Teleological Thoughts
(Ding Dong, DOMA's Dead) |
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Every time
I go to the Gay Center in NYC, as an old man, I
look up at the two story Rainbow flag fluttering
in the wind from high up on the red brick
building. And I always think back to 1964
when I was 15 and discovering that I was gay,
when there was no gay center. There was
almost nothing, no role model, no guidance of
any kind. And I think, now here is this
place to call home, full of gay folk of all ages
from morning till late at night. There's a
safe space inside just for teens to go where
they can figure out who they are and be who they
are. There are gay seniors meetings, and
twenty somethings, and folks in their forties,
and groups for people 'into' everything you can
think of including my group of gay veterans. None of that was there when I
came out. It just brings a tear to my eye
every time I look up at that flag flying
peacefully just as if it had always been there.
We've
actually come a long way. When I was born
in the mid 1940s, the middle aged adults then
were busy contemplating a world without war for
the first time in years. Homosexuality was
not in their vocabulary or minds. My
parents had fled Europe for their lives and were
living in a new land with a new language, here,
wondering what America would be like without
Roosevelt. We postwar children were
expected to grow up to become doctors and
lawyers, parents and grandparents; carrying on
with what the world war had disrupted.
Neither they nor I would have been able to
comprehend, back then, that I'd grow up to
become a gay warrior.
Still, maybe without a
word for it, my mother knew by 1954 what I was when I was
eight years old. That was when I came home
one day from elementary school and innocently
told her about "this boy" who was a
Mexican Aztec exchange student with glowing
copper skin. I said, "He's so beautiful,
can he be my brother?" I didn't have a
clue what I was nor what I was saying. But
mom, in her wisdom, got the whole picture;
perhaps sighing and pursing her lips.
She never said a word, she waited over a decade;
and when I came to visit her as an adult in my
early twenties, she finally asked me if I was
gay. Mortified, I
gulped and said, "yes." And dear mom,
bless her, said casually, "ah, I thought so."
She certainly had more patience than I did when
I began battling for our rights. A few
years later, when I introduced her to my
handsome Filipino lover, she wasn't in the least
surprised. She knew what I liked ever
since I was eight years old.
In 1948, few Americans
could have imagined that a Black-American,
General Colin Powell, would become Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the late 1980s. Nor
could the young men of our Greatest Generation,
returning home from WWII, have imagined that a
Japanese-American, General Eric Shinseki, would
now be Secretary of Veterans Affairs,
responsible for their well being in their old
age. Very few Americans back then, aside
from President Harry Truman, had the vision to
imagine that a Black-American, Barack Obama, would become
our President. In the 1940s, no one could
have even conceived of the idea that we'd have
Gay and Lesbian Admirals and Generals now,
active and retired. My dear old dad, born
at the turn of the previous century, would not
have been able to comprehend that his skinny
nerdy little bilingual boy would grow up to serve his
country for ten years, leaving as a Sgt First
Class in the US Army Reserve, and grow old as a
chubby gay veteran activist editing Gay Military
Signal.
In between, we came a very
long way. When I was 11, in the late
1950s and early 60s, Frank Kameny - a gay WWII veteran- was
already beginning the battle for our rights
along with Barbara Gittings. US Navy LT
Harvey Milk, born in 1925, was already a veteran
of the Korean War era. It would be decades
before I got to meet some of these people along
with Leonard Matlovich who became a dear friend.
My first remote connection to any of all that
was in 1964 when I was fifteen and just
realizing that I was gay. I went to seek
some counseling from the NY Mattachine Society
whose dingy offices were five floors above
Herald Square. There was no Internet for
me to find out about any of that. I read
about it in a paperback book. When I got
there, they assigned me to a 26-year old youth
counselor named Craig Rodwell. It was
decades later that I read in a gay history book
that at that time Rodwell's lover was a Wall
Street stockbroker named Harvey Milk. That
same year, Rodwell participated in the first
protest against the ban on homosexuals in our
armed forces. A
few years later, in 1969, Rodwell became one of
the leaders of the Stonewall Revolt. It
would be nearly a decade after that, when I
stood at the corner of Castro and 18th in San
Francisco having an hours-long chat with Milk,
and a year or two later with Matlovich.
