So, there I am all by myself for eternity and I decide to create people to hang with and when I do, the angels rebel and decide worshiping me was a bit too much for them. Now, instead of being alone, I have sworn enemies that I created for the rest of eternity which is, I am sure, a very long time to come. I tried again with humans in my image and likeness but because I thought a talking snake was a good idea, they ended up disobeying me because of that talking snake and I had to unfriend them big time. I tell them to increase and multiply and their first born son kills the second one and then runs off to live with people I didn’t even know were there. 

I have to wipe them all out and start again. Did I start from scratch? NO. I use incest again and start with some chosen left overs that I spared and, yep, you guessed it, they turned on me. 

The one group I picked as my favorite has to be rescued from Egypt but they build a golden calf to worship instead of me. I have to keep killing them off. I finally send myself in the form of my son to reset it all and they end up killing me, say they worship the very ground I walk on and the water too, say they will do whatever I say, then ignore me in favor of the very opposite of what I wanted and my will be done and all, while totally ignoring the very reset of all my mistakes, the beatitudes.

Now the people claim someone most unlike me is better than I am.

That, Doctor,  is why I am giving up. When they are gone, I am going back to the sweet solitude of eternity.

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Remember Massachusetts 1980

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     In 1997, a simple request to the administration of the Oklahoma City Public Schools for teacher professional development sessions on the existence and needs of GLBT students in their classrooms, similar to what was done for the Asian, Black, Latino, and other groups to which students belonged, was rejected because, regardless how important that might be, “local norms will not allow it”. That was code for supporting bigotry, as the local norms referred to were those supported by politicians, the local newspaper, and the all controlling Baptist Church.

     Over the next several years meetings were held with administrators, after having been initially refused, that resulted in the formation of a committee to review the Oklahoma City Public School District’s policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination which some hoped would result in the addition of the words “sexual orientation” so that there would be no doubt that Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender students were included in those policies and their protection and school experience would not be controlled by the personal religious and political beliefs of individual teachers and administrators.

      That committee was close to the inclusive language, but an intra-administrative tiff resulted in that committee’s meetings being postponed indefinitely which, as it was to turn out as predicted, was to be never.

     The quest for those inclusive words was not abandoned, and for the next several years, 12 in total, that inclusion was sought to various degrees of acceptance by people going to school board meetings on a regular basis to present facts and figures to educate the school district of the importance of those words.

     Finally in December 2009, as a result of persistence, and some drama along the way, the GLBT Community’s request and the importance of inclusion was recognized when the words “Sexual orientation and “gender identity” were finally added to the Oklahoma City Public Schools policies on bullying, harassment, an nondiscrimination.

     The inclusion of “gender identity” put the school district at the forefront of student protection as very few school districts throughout the country had yet to include it.

     As with all things, there is growth. And part of that process is to realize that the gates of hell did not open to consume the school district and the greater city in which it operated, and the imagined unending filings of lawsuits was a fantasy and excuse for immobility.

     Quite surprisingly, I am sure, those who had originally opposed inclusion and may have reluctantly allowed it have been seeing the rest of the country catching up.

     Proof of that positive growth came, when on this past June 12, 2017, the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education passed a resolution vowing unwavering support for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer students and staff making it one of only five school districts in the country to do so.

     Chairperson Paula Lewis has stated,

“The resolution is just a start for our district of recognizing that we are a diverse district and that we are proud of everybody in our district whether it be students or teachers.”

     And

     “I’d like to get an overarching policy that says we as a district recognize not just our nondiscrimination, but a true policy that says we recognize all these groups and they’re safe to work here and they are safe to go to school here.”

     These are the very sentiments expressed from 1997 to 2009 by those advocating for inclusive language.

     Carrie Jacobs another Board member explained her support of the resolution.

     “It sends the message that the district is for all kids. It says that we see you and we are grateful that you are here. We value your contributions.”

     This has become a good Pride Month for me.

     And lest they are forgotten, there were a number of people, besides myself, who throughout those long years went to many board meetings, spoke out when it as needed, and helped in the advocacy in any way they could.

     Recent events are easy to remember, and can appear to have come out of the blue, but the Community should thank these people:

     Rob Abiera, Jim Nimmo, Bob Nichols, Mike (Skye) Camfield, Eddie Kromer, Paul Bashline, Rhonda Rudd and Jayshree, Karen Parsons, Jean Pennycuff, all the guys at Tramps, still here and gone, Nathaniel Batchelder and his Peace House, Rey Jones, a man who wanted justice for everyone, Jim Prock, Victor Gorin, Reverends Scott Jones and Jenalu Johnston, and Paula Schonauer. .

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I came. I saw. I conquered. Now I am getting erased

I have attended talks by people who were inside and out on the street the night of the Stonewall Inn Rebellion who, after speaking of their experience that night,  have been corrected on some details that did not match what an audience member had been sent by a peer of the same age in a text.

My own history was sanitized recently to a point to remove all possible triggers that would make certain facts uncomfortable for present day young readers who might be offended by the terms that were used and the attitudes expressed twenty years ago so that when I read my own history, I was a minor player in an event in which I was the main one. Restoration of facts and vocabulary, no matter how unpleasant to today’s sensibilities, restored me to my own story.

