Elections come every two years. In between there’s fundraising, campaigning and the uphill battle to influence governance. If you’re political—and gay—real purpose can be found in the process. There’s so much to do, and the sides are so clear.
But have you ever stepped back—and I mean way back—to consider what it’s all about? What is at the core of safe schools, adoption rights and the battle over referendums like Amendment 2? What kind of world are we trying to create?
The last few weeks served up several reminders for me—all powerful, all unexpected.
Congressman Alan Grayson was the star attraction at the Equality Florida Greater Orlando Gala on Oct. 9. The first-term Democrat has stolen the Fox News playbook and is using pointed hyperbole to spotlight Republican indifference to health care and other issues. They’re outraged, and he’s in demand on talking head television.
But at the City Arts Factory, the Harvard-educated attorney was like a professor delivering an inspired lecture. He shared the story of Alan Turing, the brilliant physicist who cracked the Nazi code and was then arrested in post war England for having consensual sex with another man.
“This genius with so much to offer mankind was given a choice,” Grayson said. “He could spend the rest of his life in prison, or he could undergo chemical castration. The injections did more than eliminate Turing’s sex drive. He grew breasts, lost his sanity, and eventually committed suicide at the age of 55.”
Noting that our strength as a society lies in our difference, Grayson passionately shared his core mission.
“As your elected representative, it is my job to make sure that government does not penalize you for being who you are,” he said. “Every one of us should be encouraged to be everything we were meant to be. When that happens, we are all the better for it.”
Later that evening I talked with Pat and Lynn Mulder, local parents who are absorbing the dramatically different experiences of their two sons with inspiring dignity. Damien, who is straight, was married last weekend. Ryan, who was gay, was murdered in a brutal hate crime in 2007. One of his killers went on trial in Polk County just a few days after Damien’s wedding.
I asked if it was difficult to keep revisiting their son’s death throughout the trial process, and a tear streamed down Pat’s face. “It’s for Ryan,” she said, and started to elaborate before catching herself. “It’s for Ryan,” she repeated, looking into my eyes as if willing me to understand her full meaning.
The following weekend I saw a documentary at the wonderful Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Prodigal Sons is the story of three brothers who grew up together in Montana. One is straight, adopted, mentally crippled after a severe head injury, and it turns out the biological grandchild of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. One is gay and has distanced himself from his dysfunctional family. And the filmmaker and narrator is transgender, a former football star returning to her high school reunion as a woman.
Kimberly—formerly Paul—was embraced by family and old friends, but held back because of the internal discord between her former and present self. With vintage film of Paul playing quarterback, Kim poignantly described her struggle back then.
“During sprints I would tell myself that if I beat a certain time I would be a boy that evening,” she said. “And then I’d slow down on purpose so that I could be a girl.”
Inside the Tampa Theatre, I flashed back to the similarly tortured ways I used to deny and embrace my gay self. As a teenager I tried to “teach” myself to be attracted to girls by taking one of my dad’s old Playboys, opening the centerfold and rubbing myself. I was convinced that these new associations would eventually become hardwired. But I was 16 and horny as hell, and once aroused I kept turning to photos of furry-chested Sean Connery in a tight bathing suit circa Thunderball. They were the reason I’d commandeered the magazine in the first place.
This sense of conflicting inner voices was reinforced when I saw Where the Wild Things Are, the movie version of the classic children’s book by openly gay author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. As the film unfolds, it is apparent that the Wild Things are imaginative representations of young Max’s warring impulses. When I began seeing Max as a young Sendak—or a young me, for that matter—the movie sprang to life.
By electing the right people and fighting the good fight, what kind of world are we trying to create? One in which governments, schools, religions and families discourage fear-based conformity, and instead make it possible for everyone to, in Grayson’s words, “be everything we were meant to be.” The path will never be clear, but it needn’t be so treacherous.
It is a world where no one is murdered because of who they are, and where a quarterback who wants to be a girl is a treasure.
