Two
I’m surfacing for air after the past two weeks.
Work, the things they pay me to do, has been intense; I devoted my attention to two projects simultaneously.
Two is also the number of children Kim Davis had after an adulterous affair with the man who became husband three while she was married to husband one. The Kim Davis who skyrocketed to national infamy when, at her job as a county clerk in Kentucky back in 2015, she refused to allow any of her staff to register same-sex marriages because, as James Dobson taught, marriage is reserved for one man and one woman (of the same race — no surprises that Dobson was also a racist). Ms. Davis, so taken with the sanctity of marriage, has been wed four times (and divorced thrice). Like Dobson before her, she’s a true cafeteria Christian, picking and choosing which of the Bible’s admonitions she wishes to heed.
Fifty-Nine
I’ve been on this planet for nearly six decades — an eternity in queer years. As a member of Generation X, I was born just in time for the teachings and reactionary activism of a very closeted homosexual, James Dobson, to explode within the families of my peers.
Catholicism was my family’s opiate of choice, and although my boomer parents grew up with violence in the home (my mother more so than my father), they eventually broke that cycle.
Was I spared the Dobson effect?
On the nuclear family scale, perhaps.
On the societal scale? Hell no. None of us Americans were.
Dobson’s internalized homophobia, combined with his anal-expulsive personality (his shit went everywhere), ensured that a generation of teachers, politicians, and judges considered queer and trans people as less than.
Forty-Four
The initial CDC reports on a disease eventually known as HIV/AIDS arrived in 1981, forty-four years ago. I was fifteen and already aware that it was men I lusted after. To paraphrase Rita Mae Brown, I was gay out of Christian charity; so many men prayed for a woman, and I gave them my share.
Dobson strongly advocated that no money be spent on HIV/AIDS research. Gay men were more of his so-called willful children, and we were meant to deserve the punishment.
Thirty-Seven
By the time I graduated from college in 1988, HIV/AIDS had taken the lives of tens of thousands of gay men. The onslaught of death wasn’t enough. Dobson’s coevals in The Moral Majority found open ears in the Reagan administration, ensuring that gay lives, gay suffering, and even gay death would be answered only by more cruelty.
I therefore left the United States.
One
When I arrived in Japan in 1988, it was for a one-year reprieve from graduate school. A one-year reprieve from death.
(The combination of Catholicism and of reading, at my father’s insistence, Death Be Not Proud when I was thirteen, made me the guilt-driven hypochondriacal drama queen I was at twenty-two, certain of my impending demise.)
Three
My first three months in Japan were spent in homestays. Two months with the Suzukis. One month with the Endōs. I had a calendar in my suitcase, and every night I crossed off the day from it. At the end of August, I was one-twelfth of my way through. At the end of September, one-sixth. October? One-fourth.
In September, however, I began a propaganda offensive. In between English classes, I hinted to my supervisor that a) having me remain in a homestay created so many impositions, and b) I knew how to live on my own.
It paid off. During October, my supervisor and vice-principal together found me an apartment. The day I began living there was the first time I realized that I loved my life in Japan.
Ten
But it wasn’t just life alone that seduced me.
There were many other seductions during my ten years in Japan.
Freed from the fear that my homestay families would catch wise to my closeted sexuality and, crucially, at last connected to gay Japan (at least on the weekends) after meeting another American who shared his hard-earned knowledge.
And yet, I had an advantage over that other American that allowed me to build on and exceed his wisdom. I could read and write Japanese. What started as a single bar that catered to foreigners in Tōkyō’s largest gayborhood grew into a conquest, fueled by advertisements and personal ads in Japan’s eight different gay magazines during my decade abroad: Barazoku, Adon, Sabu, Samson, Saturday, Badi, Dave, and G-Men. Not to mention the printed guides to gay locales throughout the country, listing not only bars, but also bathhouses (admittedly, most of those were closed to foreigners during the media-fueled years of HIV/AIDS = gay panic) and cruising grounds, public spaces where (usually but now always) late at night men could meet other men. Parks, movie theaters, public lavatories (like the ones at opposite ends of the vast underground walkways that linked Shinjuku Station to Shinjuku San-chōme Station), and even, believe it or not, certain cars on certain rail lines, where, during a crowded rush hour, men could consensually rub shoulders with other men.
And then came the telephone personals, and the gay BBS, GayNet Japan. To paraphrase Harvey Milk in Torch Song Trilogy, during my first five years in Japan, I (safely) slept with more men than were named or numbered in the Bible, Old and New Testaments combined.
Thirty-Two
As my sixth year in Japan began, the boss-level seduction arrived. In November of 1993, thirty-two years ago, I met and, for the first time, fell deeply and truly in love with Hiro. He was twenty-three, and I was twenty-seven.
Twenty-Seven
Headhunters recruited me for a job in the Seattle area. After many discussions with Hiro, I agreed to move to the United States in 1998. After a few months of separation — we used software called CUSeeMe and the earliest versions of computer cameras (mine connected to my new smoke-gray transparent-cased iMac) to stay in touch — Hiro got a student visa and we began our life together here. Our twenty-seven years in the Pacific Northwest include the nine years we spent living in British Columbia, outside of Vancouver.