In my living room I have a framed t-shirt I designed for an AIDS Walk in Oklahoma City in 1994, some thirty years ago now, along with a button and key chain that were part of the fundraising, but read recently that this year will be the 25th annual AIDS Walk, according to a new committee, erasing the five walks that would make it actually the 30th and removing from the Community history the people who had faced the worst of the AIDS Pandemic’s early devastation in the 1980s, and had begun the Walks.

A simple inquiry on a visit to Long Beach California recently revealed that, although the Gay Men’s Chorus of Long Beach had existed from 1984 through around 1994 and was very well known, the young people at the reception desk at the GLBT Community Center, which should have its finger on the pulse of the Community, past, present, and future, had no idea such a chorus existed showing that the men who had given their time to the Community during the early years of the AIDS Pandemic have been erased. Making it worse was this same lack of knowledge on the part of the person in charge of the Center at the time I visited who presented a bad example to those who have taken on caring for the Community in all its aspects. They only knew about the chorus begun in Orange County in 1992. 

To guarantee to myself and anyone who might assume I have reached that age where fantasy and reality blur their boundaries, although I could find no reviews of the GMCLB’s performances, I did find notices of its upcoming concert dates in the local paper, The Press-Telegram, for those years.

Although the Center would welcome anything I might have related to the chorus, there seemed to be little interest in correcting the history.

In looking for information online since anything I had was lost in 1992 with the Rodney King Riots reaching where I had materials stored, I wrote to the local newspaper in Long Beach and was referred to a local LGBT Community newspaper that might be useful to my research and found it had recently celebrated its anniversary, claiming to be the first LGBT Community paper in Long Beach.

I know this claim to be false because, among my involvements in the Long Beach Gay Community, I was the cartoonist for the original paper from 1985 to 1992. 

That was the year I spent the summer in Greenwich Village in New York having coffee occasionally with many people who were at the Stonewall Inn that night,  holding the Ashes of Marsha Johnson at coffee in Mr. Wicker’s antique shop the day before I attended both her funeral and the party after where the Drag Queens were fierce, and got to hear the stories of the behind the scenes that may shock those whose history is all lollipops and rainbows and which they would dismiss out of hand because truth triggers the easily offended.

I have spoken with many who did the heavy lifting since Stonewall, and what they have experienced in large numbers is seeing the history of which they were a part and a shaper being modified to taste like history is a recipe and themselves being written out of their own lives and replaced with tag-alongs.

Some of the saddest words I heard came from an older activist, “No one knows who I am anymore,” when many owe her a debt.

As a teacher, whenever an unpleasant historical event came up there were always the students in the class who boasted that had they been there, things would have been different, ignoring the reality that things in the past were not like they are now and could have been better or worse than they are presently. Whereas, now you might be able to storm into someplace and make your displeasure known because times allow for that, trying that in the past might have you shot just stepping in the door depending what part of the country you lived in and what color your skin was.

When a group of us elder Gays were discussing changes over time while sitting at a bar on Pride Day, we were admonished for expressing jealousy of the young kids who have the freedom to do what we only could dream of and worked for, with the reminder that if we had only worked harder we would have had our rights sooner  when this twenty something was born Years after the state had passed its equality law and might have some difficulties now, but not those as well as what had to be experienced before.

When things like marriage equality came along it was, to this young person and his friends, just part of the natural progression that went along with what we had been given in the past because, apparently, it was not through the hard work of the activists in the Community but because of the largesse of the greater society that extended our rights to us that we now have them.

A Transgender friend is given the cold shoulder by young Trans people who ignore what her transitioning entailed as a decorated cop in a red state capitol  and do not invite her to participate in things because they have decided that all cops, regardless of anything, are bad, and she is equally guilty of any police oppression regardless of her treatment by the police force post gender alignment.

If I have seen this much erasure in these many places in just those things with which I had a close relationship, it has to be happening in a lot of places and we need to stop this erosion of our history.

I saved my history as I wrote an important part of it in a book and that, my artwork, and legal papers from OKC are archived and, regardless of any future treatment, my truth is on file.

Although it has been 30 years and only one visit in that time, I am endeavoring to restore the GMCLB and the original Gay newspaper to the historic record.

I am proposing that anyone  who was a Gay activist, who gave their lives to the fight, who experienced any part of Gay History, write your personal experience down. Do not leave it to others. They will not be looking you up especially if your history goes back more than 30 years.

Write down your personal experience, the role you played, referring only to others as they play into your story. You are the star, they the extras and supporting cast. It will happen that way with their tellings so there will, in the end, be singular and group inter-twinings.

This is your official account of your story, the one that, regardless how anyone else might twist it, will exist as your truth.

There are various places archiving Gay History.

My Oklahoma History is at a university in that state and there are Gay History sites on the internet. You can write it up on a self publishing site so it is preserved.

It used to be that we were erased by those who did not want us in the histories because we were different. Histories were rewritten to credit others with our work and pronoun genders were changed to deny our love for each other. It was bad enough when we had to protect our history from others, it is horrendous that we have to save our history from self-revision from within.

