October was coming to an end and with it Gay History Month and its annual Keystone Kops-like reaction from school and district  administrators. As I always did to make sure there had been no changes, I had consulted the accepted list of which months were dedicated to which groups and/or causes on the internet that in the past would have meant a trip to the library to find which month is dedicated to whom and what to prepare for November.

When I looked up the months, I would look for the ones relevant to my students, skipping the medical months and the months that commemorated some baked good, and went to race, ethnicity, and culture as I could relate these to my students and my courses that involved literature. I know many teachers that do this during each school year.

I had already been doing it in this school district and elsewhere for thirty years of teaching, so, continuing the practice in the opening years of this millennium was routine. 

It is how I found that because many schools start in August in some places and in others still on the day after Labor Day, Hispanic Heritage Month does not get all of September but the second half of it, assuming opening days and weeks would make any commemoration difficult as there had been no one around to put any Heritage display up and when everyone is just showing up,  and the first half of October, while the Asians get May when no one pays attention as there are graduations, final exams, and Spring Fever with nothing during the summer months when year round schools are in session or it is just summer school kids.

According to the list I had followed over the years, both pre and post internet, as I removed anything related to Gay History, I replaced it with Native American Heritage material. Just as was my intention with the other months, especially October, I avoided the standard display of Indigenous People which are too often based on the White Man’s interpretation of what he sees of Native American Culture in favor of biographies, real history, not the Hallmark version, as in the true account of what happened before, during, and after 1620 in the area of the country in which I once owned a house and whose real history of which I was aware. Among what was included was a recent published biography of Crazy Horse which a student asked to take home to show her great grandfather, and who then asked if I would let him keep it as it contained a picture of someone he knew in his youth and was the only picture of the man he had ever seen. 

I had a second copy so it was an easy permission to give. Nothing special. The honor was mine.

So, on November First, Native American Heritage month arrived, and with it a letter from the principal’s office to report for a meeting after school at which, besides the usual attendees, the principal, his assistant, the Union Rep. and myself, there was a new, additional person with each, including my Union Representative, wearing a serious face implying satisfaction on the part of the administrators and resignation on that of the Rep.

Obviously directing his opening remarks to the new person, the principal recounted that I claimed my advocacy was based on the need for all students to feel safe and respected in schools, my main concern being the Gay ones, yet, here I was hypocritically choosing to put up a display about Native Americans during the month that has Thanksgiving in it, clearly taunting the Native American students, and with me being from the area of the country where the charity intended by Massassoit was seen as giving permission to grab the whole continent, showing that my concern was one-sided as I only cared about the Gay students by, obviously, choosing to subtly spit on the Native ones. He wanted me to explain my hypocrisy and my disrespect of the Native American students to the director of Native American Student Affairs who the new person turned out to be so evident by my choosing to call November Native American Heritage Month.

The principal also claimed this was personally insulting to him as he had Tribal Affiliation, and he had found his way to get rid of both the message and the messenger and go back to how, as he told me once, “was how it is.”

Considering that, whereas, New York became the first state to declare an “American Indian Day” in 1916, that, whereas, in 1976, as part of the Bicentennial celebrations, President Gerald Ford proclaimed October 10-16, “Native American Awareness Week,” that, whereas, in 1986 Congress began requesting that the president designate one week during the autumn months as “Native American Indian Heritage Week,” and, whereas, in 1990 Congress passed and President George H. W. Bush signed a law designating the month of November as the first National American Indian Heritage Month (also known as Native American Indian Month), 11 years before this meeting, I informed those present that I did not designate anything. I had simply acknowledged what existed even with my being a Gay, White man with no Tribal affiliation while those who attempted to use theirs as a weapon were not aware of what they should be.

I knew my History Months.

The principal immediately turned to the Director of Native American Student Affairs asking if it were true that November had been designated as I claimed it was, and he admitted he was not aware of that.

Although he had justified his anger about my alleged hypocrisy partly on his tribal affiliation which made it a personal issue for him, the principal had to accept that the Gay man had shown his openness not by following his Gay History Month with a quiet month but had actually put up the first Native American Heritage display in the school that was noticeable enough to be noticed at a school  whose principal should have known what month it was and a director of a Student Affairs office who, of course, should have known as well.

This display stayed up and, in honor of my good friend from Tramps, Sue, of the Kiowa Tribe, I made sure there was information, obviously placed, dealing with Two-Spirit People. It was also a test, as the concept of Two-Spirit goes back in the history of the Plains Tribes before Christian Missionaries showed up and tried to change Native American Culture to reflect Europe and it would be interesting to see the principal and the Director of Native American Student Affairs object to its inclusion because it dealt with Homosexuality and, so, would be treated according to European not Native American beliefs which would be proof of the need to educate through the display.

They would have to go against themselves while the Gay man defended their culture.

It was always 3-D chess.

The following November, there was not only a district wide acknowledgement made of November being Native American Heritage Month, but the very large full-wall display case at the top of the stairs in the A-Building had a huge display in it the whole month.

Considering that it all came about because of a Gay man who faced dismissal for being informed where administration was not, I felt no reluctance in formally pointing out that there was a marked lack of any reference to Two-Spirit People in that display and this must be rectified.

It wasn’t.

The annual battle over Gay History Month was to continue and actually intensify over the next two principles, the last being a Lesbian who threw Gay students under the bus to show she was loyal enough to the district leadership to earn the promotion she eventually got.

This is another example where the Gay activists do not exclude, but include while they themselves are left in the cold.

When Gay Student advocacy began, I was constantly asked how long the list of protected classes of students was going to get when we start including Gay students and what about the obese, the left-handed kid, the kid with eyes of two colors, and I pointed out that there should not be a need for a list, those who identify with that list should become an advocate who can speak as one of them, and offered in the meantime adding, “for any other reason real or perceived” after the existing list to over everyone.

That wording was added but, again, it still left the Gay kids out in practice as religion often trumped the Constitution and law.

November became designated as Native American History Month in the school district, because of Gay people, but no one was to turn around and pay anything back during the rest of the time in the district  as “I got mine” was the consistent attitude.

And not just among others, but when the state legislature removed the rights of Trans students after their having had them for 12 trouble free years, the rest of the stripes on the Progressive Flag turned out to be all right with that, and are not doing anything to get them their rights back.

