Mama's Boy

by Dustin Lance Black

  Chad agreed.

  Hollywood was on hold.

  II

  After less than a year living in my house, it had become clear that Los Angeles would never feel like home for Marcus. My big brother missed his friends, his music, his food, his sports. His dog, Max, missed all the open space he’d had in Virginia. Although my friends were endlessly entertained at our frequent barbecues by Marcus’s “y’alls” and his charming country ways, he never really connected with them. Instead, he started spending more time on the internet than out of the house. And when he met a gay man in Michigan online, a man who shared his interest in NASCAR, Marcus fueled up his big white truck and bid me and California farewell.

  This wasn’t a simple decision for Marcus. In Michigan, he would have to be careful again about who knew what about his personal life. Like every other LGBTQ person in Michigan at the time, my big brother would have few legal protections once he crossed over its border. He was taking a chance on love, and his roll of the dice would add even more personal stakes to my federally aimed equality work.

  * * *

  —

  Chad and I shared a goal that we knew others didn’t yet agree with. Certain that now was indeed the time for bold action, we also felt it was time to start laying our chips on the table. OutGiving, a biennial conference of major LGBTQ donors, invited me to speak in Las Vegas, and with Chad’s encouragement, I got to work crafting a speech that wouldn’t directly call for a federal case challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8 but would suggest donors refocus their efforts on strategies with an all-fifty-states aim. It sounded to me like a prudent baby step. Boy, was I wrong.

  At this point in my life, giving speeches was not my forte. Without the adrenaline from the Oscars, I much preferred to be behind the camera—directing the spotlight, not in it. And so I endlessly reworked the speech, practiced it, and shared drafts with Chad, who joined me in Vegas for support. Awaiting the start of the show, I snuck outside to have a cigarette in the courtyard. You could say I was a selective smoker: either borrowing from cute actors or bowing to nerves. My nerves were begging for one right now.

  As I sat on a bench in that courtyard, alone with my cigarette held in amateur style between thumb and index finger, a small man made his way over to me. He was then and still is a man I admire, a man who fought for marriage equality before most imagined it was a possibility or even saw the value in such a fight. I don’t share the following story out of animosity. I share it so that young activists might understand that the first point of real resistance to any new idea likely won’t come from your perceived opponents; it will more likely come from those on your side, perhaps even from your heroes.

  This man sat to my right, neither particularly warm nor antagonistic. Knowing his long history in the marriage equality movement, I thought he was just the person to talk to about our idea of a federal course of action: I could test the waters; he could help me look for blind spots. But in this instance I indeed proved myself naïve.

  The more I spoke, the more closed off he became, folding his arms across his body. He started looking out into the distance instead of making eye contact, masking his anger with condescension. He let me know that there was already an incremental plan in place for achieving nationwide marriage equality within the next three decades, and that this plan (his plan) was clearly laid out in his book if I would only read it, and show the “patience” he had during his long fight. My pushback was that his twenty-five-year strategy would likely leave him, me, most of our friends, and folks like my brother with little chance of experiencing the benefits of all of our work. “What about us?” I asked. “Are we not worthy of equality while we still have lives to live?”

  He didn’t appreciate that sentiment. Perhaps he found it impossible, or perhaps just selfish. Truth lived in both criticisms. I knew the path we were proposing held risk, but even today, I still believe that our goals and strategies for achieving equality and justice ought to address our lives now as well as our broader future, no matter how dreamy those goals may seem. After all, I am my mother’s son, and she never did spend much time on realism lessons. Sadly, despite all the wisdom this man could have brought to our federal effort, he made it absolutely clear that he was refusing, and unceremoniously huffed off. I watched him grow even smaller as he stepped away and into the hard Las Vegas shadows.

  I made a beeline for Chad’s hotel room and told him the mistake I had just made. “Are you sure I should still give this speech here?”

  Chad thought about it, and then said, “That’s exactly the response I’d expect, and it tells us one thing above all else: this is the right thing to do, and these are the people who need to hear a different perspective.”

  In the ballroom, I was seated at a table next to a very wealthy man whom I also admired. He was and is one of the most generous donors to LGBTQ causes in America. To get an invite to this dinner, one has to pony up at least $25,000 a year. Needless to say, the linen-covered tables were mostly populated with wealthy, white, gay men. The man I was next to proved to be witty, kind, and warm. But just as I was beginning to feel at ease again, I saw the small man from the courtyard cross the room, making his rounds and shaking hands. He knew everyone here, and they all knew him. That cranked my nerves back up, and at just the wrong time.

  Before I had a chance to down a glass of wine, I was introduced. My trembling hands clutched my notecards like crutches—tools I’ve long since learned to do without. I took the lectern and shared the words I had written and practiced, filled with concerns and criticisms I was quickly realizing were aimed directly at many of the leaders in this very ballroom.