Twenty-Six
James Dobson blamed the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, a preventable tragedy that claimed twenty-six victims, on the recent decisions of many US states to enact either domestic partnership laws or marriage equality legislation.
Twelve
In June of 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Windsor v. United States. In doing so, it invalidated key sections of the Defense of Marriage Act, expanding the more than 1,3000 federal-level marriage benefits, including social security benefits, joint tax filing, and permanent residence (green card) eligibility, to same-sex spouses.
In June of 2013, Hiro and I were months away from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our 1993 first date, but when the Windsor v. United States ruling was read out on NPR, I stood up, walked down the hall to Hiro’s office, and announced that our long engagement was at its end.
We married in July, and began his green card process in September (because it took a few months to gather the required police reports).
Ten, Again
As years go, 2015 was one of the most eventful for Hiro and me.
In March, Hiro and I flew from Vancouver to Montréal for his green card interview.
In June, he received his green card at the Blaine border crossing.
Later that same month, the US Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land when it issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Late in August, Hiro and I said farewell to British Columbia and returned to Washington State.
In September, I began a full-time job at an incredible company.
In October, Hiro and I bought our home here in an unincorporated corner of King County.
That year was also a busy one for Kim Davis.
She ignored the Obergefell ruling and refused not only to issue marriage licenses to same-sex spouses, but also shut down the Rowan County marriage licensing for all couples. Within days, a lawsuit was filed against. Her legal defense team, the homophobes known as Liberty Counsel (anything with liberty in the name is a giant red flag — liberty for me, but not for thee), filed an emergency appeal to the US Supreme Court, and got proverbially spanked.
Kentucky’s governor also refused to aid her lawlessness, and Davis was jailed and fined.
Six
Every conservative justice on the US Supreme Court, all six of them, came with glowing recommendations from, not to mention membership in, The Federalist Society, a reactionary conservative group. Antonin Scalia was also a member; may he rot in hell. All of those six are affiliated with conservative Christian organizations as well, although the Catholics on the court, the hideously corrupt sexual abuser Clarence Thomas and walking clown car, Amy Coney Barrett, are affiliated with Opus Dei, a group so awful that Pope Francis was about to shut them down. Here’s hoping Pope Leo finishes the job.
There were also six merry murderesses in Cook County Jail. My favorite was Lipschitz.
Nine Hundred
Project 2025 is a nine-hundred-page manifesto designed to destroy American democracy and install a Christian Nationalist theocracy. Several scholars have noted that more than half of the Project 2025 recommendations have been implemented by the current administration, although most have been so via executive order, not Congressional legislation (and are therefore more easily undone, assuming we get the chance to do so, and that’s a mighty big assumption).
We can be grateful that James Dobson is dead. We can know he is in hell —the hell he believed in. But I’ll wager he’s still smiling, seeing his dreams (our nightmares) for this country are poised to come true.
Nine
Last week, like the emotional zombie she is, Kim Davis once again filed an appeal to the US Supreme Court, asking them to overturn Obergefell. Given the composition of the court, it is likely her case will proceed, and it is also likely Davis will win this time around.
It is anyone’s guess whether the Supreme Court will attempt to nullify existing marriages or to allow red states to do so. The most likely outcome, as I see it, will allow red states to end all future marriage equality.
Hiro and I were married in British Columbia — no ruling in the US can undo that. But there are nine legal documents that we will shortly have in place. I recommend all same-sex couples, married or not, to implement these nine, too.
revocable living trust
This allows both partners to jointly manage assets and belongings.last will and testament
For each of you to manage the distribution of assets after death.health care power of attorney and HIPAA waiver
For each of you to name your spouse as the person empowered to make medical decisions on your behalf.durable power of attorney
For each of you to empower your spouse to make financial and legal decisions should you become incapacitated.living will
To record your preferences for medical care, should you be unable to do so.hospital visitation authorization form
To ensure your spouse can visit you in any hospital, regardless of the state.agent for disposition of remains
To record who can make decisions for your funeral and burial arrangements.pet care designation and pet trust documents
To ensure your pets are cared for in the event you and/or your spouse are unable to do so.tangible personal property memorandum
Used in addition to a last will and testament to indicate the recipient of any personal items.
Zero
Despite the hatred against queer people that Dobson and others of his ilk fomented across the United States, there is zero chance that queer people will up and vanish.
They came for us with erroneous diagnoses of psychological illness, with the desire that HIV/AIDS would kill us all, with harmful conversion therapies (Dobson’s specialty), and now with legislation and court cases.
We’re still here.
Fuck ‘em.
Great piece, love the Chicago nod!
Enjoyed how you weaved your personal history with queer history bringing it back to today. That last part is the devastating part since everything we hoped would stay in the past is now haunting us in the present. But yes, our hope is that we overcame before and that we will again, even more so.