Eight (Presumably) and One

It happens every morning: two guys arguing at the top of their lungs—as well as their vocal range—in the middle of our bedroom.

OK—there are times when it’s a man or a woman, but until Rubén Sánchez of radio station WKAQ gets a sex change, there will always be at least one guy. And today, as it so often is, it was Sánchez and another guy, arguing in good Puerto Rican fashion: the Spanish accelerates to about 333,000 words per minute, volume crescendos to about 110 decibels, neither one is listening to the other, and the voices are pitched at least an octave higher.

Oh, and did I mention the interruptions?

“So whom was Rubén arguing with today?” I asked Mr. Fernández, since being closer to the offending radio, as well as speaking Spanish as his cradle tongue, made him more likely to know what it was all about. I had heard the term “matrimonio gay” (gay marriage) screeched around, and was curious to know what today’s fuss was about…..

“With whom,” said Mr. Fernández, a stickler for such things, who went on to say that he had only the dimmest idea, since he was going in and out of the morning snooze. 

Well, I can tell you what the issue was about, since today’s topic flew in on the front page of El Nuevo Día, the local rag. So what’s up? Our governor, Alejandro García Padilla, has nominated Maite Oronoz, an openly gay woman, to be an associate judge on the Puerto Rico Supreme Court.

Oronoz looks pretty credentialed to me: a BA from Villanueva, law degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and a master’s in law from Columbia. She’s worked with the Supreme Court as “oficial jurídico”—my guess would be law clerk—as well as in private practice, and in the Justice Department in high-ranking positions. She’s currently the legal director for the city of San Juan. So she’ll sail through to the nomination, right?

Not so fast, because all the tired old voices we’ve had to endure all these years are saying all the tired—and tiring—things. Here—and you should hope you don’t know Spanish—is one:

Me preocupa el ejemplo que presenta al tener una relación con una persona de su mismo sexo. Lo segundo que me preocupa es que si es confirmada al Tribunal Supremo va a tener en sus manos el poder para tomar decisiones que alteren los valores del pueblo de Puerto Rico”, señaló Vázquez. 

What’s the beef, according to Vázquez? It sets a bad example, and if approved, Oronoz will have the power to make decisions that “alter” the values of the people of Puerto Rico.

In a recent interview, Larry Kramer, the gay activist and author of The Normal Heart, told gay people to stop patting themselves on the back, we haven’t come anywhere near where we should be in the struggle for rights. And oddly enough, Jessye Norman, the black opera singer, said much the same thing about the rights of black people.

She gives two examples: both involved being asked to prove that she was a guest when she was using a hotel’s facilities, or even walking on their grounds. Big deal, you may think, but here’s why I think it is.

For those of us who are white and men, it’s hard to understand how being black or a woman completely infuses your life. I go into a store and nobody follows me around, five feet away. Or here’s another—when was the last time I worried about getting raped? And I see the point of a lot of black people: a gay person has some shelter—hint, it’s called a closet—but the black dude? He’s out there….

And in a certain way, it may be true that even the most out gay people consciously or not use the closet. I learned that by trailing a transgender woman in the last gay pride march: I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt; she was wearing a tight dress and three-inch heels.

And walking, for much of the way, on irregularly surfaces, iridescently blue cobblestones, for which the old city is famous. Lovely, especially when wet—the stones, not the woman—but three-inch heels? It was proof of how deeply important her sexuality was to her; it was also a testament to personal bravery. Because although she carried it off well, she was still taller than I, with my height of six foot three. No wonder that it was the drag queens that fought back at Stonewall.

The computer, by the way, has not red-squiggled that word, “Stonewall;” did I teach it to the computer or is it now in the lexicon? Or consider this anecdote, about a US Supreme Court justice who had just upheld—years ago—a state law criminalizing homosexuality. According to Jeffrey Toobin, the justice remarked to his clerk that he had never met a gay person. His clerk, who was gay, said nothing. Twenty years later? Sandra Day O’Connor was sticking her head into her office and directing her staff to send a congratulatory tee shirt to a gay couple on her staff who had adopted a child. (It said, “Supreme Court Kid,” or something….)

So how far have we come? Well, today’s front page has “Abogada Gay al Supremo” as the lead. But when will we have “Abogada Straight al Supremo?”

Oh, and by the way, are there openly straight people? I didn’t know, so I asked Sunshine, the guy who makes me the espresso.

“Yeah, I’m straight, but I have a lot of gay friends,” he says. Then he goes back to polishing one of the windows.