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(This is another example of attempted historical erasure when two historical moments and realities met)

As the anniversary of 9/11 was approaching, and while other teachers were putting up displays to commemorate it, I, as the only teacher held to Paragraph J that was supposed to apply to all teachers’ being required to get anything they wanted to post in their classroom approved by the principal while I was actually the only one held to it, wrote to the principal that I planned to put up a display. He informed me that he would stop by and review it. He came to my room more than once the next day, but, either I was not there as was the case the first time, or he saw there was nothing to inspect the second as I had not put the display together yet. He paid another visit the following day letting me know he would come back again as soon as I put the display together and had it up.

I was the only teacher who faced such an inspection.

Rather than review the display before I hung it, the principal said more than once that he would view it after I had. This seemed backward, so, I assumed demanding removal was more dramatic than a simple refusal issued quietly in a small room like his office or on a piece of paper that no one but I would see, and drama is what he wanted.

During one of my classes, as the kids read silently, I hung a list of Gay victims and heroes of 9/11 that I had found on the internet, along with the Daily Oklahoman’s commemorative insert which exclusively covered the heterosexual victims and heroes. As I was heading to lunch, I passed the principal and informed him that the display was up for his inspection.

When I returned from lunch, I found this note attached to the display:”Mr. Quigley, either remove the statements about these victims, or place heterosexual information about victims alongside.”

When I inspected some of the other teacher displays throughout the building, I found that most had pictures of and stories about the victims, the heroes, and their Heterosexual spouses. Some had heart-warming stories about post 9/11 life and stories of the spouses’ attempts to deal with the year that had passed since the event. They were all straight couples with no references to the many that were Gay. Yet, none were given the requirement of balance as I had been, a requirement I had already covered with the local daily newspaper’s insert.

Later in the day the principal traced me down to another teacher’s classroom where I was visiting, and handed me the following memo:

   ”I came by your room at 11:25 AM to see your display as you had requested. You had already posted this in violation of school policy J, which indicates prior-approval shall be received before posting informational signs or posters. You are directed to remove it by 1:50 PM today, September 10. I will review it after the faculty meeting this afternoon. Thank you for your compliance.”

He, obviously, wanted some drama.   

He then came to my classroom just after lunch while I had students, and asked me in front of them if I was going to remove the display. I told him I would comply with his directive, but he was a little early. 

It was to be and was indeed down by 1:50 PM as required. 

Another teacher came to me at the end of the day concerned because she had seen the Principal open my door with his key while I was out of my room for lunch, and then through the window of the door saw him going through my desk. She found this disturbing.

Upon inspection, I noticed nothing was missing from my desk, but when I checked around my room I did notice that the framed quote from the in-service back in 1998 during which the troublesome chair of the Diversity Committee had brought up the inclusion of Gay students in sexual harassment policies by saying at each school, 

“Recently there have been same-sex sexual harassment complaints. And, more and more we have to realize that among our children there are some of them who have not determined, fully, their sexuality, and there are some of our children that may be Gay. Regardless of what you think, let me tell you one thing that is an imperative. Those children must be protected. If we don’t pay attention and protect those children we are in violation of their rights under Title IX, and we could be liable,”

which I kept in my room for the Gay students and their peers to see, and as a small trophy of having gotten at least one concession from the District, was missing from where it should have been hanging. I also noticed that there was something different about my homemade 9/11 poster when I looked more closely at it.

The Principal would eventually voice his objection to the quote‘s being hung in my classroom because, as he had not been at that particular in-service on the day it was given, he had not heard it stated at his own school. To be able to rehang the quote, I was told I would have to write a letter to the person who had made the statement to verify that he had made it. This was made impossible by the fact that this man was in the process of leaving the District and was more involved in packing up than in answering trivial correspondence. I, instead, eventually had to go to my old middle school and get a copy of the faculty sign in sheet to the relevant in-service to show the Principal the number of witnesses that could attest to what had been said. I also had to dig through old boxes at home looking for the small cassette that I had used to tape that in-service. Carrying a tape recorder had been a whim in 1998, but it became standard procedure for me when, shortly after a meeting I had had with this Principal, he completely misrepresented what had been discussed, and I decided to make sure that any further disagreements did not become a he said/she said debate where nothing could be accomplished.

Although this was enough to restore the framed quote, it seemed there was never a convenient time for the quote to be retrieved by the Principal from his storage closet, so I did not get the removed framed quote back until the end of the year.

I did not replaced it with a copy. The original was to be rehung or there would be a hauntingly empty space on the wall by the door.

Beyond this obvious removal of the quote was a more subtle one. Upon my careful examination of the poster that consisted of the short biographies of the people on the planes and in the towers, I had found that a small part of one biography had been cut off with scissors. The last sentence of the biography of Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department and first recorded fatality of 9/11, mentioned that he was a celibate, Gay man, and connected with the NYC Chapter of Dignity U.S.A., a Gay Catholic organization working around the Catholic Church’s rejection of Gay people. Nothing else had been removed from any other part of the poster. 

I thought him a wonderful role model for our Gay students. 

The Principal planned to reprimand me for having hung this display prior to his having reviewed it and in spite of the number of times he was made aware that there would be a display and his saying, more than once, that he would inspect it upon its being put up, so, I told him it would be an honor to have a written reprimand on my file that referenced Fr. Judge. 

This meant another meeting with the Union Representative.  

The Principal began by chastising me for assuming that he had been the one to cut off the piece of the poster which would have been considered an unacceptable act of vandalism, especially in light of the investigation and decision concerning an earlier poster vandalism when King David was removed. He scoffed at my suggestion that his being seen going through my desk while I was not present and my door had been locked would lead one to suspect he had been looking for scissors because, as he pointed out, he had used another pair of scissors he had borrowed from the teacher across the hall and not any from my desk. His defense that he had not used a pair of scissors from my desk but a pair borrowed from another teacher did not exonerate him from having cut off the piece of the poster as far as I was concerned.

He resented my inference that this was an act of bigotry. 

He protested that his motivation was pure as these were sensitive times in the Catholic Church as it was being rocked by all the priest sex scandals, and my mentioning Fr. Judge was a Gay man was highly insensitive to those Catholics on our campus who were attempting to deal with this difficult situation. He was equating a Gay orientation with pedophilia and denying that Gay people in his school could be Catholic.