“What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. ” Thomas Paine

 In 2017, as a volunteer transcriber at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I was assigned the log book of the Newport, a steam powered whaling vessel out of San Francisco owned by a New Bedford firm, scheduled to spend three seasons hunting for Bowhead whales in the North Pacific whaling field from 1893 through 1896. As the Bowhead whale has an annual North/South migration, rather than chase them, knowing their route would take them through the Bering Strait into the arctic waters and since this would bottleneck them into a smaller expanse than the open Pacific ocean, for a number of years whaling vessels would gather at Herschel Island, 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska, off the northern edge of Canada in the Fall, carefully winterizing the ships to withstand the forming ice in order to sit through the winter, making them into homes for the crews while other amenities were supplied by the company owned village established on land to wait for the whales to return in the spring and have them come to the whalers and not the usual way with the whalers chasing them. 

It was a common practice for whale ship masters to bring their wives on long voyages and spending the winter on Herschel Island as a couple was a good practice for them either because their wives were welcome additions who would have been left at home for those three years, or the wives had insisted on being there as the Indigenous women might be seen as too great a temptation for their otherwise devoted husbands. They knew their husbands. The whale ship masters wintering on Herschel Island usually brought their wives and their children.

  During the winter of 1895, Sophie Porter, wife of Captain Porter of the Jesse H Freeman, took photographs of those wintering on Herschel Island that year and among them are those of the Captains, their wives, the ships, the indigenous people, both adults and children, and miscellaneous pictures of crew members.

  In the log books kept during that time on the Island, there are entries about the interactions of captains with their wives. We know the captains had sexual relations not only with their wives but with the indigenous women. Captain Leavet, having fallen in love with and marrying an indigenous woman, left whaling, remained on Herschel Island for a time, and became a very prominent person in that area of Canada off of which the Island lay. Captain Leavet’s activities would have been noted as he was a captain, but if there were women available to him, they were also there for any crew member as well.

Crew members did not have the privilege of bringing a mate with whom to winter, so if there was to be any sex for them, it was either with the Indigenous people in the area or each other.

Until 2017, it would seem, the answer to the question regarding homosexual activity on whaling ships, whether or not it was merely situational or because of sexual orientation, or even, perhaps, as many whaling voyages took place before Psycho-analysis invented the word “Homosexuality” and created the gender binary, just natural, had consistently been that all-male crews isolated for months and years on a ship at sea and having natural needs would most likely have engaged in some form of Homosexual activity. It was a logical assumption with no actual record of any beyond what appeared to be Melville’s hints in Moby Dick and other of his writings.

We have log entries that describe the sexual activities of crews in ports or near islands, such as the one in the South Pacific where a captain had to abandon his ship until major repairs could be completed because of the number of nails that had been melted down for local use in exchange for sex.

While studies have been done and books written regarding Homosexuality among pirates, a different topic as pirating and whaling, although taking place on ships, were not the same by nature, there has been no serious study of Homosexuality on whaling ships, or, if there is, it is being done quietly.

The whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895. Among the log entries is,

“Monday Feb 11th A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

There are a number of archive sites with digitized copies of handwritten, historical documents making them conveniently available world-wide for anyone that has a need for them or an interest in them. Although most have yet to be transcribed into a digital, typed format, before being placed on such a site, a number of people read through the original manuscript listing items and topics they deem to be of interest to others,  leaving it up to a person who comes upon such an item in the list to read the original document for the information or go a bit further and transcribe it for the convenience of others.

However, in the case of the Newport logbook, the previewers of the log may have mentioned whales, baseball games, hunting expeditions, and other items of interest found in the log and deserving of further research, but there is no mention of what might be considered an out of the ordinary occurrence on a whale ship and, so, something to be noted, the event with the steward, Scott.

Because the transcription of the Newport log was needed for a specific purpose by a particular date, the task of transcribing the logbook was divided among a number of transcribers to save time, and it was by sheer luck that I got the section with the February 11, 1895 entry. There had been nothing in the topic summary that would have made the log anything special, and it is possible that, had that section been transcribed by someone else, being just words of little importance, they would have been simply typed out. We often ran into archaic nautical terms that we would look up when convenient if we remembered to, and having had to define “Onanism” to some well educated people when I presented museum leadership with the entry, I could see how one of the other transcribers could just type out an unknown word whose meaning someone must know but not necessary for he or she to know while simply transcribing.

Upon being told about my discovery a few years after it, I was informed by a professor of maritime history, that, while reading certain log books for weather references, he had come upon a second log entry from a ship 50 years before the Newport entry, the Charles Phelps in 1843, that included the line, “allso tried to hire a Portuguese deckhand to commit Soddomy”.

Monday Jan the 30: This day begins with light baffling wind steering NE by East 2 AM wind hauled to ENE heading N at 8 AM wind NNW & clowday at 9am lowered for a Right Whale did not strike 6PM seased Wm H Smith up to the main rigging the Captain gave him 39 lashes for indeavoring to poisen the officers by putting callomil & julep & other stuff in bread He said Wm H Smith indeavored to get the cook to poisen men Forward he also threatened to kill Washington Fletcher & Clark Orlin with a dirk & carving knife and any other that molested him he also tried to hire a Portuguese to commit sodomy for these crimes he received  the above named lashes with a 6 tailed cat put him in irons put him between deck took in sail head W”.

William H. Smith, the steward, was given 29 lashes for this and for having previously attempted to poison the captain by putting a chemical into the bread dough. The attempted murder, the flogging, and the offer to purchase sex should be listed as topics of interest unless for some reason, but only the poisoning is.  Maybe it was purposely omitted because such a topic went against the reader’s personal, political, and/or religious belief, thus denying a lead to anyone doing research in this area, or it was either deemed of no interest to anyone, or it just did not register and, perhaps this applies to the Newport, as well and to others. 

