Posted on by Nathan Riley

Pride

When I lived in Albany in the 1980’s, I went to a NYC Pride march with a young man from Schenectady, a neighboring city but less cosmopolitan than the state capital.

He was amazed. He muttered, “I never knew there were so many gay people.” That daytrip was special; it gave him a glow of self-confidence. This sense of solidarity, of normalcy, is essential to the LGBTQ+ movement. It makes us stronger and better advocates for our cause.

It is no surprise; the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights had a similar effect on the coalition of white and black supporters of civil rights. This coalition formed before the Civil War and continued even during the dark days of Jim Crow. But the March confirmed that full citizenship was a national issue and prompted President Johnson and Congress to act.

“Pride” describes the solidarity that unites queers. In NYC when I grew up in the 1950’s, being queer was far from unusual. Cities across the world have had queer populations. Certainly, queers were a visible part of Shakespeare’s London and New York City during the Revolution. But as was true in 1950’s NYC, they were the butt of jokes and objects of contempt.

Their pain was greeted with indifference. “What do you expect? If they’re going to live like that, they’re asking for trouble.” Being gay was wrong, even a sin, but in a world of few choices, cities offered relative tolerance, and the crazed moralists were never trusted. Before pride, the LGBTQ+ community was tolerated but not accepted. In every city, many people had queer friends who helped create safe spaces. Hostility was by no means universal. But even the accepting joined with their friends in preserving secrecy and shame.

It was a culture of duplicity, and the 1950’s was a period of unusual hostility. Federal government employees lost their jobs for being gay, an extreme aggression that made even straight people uncomfortable. It was a gross violation of civil liberties.

My mom was an actress, and my father worked in women’s fashion. They were surrounded by gay people. They were competitors; my parents thought heterosexuality was healthy, while their gay colleagues were dubbed sick.

When I was 12, the Senate investigated Joseph McCarthy, the senator from Wisconsin whose ravings about “unamerican activities” threatened liberals in general and gay people in particular. McCarthy’s counsel was an obvious gay man, Roy Cohn. McCarthy’s fulminations brought him into conflict with the Army, and that created an opening for General Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. President, to back a Senate investigation of McCarthy. Attorney Joseph Welch led the investigation in 1954 and at one point in the hearings he made a remark about pixies, leading Senator McCarthy to walk into a trap and ask Welch to define the word “pixie.” Welch’s riposte that a “pixie is a close relative to a fairy” brought gales of laughter from my parents and their friends watching the hearings on television. They giggled uncontrollably and their amusement lasted for several days.

At twelve, I was already sexually active and enduring savage comments from other children about being a fairy. My parents’ reaction to the McCarthy hearing chilled me to the bone. With more stubbornness than intelligence, I decided that I knew the truth about my parents; no matter what they would say, I knew, really knew in my heart, that they didn’t like homosexuals and, of course, ME. Since I kept this dark secret and never talked about it, I failed to learn that this was an unreasonable conclusion.

Homosexuals were sick, and in an era where educated people quoted Freud as gospel, it was common to offer diagnoses about other people’s behavior.  This view offered a false sympathy. Saying homosexuals were sick disparaged them. On the one hand it allowed my parents to respect the civil liberties of homosexuals but on the other hand, and more significantly for me, express their distaste. I concluded that even if they said they loved me, I knew, really knew, what in their hearts they really thought. I shut up and never told them. And mistakenly I concluded that almost everybody despised homosexuals. A rigid view that remained undisturbed, even when my sister introduced me to gay students from music and art high school, I was unable to realize that she was letting me know that it was okay to be gay.

In fact, in my old age, a dispassionate look at my high school years convinced me that I fooled nobody. My fellow students at Elisabeth Irwin, a progressive high school in New York City, were all expecting me to come out. They couldn’t have cared less, but I, traumatized by my experiences between 10 and 12 was convinced that if I told anyone I would be mocked and ridiculed.

I lost a chance to have boyfriends and a “normal” dating life. Pride is not a political statement. Pride is a deeply personal decision that is one reason a person becomes politically active because they are just as good as everybody else. Had I accepted it, my whole life would have been happier.

Pride has fostered a new reality; the LGBTQ+ community is no longer sick. There have always been same-sex preferences and in fact animals from dolphins to monkeys have formed couples. Far from sick, homosexuality is natural.

Today, we are repeating this mistake by thinking we are being tolerant when we say gamblers, drug users, and sex workers are sick and need treatment.

Undoubtedly, there are troubled souls who have these habits, but anybody who has roots in the drug culture knows that you cannot make a blanket statement. People with no problems who meet their responsibilities demonstrate daily that these prejudices are false. They make good neighbors, interesting friends, and hold responsible jobs. What is missing in their lives is pride and the public recognition that these activities are normal and have existed for centuries.

