newspaper, The Viking. The time we spent writing, editing, and publishing the school newspaper in the Viking Office was the beginning of a six-year collaboration.
That year, our fellowship grew to include two additional classmates, Jim and Greg, and eventually Jim’s younger brother, John. It was a fellowship forged at a crucial time. All four of us were leaving high school and we were scared and uncertain. Wayne, however, seemed more self-assured, with a clearer sense of direction. Wayne was the pathfinder of the group, with a plan for college and life. He would go to Loyola University, live away from home, and join a fraternity. We, on the other hand, struggled to get by. I lived at home and went to UCLA, Jim and Greg attended Santa Monica College, and John joined the Army. Wayne was also the troubadour who ignited our wanderlust for freedom and adventure by convincing us that as young, independent college men, all we needed was a map, a Volkswagen bus, and sleeping bags. During our college years we traveled through central California, exploring Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Big Sur and Monterey. Independence was a necessity for Wayne. After one year in the dorms, he and a frat brother moved into an apartment near school, but he eventually settled in a bachelor pad in Hermosa Beach in his junior year. He had girl friends in high school and dated often, but he became mysterious about his emotional involvements in college. He finally admitted to living with a girl for a short time, but I never met her. Ultimately, John (who had returned from two tours in Vietnam) took over the single flat, and Wayne, Jim, and Greg all moved into a nearby apartment on Monterey Boulevard.
A migration of sorts occurred after Wayne and I graduated from college in 1970. John and Greg moved to Long Beach, Jim to Cerritos, and Wayne to Venice. We occasionally got together for card games and trips, but I felt that a major realignment in grouping and affections was taking place. Wayne never joined us for Saturday morning games of football, basketball, and baseball, and it became harder and harder to schedule and include him in other activities. We could not account for his growing indifference to “hanging out”. We decided that he must have gotten involved with drugs, and the three of us organized an intervention to confront him. Throughout dinner that night he listened patiently to our observations, and smiled silently at our conclusions. When we finished our testimony he told us not to worry, because he was not addicted to anything. In fact, he announced, he was free of the sexual repressions that had plagued him. He told us that he was gay. I pretended to take this revelation in stride, but I was secretly shocked and dismayed. I didn’t know what “being gay” meant, and I didn’t feel capable of discussing it with Wayne, or my friends. I did mention it to my father; but he turned my question around and asked what could I do about it? I wanted to believe that Wayne was on another temporary trailblazing course. Just as he was the first to leave home and live alone, travel around the state, and co-habit with a girl, I saw homosexuality as another “first”. Being gay carried an avant-garde mystique; it was hip, cool, “in”- and Wayne was always trying to be all three. Ultimately, I did nothing. In the months that followed our needless intervention, the separation from Wayne grew wider. I enlisted in the Air Force, Greg moved to Riverside to finish college, and Jim and John left school to work full time for a burglar alarm company. We lost track of Wayne until Greg rediscovered him in the spring of 1975 operating an antique shop on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California.
Our reaction to finding Wayne was like recovering the Prodigal Son, we rejoiced and celebrated. He looked strong, healthy and tanned. He had been living in San Francisco but decided it was time for him and his partner to come home. He seemed especially eager to learn what we had been doing. Greg was teaching at a Catholic elementary school, and John was a paramedic for the Los Angeles Fire Department. Jim had stayed at the burglar alarm company and was now a supervisor and I had finished my graduate work at UCLA and was getting married in August. Wayne took the initiative in arranging a reunion dinner at his home behind the store. There we met his partner Kevin, a slim, sandy-haired young man who seemed smart, practical, and very handy at plumbing and construction. I believed that I had come to terms with Wayne’s homosexuality and was accepting of Kevin. The moment of truth came when Kathy and I were addressing wedding invitations and she asked me, “Should I write ‘Wayne and guest’; or just Wayne on the envelope?”
“Are you kidding” I exclaimed indignantly. “Why should we invite Kevin to our wedding? He’s Wayne’s friend not mine.”