If Homosexual activity was the target of research, the very logs with the sought after information would have been passed over and may have been prior to 2017, in the case of the Newport, by those who did not know they had been looking at what they sought.

Finding two whaling crew members on two separate ships, decades apart, brought the assumption of Homosexuality into the realm of reality, and for over 150 years in one instance and over 100 in the other this information existed and remained unseen.

The answer to the Question is now, “Yes. There was Homosexuality on board whaling ships. We have log entries on that topic.”

A careful examination of the historical record shows that when religion and politics wed, things like same sex activity needed to be regulated to ensure there was conformity and a continual resupply of the population could be met. If same sex coupling was allowed to continue, it could decrease the number of those needed to keep the monarch and all who benefited from his personage and largess in power as feudal armies, and the whole feudal system depended not on humanity, but a steady supply of people to send into battle and tax in order to do that. Those in same sex relationships also made the rules that controlled society somewhat fluid and if this “freedom” of expression without control spread, equality would have come sooner in history and monarchies and the system dependent on it ended just as soon.

It would also show that there were more ways to do things than those demanded by church and monarch, and this fluidity of rights and thought could be dangerous to those in power. Politics often uses religion and vise-versa when beneficial to those who gain from the power of either, or both.

When same sex couples were discovered in the act, although both people might be punished, the more ostentatious kind was meted out to the one who had either, in the case of a dominant Lesbian, usurped the male role, while in a male couple the harsher punishment was given to the one that assumed the woman’s role and demeaned his sex.

When Psychoanalysis started up, in order to work, there had to be a normal and an abnormal, and the only delineation was that what the founders of psychoanalysis did was normal, while what they neither did nor were attracted to, or may have found objectionable, was abnormal.

They had to take human sexuality that was boundless and put it into boxes.

The term “Homosexuality” with all its assigned baggage did not come about until the late 1860s, and then being normal and abnormal could be measured and people put in cubbyholes. Most people are not aware that as the talk of psychoanalysis began to enter common conversation, non-Homosexuals wanted to know what they were called, and, so, in spite of the idea that their behavior was the norm, they were labeled Heterosexual.

It, like Homosexual, was coined to label an invented category coming into existence as a word about a quarter century after the division was made.

The reality is that the hard division only began when whaling was becoming a slowly dying industry and only when the artificial normal/abnormal divide was invented. The possibility exists that even as we look back and view examples of male/male interaction on whaling ships looking for the Homosexuals or just Homosexual activity, we may actually be rediscovering that there really never was and still is not in nature, a binary until we invented one and these men were not involved in Homosexuality but in human sexual activity.

Society’s rules did not apply on board a ship with its own micro-society. It was only when a crew member returned to port that he had to abide by community standards, and communities can become quite judgmental and condemning if “properly” influenced.

What happened on the ship, an island, a port of call, or another ship, as in the Newport instance, stayed there.

While looking for Homosexuality, we might actually prove that when free of society’s rules and expectations, real or created, Non-Binary is the normal human condition.

If the assumption was that an all male crew being alone at sea was responsible for situational Homosexuality because of the environment and for that reason alone, any record of it on land where there were options would be important.

As the whaling ship Newport was wintering on Herschel Island over the winter of 1894-1895, it was not isolated. Scott, the steward, was not out on a ship isolated with a stag crew for weeks, months, or even years.

That year, from the beginning of wintering in the fall of 1894 until the sea was open enough to steam out of port in May of 1895, the population of Herschel Island was the largest in the whaling company’s history of using that island. There were 1,500 people living on Herschel Island, not counting the Indigenous people who came in and out of the community to trade and the occasional visitors and company men who arrived via steamship and left after a while. 

Captains were having sex with their wives, a birth is recorded, and captains and, presumably, others were having sex with Indigenous women. Yet, even with the option, Mr. Scott was involved in Sodomy and, considering the difference between Onanism and Sodomy, it can be assumed that he was not the only one so inclined.

His was not situational Homosexuality as it was not the only option caused by isolation.

I had been taking it for granted that this entry was an example of men having sex with each other on whale ships, finally having the assumption becoming recorded reality, but I was to realize that by the time the captain had come upon Mr. Scott, the Newport had been sitting at Herschel Island for at least 6 months during which time there were captains and their wives doing what any husband and wife could do and mentions of interactions with the Indigenous people, one Captain marrying one and giving up his profession for a life in the North of Canada with her. There are records of multiple social events in the Jesse H Freeman log, referred to often as Sophie Porter’s Journal, and the entertainment at these gatherings was often supplied by a theater group and/or the chorus formed among members of the various crews, “The Herschel Snowflakes”, which would require practice and rehearsals which obviously could not be done with the men scattered on ships throughout the Pacific. You could not rehearse band music, plays, and/or choral presentations in isolation.

There are multiple mentions of baseball games played on the tundra, hunting trips with the indigenous people, small and large gatherings, and men who ran away in pairs and groups, some to be captured and brought back, others to die in the wilderness or to actually get away safely.

