When We Rise

by Cleve Jones

  I took a shower and dressed, and Ben and I took the elevator to the lobby. It was packed. Outside, hundreds were gathering, and then suddenly, from every street, tens of thousands of people appeared, clapping, chanting, and raising their fists to the clear blue sky as they marched past the White House, two hundred thousand strong.

  CHAPTER 38

  Equality Across America

  THE WOODEN BENCHES IN JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER’S SAN FRANCISCO courtroom were hard and uncomfortable as we sat and waited for the proceedings to begin. It would be a long and emotional day. I was sitting with the plaintiffs, two couples: Kris Perry and Sandy Stier from the Bay Area and Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami from Los Angeles. They and their families were the courageous public faces of the challenge to Proposition 8. The AFER team and most major media outlets had attempted to get the trial televised, but the US Supreme Court ruled against it. There had been many pretrial twists and turns, but now, on January 11, 2010, it was about to begin.

  Ronald Reagan had originally nominated Walker to the federal court, but the nomination had stalled. George H. W. Bush renominated him, and he was confirmed in 1989. Walker had represented the United States Olympic Committee in a lawsuit against my old friend, Olympic athlete Tom Waddell, to halt his use of the term “Gay Olympics.” We knew that about him, but we also knew that he sometimes hung out at The Eagle, a local leather bar. The judge chosen by random to hear Proposition 8 was gay.

  I sat between Kris and Sandy’s twin 16-year-old sons, Spencer and Elliot, with their grandmother, Laura Hubbard, and listened as Judge Walker began the trial.

  After some preliminaries, and before the various witnesses offered their testimonies, both couples spoke of their love for each other and why they wanted their unions to be recognized by the government. They were so dignified and calm and spoke with such simplicity and sincerity that it made my heart ache. As Kris Perry spoke of her love for Sandy, I heard their sons begin to sniffle. Then Laura began to cry. I couldn’t help but cry myself.

  Judge Walker called a break and Kris stepped down and into the arms of Sandy, her mother, and her sons. They were all weeping. A few feet away, Theodore Olson put down a stack of papers he had been holding and moved towards the family. He joined their embrace and I saw that tears were flowing down his face as well. It was a remarkable moment and I was grateful to witness it.

  We all hung out in the cafeteria for the lunch break—the plaintiffs and their families, Rob and Michele Reiner, Bruce Cohen, Chad Griffin, Lance, and all the lawyers and AFER staff. I felt oddly calm and certain of our eventual victory.

  On August 4, 2010, Judge Walker ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. The proponents immediately appealed.

  On November 1, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series for the first time since 1954, the year I was born, and I signed a lease for a rent-controlled apartment two blocks from the corner of Castro and 18th as boisterous crowds blocked the intersection to celebrate the Giants’ win. I sold my house in Palm Springs and Ben helped me move my stuff up to the city. I had wanted to return for a long time. I had missed my city and my street too much for too long. I smoked my last cigarette.

  Congress repealed the stupid “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulation from the Clinton administration that winter, with the House vote of 250–175 on December 15 and the Senate vote of 65–31 on December 18, 2010. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people would now be permitted to serve openly in the US military. Having grown up during the Vietnam era, when heterosexual men pretended to be gay to avoid the draft, and having opposed every war the US had fought during my lifetime, I felt a twinge of irony and recalled the words of an old Leonard Cohen song: “I finally broke into the prison, I took my place in the chain.”

  On November 6, 2012, President Barack Obama was reelected, easily defeating Mitt Romney. On Castro Street we were watching the presidential returns, but also some other important races. With some old friends from the Quilt days, Joanie Juster and Greg Cassin, and some of the younger activists that had signed up after Proposition 8, we blocked Castro Street and set up a stage and sound system. The street was jammed with thousands as we relayed the results. Obama. Marriage equality passed statewide in Maryland, Maine, and Washington. An anti-equality measure was defeated in Minnesota. And a lesbian named Tammy Baldwin was elected to the US Senate from Wisconsin. The party went on for hours.

  The wind at our backs was reaching gale force.

  It was freezing cold on March 26, 2013, when we lined up outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. I had never been inside the building before and I waved to the thousands who were holding vigil outside as we entered. I had a good seat, within spitting distance of Justice Clarence Thomas, which is probably why one of the largest US Marshals working that day took his post directly in front of me.

  We were nervous and our anxiety increased as the justices turned to the issue of “standing.” If they ruled that the appellants of Judge Walker’s ruling had no legal standing to appeal, then Walker’s ruling would stand; Proposition 8 would be overturned, but it would only apply to California. Olson, Boies, and the American Foundation for Equal Rights were hoping for a much bigger victory.

