BY JUNE OF 2015, SAME-SEX MARRIAGES WERE ALREADY UNDERWAY in thirty-six states and the remaining challenges in federal courts had been consolidated into one case: Obergefell v. Hodges. I went to bed early on the night of June 25 and set the alarm for 7:00 a.m. Pacific/10:00 a.m. Eastern. Everyone was certain that the announcement of the decision would be that morning, just in time for the worldwide celebrations of the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.
I woke up, turned on the computer, and read the news. I tried to make coffee but my eyes kept filling up with tears. Over and over, I read the final paragraph of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, speaking for the majority:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say that they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The phone began to ring. Up and down Market Street people waved rainbow flags from their cars and gathered at intersections to cheer and hug each other.
By mid-afternoon Castro Street was blocked by thousands of celebrants, traffic was rerouted, and a stage and sound system were set up once again. CNN sent a car for me to go downtown for a live remote interview with Anderson Cooper. During the interview I reminded him and his viewers that the Court’s decision was a vindication of the bold and risk-taking strategies that had been opposed by all of the major national LGBT organizations and our allies in the Democratic Party. I said that I believed this victory was rooted in our community’s experience during the darkest years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, when America came to know her gay children at the time of our greatest suffering. The hearts and minds of Americans had changed all across our country. I thanked the American people for making the Court’s decision possible: “It’s making us a better country and a better people.”
I left the studio and headed back to Castro and wandered through the crowd for a while, shaking hands and exchanging hugs with old friends and strangers. Later, I walked alone down to The Mix where the tattooed bartender, Nick, smiled around his ever-present toothpick and poured me a glass of whiskey. I looked up at the television over the bar to see the live shot of the White House, brightly lit in rainbow colors. The tears came again and I folded my arms on the bar, rested my head, and wept.
After a few moments the noise and clamor around me faded and I could hear from outside the sound of traffic on 18th Street, the bass beat of the music from the clubs and passing cars, the shrill bird cries of the new boys on the sidewalk, the pop and whoosh of the 33-Ashbury bus going up the hill, sirens and car horns and beneath it all the steady gentle wind from the Pacific. I smelled the sea, coffee, auto exhaust, tobacco smoke, and cannabis, and through the open window felt the cool fog cascading silently down Eureka Valley from the hills above.
I live today in a tiny village in the middle of a vast metropolitan area, just blocks from the first apartment I rented with Marvin Feldman back when we were young and danced every night at the Stud. When I walk to the market I see friends and neighbors who greet me by name. People are very kind, the bartenders know what I drink, and familiar faces surround me every day. Young people seek me out and walk with me around Dolores Park or up the hill to Corona Heights to look down on the city and the bay beyond. Castro Street echoes with memories even as it changes. Every building, every corner, every glance up towards Twin Peaks offers up bits and fragments of memories: faces, a song we danced to, the scent of a lover’s neck. Most nights I sleep alone. But when my eyes finally close the bed is crowded with ghosts. I welcome them.
San Francisco has changed a lot since I first saw her from the Bay Bridge that afternoon in 1972. Today it is a city for the wealthy, and their new silver towers crowd the sky. The poets, artists, musicians, dancers, and revolutionaries are long gone or leaving, as are the middle-class families, the nurses, teachers, cooks, hotel workers, and firefighters. The private buses that transport the tech workers from their expensive apartments to their Silicon Valley offices glide by the homeless and the mentally ill who crowd our sidewalks as the cold wind sweeps down Market Street.
Three thousand miles north of our little village and eight thousand miles south, the ice caps are melting. Sixty-five million people worldwide are refugees from political conflicts, poverty, and famine. The chasm between rich and poor grows wider and deeper. The divisions of racial, religious, and ethnic conflict are as poisonous and pervasive as at any time in human history. Our political process is corrupted by billions of dollars spent by the wealthiest few to thwart the will and deny the needs of the many.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the challenges that face us. It is easy to be cynical. It is easy to despair.
That is when I remember that the movement saved my life. Twice.
First in 1971, as a frightened teenager, when I learned of the gay liberation movement and flushed down the pills I had hoarded to end my life. Then again in 1994, when I was dying of AIDS, the movement stormed the Food and Drug Administration, confronted the pharmaceutical industry’s greed, and exposed the shameful lack of government response. The movement saved my life and gave it purpose and connected me to other people who also sought love and purpose in their lives.
The movement gave me hope and it is that hope which sustains me now—hope that we might yet save our planet and learn to share it in peace; hope for justice and equality; hope for the children that will follow us; hope that someday soon, we may rise.