Having grown tired of having the history I lived through rewritten so I am told I do not have my facts straight as some young person tells me my own history with many facts wrong and my attempts to correct the errors gets me accused of rewriting history when, in reality, I am endeavoring to preserve it.

The history wasn’t always clean and pretty, and, while people may want to clean it up and make it all so pretty by removing the words and details that trigger people and make them uncomfortable, these are the conditions under which people actually lived and being “triggered” to feel uncomfortable wasn’t an option as existence was a a gun.

Here’s some history and why we need to remember it as it was as rights are attacked. We are familiar with the trump years, and some in the LGBTQIA+ Community feel that whatever he does to the Gays is fine because of all the wonderful things he did as the Best Friend of the Gays. Some will even support him again in spite of what we could lose.

They are willing to give back decades of progress because they either do not know history, choose to ignore it or, since they didn’t do the work to get those rights, don’t appreciate the value of them and the struggle to get them, or the people who did the fighting.

Stop telling me to relax and give Donald Trump another chance, especially if you are not in any of those groups of Americans who stand to lose under the policies he has articulated and the people he will choose to surround himself with as cabinet members, Department heads, and advisors. If you aren’t GLBT, female, any color other than White, an immigrant, a child of an undocumented immigrant who was brought here as an infant, or a person with a disability you have nothing to fear, so stop telling me I don’t either.

Many of the “Give him a second chance crowd” voted for him because they did not like seeing what they thought were their privileges being reduced in any way, and by “reduced” I mean shared with those who had been historically denied what was theirs by right of citizenship and that everyone else had.

No one is attempting to take anything away, but they have been attempting to get that which should have always been theirs too, and to get those who had all their rights to see that this was not so for everyone.

Those who were afraid they will lose their rights, or simply do not want to share them with other American citizens and voted as they did, are the last ones to tell people to relax and lighten up as what they now have could be further unless Donald Trump in word and deed is lying to his supporters.

As we face elections again, some may see some recent gains as minor and, so, giving them up would not be that destructive, but the reality is that those gains did not happen because of the last few years, but, using Stonewall as a starting point, they were finally acknowledged after 40 years of work, and that those who did the work for those 40 years are about to see things potentially going back so the same work will have to be done again.

There are some older people who had finally begun to experience that for which they fought, and were happy in the belief that they would be the last generation of GLBT people who had had to live in the conditions against which they fought.

I finally go my rights at the age of 61 after years of fighting, and only because I moved where people had them.

Saying the gains happened in recent years is to dismiss the years that it took to get those gains.

To give a better perspective, these are some major actions, battles, and successes that took place during my lifetime (born in 1950), and I am more than a few years old:

1951: The Mattachine Society, the first national Gay rights organization, is formed by Harry Hay, considered by many to be the founder of the Gay Rights Movement.

1955: The first Lesbian-rights organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis, was established in San Francisco in 1955.

1956: Daughters of Bilitis became a pioneering national organization.

1962: Illinois becomes the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private.

1966: The world’s first the Transgender organization, the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, was established in San Francisco.

1969: The Stonewall Rebellion made the Gay Rights Movement one universal equal rights and acceptance.

1973: The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders, and Harvey Milk ran for city supervisor in San Francisco on a socially liberal platform and opposed government involvement in personal sexual matters. Milk came in 10th out of 32 candidates, earning 16,900 votes, winning the Castro District and other liberal neighborhoods. He received a lot of media attention for his passionate speeches, brave political stance, and media skills

1976: San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appointed Harvey Milk to the Board of Permit Appeals, making Milk the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. He then ran for but lost a State Assembly race by fewer than 4,000 votes. Because he believed that the Alice B. Toklas Gay Democratic Club would never support him politically, Milk co-founded the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.

1977: Activists in Miami, Florida passed a civil rights ordinance making sexual orientation discrimination illegal in Dade County. But this brought Anita Bryant into things with her Save Our

Children organization, a Christian fundamentalist group, and in the largest special election of any in Dade County history, 70% voted to overturn the ordinance.

1978: On January 8, having run against 16 other candidates, Harvey Milk was sworn in as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and he sponsored a civil rights bill that outlawed sexual orientation discrimination, with only one supervisor voting against it, and Mayor Moscone signed it into law.

John Briggs proposed Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, the purpose of which was to fire any teacher or school employee who publicly supported gay rights, whether or not they were Gay themselves. Partly because of the Briggs initiative attendance greatly increases at Gay Pride marches in San Francisco and Los Angeles. President Jimmy Carter, former Governor Ronald Reagan, and Governor Jerry Brown spoke out against the proposition.

On November 7, voters rejected the proposition by more than a million votes.

On November 27, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another San Francisco city supervisor, who had recently resigned and wanted his job back. The San Francisco Gay Democratic Club changed its name to the Harvey Milk Memorial Gay Democratic Club.

1979: About 75,000 people participated in the National March on Washington for Gay Rights in Washington, D.C., in October. It was the largest political gathering in support of Gay rights to date.

1980: At the 1980 Democratic National Convention held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Democrats took a stance supporting Gay rights, adding the following to their plank: “All groups must be protected from discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, language, age, sex or sexual orientation.”

1981: On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report newsletter with a report on an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP)  in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. Because of a June 1982 report of a group of cases among gay men in New York City, the syndrome was initially termed “GRID”, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency until health authorities realized that nearly half of the people identified with the syndrome were not homosexual men, and the name was changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). But the original name had given false fuel to those with anti-Gay animus.