The wider implication of his mindset was made clear when, once it was pointed out Fr. Judge was known as a Gay, celibate priest, the Principal‘s repeated response was, “as far as you know”. When it was pointed out that any connection between Fr. Judge and pedophilia was a totally wild, unsupported assumption, like Poe‘s Raven stuck on one word, the Principal merely repeated, “as far as you know”. He must have done this about four times in response to any statement that supported the idea that, though he was said to be Gay, Fr. Judge was known to be a good man. It was very disturbing.

The meeting ended soon after when the Principal once again explained he had taken his actions because I had not gotten permission to hang the poster, but could not explain why, if the whole poster were illegally hung, he had only removed that one sentence and not the whole thing.

A thank you note from the Firefighters of New York City written to a teacher at the school whose class had raised and sent some money to the Uniform Firefighters Widows and Orphan Fund, and was signed by the organization’s director, was allowed to stay on her door even though she had not asked permission to hang it, and even as “Widows” implied heterosexuality without her being given the requirement for balance.

Soon after this meeting I submitted a flier for a youth support group, Youth Open To Sexual Orientation, YOTSO, in Norman Oklahoma a few miles south of the city, as Oklahoma City did not as yet have such a group really functioning. It was, after all, a community group with relevance to our students, just as the various “Lock-In” nights at the local Baptist churches were.

His reason for allowing this notice to be posted, as he noted in a memo, was by having such a group off campus, there was no need to have any type of an organization on campus.

He never did explain why Christian groups, who had church-based organizations off campus, had to have two organizations on it.

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I was at a meeting called to discuss what we could do locally to influence what is happening in Gaza, specifically, to bring about a ceasefire, a real, lasting one but, if one does no happen now, how to help get all monetary and military support of Israel ended, while, of course, having the Palestinians protected even from Hamas to get peace. 

Members of a local community hoping to do what they can to end the horror in Gaza.

Having spent my adult life in the world that is made of such meetings on a variety of topics, I understand the almost exaggerated exuberance of some that will never end because it is the correct level of it, with, in some instances, there being some adaptation over time, called for by the realities unknown earlier.  

People have varying levels of enthusiasm toward the minor parts of a larger issue but are united in the whole.

And there are those whose enthusiasm becomes extreme as they see things only from their point of view and begin to add anger to their enthusiasm when others are not at their level because of certain realities. Basically, for them, everyone is expected to be at their level of enthusiasm even though the level that person is on is based on their realities regardless of those of others.

Self-centered exuberance.

At a certain point of the meeting, when we had discussed public actions, like gathering in front of the local offices of various local, state, and national politicians throughout the area, letter writing and phone call campaigns to those politicians and to their constituents to get them involved, and where and when to hold stand-outs at highly visible areas, the suggestion was made to send an election message that we were not pleased by only voting for the down-ballot offices, but not that of president, if there was no ceasefire by November 5.  The justification being that this would eliminate either candidate getting a landslide victory which would hold the implied message, “we are watching you”, the winner, who probably really does not care what anyone thinks after the election anyway..

I recalled back in my youth that, because Michael Dukakis had angered people by his not fulfilling his too many campaign promises, people chose to deny him a second landslide victory but a win nonetheless. Too many voters had that idea and sent the message in the uncoordinated, grassroots, leaderless action, and we got his opponent.

This could happen in this case, and my reality is that I spent my adult life in many places fighting for my rights as a Gay man and, regardless where I have Iived, from the most liberal to the most conservative, I finally got my Civil, Human, and Constitutional rights at the age of 61 when I returned to Massachusetts, and I do not want to take the chance of losing my rights, the cost of which I knew and paid, to make a point.

I was suddenly put in a position to have to choose between people in another country, and at my age I have seen that a country of concern at one moment does move on one way or another so an immediate concern, no matter how great at the time, becomes a misty memory or piece of rewritten history, and people in this country I know have suffered for the life of this country and were ignored and stood to return to the days and conditions we fought to get away from depending on the outcome of this election.

For that reason, I informed those present that I will not leave the president-bubble empty. It would be a betrayal of friends and loved ones.

I was accused of being pro-genocide.

I was so typical. I have no problem watching a genocide take place because I do not identify with these people because they are not like me and this difference is accentuated because I see things from my privileged position, and understanding the realities of a genocide is foreign to me. 

However, it was a useless attempt at a guilt trip.

Although for me my being in college, along with my Draft Lottery number being 364 and the old guy at the town hall who had taken my draft registration card so that I had fulfilled the law by filling out the card as he had done his duty in accepting it, then skirting the law by placing it in the shoe box with all the other registration cards to be discovered after the war was declared over because he had fought in the “war to end all wars” but was part of a system sending kids to a war that should not exist, I was spared, my peers faced the Draft immediately upon graduation.

The Class of 1968 graduated to death.

That could have been me.

A number of years later, after connecting dots, missing and seeing signs, resolving inner turmoil, and all that goes with self-acceptance and coming out,  when I finally accepted my realities and entered the Gay Community to live the life that was me, my Welcome Wagon Hostess greeting me at the door was  an epidemic with AIDS in the basket.

From 1981 through 1990, AIDS took the lives of 100,777 persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), “weeds” pulled by God to clear the Garden with the help of the evangelicals and conservative politicians who wanted their votes and refused to save lives in order to get them. Almost one third of these deaths, 31,196 people, were reported during 1990. At that point the allowed spread of the disease became apparent. By 1988,  human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection/AIDS had become the third leading cause of death among men 25-44, and was estimated to be second, surpassing heart disease, cancer, suicide, and homicide by 1989.

I entered the Community just in time to see the people I should have gotten to know begin to die away because the government wanted us gone. I do not have to see pictures of a genocide somehere else to know what one is and what it is like, whether a bang or a whimper. I saw one. I got through it. My losses were not the people in pictures, but the people.

It is from a position of privilege that someone dismisses another’s experience with a genocide because they choose not to see it as what it was.

Genocides do not always use explosives.

Carefully consider the importance of this coming election and how it will affect you for the rest of your life. Be careful not to become a one issue voter without seeing the full effect of that position on the totality of your life.

If the people who were in power during the first genocide return to power they very well may try another way to commit a quiet genocide and, just as the first time, there will be no guarantee that convenience will not let it happen again.

But, it has been decided that I don’t know what genocide is.

And DO NOT let anyone attempt to guilt trip you into voting against your own best interest, your best self, to keep them happy.

Separate head from heart and empathy from suicide. Those with little to lose and have always had what they have can easily advise others to lose everything they finally have.