There was no forced isolation that would have resulted in the only sex among the crew being Homosexual. On Herschel Island there were options from September to late April. There were no conditions that would call for Situational Homosexuality, just discreet hookups, especially after the Reverend Stringer showed up, and this applied to any sex out of wedlock. To the contrary, Herschel Island was a community of 1,500 of the best and worst people and all between, and an ever changing Indigenous population that came and went for trade.

Mr. Scott, therefore, does not fit the assumed reason for Homosexual activity on a whaling ship as he was not isolated, but was living in a large community with a great amount of interpersonal interaction, and could address his natural needs accordingly.

He was found in this act of Sodomy, not forced into it by circumstances, but apparently by will, six months after arriving. There are no further mentions of Mr. Scott nor any preceding or succeeding instances, so, although we have a concrete mention of this one time, we have to leave it to assumption that it was not the first and last, only the one walked in on.

What I originally saw as proof of an assumption related to all whalers might be, in reality, the discovery of an individual Gay man and the existence of more on Herschel Island as Mr. Smith may have had no problem with Onanism, but as he was found in the act of sodomy, he was possibly not alone.

I was recently at a lecture about the writings of a self-emancipated Black man. A reference found in one book by the presenter and author of the book upon which the lecture was based was loosely connected to something mentioned in another book, and this led to research showing that an obscure writer and a very highly respected writer on par with Frederick Douglass was one and the same person. It all came down to a lot of strings suddenly getting pulled together until, unless you went out of your way to deny what is presented, you cannot but help see the obvious.

I believe it is that way with Mr. Scott, the steward and we have found Gay Whaler #1.

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I had been sipping my drink at the bar when the bartender announced that, even though she knew it might have negative effects on the Gay Community, she was voting for Trump because of all he had done and would continue to do for us, and most of the other people around the bar agreed because Joe Biden had done nothing while, just look at all Trump has done.

This might have been expected, though not appreciated, had this happened at the tavern just a few blocks from my apartment where I have been a regular since the only Gay bar in town closed, but his was that Gay bar just prior to closure with the bartender and supportive customers being mostly Gays and Lesbians with one Heteroseual couple as regulars who not be affected in the least if Trump won.

I met, knew and worked with some of the people responsible for what rights non-heterosexual people have gotten and, because of the foundation laid, continue to get and many are now dead. This was offensive as those people had fought in reality and Trump was the hero of their beneficiaries because he had actually done nothing positive while appointing Supreme Court justices who are poised to remove the rights won.

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

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

Here’s some history and why we need to remember it as it was as rights are attacked either by local, state, and federal laws are proposed and passed to remove rights and as we head to an election where many people who, facing losing all if not most of their won rights seem willing to consider electing as president someone who is clear in his intention to attack the GLBT Community. 

We are familiar with the Trump years, and some in the LGBTQ Community feel that whatever he does to the Gays is fine because of all the wonderful things he did as the “Best Friend of the Gays” . Some will even support him again in spite of what we could lose.

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

Join the history. Add to it. Don’t erase it or let it be erased.

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

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

1956: Daughters of Bilitis became a pioneering national organization.

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

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

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

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

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

1977: Activists in Miami, Florida passed a civil rights ordinance making sexual orientation discrimination illegal in Dade County. But this brought Anita Bryant into things with her Save Our Children organization, a Christian fundamentalist group, and in the largest special election of any in Dade County history, 70% voted to overturn the ordinance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2005: Civil unions became legal in Connecticut in October.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the “last 8 years” begins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 1, Maryland passed legislation to legalize gay marriage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn history and protect what it produced.

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It was 1999 in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, in the reddest state in the union as in each election the state went totally red with not enough blue anywhere in it to render it even somewhat purple. All school activities were hetero-normative with dances, King and Queen of whatever, best couple contests for Valentines day, and, obviously, Hetero-only dances.

What I hung in  my classroom was a list of names, no pictures, no descriptions, but names.only.

There was no fanfare as the list was posted quietly after hours and was left to be discovered by the students without any attention being drawn to it.

The following month, November, was, according to the list of what months were the heritage months of various groups, Native American History Month, so I put out a lot of information on my “Learn Stuff” table in the hall outside my classroom door about Native Americans and a book on the facts of the first Thanksgiving. I did this for each month.

My principal who claimed Tribal Affiliation took offense and charged me with hypocrisy as, while I was demanding respect for Gay people, I chose to celebrate native American Heritage during November, the month with the most anti- Native American holiday in it. Salivating at his having a concrete reason to reject anything Gay, the principal contacted the head of Native American Student services and they both came to my classroom to inspect the offending display. I received a few sensitivity lectures and a threat of admonishment for this until on the following day the head of Native American Student Services acknowledged his embarrassment as he had been unaware that November is officially designated as Native American History Month and I was the only person in the school district to be acknowledging that.

The following year there was a display at the top of the stairs in the second floor hallway, but I wrote a formal objection as there were pictures of the usual Native American images, but no knowledgment of Two-Spirit People.

The reprimand is written by a Heterosexual totally blind to the realities faced by Gay students. They are invisible and beaten down whenever they came into the light like it was all a game of Whack-a-Mole at the state fair midway.

Read the reprimand carefully. Notice the blindness expressed. 

One thing positive for Gay students outweighs all the Heterosexism.

Notice what is most strongly objected to is the Gay students getting a crumb of what the Straight ones had.