Because it was originally thought that only a ignorable population was getting AIDS, through the lack of both policy and financial support the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was severely handicapped during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The Reagan Administration did not understand the essential role of Government in disease prevention, and had no interest in addressing it anyway in spite of the CDC’s clearly documented dangers of HIV and AIDS early in the epidemic because, benefiting from pandering to the religious right, it went along with the religious right’s claim that it was God’s punishment being delivered unto the Gays. By refusing to deliver prevention programs, the Reagan Administration allowed HIV to become more widely spread rather than being kept under control.

This resulted in local GLBT Communities having to design their own programs to deal with AIDS which included networks of doctors and the creation of hospices, as well as counselors for

patients and those left behind in the event of death, a model that was adopted by mainstream society when it was finally accepted that everyone could get AIDS.

It also called for resistance to politicians proposing total isolation of people with AIDS, the worst example being William Dannemeyer, former U.S. Representative from California’s 39^th district from 1979 to 1993, who advocated for enforcing mandatory quarantines for people with AIDS which included Manzanar style internment camps from which people with AIDS could never leave and to which no member of the family or friends of the quarantined could ever go and visit since he believed people with AIDS emitted a spore that caused infection and anyone who visited would not be then allowed to leave as they would have been exposed and could carry the exposure home with them.

By 1989 there were 27,408 reported deaths, many yet to die, and many more infected with HIV, many of those, assuming it only hit Gay men, had no reason in their minds to get tested, and so were not only unaware they were infected, but in ignorance spread the virus to millions more.

By 1995, AIDS was the leading cause of death for adults 25 to 44 years old with about 50,000 Americans dying of AIDS-related causes. African-Americans made up 49 percent of AIDS-related deaths. But death rates began to decline after multi-drug therapy became widely available, a practice which in the early years of the epidemic resulted in a doctor who was effectively treating his patients in this way having his medical license revoked by the state of New York.

There are 1.2 million people infected with HIV, and it is strongly believed 1 in 8 Americans are infected, but just don’t know it.

1982: Wisconsin became the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

1984: The city of Berkeley, California, became the first city to offer its employees domestic-partnership benefits.

1993: The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was instituted for the U.S. military, permitting gays to serve in the military but banning homosexual activity. Although President Clinton intended this to be compromise with those who wanted to keep the prohibition against gays in the military, it led to the discharge of thousands of men and women from the armed forces.

On April 25, an estimated 800,000 to one million people participate in the March on Washington for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. The march was a response to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. The march also protested rising hate crimes and ongoing discrimination against the LGBT community.

1996: In Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s Amendment 2, which denied Gays and Lesbians protection against discrimination, calling the discrimination protection  “special rights.” According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, “We find nothing special in the protections Amendment 2 withholds. These protections . . . constitute ordinary civil life in a free society.”

2000: Vermont became the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions between Gay or Lesbian couples. The law stated that these “couples would be entitled to the same benefits, privileges, and responsibilities as spouses.” But marriage was still defined as heterosexual.

2003: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy laws in the U.S. were unconstitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”

In November, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that barring gays and lesbians from marrying violated the state constitution. The Massachusetts Chief Justice concluded that to “deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage” to gay couples was unconstitutional because it denied “the dignity and equality of all individuals” and made them “second-class citizens.”

2004: On May 17, same-sex marriages became legal in Massachusetts.

2005: Civil unions became legal in Connecticut in October.

2006: Civil unions became legal in New Jersey in December.

2007: In November, the House of Representatives approved a bill ensuring equal rights in the workplace for Gay men, Lesbians, and Bisexuals.

2008: In February, a New York State appeals court unanimously voted that valid same-sex marriages performed in other states must be recognized by employers in New York.

In February, the state of Oregon allowed same-sex couples to register as domestic partners allowing them some spousal rights of married couples.

On May 15, the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. But influenced by conservative “Christian” groups, most noticeably the Mormon Church, on November 4, California voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage called Proposition 8 which threw into question the validity of the more than 18,000 marriages already performed. Although the California Supreme Court upheld the ban in May 2009, it ruled that those couples married under the old law were still legally married.

November 4, voters in California, Arizona, and Florida approved the passage of measures that banned same-sex marriage. Arkansas passed a measure intended to bar Gay men and Lesbians from adopting children.

On October 10, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that under the state’s Constitution same-sex couples have the right to marry, and that the state’s civil union law did not provide same-sex couples with the same rights as heterosexual couples.

On November 12, same-sex marriages began to be officially performed in Connecticut.

Now the “last 8 years” begins

2009: On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously rejected the state law banning same-sex marriage, and twenty-one days later, county recorders were required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

On April 7, the Vermont Legislature voted to override Governor Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill allowing Gays and Lesbians to marry, legalizing same-sex marriage. It was the first state to legalize gay marriage through the legislature, not the courts.

On May 6, the governor of Maine legalized same-sex marriage in that state, but citizens voted to overturn that law and Maine became the 31st state to ban it.

On June 3, New Hampshire governor John Lynch signed legislation allowing same-sex marriage. The law stipulated that religious organizations and their employees would not be required to participate in the ceremonies. New Hampshire was the sixth state in the nation to allow same-sex marriage.

On June 17, President Obama signed a referendum allowing the same-sex partners of federal employees to receive benefits. They would not be allowed full health coverage, however. This was Obama’s first major initiative in his campaign that promised to improve Gay rights.