Posted on by Nathan Riley · 2 Comments

Reflecting on a Young Life Haunted by Stupidity

How a smart person made himself stupid is a possible summary of my life. A cold assessment that has left me optimistic after I moved into my seventies and looked back.

For my first 30 years, I hid, convinced that disaster awaited if people knew I spent my free time trying to suck cock.

So deep and misguided was my shame that I included gay activists among the people who shouldn’t know my secret.

The curtain in this dark closet was woven from many threads, only one of which was homophobia. Even in nursery school, I was the toddler who walked up to a circle of blocks and kicked them down. No way to make friends.

This hostility put me at a crucial disadvantage and cut me off from lessons that friends could have taught me. All children face confusion and tension. Most cope by changing the subject. They play with each other and push away stress with fun games. They don’t fret over their troubles; they put them aside. Having few friends left me alone to mope.

The uncontrolled anger gave me a bad reputation and made people stay away. From nursery school, it was off to a child psychiatrist who taught me that being rude made people yell at me. I had been the dumb child who yelled back. With therapy, life improved for me and my classmates.

As I grew up—like at 7 or 8—I grappled with a new problem: when I got into fights I couldn’t fight back. Boy fisticuffs were common in the 1950s and often led to friendship, but I didn’t play the game. I was stubborn, got into arguments that led to fights, but I wouldn’t punch back. I tried to tell my father, but he thought I was carrying “being nice” too far. Sometimes you have to “hit back,” he said, a useless answer since I knew that—the problem was I couldn’t. This frustration was a critical crisis during elementary school.

I harbor this explanation. Dr Stella Chess in helping me control my anger stifled it in such a way I couldn’t use it where appropriate. This explanation is not under discussion; my topic was my stupidity. I decided I was a coward.

A profoundly destructive negative identity. In college it led me to turn down an invitation to join the students helping African Americans register to vote in the Jim Crow South during the freedom summer. I cheated myself and missed a moment of history.

At age ten I became the neighborhood cocksucker.  It was no secret, and most boys knew it. My parents never did. I wasn’t out, but often I was an object of scorn, ridicule, or worse. I remember walking down the school hallway cringing as girls called me disgusting. To the boys I was a faggot.

Cringing with fear and beset by depression, I seldom recognized the students and teachers who were kind and supportive. I thought I was alone and nobody would help me. Another stupid conclusion.

I started a new life in high school. My history was wiped clean, and it became one of my highest priorities to keep my desires secret. Once again, I reached an extreme conclusion: secrecy was a matter of social survival, even though it haunted my friendships. I couldn’t talk to people I liked about what mattered to me and remained convinced if they knew they wouldn’t be my friend. This way I could go to parties and visit other boys but still feel lonely. I was certain honesty would bring disaster.

The 1950’s social atmosphere fed my fears. My family was left, and McCarthyite blacklists harmed family friends. A comic actor, who I loved, was forced to move to the west coast to become a banker. His departure remains a searing pain as he was a person who made me feel truly relaxed.

My family avidly watched the Army McCarthy hearings on TV. When the lawyer presenting the Army’s story puckishly asked had “pixies” supplied a doctored photo. Senator McCarthy rose to the bait and snapped to find out what was being said.

“I should say, I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy, shall I proceed sir? Have I enlightened you?”Senator McCarthy’s closest advisor was Roy Cohen a diminutive gay man. My parents and their friends roared with laughter and gleefully repeated the story for days.

My suspicions became fixed. They really thought homos were inferior, nay, sick. I knew they would say they loved me, but after the hearing, I KNEW what they really thought. I never worried they would throw me out. I was “sick,” and they wouldn’t disown a sick person. But the flip side of this conclusion was painful. It was a common belief that a person like me could “get well” and date girls. This hostile notion preyed on me for years.

Perhaps the biggest harm caused by clinging to this stupid conclusion that nobody could like me was a lost chance at happiness. Bright and cheerful, Jeff always treated me with warmth and good humor. It made me think he was a wonderful person, but my doubts stopped me from considering the possibility that he was acting this way because he wanted to be my friend.

This stupidity kept me away from Jeff. He and a girl who was also in my class tried to get me to admit I was gay. I listened only to the suspicion that they were trying to trick me. In fact, neither Jeff nor the girl would ever do that, and it was stupid of me not to realize they were trying to tell me Jeff was gay and wanted to date me. I lost a chance to have a lover who was a delightful person, who I could have brought home and dated.

Had I been smarter and dated Jeff, I would have realized that I could be gay and have friends. It would have been impossible for Jeff and I to date and really keep it a secret. This affair I never had would have turned my life upside down in a positive way. I would no longer have been able to say, “I’m gay. Nobody will like me.”

In fact, if I had dated Jeff, I would have learned that I was desirable and people liked me. The secret that my stupidity preserved from me even when the evidence pointed in the other direction. In other words, at eighty-two I truly understand that coming out is vital. This is hardly a new idea, but had I accepted it, I am convinced my high school years would have been happier.