Last June,
by one slim vote, the Supreme Court threw out the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). At that point—as I remember it—fewer
than ten states allowed gay marriages. Now? It’s 17, and may be 18 if Michigan…
…sometime
after five PM last Friday, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman
issued a ruling after a two-week trial, based mostly on whether there was
any evidence that kids were harmed by being raised in gay homes.
The judge—a
conservative appointed by Ronald Reagan—decided no. And so he tossed out the
ban on gay marriages, which had popular support a decade ago, though recently
more and more people are scratching their heads, wondering what that was
all about….
It was a
weird time—those years when everybody was up in arms and needing to defend the
sanctity of marriage. Was it that the ritual satanic abuse thing had faded?
Because, remember—the fear had swept the country, starting out in a California daycare
center, run by this woman Virginia McMartin? Here, Dear Readers, I present her fearsome visage—don’t
look too long or too intently, lest the sulfurous stench of evil rise up and
poison your eternal soul….
Some of the
accusations were described as "bizarre",[5]
overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse panic.[4] It was alleged
that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air
balloon, and were taken
through underground tunnels.[4] When shown a
series of photographs by Danny Davis (the McMartins' lawyer), one child
identified actor Chuck Norris
as one of the abusers.[20]
Some of
the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several
investigations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris
from before the school was built, but no evidence of any secret chambers was
found.[4] There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of
children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused,
then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents. Some
interviewed children talked of a game called "Naked Movie Star"
suggesting they were forcibly photographed nude.[1][4][21]
During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star
game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children—"What you
say is what you are, you're a naked movie star,"—and had nothing to do
with having naked pictures taken.
What
happened was, according to Wikipedia, “the longest and most expensive criminal trial” as of
1990. The first allegations had arisen seven years earlier, in 1983; the case
ended with charges being dropped.
Gay people
are used to it—at least those of us who are of a sufficient age. Raf was told
decades ago that he couldn’t see his young nephew, who now has a child of his
own. Raf and I passed the child back and forth last year at a family reunion.
Oh, and
remember Anita Bryant? Who can forget here explanation that
gay people—not able to reproduce—had to be out “recruiting” children to keep
the pink race going? Presumably, it was like a scene out of Boys Beware, a film from the 1950’s that will shock
the hell out of you.
The film
starts out well enough, with the cheerful—no, let’s call it peppy—music in the
background as we see a police captain leaving the police department, on his way
to go speak to some “young people” at the local high school. Along the way, he
sees Jimmy Barnes, innocently trying to hitch a ride on the side of the road.
Alas, not
all the people in the world are as innocent as Jimmy! Though the person who
gave Jimmy the ride seemed nice enough—asking Jimmy questions, and giving him a
pat on the shoulder as Jimmy got out of the car.
That’s when
we see the driver, who until now has been only in profile. And need I say it?
The face is satanic—wait, I’ll be a good blogger and figure out how to take a
screen shot:
Jimmy,
honey? You were riding home with that?
That, Dear
Reader, is a proper 1950’s homosexual—and it’s also what we came out of, or
away from. Because I was born in 1956, which meant that for the first decade of
my life, this is what society was telling me I was going to grow up to be.
Which meant I could repress my entire sexuality, or I could become utterly
depraved, as this man was.
Nor are
such types subtle—since the very next day, what happens? Yup, there the
stranger is, after school, and today he decides to treat Jimmy to a Coke. And
then the homosexual told a few off-color jokes—obviously testing the waters.
Look, I saw
the clip a year ago, and really, I don’t need to see it again. In fact, having
lived through the whole thing, and overcome it, I really prefer not to relive
it. Suffice it to say that all turns out well for Jimmy, but that other boy?
“He became
a statistic,” intones the 1950’s voice.
If you grew
up with this garbage, it took real work to move away from it. It took therapy,
group sessions, consciousness raising, activism, marching for the first time in
a parade, telling your mother (guess what? It’s always mother first…) you were
gay, walking three times around the block of the first gay bar you were hoping
/ dreading to go into, telling everybody you were gay—and now, how many years
have passed? And surprise—you’re not done!
You’re not
out of the closet, you see. Sure, you’ve done all of the above—you have weeded
that garden as rigorously as you could, and then you get cruised by the pilot
who has flown you 1600 miles to New York City. And what do you think,
reflexively?
“They have gay
pilots!!!”
Down on
your knees, pulling more weeds!
There’s a
twenty-ish gay guy two tables away talking to his friend, or his lover, or
whoever he is or however they’re defining it. And his experience as a gay guy?
He probably didn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of school, getting
kicked out of his home, about being beaten silly when he left the bar.
But the
good news? Other people have been pulling weeds, too, including conservative
judges in Michigan, who got asked if he really would like to affirm a law that
says that some people can get married, others cannot. Here’s what Friedman
said:
In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the
will of the people,” state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly
about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the
personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state
may not longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others
now being raised by same-sex couples.
So
last Friday, Michigan had allowed gay marriages. Saturday, everybody ran down
to City Hall to get hitched. Then the ax fell—the state’s attorney general
asked for a stay, and so now gay marriages aren’t legal in Michigan.
See?
It
occurs to me—there’s something a little sad about how so many of us have done
it: rushed frantically to get hitched before some hack of a DA or AG runs off to the next court
up to block it. Parents living the next state over don’t get to see the
ceremony. Musicians who would have chosen Monteverdi’s Si dolce e’l tormento have to live with Whitney Houston. The superb cooks are eating a store-bought cake and drinking
champagne and grinning like fools and rubbing their eyes and calling their
distant family.
One
Michigan couple who got in under the wire was my old friend Geek, the
celebrated chap who—having outwitted and outlasted Fred Phelps—took his lover of 27 year
to the courthouse or city hall or wherever it was and brought him back as his
husband.
And
now, having scared the hell out of you by showing you a proper 1950’s homosexual—as
well as that satanic grandmother—let me show you the updated
version—considerably less menacing….
 |
| Congratulations, Geek and Martín! |