In December, after 12 years of advocacy that included dealing with at least half a dozen superintendents, changes in School Board members, a bevy of reprimands, a court case prompted by actions that resulted from some opposition, multiple appearances before the  Board by many people, at least one connected death, possibly two, some rather strange behavior on the part of administrators, including “Family” members, and some of the most far fetch arguments in opposition, the school board of the Oklahoma City Public Schools finally voted to add the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to its policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination.

2010: March 3, Congress approved a law signed in December 2009 that legalized same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia.

August 4, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California’s Proposition 8 violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause writing “Proposition 8 singles out gays and lesbians and legitimates their unequal treatment. Proposition 8 perpetuates the stereotype that gays and lesbians are incapable of forming long-term loving relationships and that Gays and Lesbians are not good parents.”

December 18, the U.S. Senate voted 65 to 31 in favor of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, with eight Republicans siding with the Democrats to strike down the ban. The ban was not lifted officially until President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that the military was ready to enact the change and that it wouldn’t affect military readiness.

On Dec. 18, President Obama officially repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy.

2011: June 24, New York passed a law to allow same-sex marriage making it the largest state that allowed Gay and Lesbian couples to marry.

2012:February 7, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled 2–1 that Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in state, was unconstitutional because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In the ruling, the court said that the law “operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships.”

February 13, Washington became the seventh state to legalize Gay marriage.

March 1, Maryland passed legislation to legalize gay marriage.

May 9, President Barack Obama endorsed same-sex marriage. “It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” he said. He made the statement days after Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan both came out in support of gay marriage.

Nov. 6, Tammy Baldwin. a seven-term Democratic congresswoman from Wisconsin, prevailed over former governor Tommy Thompson in the  race for U.S. Senate and became the first openly Gay politician elected to the Senate. Maine and Maryland voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, and voters in Minnesota rejected a measure to ban same-sex marriage.

2013: Feb. 27 several Republicans backed a legal brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. More than 100 Republicans were listed on the brief, including former New Hampshire Congressman Charles Bass and Beth Myers, a key adviser to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign.

March 26, the Supreme Court began two days of historical debate over gay marriage as it considered overturning Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act.

April 29, Jason Collins of the NBA’s Washington Wizards announced in an essay in Sports Illustrated that he is gay becoming the first active athlete in the NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLB to make the announcement.

May 2, after same-sex marriage legislation passed in both houses of Rhode Island’s legislature, Governor Lincoln Chafee signec it into law.

May 7, Governor Jack Markell signed the Civil Marriage Equality and Religious Freedom act, legalizing same-sex marriage for the state of Delaware.

May 13, in Minnesota, the State Senate voted 37 to 30 in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. The vote came a week after it passec in the House.

June 26, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional by 5 to 4 vote. The court also ruled that the law interfered with the states’ right to define marriage.

Aug. 1, Minnesota and Rhode Island began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Oct. 21, in a unanimous vote, the New Jersey Supreme Court rejected Gov. Chris Christie’s request to delay the implementation date of same-sex weddings. Same-sex couples in New Jersey began to marry. When just hours later, Christie dropped his appeal to legalize same-sex marriages, New Jersey became the 14th state to recognize same-sex marriages.

Nov. 5 Illinois became the 15th state to recognize same-sex marriages when the House of Representatives approved the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act

Nov. 12, Hawaii became the 16th state to recognize same-sex marriages when the Senate passed a gay marriage bill, which had already passed in the House. State Senator J. Kalani English said, “This is nothing more than the expansion of aloha in Hawaii.”

2014: Jan. 6, The United States Supreme Court blocked any further same-sex marriages in Utah while state officials appealed the decision made by Judge Shelby in late December 2013, creating a legal limbo for the 1,300 same-sex couples who had received marriage licenses since Judge Shelby’s ruling.

Jan. 10, The Obama administration announced that the federal government would recognize the marriages of the 1,300 same-sex couples in Utah even though the state government had just decided not to do so.

May 19, Same-sex marriage became legal in Oregon when a U.S. federal district judge ruled that the state’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violated the Equal Protection clause in the U.S. Constitution.

May 20, a judge strucl down the same-sex marriage ban in Pennsylvania. Until then the state did not even recognize domestic partnerships or civil unions.

Oct. 6, The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear appeals of rulings in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin that allowed same-sex marriage.

Nov. 12, The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to block same-sex marriage in Kansas

Nov. 19, A federal judge struck down Montana’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Nov. 20, The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to block same-sex marriage in South Carolina making it the 35th U.S. state where same-sex marriage is legal.

2015: June 26, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry and that states cannot say that marriage is reserved for heterosexual couples. “Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

July 27, The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Executive Board by a 45-12 voted to end its ban on gay adult leaders. The new policy does still allow church-sponsored Scout groups to ban gay adults for religious reasons.

2016: But even with the June 26, 2015 landmark Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, the GLBT community is still fighting against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

On May 13,  President Obama weighed in on the “toilet wars”—legislation being hashed out in some states about which bathrooms transgender people have the right to use—with the guideline: students may use bathrooms according to their self-identified gender.

And then came Trump, book banning, Drag Queen condemnation, and a slew of anti-Trans bills and loss of won rights.

Saying the gains happened in recent years is to dismiss the years that it took to get those gains.

So being told to lighten up as rights are attacked is to be told to forget what you did to get this far.

No, we old warriors have a right to be angry, some were killed in the effort and many died in the 80s because we were not worthy of the country’s attention, and the beneficiaries of our work should also be aware that what took 65 years of fighting to gain is about to be taken away, and they need to do what is needed to stop that.

