Love Won
In early 2004, a few weeks before Sherrod and I were married, I wrote a column about my search for the gay couples who were trying to undermine our heterosexual marriage.
Far-right, self-proclaimed Christians were insisting this was a thing, as if strategic flirting could coax a straight person to burst into glorious gay bloom. In that same year, the Bible Belt had the highest divorce rate in the country, and Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage was already legal, had the lowest.
Off I went to chase down those merry marriage wreckers.
My first interview was with Patrick Shepherd, who was president of Cleveland’s Stonewall Democrats. After an irreverent back and forth, Patrick set me straight. “Not one of us cares about your marriage, Connie,” he said. “Some of us are jealous, but that’s because your guy is hot.”
Totally not helpful.
Patti Harris, who was managing editor of the Gay People’s Chronicle, said she didn’t even know we were engaged.
That hurt.
“How?” I asked. “How could you be a leader of the homosexual agenda and not know I’m engaged?”
She laughed. “Well, right now my agenda is as follows: Pick up dry cleaning. Pick up eggs, milk and bread. Mail brother’s birthday card, which is already late.”
One after another, every gay person I interviewed insisted they had no interest in interfering with my straight and boring marriage. What a fun column to write. My favorite reader response came from a “lifelong married heterosexual male created by God,” who lived in a tiny town in Alabama.
“Look harder,” he wrote, and then further identified himself as “a man’s man.” So few words, so many questions. For starters, how did he enter the world as a married man?
In writing that column, I had once again followed the advice of Stuart Warner, my wise and trusted editor at The Plain Dealer. The angrier you are, he often said, the funnier you should try to be.
I was angry, all right. I was running out of punchlines, too.
Later that year, Ohio residents would vote on Issue 1, which was universally recognized as the harshest of 11 state ballot issues targeting same-sex marriage. Supported by many priests and pastors, it was written to outlaw both marriage and civil unions, and strip health benefits to unmarried couples, gay or straight, at public universities.
The issue passed by 61 percent of the vote.
The following week, I wrote a column about the devastating impact of that vote on members of the LGBTQ+ community, and all of us who loved them. (It’s the third column on this list, here.) After reading it, a conservative reader left a voicemail that I have never forgotten.
“I am an old man,” his message began. He had grown up in a conservative home, attended conservative schools, worshipped in a conservative church. All his adult life, he said, he had lived in a conservative neighborhood, and still belonged to a conservative congregation. But until he read my column, he said, he had not considered how much harm Issue 1 would inflict on innocent people, simply because of whom they loved.
“Please be patient with people like me,” he said. “I want to change, but I need time to get there.”
In the decade that followed, I wrote many columns in which I introduced readers to members of the LGBTQ+ community. The daughter who invited her aging mother to live with her and her partner, more than a decade after her mother had cut off all communication. The doctor whose mother screamed when he told her he was gay, but two years later received a Thanksgiving card with this inscription from his father: “You’re my son. We’ll never stop loving you.” The man whose partner of 20 years died of AIDS, and was soon ordered by a court to vacate the home they had built together because his partner’s parents were considered next-of-kin and had refused to acknowledge his existence.
My hope was that, one column at a time, I could deflate stereotypes and open a few more hearts and minds. Seven of the earliest ones are included in my 2006 book, Life Happens, in a chapter titled, The Perfect Couple. I will never know if any of these columns made a difference. I want my grandchildren to know I tried.
That conservative man’s plea for patience is now 20 years old. Nine years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry. We have seen significant progress, but the opposition is as loud as ever. Just last month, a suburban crowd of angry extremists tried to stop a community pride festival from taking place less than 10 miles from our home in Cleveland.
I am out of patience.
It has taken weeks to find the words for this column. Not because I’m tired of writing about LGBTQ+ rights. We are allies all the time, or not at all. But after all these years, I worry that my words sound stale and redundant, as if I’m recycling columns from 2004, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2015….
They count on this, of course, these people who inflict intentional harm on our families, friends and neighbors. They want us to grow tired of fighting for justice. They hope we will give up.
They have always underestimated us. Their hate is no match for the magnitude of our commitment to love, and to justice. Always, we must find the words. And so I write.
In this month of Pride, I’ve been thinking a lot about a small group of former students. I’ve been teaching college journalism classes since 2016. I am fond of all my students, but long after graduation my memories of these few have stayed with me because I worry about them, still.
During the school year, these students were openly members of the LGBTQ+ community, for the first time in their lives. They were so bright and full of life—in class discussions, and in our many chance encounters in the halls. They were free to be who they were meant to be, and their joy was contagious.
But as breaks for holidays or summers drew near, they started to change as they prepared to return to their religiously conservative families. Wilder hairstyles disappeared, as did jewelry that drew attention to piercings beyond earlobes. Boldly polished nails faded to shades of pink or nothing at all. Most heartbreaking was the change in their demeanor, as if they were rehearsing for new roles.
They were practicing at hiding themselves, one true part at a time. They would be leaving behind their friends, including significant others who would not be welcome to visit. They would no longer be protected by university polices of equity and inclusion. They would return home and pretend to be the straight, conservative kids the adults in their lives wanted them to be. That’s how much they loved their parents who called them gifts from God, but could banish them in His name.
“My little sisters need me,” one young woman told me in my office, her eyes welling up as she explained why she could not tell her parents she was gay. “I have to keep doing this, at least until they’re grown.” Her youngest sister was five years old.
On April 15, about a hundred people crammed into the city council chambers of Broadview Heights, Ohio. Most of them were there to oppose the Brecksville-Broadview Heights Pride Fest scheduled for June 8 on the campus of Broadview Heights city hall.