In those days, in the late 1970s, the gods of
the gay revolution walked the Earth like
ordinary mortals.
In 1969-1970, while I
sailed aboard the aircraft carrier USS
FORRESTAL, working just below the flight deck,
the Stonewall Revolt raged and later the Gay
Activist Alliance and other groups were formed.
Rather than picketing properly, and unnoticed,
in suits and ties, GAA protestors rampaged
shirtless in the streets demanding rights,
performing embarrassing 'zaps' on politicians
and then sending in neatly dressed negotiating
teams. The long road to our rights was
being paved by these brave pioneers.
In 1975, Air Force Tech
Sergeant Leonard Matlovich -a Vietnam War hero
with 12 years service and a Purple Heart and
Bronze Star for valor- wrote an open letter to
the Secretary of the Air Force explaining that
he was gay. This was not a spontaneous
impulse; it was carefully planned with Frank
Kameny and the ACLU. As expected, he was
discharged and they sued.
Until this courageous act of career sacrifice,
homosexuals were considered to be totally
unmentionable sissies skulking in the shadows.
And then there was the war hero, Matlovich,
appearing on the cover of Time Magazine in
uniform and moustache, every bit the masculine
American war hero. It made all the
difference in the world. It was the start
of the dialogue that led to everything that
followed, including the Supreme Court deciding
in June that the Defense of Marriage Act was
unconstitutional. It took thirty six years for
Leonard Matlovich's sacrifice to result in the
repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, at last allowing
gay and lesbian patriotic American's to serve
our nation openly in Pride. Alas, Lenny
did not live to see that day. He resides
in the Congressional Cemetery under the epitaph
he designed, "A Gay Vietnam Veteran; When I was
in the military they gave me a medal for killing
two men, and a discharge for loving one."
I met Lenny in the sweet
summer of 1979 at the Castro Street Fair in San
Francisco as he stood in his handmade wooden
booth beneath his hand lettered sign saying,
"Leonard Matlovich For Board of Supervisors."
Breathless, I went over to him and told him he
was my hero, because I had "served in silence."
That tall handsome sergeant bent down and kissed
me. I didn't wash my lips for weeks!
After that we became friends. Despite his
being a hero and leader, he was always a totally
humble ordinary guy who told terribly corny
jokes ("I'm into S&M, you know - Sneakers and
Makeup..."). My partner and I would drive
up to Guerneville on many weekends to visit him in
his pizza parlor which he bought with the money
the Air Force gave him to go away after he won
his case. Visiting his grave in Washington
DC, whenever I can, is a sacred act for me and
for thousands of others who reverently visit his
gravesite every year.
We've come a long way
since those days in the 1970s. Back then,
the idea of getting married was as unthinkable
as it had been for biracial couples a decade
earlier. Who would have thought, back
then, that the son of a biracial couple, born in
1961, whose marriage was forbidden in 16 states,
would grow up to become the champion of our
rights and marriages as President of the United
States of America.
America has progressed
since then to now in the dawn of the Twenty
First Century, where the nation's first minority
President repealed the ban on open military
service by gay patriots and speaks out for our
right to marry; while at the same time America's
second minority member of the Supreme Court, in
a biracial marriage, is a conservative opposed
to many of our President's progressive ideals.
We are truly blessed with diversity! Imagine!
That Justice was unable to see our
love in the light of his own. He voted
against repealing DOMA, and for ending elements
of the Voting Rights Act.
With the Defense of
Marriage Act having been deemed
unconstitutional by a majority of the Supreme
Court;
all of our service members will now be able to have
equal benefits with all of their marriages
equally recognized, as will those of all of our
veterans.
It has been a very long
road, and we are not done yet, since President
Harry Truman began it all in 1948 with his
courageous Executive Order integrating our armed
forces. Everything followed that forward
thinking moment, very slowly. We will not
wait another 65 years for our full equality.