In some places, especially Massachusetts, young GLBT people, not so much the T’s since they have just recently received protections, have lived without housing and employment discrimination, went to schools where legislation requires that school districts have policies and procedures to prevent and deal with instances of bullying because of sexual orientation and, now, gender identity, and teachers have to attend mandatory workshops to learn how to handle it, and same sex marriage has been around most of their adult lives.

The older people know what will come if certain things happen under a return of the GOP, and will think, “Crap. We have to do all that fighting again?”, while the younger GLBT people will wonder what the hell happened and ask, “What do we do now?”.

Learn hisor and proec wha was produced

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(I feel it important as real history gives way to legends and rewrites -even in my own personal experience- it is important to remember historical moments no matter how seemingly inconsequential)

After I moved to the West Coast I joined the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angles.

It was in the mid-eighties, and at the height of the AIDS Epidemic, and in the time before the Reagan administration abandoned the misguided idea that AIDS was God’s way of punishing the

Gay Community not for who we actually were, but because of what the religious right, Reagan’s base, wanted people to believe we were.

The very people who extolled the love of one person for another, who promoted the importance of relationships, the ones who advertised their relationships in pictures, posing as couples in the media, having children and claiming that was a sign of their love which evidenced the importance of sex as an expression of love, were denying the same to the Gay community whose members had to find ways of addressing their need to express their love for someone without being mistreated for it.

These were, and continue to be, those who claim Gay people cannot form lasting relationships while doing everything possible to prevent them.

Being new to the chorus, and not having known any other members until I joined, I had neither the bonds that the more senior members had with each other, nor those they had with others in the wider Community.

Many had lost loved ones and close friends to AIDS, and ,when I shared time with them, were helplessly watching more of the people in their lives being taken, and knowing, sadly, in the ensuing years that many of them would be part of that number. A year or so after I left that chorus to join one closer to where I lived in Long Beach, I was aware when attending one of the Los Angeles Chorus’s concerts that I knew very few of the members. The ones I knew, many at any rate, were gone.

They had been dealing with the deaths, the rejection of medical services, the actual proposal by conservative politicians and morbidly joyous conservative Christian leaders of being moved to internment camps to live out their last days, and they had not had a chance yet to grieve publicly or as a group without rejection and without judgment.

And so it was that on a particular Sunday  in the mid-eighties a memorial service was held at a church in Santa Monica to be attended by anyone who had experienced a loss and at which the chorus was to provide the music during the liturgy.

The liturgy as moving along smoothly, and then the chorus began the song by Dan Hill “Sometimes When We Touch”.

With the first singing of the song’s chorus,

“And sometimes when we touch/ The honesty’s too much/ And I have to close my eyes/ And hide/ I want to hold you till I die/ Till we both break down and cry/ I want to hold you till the fear in me subsides”,

and with the verse that led up to it being such a true description of the relationships of those who sat in the pews and those singing in the chorus who had lost someone close people began to quietly sob. With more people growing silent in the chorus it became impossible to continue.

The presiding clergyman, the Episcopal Bishop Malcolm Boyd, having the sense to do so, calmly announced that the liturgy would take a short break so that people, who had been denied such a moment, could openly grieve.

All of us in the church went outside into the church’s court yard.

Not knowing the members of the chorus beyond rehearsals and performances, I decided I would quietly move off from the group and not intrude on their grieving.

From a distance I saw some of the most masculine men I had ever met break down in tears, some hugging others to support them or to give them the hug society would not give them. I saw a grief deeper than I had ever seen even among family members who had experienced a loss. There were tears as people expressed their grief or exchanged remembrances.

As I walked around the corner of the church into another section of the courtyard I saw a lone elderly gentleman sitting quietly on a bench against a far wall. He was dressed as an older Gay man might with a hint of past fashion with a Greek sea captain’s hat on his head and a rather large, I thought almost too large, Turquoise medallion hanging from his neck. Recognizing he might be an “outsider” like me, I went over and sat next to him, quietly for a bit, until he made a comment about the scene we were witnessing.

He spoke of the difficulty these men had experienced and would in the future. He spoke of his sadness that the political and religious leaders were using AIDS for political reasons. He mourned that just as progress was being made to accept the Gay Community, a disease came along to threaten it. He spoke as someone who knew so much and had experienced so much.

There was grief in his words and in his voice.

He then spoke of his hope in the future and his belief that this would be overcome, making the Community stronger, and that that strength would bring about the necessary changes. I just sat listening as he just seemed to need someone to listen. He seemed content that someone had come over to sit with him.

It became clear from the movement of the people reentering the church that things were about to resume, and I rose to go back in. Not wanting to be an unnamed abstract, I turned and belatedly introduced myself.

“I’m Joe”. I said.

“Morris”, he said.

We shook hands, and I walked back inside, and as we began singing, this time making it through the song after the catharsis in the courtyard, I saw him come back into the church and sit in the back by himself, and old man grieving.

After the church services as we headed toward the parking lot, one of the long time members of the chorus ended up walking with me, and as we talked he mentioned he had seen me talking with Morris.

“You know Morris?”, I asked.

“Everyone does”, he replied. “That’s Morris Kight.

It turned out that the quiet man sitting alone, an old guy of no apparent consequence who had only hinted at having a history, and seemed dressed in an outdated outfit as if to remember past times, was THE Morris Kight the founder or co-founder of many Gay and Lesbian organizations, among them the Committee for Homosexual Freedom in the 1950s, which in October1969 was renamed the Gay Liberation Front in solidarity with New York City, the Gay Community Center in 1971, which later became the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center by the time I had gotten there, the Christopher Street West Gay Pride Parade in 1973, the Stonewall Democratic Club in 1975, and AIDS for AIDS in 1983.

