HIGH GEAR/MAY 1978

Page 7

PRESENTING:

MR. and MRS. ANITA BRYANT

pression that one of these par-

BY DONALD CAMERON SCOT ties is a page from "Boys in the

"But I'll admit, this was a struggle for me, not to get bitter." -Anita Bryant New York Times, 2120178

I know the feeling. I've been there.

Yet what makes the whole thing border on hysterical insanity is the other side of the coin, running parallel to and concurrent with the agony and anguish found in the darkened recesses of brooding over one's homosexuality.

In retrospect, I have often been tempted to say "if it had not been for my homosexuality," then realize that it could just as easily be "because of my homosexuality." No one can say whether the character of personality is followed in spite of being gay, or because of being gay, or a combination of the two.

Before that disastrous summer of 14, I experienced no problems at all. I was a part of a group of kids that I grew up with, as much a part of it as any of them,

with not even the worry at the time of being gay.

Even after 14 when I got 'caught' and everyone "knew," realize in looking back that had I been able to get around the cloud that homosexuality cast over my life from then until a few years ago, life should have been a breeze. Or better, had there never been a cloud over my life because of my homosexuality....

And though I would not pretend that it has been a primrose path, that it has not been harder on us than on others, because we are gay, well ...

to

Lest one get the impression that because of the problems I experienced in adjusting and acclimating my homosexuality that I have become one of those poor souls so often described by shrinks as the "typical" gay, I should tell you that a wallflower and a loner I am not and never was. That, then, is the other side of this crazily careering coin that is my life as a gay.

I have a personal invitation list that reaches some 500 gays and when invitations are sent for a party, I can expect 100 plus to attend. Thanksgiving Dinner and Christmas Dinner is at. my house, with everywhere from 20 to 60 people there for dinner, and another 20 to 50 dropping by for drinks and conversations with friends. What originally started as a default event, something arranged for those of my friends and acquaintances who had no other place to go being either alienated from family or just away from them became something that my friends and acquaintances attend because they prefer being there than being with family.

-

And, lest one get the im-

Band," forget it. The only thing I ever got out of either, "Virginia Woolf" or "Boys in the Band" was a headache. I will, then, not sit through a party of that type at someone else's place, and you can damned well rest assured that I am not about to have one at my place. Parties are something given to be enjoyed by those who are there, not a battleground for some queen in search of sadistic mental masturbation.

Start something like that at my place, and you are likely to find yourself out the window before you have a chance to go out the door. Those are the ground rules. Everyone understands that. And we have had many enjoyable parties/dinners without incident.

Too, I am fortunate to enjoy a rather special relationship with that 500. Unlike hosts of other large parties I have been to, I know all my guests except for those few who were brought by

a friend, and often I know the

friend's friend as well. That

helps to make it a cold day when I go to a gay gathering in San Francisco (the West Coast?) and do not know someone.

And, though it did not seem so at the time, I know in restrospect that has always been true. That is an integral part of me, and as far back as high school, even when everyone "knew" it was not unusual for people to go out of

their way to speak to me in corridors often being

·

someone that I did not know, but who knew someone who knew me, and in turn, felt that they knew me, too. My yearbooks have little room left for inscriptions and signatures by schoolmates and teachers.

So, too, in college, despite that devastating incident with the one roomate. Obviously, I was friends with the football player that I so carefully imitated until I had eradicated traits that did not find desirable. I was not alone, miserable, and confined to a life of solitude, but was rather in the midst of several different groups, social and fraternal, moving with relative ease in

them all.

I met my one and only lover some three months after arriving in San Francisco and after being in a gay bar for the first time. Yet even in that short span of time, I met an incredible number of people and am often amazed at how easy that seems to be for

me.

For the eleven years that my lover and I were together, we were on a different circuit the tea and crumpet and bridge set, if you will. Yet I found that I could move through that crowd easily, too. When our relationship ended, I wandered aimlessly for a few months, then returned to The Rendezvous,

perhaps to a familiar place where I had enjoyed myself before, to try to recapture some of that pleasure. That set me off on a giddy whirl that may not have ended yet. But when the carousel slowed enough for me to look back and take stock, I found that I had, once again, repeated what seems to be lifetime pattern, racking up that invitation list of 500; among them, some of the hottest men on the Coast.

I have been fired only once in my life for being gay -in a convoluted version of the typical gay firing. I got fired because my boss, supposedly straight -wife and kids couldn't keep his hands off me, and from the time I told him to do so, my days were numbered.

Even at work, the scenario is more likely to be that evidenced not too long ago when I started a new job. Within three days, persons on all three floors of the building who worked for the firm, knew who I was and I repeatedly found people coming

by to speak to me, without me

knowing who they might be. And they are straights!

***

No, I've never been a wallflower or the "typical" shrunken gay. Yet despite popular opinion and public consensus, I do not always get what I want, and I have experienced the other sides of a gay life:

When I was but a few weeks

old, I had a babysitter, a daughter of friends of the family.