Kathy looked at me oddly and remarked, “You don’t think it’s strange that all your high school friends are in the wedding party, but you’re not inviting Wayne’s partner?”
“No” I lied. In those early days, I was still immune to my wife’s reasoning and intuition. Her question annoyed me exactly because I did not want to consider that I was wrong.
“Alright” Kathy said in resignation, “he’s your friend, so it’s your decision; but it’s wrong”.
Wayne did not attend our wedding, and soon after his antique shop had a new name and owner. I never saw him again.
I always regretted my actions toward Wayne and his partner Kevin, and I blamed myself for his alienation from us. John and Greg have chided me on this point, insisting that Wayne also made a choice in cutting off relations with his long time friends. I know they’re right, but it still hurts. By the time Billy “came out” to us at dinner that night, I had traveled a long road with homosexuality. My education, which began with a high school friend I loved and lost because of my intolerance, culminated with a nephew who loved and trusted us enough to reveal the truth about himself. In coming out, Billy was not just revealing his own sexuality, he was also presenting his partner Jeff. This was the last push I needed. His revelations brought me full circle on the issue, forcing me to admit my past mistakes, and converted me into a supporter of LGBT civil rights. It took me 40 years.
Never knew I had such a lesson to learn.
I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes.
Know where I’m going, and I know what to do.
I tied it up, my point of view:
I got a new attitude!
(New Attitude: Patti LaBelle – 1985)
The idea for this essay grew, as so many of my ideas do, from a conversation Kathy and I had while traveling in the car and listening to an NPR radio story. The report featured an interview with a law school president who had written a book on the one sentence that constitutes the basis of the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms. It was the author’s premise that our view of the Second Amendment had evolved, and that it has always been the subject of fighting and political debate. The framers of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers interpreted it one way, post-Civil War politicians another way, and the settlers of the West still another way. In other words, the author said, “The right to keep and bear arms, from the beginning, was something that was not an absolute right. It was based on public need and public safety, as well as individual freedom.” He ended by citing Abraham Lincoln as having said that “with public sentiment, everything is possible. Without public sentiment, nothing is possible. Moving public sentiment, in some ways, is more powerful than being a judge or legislator, because you create the context for what judges and legislators can do.” It was at that point of the story when Kathy made a comment that shifted our attention away from the Second Amendment.
Kathy agreed with the concept that public sentiment often guided public policy and laws. She saw this clearly in today’s American society where equality and civil rights are finally being guaranteed to gay, as well as heterosexual, citizens. She would never have believed such a sudden shift in attitudes was possible in so short a time; and she ascribed the influence of young Americans as pivotal. I countered by suggesting that the power of the younger generation had also been manifested during our own youth. Although the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 declared “de jure”, or legal segregation unconstitutional, “de facto” separation of the races, on the other hand, was still practiced in the United States of the 1960’s. It was not until the nonviolent demonstrations of the Civil Rights Movement that the inherent racism and injustice of segregation were finally exposed. Soon public attitude began changing and new laws, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were passed.
Until that point, our discussion had been pretty theoretical – but then Kathy made it personal. She said that in the 50’s and 60’s many Americans accepted de jure and de facto segregation because racial and ethnic differences were visible and obvious. Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, and Filipinos looked different, spoke different languages, and practiced different customs. She understood how Americans could fool themselves into believing in these inherent differences if they never had contact with them, but what happened when those people became co-workers, church members, fellow students, or friends? How were they different then? What she found totally incomprehensible was the intolerance toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
“If your son or daughter tells you that they’re gay or lesbian,” she asked, rhetorically, “do they suddenly become different? Do you stop treating them as your son or daughter? I don’t understand how people can believe that their friends, relatives, and children don’t deserve the same rights, benefits, and privileges of all Americans, simply because they are gay?”
I was struck by Kathy’s questions. They obviously hit a nerve, because the more I tried responding, the more befuddled and confused my thinking became.
“Tony,” Kathy interrupted with a smiling prediction, “I feel a blog coming!”