I had heard of Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood from people I had met in Long Beach, who told me never to eat there because it not only had a misspelled sign above the bar that said “Fagots Stay Out”, but also had printed up matchbook covers with the same saying, and here I had had a conversation with the man who, along with Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, and 100 activists, had protested outside the place, an action with which I was familiar.

This is the man with whom I spoke, that old guy sitting alone quietly on a church courtyard bench bringing no attention to himself. A man with a history who could have been assumed to be just some old guy with retro taste in clothing wearing overstated jewelry, that old guy sitting alone at the far corner of the bar. A man I could have ignored to my own loss.

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When I taught High school in New Rochelle, NY, in the 1970s, my favorite way to get to NYC was not taking the direct highway, but taking the shore road through Pelham to stop for an onion burger and clams on the half shell at that little place along the way, I am thinking Eddie’s, so I could drive by City Island, a place I have always wanted to live.

This drive included a rather odd hill. 

It had not always been there, but a few years before that spot was chosen to be the resting place of Manhattan’s trash. Although knowing the hole would eventually become a small hill, this took place much faster than anticipated and what I drove by was a huge hill into which they stopped adding trash.

Around that same time the city was watching the slow approach, rather return, of sewage with the thickness of peanut butter as it had escaped the currents that were supposed to have contained it as it slowly sank beneath the surface but was now returning home.

A garbage barge containing a huge collection of the city’s trash floated around off the coast unable to come ashore as there was no place for it.

Yes, human waste, biological and material, has played a role in my past in the role of humor or horror depending on your mood when you received the news.

Listening to the progress of the human waste on the morning news often determined what you did not put on your toast.

The only up side was that the hill was in no man’s land and the barge and the blob were out at sea, not near people.

When I moved to New Bedford, I saw the “mountain” off the highway and knew it for what it was, the collected trash of the city that in future years, centuries from now, archaeologists will dig into to learn about those whose trash it is.The problem of these ever growing mountains is not insurmountable if we dealt with the cause of these mountains and not just deal with them.

There is too much disposable trash we are forced to create. Cereal in bags inside boxes, food items wrapped individually in a group package, hard objects with built in obsolescence, and the consumer having to accept the packaging creating trash if they want the product.

We create trash we do not need and are creating mountains with it.

I will not get into it here, but after its hay day as a rich city twice, once with whaling, once with manufacturing, it seems the state of Massachusetts has a grudge against New Bedford and wants to spit on it in the name of their ancestors who did not benefit from New Bedford or Fall River directly. 

I lived on the South and North Shores of Massachusetts consistently or my first 18 years and then sporadically after that, and the negative attitude, the seeming desire to kick a city they were jealous of while it was down has always been there. New Bedford is closer to Rhode Island than Boston, so the state has been treating it with a vengeful attitude to the point it would be better if the state just let the South Coast go to Rhode Island, although there is a bit more the state can wring out of the place if it keeps the city.

Trash.

Everyone has trash. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have trash. This is unsightly. Recycling and reclamation centers can be artfully hidden behind trees and industrial parks, but where does all the trash go that people separate into the appropriate containers? 

I watched a truck haul a container away as I was at the reclamation center in Dennis on the Cape, but just saw it ride into the figurative sunset as it just went away out of sight and from there, like what makes a ride at Disney work, none of our concern. 

To keep other towns clean, bright, and postcard worthy, they have settled on New Bedford to be the regional trash receptacle because, well ,this is New Bedford, the state holds a grudge, and the people here are, well, just the people here, not there.

Presently, Parallel Products has a facility in the far North end of the city that recycles metal and glass, and now,  after community protests about adding “biosolids” (poop) to the mix, has settled on only adding only the processing of municipal solid waste. 

People live in that end of town and, although not the tourist part that brings in a lot of outsiders to one area of town, are still residents of the city and not part of the trash being recycled near them.

There may be a financial gain for the city, but at whose expense? 

We already are involved in the city’s renaissance that involves treating many present residents as disposable trash that needs to be removed so people from elsewhere will want to live in the high end, luxury, thousands a month apartments that used to comfortably house the people living here who kept the city from dying.

The people in this neighborhood, although dodging the bullet of human waste, still are facing a facility that operates 24/7 with 6 a.m to 7 p.m. truck delivery hours 6 days a week for a total of 386 trucks per day or 120,818 over a years time, the smell of hydrogen sulfide gas, toxic “forever chemicals” leaking into the ground and the water therein, loss of property value as the area becomes the environs for a dump, and possible harm to human health and the environment which could cause developmental delays and in both children and fetuses, the sacred unborn for the Right to Life crowd.

But, hey, all this is way out there in the part of town most people whiz past as they head up Route 140 going somewhere else where there is no DisneyLand of trash. Out of sight, out of mind. 

As the Mayor put it

“The proposed project would simply be too close to nearby neighborhoods and could harm the quality of life of their residents.”

This should not be a city-wide NIMBY situation but one every citizen should oppose for the sake of fellow citizens.

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(Another moment in Gay History)

The anniversary of the moment when Anita Bryant was pied in the face by Gay rights activist Tom Higgins during her interview for her crusade against homosexuals was just a few days ago.

While most people knew her as an American singer who had four Top 40 hits in the late 50s and early 60s, the former Miss Oklahoma1958 who made it to Second Runner-Up in the 1959 Miss America Pageant, and then the face of the Florida Citrus Commission, smilingly reminding us that a day without orange juice was like a day without sunshine, for some, and a sizable some, there was the side, the nasty, demeaning side hidden behind the orange juice smile that the general population didn’t see because it didn’t touch them directly.