  The following day, the Court heard arguments in the case of United States v. Windsor. Edie Windsor had filed suit after being hit with a $363,053 federal estate tax after the death of her wife, Thea Spyer. If the federal government had recognized their marriage, she would not have been required to pay the estate tax. She zeroed in on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act for unfairly singling out legally married same-sex couples for differential treatment. Like the Proposition 8 plaintiffs, Edie Windsor had been rebuffed by the major LGBT organizations in her effort to challenge DOMA in federal court. Fortunately for her and the memory of Thea Spyer, she found one of our community’s best attorneys to take her case—Roberta Kaplan.

  Then we waited.

  On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued two decisions. The appellants of Judge Walker’s ruling against Proposition 8 were found to lack standing. Judge Walker’s decision stood. And, in a 5–4 ruling, Edie Windsor won and Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional.

  At San Francisco City Hall, we gathered with Sandy Stier and Kris Perry and their families as Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami entered Los Angeles City Hall. Both couples applied for marriage licenses. California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, who had refused to defend Proposition 8, was with us at the clerk’s office. Suddenly we heard that there was a glitch in LA; the clerk there was balking. They got Kamala Harris on the phone. She was quite stern: “This is Attorney General Harris and I am instructing you to begin issuing the marriage licenses immediately.” Her eyes twinkled at me as she smiled and added, “Have fun with it!”

  Kris and Sandy exchanged their vows in San Francisco as Paul and Jeff exchanged theirs in Los Angeles. The dominoes began to fall.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Something greater than once they were.”

  BY JUNE OF 2015, SAME-SEX MARRIAGES WERE ALREADY UNDERWAY in thirty-six states and the remaining challenges in federal courts had been consolidated into one case: Obergefell v. Hodges. I went to bed early on the night of June 25 and set the alarm for 7:00 a.m. Pacific/10:00 a.m. Eastern. Everyone was certain that the announcement of the decision would be that morning, just in time for the worldwide celebrations of the anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.

  I woke up, turned on the computer, and read the news. I tried to make coffee but my eyes kept filling up with tears. Over and over, I read the final paragraph of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, speaking for the majority:

  No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure past death. It would
misunderstand these men and women to say that they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

  The phone began to ring. Up and down Market Street people waved rainbow flags from their cars and gathered at intersections to cheer and hug each other.

  By mid-afternoon Castro Street was blocked by thousands of celebrants, traffic was rerouted, and a stage and sound system were set up once again. CNN sent a car for me to go downtown for a live remote interview with Anderson Cooper. During the interview I reminded him and his viewers that the Court’s decision was a vindication of the bold and risk-taking strategies that had been opposed by all of the major national LGBT organizations and our allies in the Democratic Party. I said that I believed this victory was rooted in our community’s experience during the darkest years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, when America came to know her gay children at the time of our greatest suffering. The hearts and minds of Americans had changed all across our country. I thanked the American people for making the Court’s decision possible: “It’s making us a better country and a better people.”

  I left the studio and headed back to Castro and wandered through the crowd for a while, shaking hands and exchanging hugs with old friends and strangers. Later, I walked alone down to The Mix where the tattooed bartender, Nick, smiled around his ever-present toothpick and poured me a glass of whiskey. I looked up at the television over the bar to see the live shot of the White House, brightly lit in rainbow colors. The tears came again and I folded my arms on the bar, rested my head, and wept.

  After a few moments the noise and clamor around me faded and I could hear from outside the sound of traffic on 18th Street, the bass beat of the music from the clubs and passing cars, the shrill bird cries of the new boys on the sidewalk, the pop and whoosh of the 33-Ashbury bus going up the hill, sirens and car horns and beneath it all the steady gentle wind from the Pacific. I smelled the sea, coffee, auto exhaust, tobacco smoke, and cannabis, and through the open window felt the cool fog cascading silently down Eureka Valley from the hills above.

  I live today in a tiny village in the middle of a vast metropolitan area, just blocks from the first apartment I rented with Marvin Feldman back when we were young and danced every night at the Stud. When I walk to the market I see friends and neighbors who greet me by name. People are very kind, the bartenders know what I drink, and familiar faces surround me every day. Young people seek me out and walk with me around Dolores Park or up the hill to Corona Heights to look down on the city and the bay beyond. Castro Street echoes with memories even as it changes. Every building, every corner, every glance up towards Twin Peaks offers up bits and fragments of memories: faces, a song we danced to, the scent of a lover’s neck. Most nights I sleep alone. But when my eyes finally close the bed is crowded with ghosts. I welcome them.

  San Francisco has changed a lot since I first saw her from the Bay Bridge that afternoon in 1972. Today it is a city for the wealthy, and their new silver towers crowd the sky. The poets, artists, musicians, dancers, and revolutionaries are long gone or leaving, as are the middle-class families, the nurses, teachers, cooks, hotel workers, and firefighters. The private buses that transport the tech workers from their expensive apartments to their Silicon Valley offices glide by the homeless and the mentally ill who crowd our sidewalks as the cold wind sweeps down Market Street.