VOTE FOR YOU

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Some Gay History items had been removed from the push cart I had been given instead of the classroom I had the previous year when I refused to remove my Gay History Month display. They figured the best way to remove the possibility of my having a display in my classroom was to have my schedule having me roaming (that is the nice term, the real one being “running”) to various rooms so there was no room in which to have one. 

My room was given to a new teacher in the building who had no idea of her quiet role in things. They were not above using a new teacher. To get through the between class hallway crowds to my next classroom, I had attached a bike horn to the pushcart I had to use to get books, papers, my required laptop, etc. From one room to the others and one of those flags attached to bikes so they can be seen in traffic to which I affixed a Rainbow Flag. Over one weekend the pole and flag were removed from the locked teachers’ room and, although the assistant principal was willing to conduct an investigation, in light of his past comments and the fact he is the last person to leave the building on Fridays, I did not trust him to investigate anything and I let that be known. The assistant principal laid possible blame on students, they used everyone. 

A subsequent discussion as to whether or not there really was a true concern for Gay students and this was not a political tool led to the principal’s wishing there was some sort of survey and that gave me the opening to suggest that, rather than take the time to design a student safety survey, we use the one GLSTEN had been using in high schools for years. I forwarded him a copy of the survey designed under Governor Weld of Massachusetts when he began investigating the conditions faced by Gay students in Massachusetts public schools which resulted in state laws there that guaranteed equal protection and treatment of Gay students.

He was concerned about limiting it to just things related to Gay students and suggested a broader survey of intolerance in general. He thought such an idea should be brought up to the Faculty Advisory Committee, so after our meeting I immediately drafted a letter to all Faculty Advisory Committee members explaining my conversation with the Principal and the purpose, neutral nature, and importance of such a survey and included a copy of the suggested survey and some supporting evidence of its need in envelopes addressed to each member, and upon leaving for the day put one in each member’s mailboxes for their consideration.

Totally unaware of the maelstrom that was raging, I went about my regular duties until that Wednesday morning when, as I entered the office to sign in, the principal shouted that I was there, and swiftly, he, an Assistant Principal, and the Union Building Representative whisked me into his office closing the door. The principal was a little hot under the collar and asked me if I knew what his previous evening had been like.

It seemed that one of the members of the Faculty Advisory Committee had read the packet from the Friday before, and had then gone to her pastor at a nearby church with it, who in turn spoke to his congregation and other pastors about the course on homosexuality being taught at the school and the survey that had been taken by the students that was sympathetic toward Gay people. There apparently had been prayer meetings over the last few nights for the redemption of the school, and calls to the school office to discontinue the course and fire the teacher who taught it. The school secretaries had no idea what was going on as they fielded phone calls, as no such course, survey, or teacher existed. But the calls were many and the anger vehement.

The evening before I was whisked into the Principal’s office, a group of ministers had shown up at the Principal’s home to speak with him trying to bring him back to Jesus, and he was mad at me because of this. I could only point out to him that the person at whom he should be directing his anger was the Faculty Advisory Committee member who brought this to his or her pastor before it was dealt with by the committee, and who misrepresented it as a done deal, thereby causing the furor. I was within my rights as a teacher to bring any topic to the attention of the Faculty Advisory Committee, but no members of the committee should take it upon themselves to bring it to the public before discussion.

It was a fine example of the very same attitude the Principal had exhibited in regard to the History Month poster, overreaction based on little knowledge and understanding with no room for hearing anything from those unlike himself. Here were these people, with no investigation, demanding certain things be ended based solely on the possible connection with things Gay, and doing so in very uninformed public displays.

Toward the end of that day, I was called again to the office. This time the Principal was a little more subdued. He had just spoken with one of the angry pastors and had filled him in on the way things really were. The pastor had apologized for his overreaction, being a little embarrassed that he and others went off without investigation. The pastor was going to contact all those whom he had previously contacted to explain the mistake, and the Faculty Advisory Committee member had agreed to call all the people she had contacted and explain her misrepresentation. The principal, however, did not feel a formal reprimand for her damaging conduct was necessary in light of her agreement to make those calls.

At the meeting the principal brought up my yet unresolved grievance concerning my reprimand for not removing the Gay History Month display, and his hope that we could resolve it all then, as he slid some papers across his desk to me.

The papers were a proposed resolution to the grievance. The Union had informed me that no resolution to the grievance would be acceptable if everything negative was not removed from my file, but these papers did not state this would be done. They did state that I was to accept two conditions if I wanted the grievance settled in my favor.

First I was to agree to stick to the curriculum, which I had always done and which, therefore, being required of all teachers would not be a stumbling block for me. Second, I would have to agree to adhere to the provision in the faculty handbook about the hanging of posters. As this handbook provision dealt only with posters to be hung in the halls to advertise events, and as I had no reason to advertise any event, it too was not a stumbling block.

However, rather than sign the offer, I took the papers home for further consideration, and, suspecting that this might not be the language to which the Union agreed, I called the Union President, and found this was the acceptable language, a previous draft having been returned to the District’s legal department as totally unacceptable. Also, the Union had required that the Principal send a memo to all teachers in general terms reminding them to stay on curriculum and to follow the handbook.

And so, on September 20, 2000 the reprimand that had been placed in my file the previous October was rendered null and void, and anything negative related to the poster was expunged.

I was also given a classroom, but the games did not end.

The grievance had centered on the Gay History Month bulletin board posting but, while signing the grievance resolution after consultation with the Union President, I was handed a memo regarding bulletin boards dated September 14, six days before I had signed any grievance resolutions papers and was addressed to all faculty and staff. Although the memo referred to the Faculty Handbook section on the “Posting of Bills”, it had an additional paragraph that was to be considered added to the handbook.

“Anyone wishing to post or display any promotional materials, advertisements, meeting announcements, motivational sayings, signs or posters, or informational signs and posters shall request permission from the principal prior to displaying such material. The principal will only consider approval of those materials which relate to instruction, curriculum, the course syllabus, or extra-curricular or co-curricular activities, and those materials which generally promote school activities or relate to the courses being taught.”

This was a transparent ruse for eliminating any Gay related posters, especially as I was the only one on the faculty and staff in receipt of the memo that I and others had not received on or after September 14, 2000. It was dated so as to appear to have already been released to all faculty and staff to make it appear that I was aware of it already when I signed the resolution. This addition came as a surprise to the Union President and its timing unacceptable, but my signature was on the resolution papers.