She was also an outspoken opponent of Gay rights running the Save Our Children” campaign to repeal the local ordinance in Dade County, Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, using the false Christian belief that Homosexuals were after children for recruitment to some “lifestyle” they insist exists, and molestation as her weapon.

She said such things as,

  “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children”;

“If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters”

And,

“All America and all the world will hear what the people have said, and with God’s continued help we will prevail in our fight to repeal similar laws throughout the nation,”

all while referring to Gay people as “human garbage”.

Not content with her activities in Florida, which, although successful at the time, brought about a national boycott of Florida orange juice with Gay bars not serving any drinks with orange juice and the idea spreading to ally bars, politicians, and social justice advocates, an action that would bear results, she went national most notably with her anti-Homosexual campaign inspiring the Briggs Amendment in California which would have made pro-gay statements regarding homosexual people or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal in effect, besides preventing GLBT students access to, at times, lifesaving information while making verbal harassment and bullying on school campuses directed toward GLBT students unstoppable, Gay teachers could be purged throughout the state.

It failed. 

When I taught in Los Angeles I worked with and knew many fine teachers who would not have been there had Anita Bryant been successful, nor would I have even been hired as I would not be allowed to teach.

Times were changing, and Gay people, in becoming more open and visible, revealed that we were as normal as Straight people, and reality began to push aside religious based false fantasies.

Her activism began to be seen as the fanaticism it was, and there was fallout from it.

The Singer Corporation rescinded an offer to sponsor a possible weekly variety show, and the Florida Citrus Commission allowed her contract to lapse after her divorce, a divorce that killed off her Christian fundamentalist audience with invitations to appear at their events drying up which meant the loss of a major source of income.

Although divorce went against her firmly held religious beliefs, since it affected her directly, she eventually came to the belief that,

“The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women’s problems.”

A series of failed businesses in which she was involved with her second husband ended in bankruptcies, a series of unpaid employees and creditors, and unpaid state and federal taxes.

In explaining their divorce, Bryant’s first husband blamed the Gays by playing the victim, claiming those who reject being victimized by him and the Missus were in the wrong for not accepting it, saying,

“Blame gay people? I do. Their stated goal was to put her out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.”

It would appear that the people who rallied others to victimize people based on lies so they could lose their jobs and homes is what was unfair, not those people refusing to be further victimized. 

The woman who had worn her religion on her sleeve and worked to have her religion the basis of civil laws applicable to all citizens, when asked just a few years ago her views on Gays, she said, in my opinion patronizingly, dismissively, and hypocritically,

“I’m more inclined to say live and let live, just don’t flaunt it or try to legalize it”.

She had caused such damage to Gay people and threatened to do more.

So that is why the pie was thrown.

During Bryant’s fading years, I was living in Oklahoma when Brad Henry was elected governor. He was young, a Democrat, and a creature unique in that state at that time, a Liberal politician. I was on the Board of a political committee in the GLBT Community of Oklahoma City who backed him during his campaign as he spoke strongly for the rights of GLBT people. We helped on his campaign with time and money, and this resulted in our getting an invitation to his inaugural ball after his election.

Henry was popular and this led to having three settings at the ball. On one floor there was a child-oriented room with games, child friendly eats, and adult supervision. The governor had children. Another floor had the Blue Room for those who had donated money and/or given of their time up to a certain level. The third floor had the Gold Room for the high-end donors. Most such events would have just had the one Gold Room for the moneyed and influential, but, because of the guy he was, Brad Henry extended the invites beyond the “elites” while still keeping them feeling special.

 The Board I was on met the requirement for the Gold Room, and, as with other organizations being appropriately identified, our table had a sign sticking out of the centerpiece with our organization’s name on it. 

We had opted to abandon the totally irrelevant boy/girl seating pattern for the more relevant boy/boy/, girl/girl or whomever you came with pattern, and at dessert were chattering like children planning to do something naughty about going to the dance as the true couples we were, rather than dancing like Heterosexuals.

It may not seem so now, but this was in the Buckle of the Bible Belt that was Oklahoma in 2003, quite close to what 1958 had been in other states when it really had been 1958, at a state wide function of the state’s movers and shakers where there was a lot of press, and where such an action would not go unnoticed, perhaps the very opposite with unknown reactions, so this was one of those little moments that was actually a pretty big deal.

It was a time in that place when anything done by a GLBT person openly as themselves with no shame or fear was most likely the first time it was done out of the closet making it “A First”.

While we were whispering, the MC for the evening had introduced the local, well known dance band whose leader then introduced its guest performer for the first set as the woman who used to sing with them way back before she became famous, and the dancing began. We hadn’t heard the singer’s name over our and the tables’ around us talking.

We walked into the middle of the dance floor and added a little Gay club spirit to it, dancing men with men and women with women, cutting in and mixing up couples, ending up most of the time right below the singer and getting a lot of thumbs up from the other dancers who I thought were signaling that they supported what we were doing.

That would have been enough to show we were among allies.

However, as it turned out, it wasn’t just that we were unabashedly dancing as the Gay people who had earned our invite just as the other people on or near the dance floor that they thought was great, but more that we had been dancing right below Anita Bryant, herself, as she sang her set just above our heads.

Those of us dancing had no idea of this until the set ended and we were approached by a lot of happy people as we left the dance floor who could not believe we had not only taken the bold step of dancing as Gay couples so freely and proudly, but we had taken the further step of doing it blatantly under the gaze of Miss Anita.