Also, note that while I was being reprimanded for not following a directive, emails and other correspondence had referred to my not following a “suggestion” until they needed a stronger charge. Ten years later this discrepancy was shown in court and played into the ruling that re-instated me.

This letter came after a meeting where I had explained the importance of this information not just for Gay students but their peers as well.

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     [Having revisited places where in my past I had known and worked with some great Gay Activists, I was surprised by how much Gay History has been lost in the last 30 years. People, organizations, and events have either been erased from the record or replaced with mythic figures. During what in my youth was called Gay History Month, October, I will repost blogs and post new ones dealing with GLBT History. The loss of history is too great and the need to restore what has been lost and prevent such loss in the future even greater.]

It was twenty-five years ago today that I took the list of famous GLBT people throughout history I had hanging in my middle school classroom for a number of years and transferred to smaller poster paper and hung them in my high school classroom after I transferred from the school where I had been teaching to the high school across the street.

Ironically. I was living temporarily at the beginning of the 1999-2000 academic year at a friend’s house, a Lesbian with whom I taught and who later, in her efforts to move up the administrative ladder at any cost, would be the principal who took the action that resuled in my wrongful dismissal and reinstatement.

Another story for another day

The list was compiled in the last years of the last millennium, it is shorter than what would be listed today as more history has been made and more people have become active in the struggle for GLBT rights, and closet doors have been removed more quickly and in greater numbers.

October being National Gay and Lesbian History Month, now GLBT  History Month, in 1999 I prepared a poster to hang on one of my classroom bulletin boards that consisted of the same four-hundred and fifty names of Gay people I had listed on a very large, oversized poster that had hung in my middle school classroom for two years. The poster listed various groups of people, from politicians, artists, and religious folk to sports and historical figures. It also contained people from many ethnic and racial groups. It was a very inclusive list that I simply hung on the first Monday in October, making no reference to it whatsoever; the words “Famous Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People” being the only indication of what the list was.

I admit that at that time Transgender people were not all that visible, and even had I been “woke” enough to have them on the list, with little attention on those members of the Community, names would have been hard to find. As it is, there might actually be some Transgender people on the list, but at the time, the T was still a year or so off.

I had made the poster while I was staying at the home of a Lesbian teacher with whom I had worked at the middle school, and who was beginning a relationship with another good friend of mine from the same school where we all worked. I had temporarily moved in with her after a particularly difficult break up with my significant other, and had helped her when she was taking certification classes for  her school administration certification by editing and correcting the grammar and spelling of the various reports she had had to write. For all intents and purposes we were like brother and sister. I had helped her handle the break-up of her most recent relationship, and was very supportive of the new one she was forming. I had no idea that, once she became a substitute administrator at the high school where I had been teaching before she transferred there, for the sake of moving up and keeping whatever position she would obtain, her attitude would turn completely negative toward things Gay related being open in school. As a matter of fact, she would eventually become the most anti-Gay administrator at the school when she became assistant principal and had a chance to become the principal.

Knowing that for many of the students, if not all, actually seeing such a list publicly displayed with no shame or embarrassment would in all probability be a new experience, I was prepared for whatever reaction they might have, hoping, of course, that it would not be too negative. I was quite pleased and proud of their reaction as it went from a small degree of shock and a little laughter the first day, to calling friends in between classes on the second day to see “The Poster”, and finally by the third day looking at it like any other piece of information that a teacher might hang in a classroom. They were mature about it for the most part.

There was one senior in my third hour class that I referred to as the “Rebel Without A Clue”. Somewhere along the line he had dropped out of school, moved to another state, held a job, and for whatever reason chose to return back home to finish his senior year. He only needed one final semester of credits to graduate and felt that because he had been in the real world, he was beyond the other seniors and my equal as an adult. He rebelled against anything and everything presented to the class without taking the time to assess it, never taking the time to see if he actually would have liked some of the things we did. He promoted his rebel image without restraint.

He was absolutely adored by another student in the class who was having some personal problems both at home and in school, and who apparently saw in his rebelliousness something to admire, with her adoration so intense he could do no wrong. She looked on him with puppy eyes, and if we watched a video she would make sure her hand fell close enough to him in order to lightly caress the back of his neck when the lights were  low. The day came when he thought that my treatment of the class was demeaning. In reality, because he was often absent and constantly indiscriminately rebellious, he was unaware of those times when I was joking with the class, and the class was joking along with or back at me. Class to him was like returning to some show on cable after going through all the stations with the remote expecting to pick up the original show where you left off. Apparently he assumed the class froze while he was away from it on the days of his many absences, so long standing jokes or references to something that happened during another class escaped him. He did not seem to understand that occasional visits to class interfered with continuity when he stood up in class on the third day of the poster’s appearance in reaction to a joking remark I had made to another student, and gave a rather incoherent and totally out of touch speech condemning my negative attitude toward the members of his class and my obvious ignoring of his equal standing with me. As he stormed out of the room announcing he was going to report me to the assistant principal, his most adoring fan rose to join him in his walk out. Once he was gone, and the laughter of the other students that had followed his dramatic exit  subsided, we returned to what we had been doing. Even the students did not see his action as appropriate or even called for.