In the spirit of the resolution and this newly created policy on the hanging of posters, toward the last few days of September in anticipation of Gay History Month, I wrote a letter to the principal requesting permission to hang posters related to the topic. His reply was, as expected, a refusal to allow it couched in educational babble about preferring more than a “one-dimensional” approach to which posters were by nature limited, and the fear that information without education would result in reactionary behavior as there was no forum for give and take. He did suggest that I work with my department to see if they would like to come up with an educational approach that he and the Dean of Instruction could help undertake. After all, we did want to be inclusive, not exclusive.

In the meantime, if I knew of any students who needed counseling, I was to refer them to our crisis counselor.

I immediately wrote a letter to the principal pointing out that it was an insult to Gay students to imply that their only need was for counseling from a crisis counselor, and how dismissive of them that was, while every effort was being made to prevent them from getting positive information that did not imply that they and those like them were deviants or troubled. They could go to counseling; they just couldn’t have Gay History Month mentioned and all the positive results that that could bring.

Within days I was, once again, summoned to the Principal’s office. Apparently, a parent had called to complain about the Gay History Month display in my classroom. It was disturbing to her daughter, and to the Principal’s way of thinking might be in violation of the spirit of the memo on bulletin boards which could begin the process for dismissal since I chose to violate the Grievance Resolution. He told me of the parent’s concern that I was “promoting the Homosexual Agenda”, and he agreed with her that school was not the place for that. Endeavoring to be honest and educational, I asked him what “promoting” meant, and if it was also promoting if it was what the majority was pushing, such as “prayer around the pole”, or the many other religion-based activities we had on campus. Was it simply informing when the majority did it and only promoting if done by the minority?

I challenged him to point out one non-heterosexual thing we did at school that would make a Gay student feel that he or she was not just ever so lucky to be a guest on everyone else’s campus. Should we wait for them to drop out or die before we cared, and then wouldn’t we be relieved if and when they were not our problem anymore?

I did not have a display in my room. He had accepted the parent’s complaint and commiserated with her without verifying that there was a basis for it.

The next day, realizing I was just as much in trouble for not having a display as I would be for having one, I put up a very small one. And, because it was a book display and not a poster, I did not think I would have to get the Principal’s permission, nor that it violated the fictitious all-staff memo the rest of the faculty had yet to see.

The Assistant Principal, who was to observe me again that year, wanted an informal chat. He had been apprised by the Principal of a parent’s complaint about my Gay promotional display. He was still talking about the previous week’s complaint of a nonexistent display since his description of what it consisted of was the same as what the principal had described the week before. He was not aware of the real display which consisted of books with short stories written for, by and about Gay and Lesbian teens, historical documents, books on the Holocaust that centered on Homosexuals in the concentration camps of World War II, books by and about African-American Gays and Lesbians, three reference books that answered not only questions for Gay Teens, but their straight friends as well, and a book on Two-Spirited Native-Americans.   

This particular Assistant Principal had grown some since the previous year’s events and having recently received his law degree was a little more open to discuss legalities. He was familiar with the 1984 case against the Oklahoma state ban on teachers supplying positive information about Gays and Lesbians, and had to admit that “promoting the Homosexual Life-style” was a hollow charge at best. His main concern was that whereas I, as a teacher, was on campus because I chose to be there, the students were there by law and had no choice, so they should not be made to feel uncomfortable in a classroom. He was, obviously, concerned for the Straight students.

I smiled and told him that had been my point all along.

Gay students had to attend school every day by law, and we didn’t have one thing there for them. We even removed posters they might get to see for only one month a year while there was a multitude of heterosexual activities all year. People tried to ban books that may be the only positive thing we had for Gay students on an exaggeratedly heterosexual campus. I asked if he knew at what point these kids began to count.

I honestly admitted that there was a display, now, but it was not the one he had been referring to or describing. He went to my room, saw that the book display was at the back of the room, and, as there were two doors to the room, no one was forced to go near it. He saw that by sitting in any desk in the room, students could not see the display unless they turned totally in their seats. And, finally, he checked out the contents of the books and saw that they were educational and of no threat to anyone. They did not contain any of the expected mandatory dirty pictures that Gay people were supposed to automatically rely on. He decided on delaying my evaluation until after October so he would not have to contend with the book display in the room, but he later decided he could not treat me any differently than any other teacher, and so he would not be able to delay my evaluation after all. He would, however, overlook the books.  

So in that one week in September 2000, I had fun with censorship, theft, angry pastors acting on assumption, avoiding a book banning attempt, small as it was, multiple false charges of grooming, called recruitment in those days.

And there were still eleven more years to go.

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I was born in Boston over 70 years ago and within days became a Boston Irish Catholic which one remains the remainder of their life in spite of any moving away or loss of Faith. As such, we learned from the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Cluny, why the Red Sox were better than the Yankees. We also learned all about those people we know who might be good people, but, sadly not being Catholic, will not be saved and that is why we needed to bring Jesus to them. 

We ransomed “Pagan babies” for this.

In the first grade I heard officially that the Jews were still waiting for the Messiah and I thought it was lousy that no one told them about Jesus yet, and suggested to my first grade teacher, Sister Mary Frances, that I could be the one to go tell them since no one else had. Thought that was nasty of us not to tell them and then claim they killed Him and act accordingly. 

And so, I, along with the other religious who uselessly meant well but would not be saved, I became familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormon Temple and all, of course through the filter of the Nuns. The Mormons had a great choir and a big church with an angel on top made of gold. I saw documentaries, the choir on TV, taught many Mormons over the years especially where there was a concentration in the part of L.A. where I taught, Carson, with my many Samoan students, the Osmonds, and all of that, but I thought, since I had no reason to go to Salt Lake City, the Temple would be something I knew about but had little chance of seeing or wanting to see.

There are things all over the world I will never see because I cannot get there while there are others I can see if I choose. Resigned to that, I accept that I will not see everything but will be glad to see what I can without any regret toward the other situation.

Whenever I have gone to a strange city, the first thing I do is note the tallest building seen from my starting point if I am walking, and between noting its position and, in the day, the position of the sun I can always find my way home.

With all I knew and had seen about the Temple, I was looking to be impressed on my way from the airport as the Temple stood tall and proud above the city like a beacon on a hill. Johns Hopkins does not allow any building on campus to be higher than the main building’s dome so if you plan a building that would violate the height rule, those excess floors go underground.

