From AP via pageoneq.com
SAN FRANCISCO – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, kicked off San Francisco's annual gay pride parade Sunday by splitting with her husband over support for legalized gay marriage.
Elizabeth Edwards announced her backing of same-sex marriage, a hot-button departure from what she said was her husband's opposition.
“I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me,” Elizabeth Edwards said at a news conference before the parade started. “I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage.”
The last week in June is indeed Gay Pride Week. I was reminded of it in different ways over the course of the past several days. And I found myself thinking how much my perspective has changed. And all for the good.
I'm nearing my 48th birthday. I've been together with my partner for a lucky 13 years, four dogs, three cats, three adult horses and four foals, four homes, and too many family events to recall. Though we are one of those "gay couples" you hear about, our lives seem so completely and utterly... normal. Average. At times, even, well, boring.
Save for the fact that we don't have children, a choice many hetero couples make too, we're nothing special. At least demographically. Double income, house, mortgage, a vacation or two a year. Both Democrats, but I didn't start out the relationship that way.
For whatever reason, I found myself recalling Gay Pride weeks, days, events and parades of years gone by. A lot has changed in the world since the first time I remember watching the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago. I remember it clearly. It was 1984, and I was about 25. And wow was I ever Mr. Straight Guy. I lived with a fraternity brother from college, and we were both into our second or third years in our respective advertising careers. We partied. We hung out with college pals. He dated. I didn't, but that was, of course, because I was just having too much fun. Sort of.
That year, I was riding my bike around Chicago's Lakeview area when I came to a blocked off street. Oh boy! A parade! All kinds of people were lining the streets. And slowly -- OK, pretty quickly -- it dawned on me that this was a different kind of parade. There were dancing drag queens on stilts. There were burly looking women on motorcycles. I watched this spectacle, but said nothing of it when I went back to my apartment. It only came up when the news was on and the roommate commented on the "fucking faggots." Yeah, look at them. Them. I wasn't one of them. No way.
I had up until this point kept my sexuality a secret even from myself. But this one errant comment from a person who is actually still a friend today lit something inside me. But it only smoldered for another few years.
After another roommate, and finally my own apartment, I began the important first tentative steps into "the gay thing." Still in denial in some ways, and mortified someone in my life would find out, I snuck around with personal-ad dates. Rightly worrisome about AIDS, I was overly cautious. I went to the parade for only the second time the year I was to turn 30. By this point, I knew I was gay, but I was only allowing myself to watch from the sidelines. Innocent bystander, watching alone. Horrors! A group of people from work wandered up to where I was standing. I joined them, and we all had fun... but as straight people watching the show.
A year later, I was in a real relationship... my first. My boyfriend (who hated the term "boyfriend") was unbelievably closeted. He made me look flamboyant. I tried without success to get him to go to the 1990 parade. No way. I recall his saying something like how the parade was exactly wrong for gay people. It was, in his view, a freak show that only made it harder for us more "normal" gays to get along. At the time, I was buying that load of crap. But we didn't go, and even though we split late that year, I didn't go in 1991 either.
Ah, but in 1992, all was different. An opportunity to transfer from Chicago to the Los Angeles office came up and I took it. I saw it as a chance to bring together what were essentially two separate lives. I decided from the get go, I was out. And out I came, like the cork in a champagne bottle. Through a gay friend in Chicago, I met a guy I started dating almost right away. He and his roommates took me to some kind of pride festival in Long Beach. For the first time, I wasn't watching the show, I was in it. And that was just the warm-up. The West Hollywood parade was a life-changing experience. Never, ever, had I felt so good about who I was. Of course, it may have been helped by a whole lot of beer.
The LA gig was short-lived. At work, they didn't really like me, and I didn't really like them. I didn't help myself by getting involved with a guy that worked in my department. The chance to go back to Chicago came up and I took it. I was soon to discover, however, that gossip made it back to Chicago before I did. Oops. The very first day I was back in the Chicago office, a guy I had been pals with asked me if "I turned into a 'mo in California." He actually said it that way. My response: "No. I've always been gay."
No one cared. They all knew at work. And no one really cared. (It was an ad agency for chrissake.)
The 1993 Chicago Pride Parade was a blast. I was making a lot of friends... out, cool, fun gay friends. A coworker introduced me to the gay cabal at work. I traveled a lot for work that year, and almost always with my gay friend Mitch. We'd swap dating horror stories and give each other encouragement. We both met guys about the same time in 1994. Since Mitch and his (then and now) partner Paul lived a block off the parade route, for the next few years, we went to their parade brunch. What an affair. Save for a few minutes one year, we never made it to the parade itself. We were having too much fun among ourselves. The parade was a reason for the party, but not a feature.
Tom (my partner then and now) and I bought a weekend place over in Michigan in the later 90s. And we never went back to the parade. We were always in Michigan. But we'd be sure to get home in time for the 10 o'clock news to watch the high lights. We'd appreciate the incredibly crazy flamboyant participants, but also that one person they'd put on camera grousing that most gay people didn't really act like this. Yeah, I suppose. But is that because the don't want to, or are just over at their place in Michigan?
Now, in 2007, Gay Pride week and the parades are pretty much an "oh, yeah" thing. It's not that we aren't supportive of the gay community. We kicked in to try to defeat Wisconsin's constitutional amendment that prohibits gay marriage, which passed anyway last year. We love the fact that we are represented in Congress by Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay woman. And we never even think to conceal our partnership from anyone. But since being gay is just a part of who we are, we really don't think much about Gay Pride Week. Every day is pride day, by virtue of how we live our lives.
Yesterday, some friends and their kids were up here in Madison from Chicago. Tom took them to the farmer's market. The youngest son, a 10-year-old, bought himself a rainbow beaded necklace with a peace sign hanging from it. Later in the evening, his mom asked him if he knew the symbolism of his necklace. "Yeah, diversity means we should like every kind of person no matter what they are or who they love. And we should be for peace and not war."
"You guys know it's Gay Pride Week, right?" his mother Patti asked us.
"Oh, yeah. That's right." But I think our parade is later in the summer. I don't know." I replied.
I just Googled Madison Pride Parade. There's still time! Madison's gay pride weekend isn't until July 21 and 22. I think I'll ask Tom to go. I'll bet it will be fun. And as I look at all the faces, maybe I'll see that person who is secretly wishing he or she could be doing more than watching from the sidelines. If I make eye contact, I'll try to give them a look that says "you'll get there."
cross-posted at Kerfuffle