It was a big thing, the memory of which makes me proud to have known, been with, befriended, and worked with the people who sat at the table and danced for the Community.

This was that moment in time.

Those at the table who took that step on to the dance floor that night, at least the ones I can remember after the intervening years, were Edward Kromer and his spouse, Paul Bashline, Anthea Maton, a wonderful artist, Margaret Cox, a power house in the fight for women’s rights in general and Lesbians’ in particular, Tom Mac Donald who, perhaps just doing instead of considering possibilities, came up from the Blue Room to the Gold Room with his date because, well, there was live dance music, and me.

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Teaching in Southern California during the 1980s and with all the Sandinista/Reagan business, our student body had a degree of fluidity as students would show up to stay or wait for the better placement after having arrived from somewhere in Central America and having endured God-knows-what along the way. They were fleeing from a situation of the United States’s creation while it avoided responsibility for dealing with its creation properly. When companies such as those who deal in Bananas saw the potential of exploiting Central America, as they had done since the beginning of the country, took over land, disrupted society, ended any concept of communal farming for the benefit of the community, and basically did to the people of Central America what we had learned to do with Manifest Destiny. Take the land, leave the people to deal with it, and blame them if they just can’t.

We introduced a need to survive in this new societal configuration and, as happens wherever this is done, struggles to be powerful under the new system introduced drug cartels and death squads to guarantee compliance with the newly established local way of doing things.

We took their society, their culture, their land, their homes, and their livelihood and we expected them to stay there and just deal with it. 

The migration that we caused began.

I was having a casual drink when the bartender blurted out, in response to a patron’s comment, that her family immigrated the legal way and so should those people coming from Central America. They should not be treated any differently than anyone else.

There was general agreement among the other patrons, at the time a gathering of first and second generation descendants of immigrants.

I have heard this often in a city built on immigration from the whaling industry to manufacturing, usually expressed by those who would have been considered DACA kids under other conditions. They did not know what the full process of immigration was, being in the womb, or very newly out of it, nor did they have to do anything more than follow parental instructions, and here they were.

I have become a bit of a history buff and this comparison intrigued me as, knowing something about Lusophone history, I seemed to have overlooked some important parts of Portugal’s history that, had I known, might have my attitude vary somewhat.

I was under the false impression that most Portuguese who had arrived in the days before strict immigration laws did so just getting on a whaleship in one county and ending up here with the remaining wave of immigrants coming as labor was needed in factories and an influx of immigrants became essential. When the United States began stricter entry requirements, people had to go to consulates in their home country, fill out papers, pay the fees, supply required documentation, attend an interview to receive an approved visa if all goes well, and arranging how the family would travel, together as a unit or with one family member arriving alone to set things up stateside for an easy process.

I know Portugal had a revolution in 1974 during which the dictatorship was overthrown without any death or carnage, but, rather, with the distribution of carnations, but I think the whole history of the revolution and how it has influenced the generations after, if only those from Portugal proper or the Azores, particularly, would open up and be honest about the drug cartels and death squads that wandered around the Islands creating a threatening atmosphere from which the people had to escape.

A volcano grew and erupted on the tip of the island of Faial, and for 13 months, from September 27, 1957 until October 24, 1958, it was active, destroying houses, and causing the evacuation of 2,000 people from the area. There were no deaths from the eruption, however. 

In response, because of the states’ relationships to Portugal, Senator John F Kennedy of Massachusetts and Congressman John O. Pastore of Rhode Island proposed, and President Eisenhower signed, the Azorean Refugee Act on September 2, 1958, authorizing the emigration of 1,500 people which began a 50% decrease of the resident population of Capelo contributing to an increased standard of living, greater working opportunities, and some improvements in base income for those who remained because, due to amendments and adjustments, the final number became a few thousands more than that with many of the arrivals, having been farmers, moving to California and establishing a huge Portuguese farming community.

What Faial and by extension Portugal seem to be hiding in order to present a rosy picture of the island and its people is the existence of the drug cartels and death squads that had been, and may very well still be operating during that period and after.

Otherwise, those people and their children who came as a result of that Act cannot say they have arrived according to established procedures, unlike those from the south who are experiencing problems similar to what they had secretly, apparently, faced since the people from Compelo, rather than have just as easily availed themselves of the formal system benefited from one specifically designed for them. the Azorean Refugee Act would seem to indicate that they did not arrive as others had but by way of exceptions to the rules, time frames, fees, and services extended upon arrival.

Others with whom I have spoken, no matter where in the Portuguese world they came from, have similar stories to each other of coming to live with family already here, having a member or two of the family coming over first and sending for the rest of the family when things had been arranged, filling out forms, and patiently waiting for the assigned time to leave.

None of them, none, talk about losing their land to industrial farm companies, having to protect their children from the gangs who seized power under what the United States allowed and supported militarily, or the drug cartels. They do rap rhapsodic about the islands, the mountains, the wine, the cheese, the Linguica, and the pastries I love, but we hear nothing about the conditions that drove them from their countries to seek safety here.

There would appear to be a well hidden history and accounting of current events as we only see the tourist brochures and talk to some very close-lipped people.

Considering that the details are exactly the same and those coming from Portugal have had to deal with the same conditions forced on the people of Central America, this hiding of the grossly negative conditions does a disservice to those in Portugal and the Azores who continue to suffer.