What a spectacle of hate and misinformation. As The Plain Dealer reported, one man accused local hospitals of sponsoring booths at the festival to promote hormone therapy to unsuspecting children. A woman questioned why Pride events even existed. “To draw more division between different lifestyles?” she said. “To encourage our young people to explore something that wasn’t meant to be? This is grooming”—there it is—“and this should not be tolerated.”
Councilwoman Jennifer Mahnic expressed dismay. “In all the years I’ve been on council, we’ve had some controversial issues. Some that I didn’t agree with, some that I did. But I have never seen such a large number of people truly filled with hate.” The crowd erupted, making it impossible to hear her.
As those angry people would soon learn, their attempt to kill a celebration of love and acceptance was a deep dive in a shallow pool.
News coverage was factual and unsparing, casting the protesters in a shade of limelight they did not expect. By the time city council convened again, on May 2, a crowd of LGBTQ+ supporters filled virtually every seat and lined three of the chamber walls. I went with my friends Jackie and Karen. We sat with our friend the Rev. John King, a Broadview Heights resident and pastor of Brecksville United Church of Christ, where all of us are members. John is a tireless activist for justice and spoke in support of the Pride Fest at both meetings. He has the right answer for that popular question, What would Jesus do?
While all of us were waiting to enter the chambers, a woman with a clipboard was making the rounds of the crowd. Without introducing herself, she asked the same question of every person she approached: “Do you live here?”
When it was my turn to be asked, I told her my name and asked why she wanted to know. “I live here,” she said. “This meeting should be for residents only.”
Well, as I explained, that’s not how government works. A public meeting is open to the public. Community is not defined, nor can it be contained, by grids on a map. I don’t have to live in your neighborhood to care about those who do.
Only residents could speak at the microphone at that night’s meeting. It was inspiring to listen to the other people of Broadview Heights—the ones who believe in equality and justice, and who were embarrassed by the rhetoric of bigots.
Anita Podlogar, who served for 11 years in the Ohio Army National Guard, talked about what freedom meant to her. “I am here because when I chose to serve this country, I made the same pledge that every civil servant who wears a uniform swears to: ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’
“Creating a mob to bully a local municipality to change charters…to ensure that people they don’t agree with cannot enjoy the same freedoms as they can? Well, my friends, that sounds like a domestic threat to me.”
Her 16-year-old transgender son, Miles, proved to be one of the bravest people in any room as he directly addressed the adults wielding God as a weapon to bully kids like him.
“You are the people who are supposed to create a safe environment for me, and you are failing,” he said. “Your main concern is ‘protecting the children,’ but I myself am a child in need of protection from you. I was raised in the church. I know who God is and I know he loves me just the way I am…I’m not here to change your heart, but I am here to open your eyes….
“I did not turn queer from seeing multi-colored fabric or being around someone different than myself. The mayor is not at fault for having decent human compassion and I am not at fault for wanting to express pride for who I am. Remember, Jesus told us to love thy neighbor, not hate.
“Jesus would be very disappointed in you.”
The applause drowned him out, for all the right reasons.
On Sunday, June 8, Sherrod and I attended the BBH Pride Fest on the grounds of Broadview Heights city hall. Last year, a few hundred showed up. This year, nearly 2000 people came to show their support.
We couldn’t walk three feet without being pulled into hugs and selfies. So much happiness. So many families with laughing, dancing children and grown-ups who couldn’t stop smiling. In that moment, I felt the progress I had prayed for in 2004, 2005, 2006….
Later that evening, Sherrod and I were sitting in the family room as the Cleveland Guardians played baseball on our TV. I was curled up on our ancient leather sofa, working on a needlepoint I have vowed to finish this year. (I made the same promise last year, so I’m not optimistic.) Sherrod was in his favorite chair, balancing two dogs on his lap as he tried to write letters.
Lamplight illuminated a wide swath of silver glitter on Sherrod’s cheek. When he saw that I was staring, he tilted his head and said, “What?”
I tapped my cheek. “You’re sparkling.”
He touched the glitter. “From a hug,” he said, smiling.
So dangerous, these people full of love.
You will never know who your words will reach. My now 96-year-old very Catholic mother changed her mind about gay marriage after a rant from Keith Olberman. It wasn’t you, but it was someone and he doesn’t know what he did either.
What that change meant was that my gay cousin, who waited to marry her partner of 30 years until her own parents were dead, was warmly welcomed into my parents’ home. We celebrated their marriage. They shared a guest room just like every married couple.
When my dad died, that cousin beat me to my mom’s house, a several hour flight for both of us. I don’t think these facts are unrelated.
Carry on. It’s working.
PS — your husband is hot.
Connie, you need to keep shouting our truths. They are not stale and need to be heard. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for you and Sherrod being strong allies. My wife and I just returned from a three week Alaska trip. We were often mistaken for sisters. Some ventured to ask how long we had been together-22 years, more than many of the heterosexual couples we met. Then they asked how long we had been married-14 years. That eight year gap denied me the right to have my wife covered by my employer health insurance. Then it taxed that insurance as it was income. Then I had to file claims when same-sex marriage was legalized so I could recoup that money. My wife and I were never “groomed” or groomers. We like many of our friends don’t have the time nor the inclination. We live our lives pretty much like others. We are too busy scheduling plumbers when the toilet has a leak, scheduling the roofer when it leaks, being election judges, volunteering at our local nature center and enjoying trips to beautiful Alaska. My wife and I hope that some of the people we met on our trip have a new understanding of how similar we are to them. But we don’t dwell on it because we are too busy living our lives to be concerned about what others think of us