Media Madness (Gay Edition)

Woohoo, I've been profiled in the Windy City Times. It's part of their Earth Day coverage. It's an honor to be sharing the spotlight with Deb Shore, who is both someone who is doing really important work, and a personal friend.

The Hurricane Season: August-November 1979

This is the third year that I have been blogging on National Coming Out Day, and I provide another installment of my recollections here.

I moved to the Chicago area in late June of 1979 to begin pursuing my doctorate from the Department of Biochemistry at Northwestern. As I have previously mentioned, part of my decision to come to Chicago involved the fact that I needed to come out here. I had struggled with life in the closet enough to know that it wasn’t a winning proposition. By the time I arrived in town, I was completely committed to starting the process.

But what to do? I didn’t know how to come out. It wasn’t something that there was a how-to manual for, especially that long ago. I did spend part of that summer in the HO section of the university library, being generally unimpressed with what I was reading. I was pretty sure that I wasn't interested in being a flamboyant party boy. That decision undoubtedly served me well- although nobody had yet heard of AIDS, 1979 would later prove to be a very dangerous time. I remember wondering a lot where I fit in. It was pretty clear that I felt outcast in the straight world. Was there room for me anywhere in the gay life?

In August of that summer, I was reading the classified ads in The Reader, Chicago’s local alternative paper. There was an ad by an organization called the Mattachine Society advertising a discussion group for gay men the following Tuesday. Mattachine, I would later learn, was a very early gay rights organization that dates back to the early 1950s.

I went. I still remember the evening vividly, down to what I wore (my green alligator shirt). The discussion was warm, sometimes goofy, and only a little bit political. The men ranged widely in age and in personality. There were overtly queeeny types (still quite scary to me that early in my own process) and guys who I felt that I might have met even in my old home town. I remember the frisson of first seeing unrelated men kissing socially. I also remember seeing my reflection in the window of the El car on my way home and wondering if I was somehow different now.

I would return to the discussion groups faithfully each week for several years. Those guys did so much to calm me down about the whole process. Many were important examples to me of how one could be out and proud and lead a rich and productive life. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The summer of 1979 was one of great change for me. I felt very alone for much of that summer. I was far from home and the people I knew and loved. I was living in a large city for the first time. It was the summer that I would gradually grow accustomed to being on my own. Perhaps because I missed the ocean, I remember thinking at one point that it’s when hurricanes make landfall and come into contact with people that they dissipate. I spent that summer by myself, feeling far out at sea like a hurricane-- gathering strength.

March 28, 1979

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. In celebration, I offer a rememberance of the day that I decided to come out of the closet.

In March of 1979 I faced a time of scary decisions. I was in my senior year in college, finishing up a very successful undergraduate career. I had just gained acceptance at 4 doctoral programs in various biochemistry departments around the country. I should have felt that the whole world was before me.

I was actually miserable. In part I was in the throes of unrequited love. My friend C and I had been close for about a year. He was smart, handsome, and funny. I was competely smitten with him. He, of course, liked girls. To further complicate matters, iwe were attending a very small college in rural New England. I knew only one other gay person. I feared the prospect of a lonely, miserable life spent in shame. Was I doomed to fall in love with, and be frustrated by, straight boys for ever?

Spring break came. I did not go to Ft, Lauderdale or Panama City. I went to Massachusetts to spend the week with my family. I wanted to spend time not lusting over thinking about C, not trying to fit in socially with people whose lives were taking them in very different directions from mine, but instead trying to figure out which of the four schools that had accepted me would be the one that I would attend.

When I am in need of emotional healing, I turn to the natural world. So on Wednesday of that week, I borrowed my mom’s car and drove down to spend the day on Cape Cod. I planned to drive down, eat fried clams, walk in the National Seashore and think hard about my school choice. Two memories from the drive remain vivid. I heard for the first time a song called Sultans of Swing by the then-unknown group Dire Straits. I would follow their music for decades to come. Partway through Boston, a news bulletin came on the radio announcing that there had been some sort of malfunction at a nuclear power plant outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The news spoke of little else for the rest of my journey- and for weeks to come.

I walked a lot that afternoon- over dunes, through maple and cedar swamps, and along beaches. It was chilly enough to keep me going as a means of staying warm. But instead of thinking about school choices, I found myself thinking about C and the pain of not knowing if I could ever find happiness with another person. I thought of how tired I was of feeling isolated. I wanted the pain to end, and realized that meant taking a very different approach from the hiding and being afraid that had dominated the last six or seven years of my life.

