Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [62]
Jackie was a high-energy mother of three, one of whom is gay. Barely five feet tall, stocky, graying at age fifty-five, Jackie turned to P-FLAG out of anger at the bigotry she witnessed toward gay people. Unlike Mary, she had had no problems in accepting her son’s homosexuality; in fact, she had guessed his orientation correctly before he acknowledged it to her as a teenager nearly a decade before.
Under Jackie’s leadership, Diablo Valley P-FLAG began holding monthly meetings at MCC in Concord, across the northern boundary of Walnut Creek, and delicately initiated outreach to a few local schools. The environment in conservative Contra Costa County was not generally hospitable to the public advocacy of gay tolerance. Most gays and lesbians in the county were deeply in the closet. Meetings at MCC remained small since people—even straight parents—were reluctant to be seen entering there, or even parking close by.
Concord was a peculiar mix of blue-collar suburbanites who had fled urban stress back in the 1960s and a newer breed of office workers who had followed the new transit line and consequent business development along a rapidly spreading industrial corridor. Others—including an increasing number of quiet gay couples—commuted to jobs in San Francisco. One of the oldest cities in the county, Concord combined convenience and affordability. (Today it is the largest city in Contra Costa County, with 116,000 residents.)
Mary became an active member of Diablo Valley P-FLAG and was in fact listed as its vice president. She put together an account of her “story” for use at meetings and visits to other chapters. Still a reluctant speaker, she occasionally asked Jackie to read the account for her. The simple eloquence of the statement, not to mention its there-but-for-the grace-of-God pain, was mesmerizing to parents newly aware of their children’s sexual identity.
Soon her name got around the local P-FLAG circuit. She was also interviewed for the first time, for a story about gay suicide that ran in July in the San Jose Mercury-News.
In November, Mary’s father, Alvin, died of a heart attack at age eighty-six. Alvin Harrison had been the gentle, soft-spoken mediator of the family, who suffered the barbs of his wife but also knew when to step in if the rapier thrusts began to draw blood. His wife, children, and grandchildren adored him for his great kindness. Chosen to give the eulogy, Mary used the text of the Parable of the Good Samaritan to express some of those sentiments, alluding to her own struggle in the process: “You were with us when we had fallen by the roadside of life. For some of us, we had been beaten and robbed by our own humanity…. Perhaps, we used poor judgment as we walked the road of life. Perhaps we didn’t listen to your kind wisdom given to us upon request. You, dearest Daddy, nonetheless came to our rescue. You never passed by on the other side.”
In early 1987, a seemingly innocuous incident blew apart the tacit anonymity of Contra Costa’s gay community.
Rev. Larry Whitsell, who held a seat on Concord’s Human Relations Commission, introduced a resolution to the city council in January that the city’s June calendar include an item designating “Gay Freedom Week,” to coincide with the annual nationwide celebration of gay pride. It passed without a hitch.
Press accounts of the decision, however, stirred a hornet’s nest. Protest letters flooded the city council. “We moved to this area because of the family-oriented communities, and we want the moral character of our communities to remain intact,” wrote one citizen.
By the time the commission reconvened on February 19, the debate had reached a pitch of hysteria. The commission’s meeting room was overflowing with 450 people. Another 300 had been turned away. Those who testified on behalf of gay tolerance