I assumed such a rule regarding the city below it and the temple, but for some reason that is not the case, and my Uber driver explained that since modern buildings have no such restriction, the unseen Temple was inside that “cluster of buildings over there”.

Not to worry, as I will just go among those buildings when I was exploring.

The Uber driver also explained I should have an easy time getting around as all street signs indicate where you are in relation to the temple. I told him that that was all well and good if you lived here and you knew where the Temple is, but that is useless to me as I can’t even see it from the highway and, because the cluster of tall buildings, would not know where it was until I had entered the forest. He laughingly agreed and said that was a standard assurance to tourists knowing full well that, if they were there the first time, they had no idea where it was, so trying to establish where you were in relation to a hidden thing could get annoying. Which it did.

I am not looking for any scientific explanations or some techno-over explanation of how, why, or why that is not what happens as I lived it, so, accepted or not, this is what I found through my experience. 

Other than Boston where downtown streets are laid out according to colonial usage leaving a series of spider webbed streets of all sizes and destinations, or none, to be rectified in the back Bay that came from landfill, cities that I have visited began with a plan and that included grid streets based on numbers and the alphabet with the letter being left alone or used as the first letter of a name. A and Adams Streets come to mind.

In Salt lake City all streets are numbered to indicate where you are in relation to the Temple. My hostel was located South of the Temple but to the West. Being familiar with grid layouts I had assumed I would be on SW 600, but that is compass direction not Temple relationship so I was on W (of the temple) 600 (street number) South (down from the Temple). Put the Temple in the center of a square and it seems easy enough. But this was only convenient for visitors in the old days when there were fewer and shorter streets, and you could see the Temple from anywhere in the valley to find your location. But that was then.

At a certain point, although I had not changed streets but was at the Temple line, my street became S 600 W . You could not see the Temple, and as they are getting ready for the 2035 Olympics, there is a lot of construction, mostly hotels in the area I was in and lots of remodeling that leaves the hotel up but perhaps without the soon to be replaced whenever they get to it hotel sign. Lots of huge, unnamed plywood palaces there.

If you missed the change, apparently GPS does often as well.

I stayed at a hostel one block from the reunion hotel where my three-day stay was the price of one night and so I had to walk where I wanted to go and I used my phone’s GPS. The reunion hotel was the Hampton Downtown, formerly the Hampton Inn, the sign still on the side of the Building. There are Hamptons all over the city with variations of the name, Hampton Court, Hampton by Hilton,  Hampton Gardens, the Hampton Rye. I had arrived hours before check-in time and I decided I would drop my backpack off at the hostel to be held while I wandered around looking for the other hotel. On the map it was just around a corner or two

It took two hours using GPS to locate the hotel as GPS was sending me everywhere. I finally did what men do not do, I asked directions and found I was actually one block south and one block over from the hotel and GPS had brought me almost to it more than once. The manager of the hotel informed me that driving with GPS is one thing as you zip through the “vortexes”, walking is another as you slowly pass through. The difference between jumping over a chasm in a car with speed and trying to walk across it.  Had I been looking for the Sheraton, things would have been easier as it was one hotel with a huge sign. When I entered my address as starting  point it apparently confused the GPS which I eventually heard from many of the people I talked with was common, so that as I approached a “vortex”, what people called the concentrated point of the satellite signal that like light through a magnifying glass eventually gets concentrated at a single point, the omni-direction point, anywhere in that field, the GPS will either continue you on your way or switch you toward another location from that spot because of the odd street numbering. If you could see the Temple there would be no problem, but you can’t, so there is.

This might not be the scientific explanation but it is the one that makes experiential sense. 

I found my hostel was very close to Harvey Milk Way. In spite of it being Mormon Central, they have already had a Lesbian mayor, there is a Gay district, and the city is rated one of the most accepting cities in the country. I found one bar with Drag shows that was a block from the Temple. Either the Mormons are in their own hell now, or they have a great, but unseen sense of humor as you see many sarcastic product names based on Mormon tenets, real or assumed, like Polygamy Porterhouse BBQ Sauce and Sister Wives Toast. Although it was not my intention, I ended up going to that Gay bar by the yet to be seen Temple only because the GPS route to Harvey Milk Way had become too complicated and had too many sudden re-centering notifications when I was following the voice telling me where to go. I finally gave up and spent the $10 on a cover charge and the same on a drink in a highball glass that stopped a fingers width from the rim. 

The next night, I entered the name of the bar on Harvey Milk Way that I had entered the previous night but this time from the reunion hotel not my hostel that was two blocks down and one over, and the direction had me go straight down 300 st. for 8 blocks, passing my hostel on the next street over and taking a right to the door of the bar where the $10 drink from the night before was $4 and I got the word that the other bar was the tourist one with tourist prices, frequented by the locals only occasionally because of the prices unless you are one who buys expensive coffees while complaining you cannot afford essentials.

From the reunion hotel it was one straight line then a right when the night before from my place, one street over, I kept getting the recentered while following the route I was being directed on.

The hostel manager said that because of the similarities, yet differences, between W600S abutting S600W, it is best to get away from that area and then begin your walking GPS search to avoid this, and he apologized for not having told me that on signing in.

This explained why any attempt] to find the Temple by foot and GPS was so confusing and easy to give up. 

I attempted to see the Temple by getting to it by the on-off train, but GPS often had me at the wrong station platform so I eventually gave up looking as the train had me everywhere but on the line that goes right by it with my having been directed by GPS to get on and off a lot of platforms that went elsewhere or were around the corner or near a building blocking the view so I got off as directed and missed by that close.

I did get to see a lot of the city this way from top to bottom and side to side.

I got philosophical about this and figured that as close as I had gotten, I would just never see the Temple. I had been searching the equivalent of day and a half and, as I was to find, just missing it until I gave up and went GPS-less and, looking for something else, turned a corner, and there it was.

I was standing in front of a building that I had seen on film and television, had heard good, bad and rumored things about, knew a lot about without being a member of the church for 74 years.

If it had been one, a goal was reached or an item could be checked off on the bucket list.

However,

Recently, as the LDS became concerned about the arrival of the Big One, the biblically proportioned earthquake out west, and realized the Temple, being of old construction, was not earthquake proof and decided to address that.  They needed to get the Temple on to piles and a firmer foundation while making all necessary adjustments to the building and surrounding structures because, I guess, they have some doubts that God likes them enough that He will preserve the building.

