June 26, 2015. We were boarding a plane in Italy for the US when we found out we were finally – legally – married. Feeling totally dumbfounded, I really really wanted to call my mother. She would have been so happy.
I remember the day 50-whatever years ago when I told her I was gay. She cried. Not because I was gay, but because she knew what a rough life I was destined to have – and she feared I would be alone. I lived all over the USofA chasing rainbows of one sort or another but true love always eluded me. I hid the rough spots over the years, but she always hoped I would settle down.
And then I – and she – met Victor. It was love at first sight.
She adored him and knew from Day One that I had finally met my life-mate. She was a proud mama and so happy that her little boy had finally found the happiness she had always hoped and prayed for.
She died way too soon, but she left us knowing we were happy.
I just wanted to call her and say We Did It! Legal everywhere! She would have beamed with pride.
What a difference from that little boy 60 years ago – several lifetimes ago – who at 13 actually thought about killing himself. I knew I was different, I thought something was wrong with me. I knew liked boys but I also knew it was something I had to keep secreted in the deepest depths of my being. The love that dare not speak its name…
It was a very frightening time. I think it’s one of the reasons I’m very publicly out today. I want other 13 year old kids to see a [reasonably] well-adjusted adult gay male out there and just kinda pass on the “it’s okay” message.
When I told my father I was gay, his reply was “I know. I was wondering how long it would be before you finally mentioned it.”
And then I CAME OUT. In a blaze of Rainbow Glory. I was so out my brother finally told me he liked me better when I was in the closet. I got the message and toned things down a bit. It was such a relief, though, not to have to hide. Of course, it opened up a whole new can of worms… I got to experience fear – not of being found out – but of getting my ass kicked for being in the wrong place or coming out of the wrong bar. And then there was the hotel GM who told me I wasn’t going any further up the Corporate Ladder because I didn’t have – emphasis his – a wife.
So many years of open and blatant discrimination. So many years of being called a sodomite and a sinner, that I was going to hell. Laws enacted to deny me my basic human rights.
Hell – I couldn’t even get out of the draft by saying I was gay. In those pre-Don’t Ask Don’t Tell days, I would have been inducted, and then dishonorably discharged. With a probably prison sentence. Really.
When we moved to Pennsylvania from California in 2001, I – naturally – had to quit my job. California denied me unemployment because we weren’t married. I filed an appeal and a judge wrote a scathing opinion denouncing California, stating that we had done everything we legally could to validate our relationship and they couldn’t deny my unemployment based on a legality they refused to give me. It was great.
When California finally enacted Marriage Equality we decided to get married at home in San Francisco in 2008. The wedding was planned for November 23rd. Prop 8 passed on November 8th. So much for our non-wedding. We did have great train ride back to Pennsylvania, though.
We were finally married in October 2010 by a dear friend in New Hampshire. And then parts of DoMA were repealed. In May 2014 – while we were in Sicily – Pennsylvania recognized our New Hampshire marriage.
And on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court announced we were married. Period. (Or so we thought.)
I don’t think that little boy 60 years ago ever dreamed it would come – or that people would now be trying to take it away.
In 1995, Victor and I marched as honor guards in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade for Hawai’i defendants Ninia Baehr and Genora Dancel – two of the women who sued Hawai’i for the right to marry and really started the firestorm. I didn’t think we had a snowballs chance in hell of ever seeing marriage equality in our lifetimes, but it didn’t mean we were going to roll over and play door mat. It was a raucous crowd – Pride Parades were much more in-your-face-fuck-you-we’re-here-we’re-queer-deal-with-it spectacles. And marching the length of Market Street put some strain on our poor little feet – but it was so worth it.
Hours later, we got home and opened champagne!
This bottle came back with us from Paris and had been sitting in the ‘fridge waiting the right moment to come out, so to speak. It was the perfect day to drink champagne and celebrate.
And we’ll be drinking another when these political fuckwads are gone.
The fight(s) are far from over…