  OUTGIVING SPEECH NOTES—2009

  Harvey Milk’s message was simple: be proud, come out, represent yourself, and reach out. If you look at Proposition 8 this past year, there were almost no gay people in the ads or literature, and little effort was made to reach out and educate. In fact, back in September, when I called up some of the folks involved in one of the major organizations fighting Prop 8 and questioned their strategy, I was told, “Gay people do not test well in focus groups.” That isn’t just bad strategy, that is homophobia, and until we find pride in ourselves again, pride enough to come out, and to reach out, and educate, so that we do start testing well amongst our fellow Americans, we will never win this fight. Because the simple truth is this: if people don’t personally know who they’re hurting, then they don’t mind taking away our civil rights on Election Day.

  And after that election, what did I hear from another leader in another of our largest LGBT organizations? “If we just quiet down, ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ are) will let us do whatever we want.” These are the words of one of our leaders: “Quiet down.” I don’t plan on doing that.

  There is no question we are at a critical moment. As Dr. Martin Luther King said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” And another quote leaps to mind. It’s from Harvey’s first run for public office in 1973, when many of the gay movement’s leaders told him it was too soon for an openly gay elected official, and not to push too hard, and Harvey said to them:

  “Masturbation can be fun, but it does not take the place of the real thing. It is about time that the gay community stopped playing with itself and get down to the real thing. There are people who are satisfied with crumbs because that is all they think they can get, when in reality, if they demand the real thing, they will find that they indeed can get it.”

  At this point, most in the crowd laughed and cheered. In fact, throughout the speech, there were rousing rounds of applause, but in the back, the wealthy man who had just been so warm now looked none too pleased, and the small man sat stony-faced, his arms folded again. Chad was watching from the wings; his arms were also folded, but he offered a nod that said, “Keep going.” The truth
is, he couldn’t have stopped me if he’d tried. Those stern expressions in the face of my generation’s fire, desire, and demands to feel freedom in our lifetimes had hardened my resolve.

  It has been thirty years since Milk gave his life in our struggle for equality, and we will not wait thirty years more. It is time for us to stop asking for crumbs and to demand the real thing. It is time for the LGBT movement to follow in the footsteps of every successful civil rights movement in this great country’s history, and finally, at last, name our dream:

  We, the gay, lesbian, and transgender people of America demand that the promise of our constitution and declaration of independence be honored. We demand that the federal government act immediately, decisively, and unequivocally to ensure equal protection under the law for LGBT people throughout the United States of America.

  Full and equal rights federally. That is the dream.

  We must dream bigger than Prop 8’s which even in victory would have denied us full federal marriage rights. We must instead look back to the example set by Loving vs. Virginia and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They showed us loud and clear that full and equal civil rights can only come from the federal government.

  We must name this dream in order to inspire the activist generation of Harvey Milk to return to the fight, to inspire the young people to join in, and lay their bodies on the line, to inspire our straight allies: our mothers, our fathers, lawyers, grocery store clerks, friends and those who do not yet know we are their friends. I know this sounds lofty to some, but I am a child of Harvey Milk, and he has inspired me to dream and dream big, and big dreams are how change…really…happens.

  We must recommit ourselves so that when that gay kid out there tonight in San Antonio, Texas, hears for the first time that we are finally fighting for his or her full equality, federally, he will know there is a brighter future ahead for him too, and he will no longer think of taking his life. And that young girl in Provo, Utah, tonight, she will know that very soon her love will be just as valued and protected as her straight neighbor’s love, and not in some distant tomorrow. They will be equal citizens in every state and county of this great nation of ours within…their…lifetimes.

  That is our dream. Equality. At the federal level. And together, we will make it our reality.

  At that point I received a standing ovation from most in the room. But the small man refused to rise. My wealthy tablemate was equally upset. My eyes stayed on them, and time would prove my focus well aimed.

  III

  The next night, when I was no longer in Las Vegas, my once warm tablemate got up onstage and gave his own address to this very same crowd, attempting to dismantle my words as misguided, impatient, and dishonest. Without question, his heart was in the right place, and although he had long been a hero of mine, for the next many years he and others in that room would wage active campaigns against the plans and strategies that sprung from our more aggressive philosophy, proving themselves to be devotees of the “same old, same old” in a time I felt called for innovative action.

  But to completely ignore their strategic concerns would have been a mistake. They knew there weren’t enough votes in Congress to pass an LGBTQ civil rights act, and that a case in the Supreme Court needed five votes out of nine to win. Most people felt secure that we had four: Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, as well as Souter and Stevens (who would soon be replaced by LGBTQ equality-minded Justices Sotomayor and Kagan). But four is one shy of the five needed to win, and most felt just as certain that Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas would vote against marriage equality. That left us with one swing vote: Justice Anthony Kennedy.