So in my 74th year, I stood before the Salt Lake City Temple that was totally surrounded by construction equipment, wrapped in scaffolding and that orange mesh protective fencing. Here I was standing in front of the Temple, physically standing in front of the Temple, looking right at it, I have pictures, yet unable to see what I was looking at.

At my age and with no need nor desire to return to Salt Lake City, I have to accept that I will never see the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City in my life time.

Talk about a lesson in setting goals. Imagine if I had made a religious pilgrimage to see the Temple before I die but, while I could see where it is, I could not see it.

Ironically, I now know that I will go my whole life without ever having actually seen the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and I was right there.

What one might say I waited 74 years to see.

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Tonight, May 18, 2022, the senior class of North West Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Ok will be graduating.

It is the last of the week-long series of graduations for all the high schools in the city, and it seems fitting that NWC would be the last, and, therefore, most remembered graduation. You may have liked all the songs in the show, but there is a good chance you remember the last song best.

Although discussions to add Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to the city’s school district policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination had begun slowly and rather quietly as the topic in the Buckle of the Bible Belt was an awkward one for most, it became very public and complicated when the principal of the high school overreacted to the first piece of positive information for the Gay students that was hung in accordance with the spirit of the policy on nondiscrimination as school policies applied to all students, listed or not, as was established by the district’s own committee on equal rights, by taking it, somehow, as a personal attack on him and a political move detrimental to him and the school and was joined in this by assistant administrators who saw being Gay-Positive might ruin their chances of advancement.

For the 10 years out of the twelve that it took to move the school district administration, the 10 superintendents (there was an amazing turnover as each failed to be the expected miracle), an amazing number of mid-level administrators who came and went with surprising frequency, and 3 principals, rather than let the topic be discussed in the central administration building, school administrators assumed the roles of the defenders of the status quo, and with each poor choice of action, they would double down to erase the memory of one mistake by committing a worse one.

Although it was slowly becoming obvious that the main administrators of the district might have begun acknowledging the importance of the addition of these words to policies but were just trying to find a way to do it or pass it down the road to someone who would, in such a way it did not come with political and religious related problems. They wanted to save face.

After 12 years during which time people had gone before the School Board to, among other things, advise that if they did not extend protections for the Gay students in the district for the correct reason, being responsible for the safety, wellbeing, and education  of all students in  its schools, they should do it for the self-serving reason of avoiding litigation when, after all the times people appeared before the School Board and read from reports and offered statistics to justify the need, if a child were to be harmed, a parent could point to the many times the board simply chose to ignore the facts.

At least do it to avoid future litigation.

And, so it was, that in December 2009, after the passage of the Michael Shepherd law, the board sat at the dais and marveled at all the information they had accidentally come across individually, on their own, over the weekend explaining their legal standing according to this law and decided to finally do what it had been asked to do for years, claiming they had come to this moment totally by accident and totally on their own. Much of their newly self-discovered reports and statistics had a familiarity to them as they were merely read from what had been handed to each board member over the years.

So, tonight the students from the high school which for some unexplained reason chose to be the major battlefield a war that wasn’t the one they thought was being fought.

 With this final graduation the 25-year chapter from a request in 1997 to this night comes to a close as the Oklahoma City Public Schools class of 2022 graduates as the first class of any school system in that state having had Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in school policies their whole educational career without any of the predicted problems having taken place.

When the last graduate of NorthWest Classen High School is handed a diploma, that will end one chapter, and this milestone will become the status quo.

CONGRATULATIONS NWCLASSEN KNIGHTS CLASS OF 2022.

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It was the 1980s and by all reckoning, although many major cities had made strides in Gay Rights since Stonewall, California’s two major cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles were ahead of most of them. The state and these cities still had a ways to go, but at least there was forward motion in spite of the convenient excuse AIDS gave the Christian conservative right to work for our genocide in God’s name.

I was the cartoonist for the Gay newspaper in Long Beach, California as well as a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of that same city, so when I became active in the teachers’ union, the interests of Gay teachers was a natural concern. My involvement in the Gay Community came to the attention of some of the union’s leadership and the effectiveness of my cartoons in educating  teachers and the general public about the need for and the reasons for a teacher strike showed I could meet goals. Although the union had a Gay and Lesbian Education Concerns subcommittee, like most subcommittees, it existed to exist and had no power or authority to act in the name of the union or participate in the activities of other full-standing committees beyond an assistance role.

One of the members of the executive board, a Gay teacher who would eventually move up the political ladder making a difference for Gay people as he moved toward the state legislature, asked if I would assume the long vacant chair position of this subcommittee as it might become more active with full standing committee status especially as, once the dirty work was done, there would be people who would want to chair it without having helped to create it because full standing committees come with power and position.

It was the end that counted.

We took steps to make this happen knowing there would be tremendous support from the board and rank and file membership and made it so.

As was usual then and continues now, such committees had co-chairs, male and female in most cases with specifically a Gay man and Lesbian in this case not for exclusion of others but because in the 1980s that was about the extent of gender understanding. There were certain benefits to being a full standing committee, one of which was a position on the executive board that was more than advisory but contributory. The others were being sanctioned to speak as a standing committee representing the union  and the power to seek funds for activities we could justify.

The establishment of the full standing committee took place toward the end of the academic year and just prior to the Pride Parade in Los Angeles that year, and, so, members of the committee asked for and received the union’s blessing to march in the Pride Parade officially representing the United Teachers of Los Angeles. With little time before permission to march and the parade, I made a banner at home identifying who we were, making sure the name of the committee was clear.

There were less than a dozen of us. For some, this was a crowning moment and perhaps one of the last memorable moments of their lives because of the times. As we rounded the bend on Santa Monica Boulevard just at Barney’s Beanery, the person acting as Emcee for the local cable access channel covering the parade lost his cool and asked if it were a serious entry when he read from the card in his hands that we were members of the Gay and Lesbian Education Committee of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, an entry that took him totally off guard and having him register his disbelief.

The spectators went nuts.

It was not a quiet debut. 

I was a celebrated one.

Some thirty one years later, having had as my only certain objective to attend the Pride Parade in Oklahoma City and then continue on to the West using an Amtrak Rail Pass to do some historical research and the reset of history, I was sitting sipping a beer in the Mine Shaft in Long Beach CA when the obvious lack of customers had another patron, the only other one on a hot Saturday afternoon, ask where everyone was. Apparently people were up in Los Angeles for all its Pride Parade activities as the Parade and Festival were the following day.

