From Fear to Compassion to Activism

I was 15 years old, and shopping in a department store with a friend when my heart went up in my throat and my pulse stared racing. I actually felt real fear. “What’s wrong?” my friend Chris asked. “Look at those two guys over there I pointed.” “They’re queers!”

It killed me to write that last sentence, but you see, that was the only word I knew at the time, and I had had no teaching about ‘alternative lifestyles.’ All I knew was that there were two men wearing makeup and stylized hair. I had heard about such individuals, but didn’t know anything more than that they were scary and threatening.

In those years, as most boomers know, sex education didn’t include any information about such things. All we really knew were whispered accounts of a teacher that disappeared following stories that he had inappropriately touched some of the boys. The word queer was bandied about as a perjorative. There was just lots of fear and confusion as I recall.

To my knowledge, there was no one in my school who was openly gay, but the effeminate boys were certainly bullied. It was still okay to be a ‘tomgirl’ back then.

Fast forward to 1978 and my airline career. As soon as I started flying, I met openly gay flight attendants and even one gay pilot. I had a crash course in what their lives were like. The men told me stories about coming from small towns in the Midwest where they were bullied and ostracized. I quickly learned that these guys were not gay by choice, but by birth. One flight attendant that I became close friends with confided in me that he thought he was the only person on earth who was made with feelings for the same sex. My heart ached for what he had endured.

Now fast forward to the mid 90’s. I am working for Barnes and Noble as their community relations manager, planning in-store events. I decided that I wanted to acknowledge Gay Pride Month, and to have some events to promote it. My store manager and district manager gave me a green light. My events included the local gay and lesbian chorus, and a panel discussion with a local gay minister, a gay female disc jockey and a couple from PFLAG, (Parents and friends of lesbians and gays.)

I had come a long way from that day in the department store. My events drew huge crowds – the most I had ever had. In addition to those seated, were people on the fringes pretending to look at books.

We did fear some backlash from the community, but received only two letters of complaint, and more than 40 thanking us for the events. One letter came from a church which later contacted me about doing an event with them. I found the irony most interesting.

The point of all this is to chronicle my evolution from fear to compassion to activism. I strongly believe that we are at a pivotal time in history when acceptance and even embracing all alternative lifestyles is coming into being.

Most of us boomers have lived long enough to have known and maybe even loved a gay person. I know that I have.

I heard a comedian recently joke that we should give gays the right to marry so they could be as miserable as the rest of us. There’s hardly a day that goes by that the gay marriage question is not in the news. To me, it is more about their human rights than it is about marriage. When my gay friends who are couples, tell me about the inheritance laws, health insurance coverage, filing joint tax returns, and even the right to visit their loved one in the hospital when “family only” is the rule, I realize that they don’t have the rights that many of us take for granted.

We boomers have seen sweeping cultural change in our lifetimes. In fact, we’ve been responsible for much of it. Our numbers are many and our voices are strong. With a demographic of 76 million, it’s safe to say that there are millions of us who are gay, whether a lifetime has been spent in the closet or not.

In a short while, the Supreme Court will act on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 from California – both of which have been stumbling blocks to gay rights.

For those of us age 46-64, this may mark a new passage in our lives that we could never have envisioned when we were confused, frightened adolescents.