The funny thing is, even though I was thinking about things that had nothing to do with the main decision in front of me, my thoughts that afternoon led to my choice. If I was to get beyond my uncomfortable isolation, I’d need to find other people like myself. Were there any? Were they all weirdos? It was a chance I would have to take.

Of my four grad school options, two were clearly the preferred ones. I had received handsome (and very similar) fellowship offers from the departments of Biochemistry at Northwestern and the University of Rochester. I knew enough to realize that my immediate future lay in a city, and that there would be more prospects to come out in Chicago than in Rochester, NY.

The decisions I made on March 28, 1979 would affect the rest of my life to a degree that I could only dimly imagine that day. I would accept Northwestern’s offer and move to Chicago. I would try, if only tentitively, to come out of the closet. And I would come out on my own terms, letting nobody else dictate what that would mean. These decisions, which would prove to serve me extraordinarily well for the rest of my life, were made in beautiful surroundings on a day where it seemed almost possible that the world could end in nuclear holocaust;

Happy National Coming Out Day to my gay and straight readers alike.

Loving vs. Virginia Anniversary

This week marked the 40th anniversary of an important Supreme Court decision. Loving vs. Virginia was the landmark case that struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US and allowed inter-racial couples to marry in all 50 states. Now, 40 years later, the country is involved in a similar discussion about same-sex marriage. Mildred Loving, one of the plaintiffs in the case, has prepared a beautiful piece in response to the anniversary. It's too eloquent not to share in its entirety.

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving*

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn't get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn't allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ""Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn't have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Hat Tip: Ed Brayton

Hair of the Five-legged Dog

Yesterday, I posted a rememberance of my first meeting with Leon, exactly 25 years ago. In celebration, and as a musing on one result of sharing a quarter century of life with someone, I today reprint an essay that I wrote several years ago. It was written shortly after the publication of the book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, and is a response to a sermon that I accidentally discoverd as a result of the book.


One of the marvels of the Internet is the opportunity that it opens for serendipitous discovery. The recent suggestions that Abraham Lincoln might have been gay piqued my interest. Wanting to learn more, I ran a Google search using the search terms "Abraham Linclon" +homosexual. Among the numerous "hits" involving my intended subject was one entitled Five-Legged Dogs, Abraham Lincoln & Same-Sex Marriage. The link connected me to the text of a sermon given by Fr. Phil Bloom of Seattle and posted on his web site Simple Catholicism. The reference to Honest Abe had nothing to do with speculations about the Great Emancipator’s sexual orientation, but rather referred to an anecdote that Bloom attributed to him:

Abraham Lincoln posed this question: "How many legs does a dog have?" The reply of course was four.

Lincoln asked, "If we call the tail a leg, then how many legs does a dog have?" The reply: Five.

"No," Lincoln said, "Just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it so."

The anecdote was intended to convey an analogous concept regarding same sex marriage: just because you call it marriage doesn’t make it so.

On the surface, Fr. Bloom appears, from a Catholic perspective, neither radical, nor unorthodox in his treatment of the subject (though his- admittedly unrelated- maunderings on evolution suggest tendency to venture beyond the mainstream of church teaching on some issues). Indeed, some of his statements on the subject verge on the conciliatory:

…few people would want to limit legal arrangements [between same-sex couples] (inheritance, hospital visitation, etc.)…

Surface appearances can be deceptive, however. Within the framework of Catholic teaching, marriage is by definition a sacred relationship between one man and one woman. Fair enough- the Catholic Church is free to define its sacraments according to its own revelation. Unfortunately, Fr. Bloom is not content to let it stand at that.

Part of the problem is entirely predictable. As a non-religious person, I object to the fact that people like Fr. Bloom wish to have their religious definitions of marriage codified into the law of the land for Catholic and non-Catholic, Christian and non-Christian, religious and secular alike. This, however, is old stuff. My real objection to Fr. Bloom’s sermon arises when he mischaracterises same-sex couples in a manner that both trivializes their relationships insultingly and causes him to fall victim to the same logical flaw that he accuses proponents of same-sex marriage of committing. He does so be relegating same-sex couples to the status of "friends."

I am referring to the attempt to take the friendship between two men or two women and call it "marriage." Now, to celebrate friendship is obviously a good thing…

…However, there is a problem if we try to put friendship on the same legal level as marriage…

…They not only want to call their friendship "marriage," but to force you and me to do the same.