On their way to the office the “rebel” and his moll were met by another student who had only been in my class for two weeks, and had only attended twice, and the three continued on to find the right assistant principal to whom to report. At the time, the assistant principals were not the disciplinarians needed at a middle-class, “inner-city” high school. They each favored the students from their own ethnic groups, and students knew which was the best one to go to in order to get what was wanted, or avoid the discipline that was called for.

Toward the end of my last class on the day of the very mini-walk-out I received a note from the Dean of Instruction (an invented position without much of a job description which put the holder of the job at the mercy of those administrators with identifiable job descriptions) requesting that I come to his office before leaving for the day.

The three students had reported on me to an assistant principal. Two of them were concerned about what they considered my less than acceptable treatment of my senior class with the “Rebel Without a Clue” voicing the complaint while his adoring fan merely nodded in agreement. The third student, who had joined them in the hall and was not privy to what had happened in the classroom that or any other day, had chimed in that she was offended on religious grounds by my “Homosexual Poster,” but the other two had said that as they had Gay friends the poster did not bother them. The vice-principal they had gone to referred the matter to the Dean of Instruction as he was the one that was to evaluate my teaching performance, but the only complaint he was directed to address was the poster. The other complaint was never dealt with. It was simply ignored.

Since I had not only worked with the Dean at the middle school, but he was the one who had pursued my transfer to the high school, we were on friendly terms. He admitted he was aware that I had had a similar poster in my middle school classroom and was aware of my work with the district to include GLBT students in policies on bullying, harassment, and non-discrimination, but he had been told to deal with the complaint, and so he was doing just that.

I explained that October was Gay and Lesbian History Month; that it was important for the students to see during this month that there were many Gay people who had made major contributions to western civilization just as it was important for other groups during other designated months like Black History Month, or Hispanic Heritage Month to see what their people had contributed; and that Gay students see that there were actually positive role-models for them. My confidence was bolstered by my involvement on the district’s diversity committees and the committee chair‘s advice regarding the spirit of the policy as opposed actual language. At our final committee meeting dealing with rewriting the three relevant policies at the end of the previous academic year, although the inclusion of sexual orientation was a proposed inclusion, the final wording was not formalized enough to be presented to the School Board, and when questioned, the chair said  without the actual wording the spirit of the language should be followed.

That was what I had done.

In spite of his acknowledging that these were lofty goals, the Dean’s concern was that I could not justify the poster on the grounds of multiculturalism as the various cultures were not represented; only Gay people were. His argument smacked of the erroneous belief that “Gay” was a white man’s thing, and revealed that he had not bothered to actually read the list, or he would have noticed the names of Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans.

His suggestion for remedying the situation was for me to go out that night and expend my own time, energy, and funds on purchasing posters that represented all minority groups, something my poster already did. I asked if I would be required to do the same when I acknowledged the months set aside for other groups such as Black History Month, or Hispanic Heritage Month, and if he or the person who objected to the poster would be willing to give me the funds to oblige this suggestion. My poster, after all, was already inclusive, so this would be an extra, unnecessary expense. I also let him know I could not follow his suggestion because I was attending the “Stop the Hate Rally” that was taking place that evening at the Myriad Gardens in downtown Oklahoma City, the irony of which to me was just short of pointed.

He then suggested that in the future I seek permission from an administrator before posting anything that someone might consider controversial. As I did not see information natural to Gay people to be controversial, I did not see how I, or any teacher for that matter, could anticipate what an individual might perceive as, or choose to call, controversial.

As far as I was concerned, when that meeting ended he had done as he was directed, having spoken to me about the complaint, and I had justified why the poster should hang in spite of the single complaint lodged.

The following day before classes were to begin, the Dean of Instruction entered my room by the front door giving my room a quick survey before exiting out the back. Later that morning a student office aide delivered a note from the Dean of Instruction requesting that I report to his office before leaving school for the weekend, a meeting at which he expressed his disappointment at my not following his suggestion, and further suggesting that it might be a good idea to remove the poster by the beginning of the school day on Monday.

I gave the situation a lot of thought over the next two days, and concluded that to take down the poster would not only be a negative message to Gay students and their straight peers as well, but it would go against what I had been trying to do with the district and would legitimize the complaint of one student out of a student body of over 1400 students and my class load of well over 150. And, as I was following the spirit of the Diversity policy that the committee had been working on, the feelings of the members of that committee, and the explanation of the chair when asked what we should do in light of the absence of our final proposal and wording, I saw my actions as being supported by the district and its policies.

And so it was on that Monday morning as he once again passed through my room before classes began that I gave a letter to the Dean stating that I chose not follow his suggestion to remove the poster because it would not be in the best interest of the Gay Students or their peers; it contained people of all ethnic and racial groups; and that the student who allegedly complained was from the majority religion, race, and sexual orientation who had many outlets at her disposal including Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Bible study groups and a host of heterosexual related school sponsored activities. I went further to point out the uniqueness of the treatment of this poster as teachers did not have to have planned posters reviewed by administrators, and many classrooms featured posters not directly related to the curriculum. My poster served a valuable purpose.

A student office aide came to my room during the first class that morning to deliver a summons to the Dean of Instruction’s office. I replied with a quickly written note that explained in writing that I was leaving at noon to make sure I arrived on time for the funeral of a friend‘s mother, and, therefore, could not make the requested 1:00 p.m. meeting.