My grandparents told us many stories of their youth in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My grandfather got to stay home rather than be sent to the front lines during the War to End All Wars because, as a medic’s assistant, he was needed at home when the explosion of 1917 happened in the harbor, and my grandmother had the scar she got from shattering glass that morning to show her grandchildren on occasion, usually when Nova Scotia sent the annual Christmas tree to Boston.

Yet, not once did they ever mention the conditions they faced before their train ride to their new country. I would have appreciated their adventure more had they only spoken of the drug cartels, the death squads, and their loss of land, livelihoods, and culture to big business causing them to have to flee to Boston to join relatives already here, safely, thank God. 

We never heard about the death squads and drug cartels. It is, apparently, the Maritime Provinces’ best kept inter-generational secret.

They and the Lusophone world know how to keep one.

If they only spoke out, honestly and openly, I might have a better chance of understanding how emigrating from Lisbon is just like having to leave some Central American location.

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This is a reprint of an historical moment that has, for some reason, gone by with little attention.

In the opening years of the 21st Century, the volunteer organizers of the Oklahoma City Gay Pride parade and festival, realizing that the permit to use a city park for the annual one day community festival that preceded the Sunday evening parade actually covered the whole weekend from Friday evening to Sunday evening, decided to take advantage of what was available, but up to then not used.

The plan was to have some form of musical event on Friday night followed by two days of the usual festival activities of information booths, vendors, food, and entertainment, culminating in the annual parade, and letting the greater community know that everyone was invited.

In spite of its being the Buckle of the Bible Belt, the Pride parade was the biggest parade in the city, and the festival one of the most attended, and eventually even the state tourist board would recognize this and include it in its tourist guide.

But back then there was a need to advertise the expansion of the festival, tout its importance to the whole city community, and, perhaps, attract a bigger crowd. It would still be geared to the GLBT community and the celebration of its pride, but it would also become welcoming to all people so they could see how diverse, and, as was also necessary, how normal GLBT people were to counter the cartoonish representations presented by churches and extremely conservative politicians.

Nothing would be compromised or “toned down” as there was no reason for that.

The national theme chosen by whoever chooses them was not relevant to Oklahoma City as it was geared toward those cities whose GLBT Communities had made much more progress than we had, and so we would have been celebrating what we had yet to be celebrating.

We chose to celebrate the strength and hard work of the community in the fight for its rights in spite of the odds, and used the graphic of a powerful locomotive and Dolly Parton’s version of Peace Train for advertising. We constructed a model steam engine with two box cars on a flat bed trailer, strung it with lights, and made it adaptable for any parades we could get into to advertise the festival and parade that year.

It was rather surprising how many local Christmas parades accepted our application for inclusion, and that made it necessary to add piles of white puffy material to have the train plowing through snow with Christmas gifts in the box cars.

There were banners on both sides stating who we were and what we represented, and along with the Rainbow Flags flying from the 4 corners of our float, it was not a closeted thing.

We originally intended to walk along beside the float wearing rented animal costumes, but because the cost of renting both the bodies and heads made the cost of this prohibitive, we marched as animal bodies with human heads.

Peace Train played on a continuous loop as we tossed candy and strings of beads into the crowds, and the response from the spectators was positive, unlike the negative responses we had anticipated, and we saw that the people did not fall in line with the religious leaders and politicians who, while pushing their animus toward GLBT people, were obviously out of touch with the general population.

It was after our participation in the Norman, Oklahoma Mardi Gras Parade that we received an invitation that was historic.

For many years, GLBT communities throughout the country had been suing St. Patrick Day Parade organizers in their communities to be allowed to march in their communities’ parades. Because of the continuous denials, their suits and the news stories about them had become as annual as the parades.

The invitation we received was to be part of the Oklahoma City St Patrick’s Day Parade.

On the morning of the parade as we “Irished up” the train float with plenty of green and pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, the person who was in charge of the flags was a no-show. This meant we had to go to a local flea market we had passed when bringing the float to the staging area where we had seen a rainbow flag flying along with MIA-POW, Harley- Davidson, and Confederate Flags on poles above a flag vendor booth. The Hells Angels, ZZ Top looking guys who manned the booth were surprised when we told them why we needed to purchase four Rainbow flags, and got a good laugh at their unknowingly flying the Gay Flag along with those others. As an aside, they continued to fly that flag with the others for many years after.

A problem in the wider GLBT community is that its own media pays a lot of attention to the large city communities while very little is paid to smaller communities and none, if any, to rural places. The GLBT Community was making great strides in GLBT rights, but major victories in Oklahoma were ignored in favor of covering even the most minor win in the big name cities. And it is not because they are not aware of these victories in the “second tier”, flyover places.

While the bigger news story should have been that without any law suits, the GLBT community in Oklahoma City had been invited to participate in the parade, the story the GLBT media covered was that Chicago had finally won its suit while Boston and NYC, as well as other big name cities, had, once again, failed to win theirs.

The OKC parade stepped off one half hour before the one in Chicago which means that the GLBT contingent in OKC was already marching when the Chicago parade began. As a result, not only was the OKC GLBT community the only community invited to be in a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, bypassing the need for lawsuits, but it was also the first to actually march in such a parade.

The big news in the GLBT media that day was Chicago. The bigger news was Oklahoma City.

It has been 16 years since history was made, but during those years which major city has won or lost its law suit, which major city GLBT community will or won’t be allowed to march continues to be the coverage of St. Patrick’s Day parades.

Not once in those years has what happened in Oklahoma City been mentioned.

So I am trying to get the information out by going around the selective media.

Not only was the Oklahoma City GLBT Community invited to be part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but it was also the first GLBT contingent to march in one.

The more you know.

on AMAZON.COM

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