Pointedly, at no point in the sermon does Bloom use the term "couple" in discussing same sex relationships. His only reference to love is to decry "the ersoion of the chaste love of freindship" by same-sex couples. That’s right, not only are gay couples merely friends, if they are sexually active together they are friends in a manner that erodes love (mechanism unspecified).

The problem is particularly insidious because to argue against it can be construed as arguing against friendship as a component of marriage. Clearly, strong couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, appropriately recognize the important role that friendship plays in their unions. My argument here is not that my husband is not my friend- far from it- but that the word friend is, in and of itself, grossly inadequate to describe who we are to one another.

After reading the sermon, I mentioned it to my husband. We pondered the ways in which friendship is an inadequate descriptor for our love. In some ways, the question is challenging. Many of the differences between our marriage and friendship are differences of degree rather than of kind. For example, when we have had the occasion to make difficult career choices in order to stay together geographically we have expressed something deeper than what is found in a typical friendship. Yet that decision resides on the same continuum as decisions to accept minor inconvieniences and make small sacrifices for the benefit of other people who matter to us.

Perhaps the main difference in kind between our love and friendship is one of exclusivity. Over the past twenty-odd years, our lives together have become intertwined on numerous levels: emotionally, financially, spiritually, sexually and socially. There is simply no room for another friend of this magnitude in my life. We can be confident that our love will always be there, in part because we share it with no one else. Part of the joy of our life together is that in the continual ebb and flow of our existance as individuals we become one who is greater than the sum of both of us. Sound familiar?

One enlightening tool that can be brought to bear on the "are we just friends?" question is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) devised by psychologists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967. A sort of emotional Richter scale, the SRRS describes the relative impacts that major- and not so major- life events elicit. Death of a spouse rates highest on the scale at 100. Near the low end, going on vacation gets a 13. The top three items on the list all involve ending marriages: death of a spouse, divorce, and separation from a spouse. Death of a close friend ranks 17th- behind deaths of family members, but also behind things like getting fired, business readjustment, and sexual difficulties. The scale is a helpful tool for analyzing the question at hand.

Loss of Leon, my husband, would be the one single most significant, heartbreaking, and traumatic event of my life- because it would be like losing part of myself. Without a doubt, it ranks ahead of loss and death involving other close family members- as painful as those would be (and have been). Would it rank 100, the equivalent of the loss of a presumably heterosexual spouse? Such a question can never be answered in detail. My guess is that people experience as much variation in the emotional impact of the loss of an opposite-sex spouse as they do to the loss of a same-sex spouse. I seriously doubt that any heterosexual individual could answer the same question in detail. What is clear is that loss of Leon would occupy the exact same position where the SRSS places loss of a spouse - right at the top.

Just as calling the dog’s tail a fifth leg doesn’t make it so, calling committed couples simply friends doesn’t make it so either. The SRRS readily distinguishes the love of a spouse from the love of friends. Unlike Fr. Bloom’s sermon, this comparative approach appropriately reflects the depth of love and commitment shared by couples of all persuasions, a love that people like Fr. Bloom try to deny through the language of diminution. To distinguish friendship from the love of a spouse does no disservice to the love of friends. To conflate them does a severe disservice to marriage- same sex or otherwise. And to base the civil law of the land on this conflation will bring untold suffering to the countless committed and loving families that just happen to include same-sex couples.

A Night to Remember

January 23, 1982 was exactly 25 years ago today. It was a Saturday, and I went with friends from church to see the Windy City Gay Chorus perform. It was a preview show of the councert that they were about to give at Lincoln Center in New York. I was sitting with David, an endearingly queenly young man from our church group. David was always making sure that everyone felt included in whatever group he was with at the time, so it was entirely in character when he introduced several of us to the new guy who was sitting directly in front of me. New Guy was this very handsome bearded guy who struck my fancy immediately. Wanting to continue the interaction, I asked him what he did. "I'm a chemist," was the reply. "Really? So am I." At the time I was working on my grad degree in biochemistry and was more chemist and less biologist than I am now. David, of course, got a bit fluttery over the exchange. "Oh, my, that's not what I would have said."

It's funny how you often don't know at the time what days and what events are having a profound effect on your life. New Guy was, of course, Leon, and today is the 25th anniversary of the day that we met.