Jessye Norman grew up in a world where there were signs over the two water coolers: “Whites Only,” “Colored Only.” I grew up in a world of Boys Beware, a lurid educational film—à la Reefer Madness—that advised against taking a ride from strange men. Why?

“He paid for the ride with his life,” intones the voice from the sixties (curious how different decades have different voices—anybody looked into that?). The driver, you see, was a known homosexual.

Wait—I didn’t get a gasp out of you!

It may be, in fact, that society’s coming out is just like our own coming out. It’s layer after layer, this peeling of the onion, until all that’s left is taste, aroma, zest. All the acridness, everything that made you cry has vanished, or rather, been commuted, transformed, and transmogrified into something wonderful, tasty and…

…delicious.

Then and Now

Hey, you guys up there—slow down! You’re making me dizzy….

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….

Look, she’s clearly not having the best day of her life, but satanic? And here, under the very appropriate heading “Bizarre Allegations,” is Wikipedia’s description of the affair.

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!

Boys Beware

It was a curious coincidence, hearing of the danger of the homosexual just after having read a biography of one.

“Homosexuals are sick,” announced the computer speakers. “But not a visible sickness like chickenpox or the measles. Mentally sick.”

“What in the hell are you watching?” I asked Mr. Fernández.

“Boys Beware, an educational film from the fifties.”

Wrong—it was from 1961.

And it was educational in everything but the message. Although some of the message made sense. Don’t get into cars with strangers. If a friend does, write down the license plate number, and the make of the car. If you have any doubt, go to your parents or a trusted teacher.

“He traded his life for a newspaper headline,” announces the narrator. For some of them—in my case us—can be violent. And careful, they / we may seem normal. Even really friendly—always a dangerous sign. One of the four boys in the movie makes the mistake of going to a motel. Well, why not? The guy—a suspicious type with sunglasses and a mustache (right, central casting wasn’t being imaginative that day)—had bought the boy a coke, taken him fishing, and then showed him a little pornography. The boy reports the presumed molestation to his parents—the man is arrested and convicted, but Jimmy is given “probation in the custody of his parents.”

Oh yeah? Isn’t this the classic “blaming the victim?” Shouldn’t we look on the kid as, well, a kid? They do stupid things, sometimes.

Well, it was shot in black and white, there in 1961. But apparently the message was no less timely—or important—in 1973, when they decided to shoot it again in color, though with the same script and soundtrack, but different actors.

1973 was the year I graduated from high school.

I tell you this because the ten minutes of nonsense that you can see below was the absolute background for my formative years. The men in their suits and their ties. Mother in her skirt, sweeping the walks. Even the voice of the narrator, with his folksy talk about “young people” is a voice no longer heard.

You never stop coming out, is a frequently-expressed truism in the gay world. Watching this film, I wonder if I can ever fully rid myself of the self-hate that comes with being told, for the first two decades of my life, that I was sick and perhaps criminal.

Perhaps? Well, unless I chose celibacy, definitely criminal. I didn’t realize, somehow, that the 1950’s were perhaps the worst years for oppression of gay people. In 1953, Eisenhower decreed a ban on homosexuals working in the federal government. Most gay people resigned--why wait for the axe? Joe McCarthy of Appleton, Wisconsin, threw fuel on the fire a few years later, and by then it was automatically assumed, if a man resigned from a government post, he was gay. The police are raiding bars, and taking a nice little pay-off in bribery money. Thugs are looming everywhere--to beat and bash gay men senselessly. Among all of this trauma, it's a wonder that there were men who continued trying to live their lives.

One of whom was Samuel Steward, a professor, a friend of glittering literary figures, and later, a tattoo artist. He travelled to England to meet Lord Alfred Douglas. To France, to meet Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein. Through them, he meets Thornton Wilder, and has a physical relationship on rare occasions for the next twelve years.

And apparently, he’s a gifted teacher, judging from the letter from a former student quoted at the end of the book. But he tires of it, and goes into tattooing. Then, after a dozen years or so of work, he closes up shop and retreats into a small cottage behind a bungalow.

The description of the inside of the house is heartbreaking. A compulsive collector, he can throw nothing away. Papers are everywhere, along with the empty food cans and the newspapers the dogs have urinated on. The stench is unbearable. It takes the executors of the estate several months to clear out the house.

He was a sexual renegade, writes the author. Yes, in the sense that he had plenty of sex, and didn’t feel much shame about it. But I wonder about that. How could anyone—he or I or any of us who grew up in an environment saturated with shame and sickness not have been, or still be, affected?