I like to believe that I was always tolerant and accepting of LGBT men and women, and that I recognized their plight for civil rights and equal protection all along – but that wouldn’t be true. My feelings, attitudes, and beliefs on the gay issues of the new century have changed, grown, and evolved over time, and my gay friends, my gay relatives, and my children have clearly influenced them.
In 2010, when my nephew Billy invited a group of his aunts, uncles, and cousins to dinner at a Manhattan Beach restaurant during one of his regular visits to Los Angeles, I thought it was just one more of his many thoughtful and considerate actions. Despite having attended John Hopkins University in Baltimore, living in Washington D.C., and joining the Army after 9/11, Billy had always kept in contact with his relatives in Los Angeles and Southern California, especially with his cousins. But when Kathy and I questioned our ability to attend the dinner on a Friday night, our daughter Prisa intervened. She stressed that it was vitally important that we go because Billy had something very important to announce. The fact that Kathy was his mother’s sister, and we were both his Godparents, made our presence essential. Then to add further mystery to the occasion, Prisa insisted that we be open and accepting to anything Billy had to tell us. At the time, I thought it was a curious request, and it made me determined to attend.
When Billy told us his story of sexual awakening and of his love for Jeff, his partner, nothing changed – but me. Billy was still Billy, the boy we watched grow up, and the man we knew, loved, and cherished. If anything, he made me aware of the terrible burden of keeping secrets, while knowing that society, churches, and the government were judging him as a mental aberration or as sinful. Our subsequent conversation gave me the opportunity to finally ask questions that Billy was eager and anxious to answer. You see, up until that night I had always dealt with homosexuality as an abstract concept that was never mentioned or discussed. Long before the Clinton Administration coined the phrase and the practice of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell”, homosexuality was “the Love that dare not speak its name”. That was the way “enlightened” men and women dealt with it, especially those in the educational fields, and so I never brought it up. I pretended it didn’t exist, even though I had friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that I “knew” were gay. We never talked about it. Yet Billy was not the first person to honestly admit to me that he was gay. That distinction goes to my long-ago friend Wayne, who stunned me and two other friends with that revelation in 1970.
Wayne was my crossroads friend in high school and college. Before meeting Wayne, friendships were seasonal. The “best friends” I made in 8th grade were different from my best friends in each successive grade. That changed with Wayne. He became a soul mate who refined friendship into an honest and expanding relationship. Wayne and I first met in our sophomore year as political outcasts on the school’s running track, running punitive laps for supporting Barry Goldwater. We were the only students foolish enough to raise our hands when asked who was voting for the conservative Republican candidate for president in 1963? Our youthful libertarianism and self-inflated intellects united us, and we maintained a casual acquaintance until our senior year. That year Wayne asked me to join him as editor of the school newspaper, The Viking. The time we spent writing, editing, and publishing the school newspaper in the Viking Office was the beginning of a six-year collaboration.
That year, our fellowship grew to include two additional classmates, Jim and Greg, and eventually Jim’s younger brother, John. It was a fellowship forged at a crucial time. All four of us were leaving high school and we were scared and uncertain. Wayne, however, seemed more self-assured, with a clearer sense of direction. Wayne was the pathfinder of the group, with a plan for college and life. He would go to Loyola University, live away from home, and join a fraternity. We, on the other hand, struggled to get by. I lived at home and went to UCLA, Jim and Greg attended Santa Monica College, and John joined the Army. Wayne was also the troubadour who ignited our wanderlust for freedom and adventure by convincing us that as young, independent college men, all we needed was a map, a Volkswagen bus, and sleeping bags. During our college years we traveled through central California, exploring Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Big Sur and Monterey. Independence was a necessity for Wayne. After one year in the dorms, he and a frat brother moved into an apartment near school, but he eventually settled in a bachelor pad in Hermosa Beach in his junior year. He had girl friends in high school and dated often, but he became mysterious about his emotional involvements in college. He finally admitted to living with a girl for a short time, but I never met her. Ultimately, John (who had returned from two tours in Vietnam) took over the single flat, and Wayne, Jim, and Greg all moved into a nearby apartment on Monterey Boulevard.