As I was dashing through the hall a little after noon, the dean met me and asked for a convenient time to meet. I suggested the next morning, but not too early as we would both probably want our morning coffee. We set the time of the meeting at 8:45 a.m., and off I ran.

After the funeral I returned home to find a message on my answering machine from the news department of a local T.V. station asking me to call the news director. Thinking they had reached me in error, and wanting to let them know that in case the story they were following was important, I returned the call and was asked for my reaction to the impending reprimand to be given to me at the meeting to take place at 8:45 the next morning. Obviously I could not give a reaction to the news of which I was not aware, and although I did verify to the news director that there was to be a meeting between the Dean of Instruction and myself in the morning, I could not confirm that I was getting a reprimand. Further, I was confused as to how she could possibly have known about it before me anyway.

It turned out that the parent of the student who complained about the poster had apparently called the news department after someone from the school had called him with the information about the purpose of the next morning’s meeting. I did not know how to handle this violation of my rights if it were true, and agreed to call the news director the next day with my reaction if I did get a reprimand, but only after I had time to deal with it. I then immediately called the local chapter of my Union to ask advice.

I am convinced, although I cannot prove the suspicion, that the funeral interfered with the time-line that was to have had our meeting take place that afternoon before the parent of the student who complained was to be called as a way to pacify him. He had threatened some sort of protest in front of the school if the poster was not removed, and someone felt this could be avoided if the parent was kept informed about how I was going to be handled.

If we had had the meeting that afternoon, whoever called him could have reported a reprimand was given. As it was, he could only be told I was about to get one. Still, this was a personnel matter which should have been addressed with me before announcing it to the public.

For the rest of that evening there were quite a few phone calls made between me and the Union, the Union and the central administration building, and me and the head of the public relations department of the school district to get advice on the parameters I must follow with the press as an employee. I went to school headquarters to meet with the P.R. director who never returned to her office, and had to settle with contacting her at a child‘s birthday party by way of her emergency pager number, only to be told to avoid anything related to personnel matters.

To get away from the situation I attended a political affair at a club in the hotel in the Gay District where the president of the local American Federation of Teachers managed to trace me down to tell me that the deputy superintendent was asking me not to go to school in the morning to avoid any potential demonstration that my attendance might provoke, and to ask if I would mind going to my classroom to help remove objectionable material.  We both knew that I would not consider agreeing with that last request.

The principal feared that the parent had organized a picket line, and he wanted anything the parent might find objectionable removed from my classroom before school the next day so that if the parent somehow got to my classroom in the morning he would not see anything to which he could object. To this end, the principal had gone to my room that evening with the Dean and an assistant principal to remove anything Gay related, but found he had to contact the Union president to see if he could get me to go to the classroom and help remove things. The principal’s major concern by the time the Union president found me was a huge chain with rainbow colors on it that the student had included in those things that bothered her, having now expanded her complaint beyond the poster. The chain could not be found, and the principal feared that if the parent saw it in the morning there would be a scene. The fact that he was in the room and unable to see the chain should have been an indication of the extent to which the student had exaggerated her discomfort with those things in my room especially as there had never been a huge chain in the room.

I refused to report to the school on the grounds that I would not be party to the removal of the “Gay things” and my expressed fear that to enter the school so far after hours could set me up for a charge of trespassing.

That night on the nine o’clock news there was a report on my poster featuring the father of the complaining student accusing me of “teaching homosexuality” when Bibles and prayers were banned from schools. The student also appeared in the reporter‘s video looking threatened and emotionally injured, expressing offense at this affront to her religion. My name was mentioned, and the parent reported that I was to receive a reprimand the following morning as proof that I was in the wrong.

The following afternoon I was contacted by the local station which had aired the report asking for my comment on the reprimand they thought I had received earlier in the day. I told the news director that I had been asked to take the day off, which would not count against my personal sick days, so I had had no meeting and had not received any reprimand yet. I agreed I would contact her if I got some direction on how to handle this as it was all new to me, and, therefore, a little unsettling. The news director then asked if I would speak to a reporter in general terms, but I asked for some time to consider this.

Hearing nothing from the district, and with support coming only from the Union and a few friends, I called the local station back a little later in the day agreeing to talk. Upon the arrival of the reporter and cameraman to my home, the reporter asked if she could see what the fuss was about, and I handed her a copy of the list of names I had hung on the bulletin board. She was markedly disappointed that it was merely a list of names with no pictures, saw no actual story in it, and then sat and read through the list occasionally expressing disbelief in a name or expressing satisfaction that someone she had suspected was indeed included.

But it was not the anticipated salacious information the station was led to believe it was.

We spoke for at least thirty minutes covering the importance of Gay and Lesbian History Month, why it should be treated just as all the other history months were, and why I thought the poster was a positive thing. As she was leaving and I thanked her for what appeared to me to be a positive interview, she told me that in all reality there was no story here. That night the station ran a little from the story of the night before, showed about thirty seconds of me showing the list to the reporter and explaining the importance of acknowledging Gay History Month, and that was it.

When I returned to school in the morning, I informed my students, in answer to the inevitable questions about the last two days, that we would not spend class time dealing with the matter beyond a quick recounting of the basic facts.

That afternoon I went to the Union office and filed a grievance to have the reprimand removed from my file.

Well, at least that was it for that episode, but it was the beginning of events that took the next 10 years to resolve to the benefit of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender students in the district.

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