Why I am a Gay Scientist

This is an essay, slightly modified, that I wrote several years ago. I was planning on posting it next Wednesday as a celebration of National Coming Out Day. The events of the Mark Foley scandal have left me totally disgusted, and I wanted to share something about taking pride in, and responsibility for, who you are. Foley has done neither, despite the increasingly hollow claims of his spokesman that he takes full responsibility for his actions. So I'm posting this a bit early. Happy coming out day to all.

A few years back, I went to a professional conference for people developing medical diagnostic tests. One company had just developed a new cancer test in which positive results were revealed by the development of a vivid pink color. To promote this new product, the company was giving away plastic test tube racks in the same shocking pink color. I wanted one. As I explained to a (straight) colleague while showing her my new treasure, "it’s what every gay scientist needs—a hot pink test tube rack."

My colleague took issue with my humor. Why, she asked, was I calling myself a gay scientist? In her mind the two phenomena were in no way related. I may be a scientist, and I am most certainly gay, but my friend felt that unless I am actively pursuing some sort of scientific study of sexual orientation- a la Simon LeVay, perhaps- then I have no business calling myself a gay scientist.

Something similar, though more nefarious, happened years ago while I was still in college. I made the mistake of talking with the school psychologist about my struggles to come to terms with my sexuality. Among his significantly unhelpful efforts was the question "when they wake you up in the middle of the night and ask what you are, do you tell them that you are gay or that you are a biologist?" There was, of course, a right and a wrong answer to this question. If my reply had been "I’m gay," the implication was that I was placing too much emphasis on that part of myself, and that I would do better to self-identify more strongly with my prospective career.

My response to both of these situations was similar. I felt as though an uncomfortably schizophrenic existence was being required of me: in this compartment of my life, I’m gay, in that compartment, I’m a scientist, in this other compartment I love cats. In truth, I’m a gay scientist who loves cats-- and who has a bunch of other attributes as well. By identifying two particular attributes and describing myself as a gay scientist, I am integrating two aspects of my life that I consider of greater importance for self-identification.

Believing that it is important to self-identify as gay does not mean that I subscribe to the notion that gay people need to emphasize our differentness- that being alien and out of step with the mainstream are somehow important facets of being gay. Actually, I’m pretty solidly assimilationist. And while I’m not part of the radical crowd, I don’t want to impose my own assimilation on anyone else. Furthermore, I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with attempts on the part of some in the assimilationist camp to minimize the importance of sexual orientation. For example, in an otherwise excellent essay entitled The Fear of Being Ordinary, conservative University of Minnesota Law School professor Dale Carpenter lauds a trend in movies of the 1990’s towards depicting gay characters as ordinary people. Unfortunately, he proceeds to opine that "in a better world, that last attribute [being gay] would be among the least important facts about the characters."

Excuse me? What prompted this drift from suggesting that being gay is one attribute among many to relegating it to the least important of one’s personal attributes? While I remain enthusiastic and optimistic about the progress that gay people have during my lifetime, I also feel that it is important to recognize the challenges that gay people everywhere have risen to in order to achieve happy and fulfilling adulthoods. These achievements are appropriately sources of Pride, and are very much to be celebrated. Suggestions of neglecting to do so feel uncomfortably like invitations to return to the closet, though I am certain that Carpenter did not intend that particular implication.

In my own case, the pairing of my sexual orientation with my scientific viewpoint is important if for no other reason than that the former contributed to my early interest in the latter. In part, nature and science were safe refuges from what was, during my formative years, a Terrible Secret. In contrast to navigating the dangerous social waters of being gay in high school in the mid 1970’s, working with plants and insects meant dealing with things that did not judge me. The most that I risked in studying them was contact dermatitis.

By providing an eminently rational framework for looking at the world, science also provided me with something critical: the ability to consider the seemingly unthinkable possibility that the rest of the world was wrong. The world could be approached through observation, evidence, and analysis. There was a remote possibility that it was OK to be me.

The result of all of this was that I succeeded in transforming a serious challenge- being gay in a highly homophobic environment- from something frightening and difficult into something that pointed the way to a successful and rewarding career. When I insist on defining myself as a gay scientist, it isn’t out of a sense of victimhood, but rather a sense of survival and accomplishment.

Would I have become a scientist even had I not been gay, or had being gay been a nonissue during my adolescence? It is, of course, impossible to say. What is clear is that being gay did have a profound influence on my interest in science. For that reason, I will forever be a gay scientist, and will continue to proudly use my hot pink test tube rack.