It would be she who would first bring me to San Francisco 14 years later with her own family, when I would decide, knowing nothing about gays or gay life, that this was where I would live. Though she was nine years older than I, there was a strong attachment between us, and she was always around.

In 1966 she gave me a puppy, sight unseen, that I had not wanted, but fell in love with within minutes after taking her out of her kennel at the airport. Over the years, my friend, who lives

now on the West Coast, visited San Francisco periodically. On a visit in 1972, my lover and I, as we had before, had dinner with her and her traveling companions and visited. When time came for her to leave, she drove off with me expecting her back within a couple of weeks. She never came back and she never called. Somewhere in there, I knew that she had consciously realized that I am gay and that a 32-year friendship had ended. We had survived family tensions, town gossip, and even ridicule because she was older than I, none of which mattered. But that I am gay did matter.

Last year, after eleven years with me, the puppy died. For the first time in 5 years, I called my ex-friend of 32 years to tell her. A color confrontation I hope never to have again. Icy and

nasty, far from being even slightly sympathetic, she was antagonistic to the point that I hung up, knowing I would never call again. But we learn to expect, and take, that when we are gay.

down $400,000 a year from the church?

And how many, other than Mr. and Mrs. Anita Bryant could pull down $400,000 a year as practicing perverts of the very religion in which they profess so profound a belief as a base to their entire lives?

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law."

So it was in knowledge of the things that we suffer because we are gay that I took a hard line stance on Anita Bryant a year ago. Given the background, along with Anita Bryant's determination to annihilate us if possible, it should be no wonder that I had, and have, about as "And if they will learn much concern for Anita Bryant's anything, let them ask their welfare as do Jews for Hitler's. husbands at home: for it is a Anita Bryant had everything this shame for women to speak in country could offer: fame, sucthe church." (I COR 14:35) cess, wealth, Gay fans, and some say even beauty. She admits that she had 80 bookings a year at $8,500 and up some $680,000 plus, her Florida Citrus Commission contract of $100,000. Total: $780,000 plus a year that bought her all those fancy shoes she so desperately wanted, as well as a 27-room mansion on Biscayne Bay.

But that was not enough, and

when Anita Bryant turned, she turned to drive the spiked heels of those fancy shoes her parents could never afford through the souls of a group of people who have had nothing but spikes driven through our souls from a time before we even understood the meaning, much less the ramifications of what it is to be gay: in all too many cases, before we understood even the

meaning of the term. We were, however, a convenient, expedient, and easy target for Anita Bryant. She attacked with all the fury of evil that she could muster, using every scare tactic known to man, hurling sinister allegations backed by not one scintilla of fact or truth. She knows nothing of her subject: , she lies, as did all those after whom she patterns herself, with the ease of diabolical tyranny and never looks back to see the cost in Human Lives. And well she might. Look at whom she numbers among her friends the Ku Klux Klan, Richard M. Nixon, Mike Thompson.

And now she pisses and moans that she has lost her major bookings and that her in-

come has been cut in half, down to around $500,000 a year, reducing her to a position where she has "had to take what we can get and praise the Lord...." I should certainly hope so! $500,000 a year, less her $100,000 contract with the Florida Citrus Commission leaves about $400,000 that she is picking up on the revival circuit. $400,000 A YEAR FROM HER "BELIEFS" is not something to be sneered at! How many pastors or priests, those who devote the r entire lives to ministering to the souls of their flocks do you know who can step in on the backs of the already downtrodden

Nevertheless, to bolster her sagging income, Anita Bryant knows no scruples. Not only does she not "keep silence in the churches," but she "take(s) what (she) can get" from it -so far, $400,000 a year.

"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rotten-

ness in his bones." (PROV 12:4)

Mr. Anita Bryant doesn't look

too ashamed at the lack of a virtuous woman, but then at $500,000 a year, maybe the crown he gets instead is worth a lot more, even if not in virtue.

"In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array."

What about all those fancy shoes and clothes Anita Bryant is now buying with money that she "take(s)" from the church?

Beyond that, Anita Bryant's "historical societal" argument is a joke when one remembers that she herself is in a profession that until very recently would have been, in and of itself, enough to bar her from even entering the church. The stage, until a few years ago, was a profession of shame. Books are rife with accounts of the shame suffered by parents whose daughters wanted a life on "the stage." Yet we do not see Anita Bryant giving, or even hinting at giving up the "sin" of the immoral stage. Maybe the wages of "sin" $500,000 a year -are just too tempting.

Nor is Mr. Anita Bryant any better:

"But I suffer not a woman t teach nor to usurp authorit over the man, but to be silence." (I TIM 2:12)

How many times have we se Mr. Anita Bryant standing in t background, waiting someone to notice him, or ev care, and perhaps ask question. And when he does & swer, he speaks over h shoulder, from behind her. It one thing to have a belief. It another to try to live by th belief. But it is quite another try to assassinate others wi

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