A migration of sorts occurred after Wayne and I graduated from college in 1970. John and Greg moved to Long Beach, Jim to Cerritos, and Wayne to Venice. We occasionally got together for card games and trips, but I felt that a major realignment in grouping and affections was taking place. Wayne never joined us for Saturday morning games of football, basketball, and baseball, and it became harder and harder to schedule and include him in other activities. We could not account for his growing indifference to “hanging out”. We decided that he must have gotten involved with drugs, and the three of us organized an intervention to confront him. Throughout dinner that night he listened patiently to our observations, and smiled silently at our conclusions. When we finished our testimony he told us not to worry, because he was not addicted to anything. In fact, he announced, he was free of the sexual repressions that had plagued him. He told us that he was gay. I pretended to take this revelation in stride, but I was secretly shocked and dismayed. I didn’t know what “being gay” meant, and I didn’t feel capable of discussing it with Wayne, or my friends. I did mention it to my father; but he turned my question around and asked what could I do about it? I wanted to believe that Wayne was on another temporary trailblazing course. Just as he was the first to leave home and live alone, travel around the state, and co-habit with a girl, I saw homosexuality as another “first”. Being gay carried an avant-garde mystique; it was hip, cool, “in”- and Wayne was always trying to be all three. Ultimately, I did nothing. In the months that followed our needless intervention, the separation from Wayne grew wider. I enlisted in the Air Force, Greg moved to Riverside to finish college, and Jim and John left school to work full time for a burglar alarm company. We lost track of Wayne until Greg rediscovered him in the spring of 1975 operating an antique shop on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California.
Our reaction to finding Wayne was like recovering the Prodigal Son, we rejoiced and celebrated. He looked strong, healthy and tanned. He had been living in San Francisco but decided it was time for him and his partner to come home. He seemed especially eager to learn what we had been doing. Greg was teaching at a Catholic elementary school, and John was a paramedic for the Los Angeles Fire Department. Jim had stayed at the burglar alarm company and was now a supervisor and I had finished my graduate work at UCLA and was getting married in August. Wayne took the initiative in arranging a reunion dinner at his home behind the store. There we met his partner Kevin, a slim, sandy-haired young man who seemed smart, practical, and very handy at plumbing and construction. I believed that I had come to terms with Wayne’s homosexuality and was accepting of Kevin. The moment of truth came when Kathy and I were addressing wedding invitations and she asked me, “Should I write ‘Wayne and guest’; or just Wayne on the envelope?”
“Are you kidding” I exclaimed indignantly. “Why should we invite Kevin to our wedding? He’s Wayne’s friend not mine.”
Kathy looked at me oddly and remarked, “You don’t think it’s strange that all your high school friends are in the wedding party, but you’re not inviting Wayne’s partner?”
“No” I lied. In those early days, I was still immune to my wife’s reasoning and intuition. Her question annoyed me exactly because I did not want to consider that I was wrong.
“Alright” Kathy said in resignation, “he’s your friend, so it’s your decision; but it’s wrong”.
Wayne did not attend our wedding, and soon after his antique shop had a new name and owner. I never saw him again.
I always regretted my actions toward Wayne and his partner Kevin, and I blamed myself for his alienation from us. John and Greg have chided me on this point, insisting that Wayne also made a choice in cutting off relations with his long time friends. I know they’re right, but it still hurts. By the time Billy “came out” to us at dinner that night, I had traveled a long road with homosexuality. My education, which began with a high school friend I loved and lost because of my intolerance, culminated with a nephew who loved and trusted us enough to reveal the truth about himself. In coming out, Billy was not just revealing his own sexuality, he was also presenting his partner Jeff. This was the last push I needed. His revelations brought me full circle on the issue, forcing me to admit my past mistakes, and converted me into a supporter of LGBT civil rights. It took me 40 years.
