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Steppin’ Out
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A symbolic pair
It was fitting that the Nobelist and the caring mother should sit
together, representatives in turn o f the universal human family
and the conventional human family
BY
ROBERT
BERNSTEIN
nside New York’s historic Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel one crisp evening last
November, a man and a woman sat together at
the head table of a black tie event in the
hotel’s elegant Grand Ballroom. Together —
looking out over a pennant-festooned floor
where nearly 800 Finery-clad men and women
were gathered to share food, drink, laughter
and tears — they symbolized the vision that
had brought the hundreds there.
He was a world-revered Nobel Peace
laureate, an author of whom an early critic
had written, “Not since Albert Camus has
there been such an eloquent spokesman for
man.’’ She was a suburban housewife with a
grandmotherly air, beaming with pride to be
representing an organization that tonight
would share the spotlight with a figure of
history.
In a sense, it was just another fundraiser,
typical of the hundreds of similar affairs that
each year help fuel the engines of a
democratic system. But it was also an
affirmation of a fact that misguided moralists
have managed to keep secret from the national
mass mind: the movement for gay equality is
deeply rooted in the truest and most enduring
of traditional values.
The occasion, two days before election day
of 1989, was the city’s eighth annual fund
dinner of the Human Rights Campaign Fund,
the principal lobbying arm of the crusade for
gay citizens’ civil rights.
Banners proclaimed the evening’s theme,
“All Part of the Family.” Its sponsors
described the event as a celebration of the role
of lesbians and gay men in all their various
I
families: “the human family, the American
family, the families in which we were bom,
the families we have created, and our
community family.”
So it was Fitting that the Nobelist and the
caring mother should sit together,
representatives in turn of the universal family
and the conventional nuclear family. Their
side-by-side presence suggested that this was
indeed a movement in the mainstream of the
evolution of human enlightenment.
The laureate was Elie Wiesel, generally
regarded as the most powerful of Holocaust
writers. His table companion was Paulette
Goodman, president of P-FLAG, there on
behalf of parents who hold equal love for their
gay and nongay children.
They were flanked by other guests of
honor, including the Democratic candidate for
mayor of New York City and a pair of area
congressmen. The crowd before them, though
composed largely of gay and lesbian
celebrants, was liberally sprinkled with the
latter’s parents, grandparents, brothers, sister
and other kin.
Two days later, the glow of pervasive
harmony would be shaken by some political
and social realities. The head table’s pro-gay
candidate, David Dinkins, would become
New York’s mayor-elect — but by an
unexpectedly narrow margin that would
generally be attributed to closet bigotry. And
fundamentalist forces would rejoice the same
day in the repeal of pro-gay measures in no
fewer than Five American cities. There, it
would be the oppressors’ turn to cheer.
But here, and now, it was a time for the
celebration of understanding and compassion
a time for spiritual renewal. For the moment,’
it was almost possible to forget that millions
of our fellow citizens still resonate to the
Bible-thumping vibrations o f the self-
proclaimed “religious” right.
Yes, this was a night when we would
ignore the setbacks and toast hope — when
we would view the glass as at least half full
(with chamr _gne, at that) and fete hard-won
progress.
Elie Wiesel, after all, is a sort of
incarnation o f hope for human rights, survivor
of a Holocaust that he would describe that
night as “the consequences o f the opposing
views when they dominated the scene.” And
he would recall movingly that gays were
there, too, sharing with his own people what
he called “those places o f darkness, silence
and Fire.”
His keynote remarks, eloquent in their
simplicity, were directed largely to a question
on every mind: why, from what must
comprise a daily mountain o f similar
invitations from moreTashionable sources,
had he chosen to respond to this one?
His answer, in retrospect, is what might
have been expected from one o f the century’s
most articulate chroniclers o f the human
spirit
“Those who hate you, hate me. Those who
hate, hate everybody.... So why should I not
be here to speak to you about self-respect and
about civil rights.... W e are all human
beings.”
When it was over — capped with a
benediction by a Presbyterian minister whose
lesbian daughter was a dinner co-chair —
there was a lot o f teary embracing, especially
among parents and their gay children. The
overheard words o f one pair summed up, at
least for me, what the evening was about:
“I love you, Daddy.” “I love you, honey.”
Robert Bernstein is a vice-president of the
Federation o f Parents and Friends of
Lesbians and G ays and editor of the
PFLAGpole
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