It had not been in my plans as I had no idea my timing was that good, but the following morning, I rose early and went up to L.A..  I was on the train from downtown L.A. to where I was hoping the Parade was staging, hoping I had the right train and wasn’t going to spend my day traveling the city only to read about what I missed in the newspapers the following day. I approached a proudly rainbowed fellow passenger and told him I was following him so he better know where he was going. He was a proud Transgender person about to be in his first ever Parade, so we had a nice conversation about parades and parted ways when we got to Highland Avenue and went in search of our groups to join the city’s largest Pride Parade. I am sure if I ever got to tell him about what happened after we parted, he would be happy to hear it. He was a character in the day’s stories and had a connection to much.

I got the number of the Teacher Union staging spot and was overwhelmed when I arrived  where, unlike the first parade, instead of a few people taking a deep breath as we did not know how teachers would be received in the parade, there was a large flatbed truck and a good fifty or more people of all ages, races, etc. that increased in size by the time the parade stepped off.

I introduced myself to the person who seemed to be in charge, but with the assembling confusion, she did not really hear the whole story but invited me to march with them as a former UTLA member. I had previously arranged to visit the union headquarters prior to my trip on that Monday via emails, not knowing about the parade, so the next morning on my visit all details got explained to this very person.

The theme of the float was “Banned Books”, and as part of that we were handed enlarged copies of the book covers of the most banned books in the United States at the time and I was randomly handed “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M Johnson.

Why this was a notable coincidence can be seen from this previous blog entry, https://www.quigleycartoon.com/?p=18963.

I surprised myself by making it through the whole parade, asked to keep my enlarged book cover, thanked the Union leadership for allowing me to march and close a circle while remembering those in the first group, and went back to my motel in Long Beach, and composed this letter to George Johnson.

“George,

You might not remember me. I was the old guy in New Bedford who told you about your connection to Frederick Douglass when you spoke at the Lyceum.

If you were to google me in relation to Oklahoma City, you would see I advocated for inclusive language in school district policy that finally happened in 2009 with the addition of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”. It came at a cost, but it came.

Five years after I left the district, after seeing the language stick for two years and not wanting to become a focal point to distract from the students, and with none of the originally predicted horrors the first language addition was supposed to bring down upon us, the district added “gender expression” in 2018.

If there had been problems with the first two, why would the district add to them especially in light of the misrepresentations, false prophecies, and wild claims that were offered to prevent the inclusive language in the first place.

Sadly, when the state house in Oklahoma went after Trans students, for some odd reason, this was never brought up by advocates, state and national, to counter this move. They ignored this actual case study that showed inclusion neither created problems nor caused harm, choosing, instead, to use boilerplate, universally applicable arguments with no direct connection to the state whose capitol city’s school district had been inclusive for twelve years. They had their evidence right there in the capitol city.

For two years I wrote letters to the Gayly, the Community rag, the Daily Oklahoman, the major newspaper, and others asking why all the other stripes on the Progressive Flag are content to keep their rights while they are comfortable with the Trans students losing theirs while not fighting to get them restored.

The Oklahoma City Public Schools Class of 2022 was safe at school from the first grade to twelfth, first and only group to do so in that state. Now, some will have had rights for the majority of their time in the district, some for a smaller part of theirs, and, from now on, all the students who never had them but could have will be entering the schools.

Using a USRail pass, I traveled to OKC and found that, while the older members of the Community are bothered by this, the younger members seem to have not noticed or choose to ignore it because it is unpleasant, or if they do, think a big Pride Parade will change hearts and minds. Those with experience know it takes hard work.

The glitter is for the after party.

After your presentation in New Bedford, I got on the internet and wrote all about it, your Douglass connection, the information you artfully wove into stories so there was no lecture or preachiness about it, and the make-up of the audience. I taught English for 38 years on the Middle and High School levels, all grades, sometimes Special Education classes. In my haste, I used standard pronouns and, in spite of any of the substance of your talk and its importance, the only comments were about my disrespecting you by not honoring your pronoun preference, (apparently no room for error) which, although I am sorry for having done that, seems less disrespectful than ignoring your message entirely.

After Oklahoma City, having additional segments left on the pass, I traveled to Long Beach CA where I had lived too many years ago and found that the L.A. Pride Parade was the same weekend as my arrival, and this is the reason for the letter.

I taught in L.A. back in the mid-80s to mid-90s and was the chair of the teacher union’s subcommittee on Gay and Lesbian Education Issues (it was the vocabulary at the time) and got it accepted as a full standing committee which was a big deal then. Because we now had the Union’s blessing to officially represent it and had access to funds, I was one of the first 12 or so members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles who marched in the 1990 L.A. Pride Parade behind a banner I had handmade in my apartment since it was too short a time to get an official one printed in time.

When I saw I was in SoCal at the right time, I went to the parade as I read the union was going to be in it. This time, some 34 years later, there was a diverse crowd of people, a truck with the union banner for the teachers on one side and the state Federation of Workers AFL-CIO on the other, and parents with children, diversity, the old, and the young.

I spoke with the person in charge and explained who I was and why I would love to march since I was there by coincidence. It was like the closing of a circle.

Someone announced the theme of the “float” was “banned books”, and started handing out enlargements of the covers of banned books at random and when it came to me, I was handed “All Boys Aren’t Blue”.

So, here I was, 34 years after having been one of the first teachers to march officially in a Pride Parade in Los Angeles, representing the teachers’ union which had recently won in a huge strike, doing it again, this time carrying the book cover of a person I hope I added to by telling of the Douglass connection at the Lyceum, marching as a total unknown to most of the marchers while watching their joy doing what that first group started.

Too many in that first group did not live long after because of the times, so I marched for them, after having been told in OKC by some former students my being open and true to who I was as a teacher helped them and now some of their children by their acceptance of their true child. That was a brave group of people.

I have included a picture of my old Gay self and what I got to carry in the L.A. Pride Parade. There are so many threads connected in this picture.One might say this picture draws so many ends together and, so, I also carried it for my former students.

The picture:

And, George responded,

“Thank you so much! This is really beautiful. I’m so appreciative of this and you. 

G”.

What a way to close a circle.

That night, after composing and sending the letter, I told the gentlemen at the Silver Fox about the day’s adventure.

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