We've made so much progress over the past four decades that it's easy to forget how far we still have to go. You can see that in the marriage fight, where gay relationships are routinely equated with the destruction of civilization. But you can see it more clearly, I think, in day-to-day life.
I live in Minneapolis, one of the most politically liberal places in the country. Minnesota has a statewide law protecting gays from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Minneapolis has three openly gay city council members, the largest proportion of any major city in the country. A Republican couldn't get elected dog catcher in this town. My employer, the University of Minnesota, offers same-sex domestic partners' benefits to employees.
Not long ago I briefly dated a guy living in San Francisco. He came to visit me in Minneapolis for a long weekend, during which we did the kinds of things that dating couples do in order to get to know one another better. We went out to eat. We went to the movies. We walked together down the street and in the mall.
He lives in the Castro and when he dates people he's used to holding hands, kissing, hugging, showing affection in dozens of little ways. And he gives no thought to doing these things in public places. Yet when we did these things in public in liberal Minneapolis, the reception we got ranged from cold disapproval to open hostility.
In one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, while we were waiting in line to order, he hugged me from behind and lingered there a few moments. The wait-staff shot us nervous looks, like they feared we might start sodomizing each other right next to the lamb kebobs. Some guy walked by us singing to his portable CD player, and spelled aloud the word "G-A-Y" as if it were part of the song.
Driving back from a movie, I put my arm around my date's shoulders. Several other drivers slowed down beside us to take a closer look at my car, a 1959 Chrysler Windsor. When they noticed my arm around my date their appreciative attitudes changed. The nice ones pointed us out to their friends and laughed, then sped ahead. A couple of carloads of young men were more menacing, throwing paper cups and even empty bottles of beer at my car.
At the zoo, walking down the street, and in the mall, we held hands at several points (always at my date's initiative). Each time we got nasty looks. We would pass someone, then I'd turn my head and see that they were looking back at us and whispering to each other. A few parents turned their children away from us, as if we were contagious, harmful on sight.
All in all, in the space of a few days, things like this happened more times than I can count. At the end of the weekend, I apologized to him. I was embarrassed. I felt terrible that I brought him out of a place where he could be himself to a place where being himself meant living with a constant sense of low-level danger. There was no way I could ever ask him to leave San Francisco to come to this place. There being no future, we stopped dating.
Sad as I was about that, I was mostly stunned. Though I knew things weren't perfect here, I had not experienced anything like it in the five years I'd lived in Minneapolis. Had all this really happened in my cocoon of tolerance and acceptance, my liberal bastion? Had it been a fluke, an unlucky weekend of chance encounters with the only ignoramuses around?
Then it dawned on me why it had happened that weekend in Minneapolis, but not before. In previous dating relationships, all with men from the area, my dates and I had censored our public conduct in ways to avoid these problems. We'd engaged in little or no hugging, or hand-holding, or other obvious signs of affection in public. We had held back without even realizing it. It was second nature to us.
My San Francisco date, however, hadn't been properly trained in this way. He had initiated each of these shameless, heedless displays and I had somewhat nervously gone along with them. He felt free in a way I never really have.
What does this atmosphere do to gay people who live outside a few square blocks of freedom in a few big cities? What effect does it have on our chances of forming lasting relationships? When straight couples need a touch of reassurance, they hold hands without a thought. A husband will casually lean over and plant a kiss on his wife. These gestures, mild and routine as they are, help sustain a relationship. Yet for gay couples they are social faux pas, perhaps an invitation to abuse.
The truth is, there's a deep aversion to gay people that will not be eliminated by enlightened laws. It's a gut-level disgust that defies rationalization, that resists education, that fears without thinking. The laws that rule our lives are not written on statute books; they are written on hearts. And the heart of this country, in the heart of this country, is still darker than many of us had hoped it would be by now.