From: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com (Rod Williams)
Subject: A Father's Closet
Originator: rjwill6@pbsdts.sdcrc.pacbell.com
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Francisco
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 16:52:31 GMT

Sunday's New York Times Magazine's "About Men" column is
usually a tale by a sensitive guy who discovered the
ManlyMan(tm) within.  This week's (11/8/92) is the reverse.
William MacLeish (Archibald's son) writes about his elder
daughter's lesbianism, revealed to him after her marriage
(with two kids) broke up, and she fell in love with another
woman.  Some months later, the couple had a commitment
ceremony, and MacLeish was not invited.  His daughter wrote
him that, because of past remarks putting down homosexuals,
"that doesn't make you a very safe person."  If he wanted
her respect, he "could begin by admitting the degree to
which [he] was homophobic and sexist."

Eventually MacLeish started seeing a counselor and examining
the way he looked at the world, including his ideas of men's
and women's roles, and realized it didn't work anymore.  I'll
let him take up the story...

    I have been with my daughter and her lover several times
    now, each time more free and open than the last.  Not too
    long ago, all of us -- my second wife and I, my two
    daughters and their families -- met and played in the dusk
    under oaks and maples.  That same night, the Republicans
    were gathering in Houston.

    For days I saw and heard a small group of extremists
    calling for their brand of cultural cleansing.  They,
    adherents of the repressive right, had a list of enemies,
    and homosexuals were near the top.  Their message was
    clear and ugly: We talk to God; God says, "Get the gays."

    Cults have been chanting similar chants in this country
    since Salem.  But the hate show in Houston -- and now the
    anti-gay campaigns in states from Oregon to Maine -- have
    taught me that the haters have not lost their talent for
    mining the seams of our least reputable fears.  They
    obviously have not lost their staying power.  I said to
    myself that now I had a strong and personal reason to
    "come out" publicly against them.

    With that thought, that phrase, I finally did get it.  My
    elder daughter and her lover made no bones in public about
    their sexual preference.  I was making bones, plenty of
    them.  I was telling only my closest friends about the two
    women, and then only in conspiratorial confidence.

    I had fallen back on the safety, the old safety of silence.
    If I were going to come out in the open against the
    repressives, I first needed to come out of that safe
    closet of mine and talk about my own daughter.

    I saw her again recently.  There was some family furniture
    to divide up, and when she and her lover were ready to
    drive home, I asked if I could say something in private to
    her.  We walked off into an old pasture, and I asked her
    if she would mind if my writing this piece.  She reached
    out suddenly, took both my hands, and pulled me close to
    her.  Close enough so that I could see the tears begin,
    the love.

    ---------------------- end of article ---------------------
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rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san francisco -=- rjwill6@pacbell.com
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