GAY BASHING

Before we set aside the recent controversy over gay lifestyles in

DuPage, let me add a personal perspective.

I once worked the graveyard shift at the U.S. Postal Service in

downtown Chicago, sorting people's mail far into the night. In those

days, I would put my work aside at three a.m. and catch a subway

train, which carried me to 51st and Prairie. There I might wait for a

bus, or on summer nights, I might walk along the border of deserted

Washington Park to my home about a mile east.

At the train station one warm night, I met a man and his woman

who humbly asked for money. Against all the survival lore of the

streets, I stopped and spoke to them.

There was little of the standard urban toughness about them.

They seemed almost innocent, as my parents must have been when they'd

come here from the rural South. They were hungry, homeless, without a

cent. An old story. I gave them a little cash which would have gone

to waste had I been carrying it ten minutes later, and I turned toward

home.

I'd spent the train ride home in a dour Presbyterian mood of

spiritual dissatisfaction--my soul is seldom rested. The encounter

with the two innocents depressed me almost to despair. It was such a

tiny bit of suffering I'd seen, yet it set me to questioning the

goodness of God. It seems absurd to me now, but I recall praying, "If

life must contain this sort of misery, I'd rather die."

I was so disturbed that I forgot my surroundings, ignored my city

instincts. Only later did I notice that I was not alone.

"Hey, man! Got a match?"

On the other side of the street, four or five or six teenage boys

eyed me. Even then, I did not think.

"No," I replied. "I don't smoke."

And here is the part of the story I don't know how to tell. How

do I explain to you about my manner, cold and aloof even in prayer?

How can I convey to you the high-pitched voice and precise diction

which makes me sound imperious and arrogant even to my family?

Most difficult of all, how do I tell you about the culture of

black urban males, for whom every act, every gesture serves as an

assertion of intense, virulent masculinity? Unless you have lived in

this world, you can't know.

In retrospect, I knew what they heard in my voice that night.

I'd seen it in men's eyes before, a moment after speaking. I saw it

now, and heard it, and realized that I'd just made a horrible mistake.

They came to me then, at a run, brandishing broken broomsticks

that I hadn't noticed before. How many? Four? Five? Six? Before I

could count, I was down, my clothes half torn from me, my head quaking

from the blows. I screamed for help, and they screamed too.

"Kill the fag! Drag him into the park and kill him!"

They might have done it, too, had not a yellow cab pulled up and

stopped. The driver did not get out; he didn't have to. The lads

wanted no witnesses.

The beating stopped. They helped me up, dusted me off with

elaborate courtesy, removed a buck from my wallet and handed it back.

They warned me of the bad things that could happen to faggots

traveling at night alone. Then they vanished into the park. My

glasses were shattered; I was blind. For all I knew, they'd merely

ducked behind trees in the park, waiting to spring out again.

I staggered into the middle of 51st Street, flagged down a police

car, collapsed against its side. The driver aimed a blurred face at

me as I whined at him through bruised lips. Then he drove away.

Alone I staggered toward the bright lights of Cottage Grove

Avenue. And of course I made it. Later, in a hospital emergency

room, I remembered that just before the attack, I'd been praying about

the advantages of death. But God is merciful, and smart enough to

know a stupid prayer when he hears one.

This is a coming-out story, though not the kind you may have

supposed. I am not gay. But I have been mistaken for a homosexual by

a fair number of people. And I'm the only heterosexual I know who has

been the victim of a gay-bashing.

As this story reveals, I am a bad Christian, but a believer

nonetheless. I'm quite an old-fashioned one too, as any Wheaton

College alumnus should be. For example, I hold to the traditional

Christian belief that homosexual acts are sinful.

But two of the best friends I made at Wheaton College are gay.

They're my friends still. They're bright, witty and make wonderful

drinking companions, even if you don't drink. And neither of them

deserve the savage and lunatic hostility that they face daily, any

more than I deserved to be beaten with sticks.

Having a gang of youths go upside your head can be a wonderful

aid to clear thinking. I almost wish I could prescribe a similar

treatment for some of the people who've been phoning and writing us

here at The Journal.

Many of our critics mean well; they sincerely worry about the

promotion of a lifestyle they consider immoral. But underneath the

sincerity is the smugness of straight, well-off American white people,

people who are convinced that everyone in the world is either like

them, or desperately wants to be like them.

 None of their messages showed any hint of sympathy for gays.

There was no word of regret for the outrageous abuses these people

suffer. Nor was there a realization that what these people chiefly

want from straight society is the right to be let alone.

These sincere, good people would never bash a faggot's head in,

but they'd treat him like dirt in any of a dozen other ways, without

even realizing they were doing it. With all kindness, I would no more

leave the civil rights of homosexuals in the hands of these people

than I would have left my civil rights in the hands of Bull Connor.

This is one born-again Christian who has a very personal reason

for supporting gay-rights legislation. And the more I hear from

straight people, the more I favor it.

---

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