  Three thousand miles north of our little village and eight thousand miles south, the ice caps are melting. Sixty-five million people worldwide are refugees from political conflicts, poverty, and famine. The chasm between rich and poor grows wider and deeper. The divisions of racial, religious, and ethnic conflict are as poisonous and pervasive as at any time in human history. Our political process is corrupted by billions of dollars spent by the wealthiest few to thwart the will and deny the needs of the many.

  It is easy to be overwhelmed by the challenges that face us. It is easy to be cynical. It is easy to despair.

  That is when I remember that the movement saved my life. Twice.

  First in 1971, as a frightened teenager, when I learned of the gay liberation movement and flushed down the pills I had hoarded to end my life. Then again in 1994, when I was dying of AIDS, the movement stormed the Food and Drug Administration, confronted the pharmaceutical industry’s greed, and exposed the shameful lack of government response. The movement saved my life and gave it purpose and connected me to other people who also sought love and purpose in their lives.

  The movement gave me hope and it is that hope which sustains me now—hope that we might yet save our planet and learn to share it in peace; hope for justice and equality; hope for the children that will follow us; hope that someday soon, we may rise.

  Acknowledgments

  On January 11, 2010, the federal court challenge to California’s Proposition 8 began in San Francisco. After the day’s proceedings, I went for a walk around my Castro Street neighborhood with actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, both liberal activists and among the founders of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. As we walked I shared stories of my adventures on Castro Street over the decades. After about an hour, Rob turned to me and said, “You must write a book about all this.”

  I coauthored a memoir about the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt called Stitching a Revolution that was published in 2000, but I wasn’t satisfied with the work. The fifteen years that followed were an extraordinary time for me and for the movement; there was more to write about. Rob’s nudge got me going. The first person to read portions of my new manuscript was my friend and then neighbor John Betteiger, a former editor at the San Francisco Chronicle who is now with the New York Times. I was confident that John wouldn’t varnish his opinion. His enthusiasm and suggestions pushed me forward.

  The second person to read part of the manuscript was Jo Becker, also with the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and author of Forcing the Spring; Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality. Her emotional support and practical notes were invaluable.

  I spent a month at the Los Angeles home of Dustin Lance Black, where I became a nocturnal creature, emerging from my room every evening to resume writing at his dining table. While in Los Angeles I reconnected with Bennett Cohen, a screenwriter and nonfiction author who had lived in San Francisco in the 1970s and written about the Zebra murders. Ben spent many hours with me, helping me outline the chapters and deciding which stories should be included.

  My first efforts to find a literary agent were not successful. Then Kevin Sessums, author of Mississippi Sissy and I Left it on the Mountain, introduced me to Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic. It was a happy connection, made even happier when I learned his agency had represented Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Ken Kesey. Robert knows the industry, is ethical, and is great fun.

  My editor, Paul Whitlatch, while so much younger than me, seemed to understand—from our very first telephone conversation—who I am and what I wanted this book to be. I could not have asked for a better relationship with an editor and am very fortunate to be published by Hachette Book Group. Thank you to Mauro DiPreta, Michelle Aielli, Betsy Hulsebosch, Lauren Hummel, and Odette Fleming.

  My new friends Adam Odsess-Rubin and Brenden Chadwick helped me proofread the manuscript. I’ve benefitted from the love and support of Nick Cucinella since we first met almost twenty years ago. I can’t imagine a better friend.

  When I was halfway through writing the book, my parents’ health declined rapidly and my sister, Elizabeth, and I endured three very difficult years before and after their deaths. The painful experience was shared with her husband, John Ettinger, and their two daughters. With the help of our extended family, we managed to hold it together.

 
; For over a decade I have worked for UNITE HERE International Union, the hospitality workers’ union. Our members fight hard for justice every day. My supervisor at the union, David Glaser, has become a trusted friend who is always there to listen, to challenge, make me laugh, and provide wise counsel. I am deeply indebted to him. D. Taylor, John Wilhelms’s successor as UNITE HERE International President, has continued and strengthened our union’s commitment to LGBT equality, winning contracts that protect workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity even in states with no legal protections for LGBT individuals.

  Very few of my old friends survived the HIV pandemic. One who did is Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flag. He is still sewing flags and banners and is as outrageous, smart, and funny as ever and I am grateful that our friendship has lasted for over four decades.

  Some twenty years ago I met a young man named David Smith. We traveled together, had many adventures, and have a relationship that has survived many twists and turns. He teaches high school in San Francisco, we talk almost every day, and I think he knows how much I love him.

  This book is not intended as a history of the LGBT movement. It is not an autobiography, but a memoir—a collection of memories of people I knew, events I witnessed, and struggles that continue. I have reimagined and reconstructed many conversations and changed or otherwise obscured some names. Throughout the book, I use the terminologies of the times I am describing.

  I had originally thought of this book as having two equal parts: the time before AIDS, and the time that followed. But I soon realized that the stories I wanted most to tell were of the years before the plague, when we were still young and unaware of the horror—and the triumphs—yet to come. My generation is disappearing; I want the new generations to know what our lives were like, what we fought for, what we lost, and what we won.