A Long Road Traveled

The last time I got as close to the White House as I did this week was many years ago—six years after the Stonewall riots, when I was a 13-year-old National Spelling Bee participant from St. Margaret’s School in Lowell, Mass. We spelling bee kids didn’t make it into the White House that day—we stood outside as first lady Betty Ford spoke to us from a balcony. By then I already knew I was gay. Raised in a staunch Catholic home and taught (and tormented) by nuns, I was certain that an open homosexual (that was the only term I knew back then) could never be allowed inside the White House. I knew nothing of the nascent gay-rights movement—it hadn’t reached Lowell in 1975. All I knew was that that whatever words there were to describe what I was, it would have to be suppressed forever. I assumed that I would have to either become a priest or figure out some other way to hide.

Thankfully, time marched on, and I eventually became a politicized college student rather than a candidate for the priesthood—and ultimately I kicked open my closet door and came out. But I can’t help thinking about that personal history as I replay the reel of yesterday’s visit to the White House in my head. As the executive director of SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBT senior citizens, I was invited, along with some 200 other LGBT leaders, to join the Obamas in commemorating gay pride—which falls this year on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

I was accompanied by three SAGE members: a lesbian couple who are 86 and 91, who reminisced about voting for FDR and described Barack Obama as “the most inspiring politician since Adlai Stevenson,” and a Stonewall veteran and founder of the Gay Liberation Front, an activist group formed in the aftermath, who proudly chose his SAGE T shirt over the ties worn by every other man in the room.

Apart from celebrating, we had gone to the White House to make a point: that older people have to be included in the Obama agenda for LGBT progress. And we did what we came to do, with one of our members (the Stonewall vet) even receiving a personal meeting with the president and Mrs. Obama. But as I stood with my partner, in the front row, some five feet from the presidential podium, I realized how intensely personal this experience was for me. I thought about how each member of the SAGE contingent has had our own life’s journey—and each of us was moved deeply and differently by that moment.

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Episcopal Diocese of LA officially condones the blessing of gay unions

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has announced that church leaders can bless the unions of same-sex couples as a matter of policy.

The Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, whose diocese encompasses Los Angeles County and five other Southern California counties, made the announcement Friday during a diocesan convention in Riverside.

Bruno acted just days after hundreds of conservative Episcopal congregations in North America formed a breakaway church amid a rift that began with the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire five years ago.

Bruno’s declaration is not expected to have a major effect on Episcopal churches in Southern California. Many have been blessing gay unions for years. But he has now made it official.

“The practice has not changed. The policy has. . . . It’s sort of like ‘coming out,’ ” said the Rev. Susan Russell, a lesbian priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Russell also is president of Integrity USA, a group representing the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the Episcopal Church.

The rite endorsed by Bruno also allows the blessing of other relationships, such as those between two senior citizens who do not wish to legally marry because they might lose health insurance or Social Security benefits.

Church officials also noted that, unlike communion, the rite is not mandatory. Clergy may choose not to perform it.

Diocese representatives also passed a resolution at their convention calling on the Episcopal Church to let gays and lesbians become bishops.

See Episcopal Diocese of LA officially condones the blessing of gay unions
Los Angeles Times