  Justice Kennedy was a conservative Reagan appointee who over the years had shifted slightly left on some issues, including with his opinion on Romer v. Evans in 1996, which struck down an anti-gay Colorado constitutional amendment because it failed to prove any rational basis for discriminating against gay people, so it didn’t satisfy the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S Constitution. Then again, in the landmark Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas, Kennedy helped strike down Texas’s sodomy law and made same-gender sexual activity legal across the United States. Kennedy had not only voted to legalize being gay, bi, or lesbian with his vote, he had also written the affirming opinion himself. His equality-minded words in these opinions gave me a good degree of confidence that he would vote our way on marriage equality as well. And the fact of the matter was, Kennedy and Ginsburg weren’t getting any younger. I argued time and again that if a conservative president took the White House and replaced either of those justices with an anti-gay judge, even those small and wealthy men’s great-great-grandnephews might never see federal marriage equality. If we were going to bring a case, I thought it wise and necessary to do so while we had any hope of getting five votes. Yes, we were short of certainty, but we did have a reasonable shot in that moment in time.

  The small man and wealthy men seemed certain that the Supreme Court would only get more progressive with time. On this point, I felt sure they were being naïve—blind to our nation’s history and its pendulum swings when it comes to presidential elections and civil rights. Yes, things move forward, but a pendulum also swings backward. They felt equally sure I was being a fool. At the time, who was I to say they were wrong? Neither side had a crystal ball. Looking back now, after Kennedy’s retirement, their argument to wait has proven to be the shortsighted one, and most certainly would have killed marriage equality for generations. But at the time, their ability to persuade others that it was best to wait left us out on a limb. And partly thanks to my spilling the beans in that Las Vegas courtyard, they had a head start branding our strategy as foolish in the court of public opinion.

  Back in Los Angeles, Chad and I were having lunch with famed civil rights leader and former head of the NAACP Julian Bond. Julian was nearly seventy then, a straight African American man who saw what many didn’t yet: a clear connection between our movements. I was now in need of an authoritative, credible shot of courage to go head to head with my own people, so I shared our Vegas story with Julian Bond.

  Julian leaned back and formed one of those smiles that stretches the skin tight over the face. Then, more to the clear blue sky than to me, he said, “Lance, good things do not come to those who wait, they come to those who agitate.” His words were just what the doctor ordered. He saw the same value in troublemaking that my activist former dean had. Julian understood that this wasn’t the time for “patience.” He was encouraging us to use our troublemaking stripes to give history a big shove in the right direction while the iron was still hot.

  IV

  Chad appreciated Julian’s words, but he didn’t need a shot in the arm like I did. It turned out Chad was a natural agitator with a big troublemaking ace up his sleeve.

  A few days after our lunch with Julian, Chad sat down with me and some scrambled eggs in a West Hollywood courtyard café and in his classic casual style suggested something absolutely mad. Months earlier, Chad, along with actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, had caught wind of a rumor that famed conservative Supreme Court lawyer Ted Olson—the man who won the White House for George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore in 2000—had a surprisingly pro-equality marriage stance. Chad had already met with Ted in D.C., and in theory, this hero of the right wanted to represent our very queer case.

  “The man who gave us Bush?!” I let slip. Ted had argued in favor of almost every conservative case there was. He had been President George W. Bush’s solicitor general. “That’s insane!”

  Unfazed, Chad added that Ted wanted co-counsel, and in that search had suggested we reach out to David Boies, the famed progressive Supreme Court lawyer Ted had beaten in Bush v. Gore. That’s when I caught the narrative by its tail. This combination had the power to cross the political divide, to reach from California and Massachusetts to Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and Georgia. It was a daring, trick
y, but potentially brilliant design to create a new space that might grow acceptance where it was needed most: the places we’d once called home.

  Better still, Ted and David were talking in “broad” legal terms about marriage equality—that it was a “fundamental right” guaranteed to all citizens by the U.S. Constitution. A favorable decision based on such arguments wouldn’t just reverse Prop 8, it could bring marriage equality to all fifty states. That was important to me. Such a win would apply to my LGBTQ family in California but also to Marcus in Michigan, Virginia, or whatever corner of our country he called home.

  Chad wasn’t asking for my approval on any of this: he was showing his hand. Little did I know in that meeting at CAA weeks earlier how far along Chad’s SCOTUS “notion” already was. Vegas wasn’t just a test of our federal ambitions; it was an opportunity for Chad to test the courage of my convictions. Having passed that test, and now enthusiastic about this lawyerly design, I was invited to join the board of a new organization that would sue the state of California in federal court with the wildly unexpected combination of oft-foes Ted Olson and David Boise leading the charge together.

  I began attending meetings with our case’s other founding board members: Rob and Michele; Milk producer Bruce Cohen, who’d secretly been involved for some time; and Chad’s esteemed business partner, Kristina Schake. Leaning into the red, white, and blue a bit more than the rainbow flag, we decided to name this new organization the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER).

  But when the big day finally arrived to publicly announce our intentions, the ire from mainstream LGBTQ leaders and organizations multiplied tenfold. Bringing Ted Olson on board even made the stalwartly progressive ACLU oppose our case. According to many LGBTQ political insiders and opinion makers, we were dragging our people kicking and screaming toward a devastating courtroom loss that would invite a backlash that would set us back decades.