The good doctor

The former surgeon general of the U.S.A., C. Everett Koop, has died at the age of 96. If you were American in the 1980s, you might remember this surgeon general. He wore a mustache-less beard and his distinctive uniform, which made him look like a naval officer. Cigarette advertisements (which still appeared in print in those days) always carried the SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING, bringing Dr. Koop into every magazine and grocery store checkout, whether you wanted to read about him or not.

Dr. Koop obviously had a long life himself (a widower, he remarried at 93). His passing reminds me of what the U.S.A. was like under Ronald Reagan, who appointed him. Dr. Koop disappointed President Reagan and many others in Washington by advocating based on what he honestly saw as threats to public health, rather than ideology. One threat, then as now, was the scandal of many Americans having no health care at all. The surgeon general had no success getting his bosses to care about that.

But there were two other areas of huge danger to people's health in which Dr. Koop didn't toe the line, either. One was the syndrome that came to be known as AIDS, which first appeared in the U.S. at the beginning of the eighties. The other was, as already alluded to, cigarette smoking.

Try to remember what AIDS meant in the decade before antiretroviral drugs. It was a 100% killer which, as we know, brought unimaginable loss to the gay community. Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act were not even thought of yet--our main national issue was dying men, and women in solidarity with them. AIDS began as GRID or "gay cancer," and was thought only to affect homosexuals. Even later, when others contracted AIDS from blood transfusions, the country saw them as "innocent victims." Which implied that somebody else was guilty.

If we're ever tempted to think that gay Americans haven't made much progress, we should try to recall C. Everett Koop's day. Homophobia in the U.S.A. now is persistent; thirty years ago, it was indescribable. Phobia was an accurate term, because it was as much terror (of those AIDS-spreading gays) as hatred whose pervasiveness is difficult to grasp today, even for those of us who were there.

Before AIDS, homosexuality was more or less unspeakable. When AIDS arrived, and appeared to affect only gay and bisexual men, very few people outside the community cared. It wasn't just a crazy fringe view that these people deserved death as punishment for their lifestyle. That was mainstream America's view, and it was the view at the highest levels of government.

The virus that causes AIDS is often said to have been "co-discovered" by French and American researchers in 1983, although in fact, the French discovered it in 1982 and the U.S. scientific community held off on recognizing this until one of their own had also isolated it--which he could not have done without the French scientists' help. For Dr. Koop, AIDS was not a plague in a biblical drama; it was an epidemic that deserved a scientific response.

What I am perhaps belaboring here is how radical that approach was in the eighties. Even when AIDS began to affect straight people, it was still associated with injecting drug users and homosexuals above all--the guilty victims. Neither group got much compassion in the era of the Reagans and "Just Say No."

This is interesting, because the very people who thought AIDS a just consequence of one's lifestyle did not feel that way about smoking-related diseases. Dr. Koop warred with North Carolinians like Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican, and the Democratic governor who called for him to be impeached. Senator Helms was a ceaseless foe of homosexuality and any representation thereof, for example in art. He also represented a state that is at the center of the tobacco industry, and took every opportunity to protect it.

Here was an industry whose products, Dr. Koop said, killed 300,000 Americans every year, most of whom became addicted in their early teens. If some in Washington had their way, the surgeon general could not defend these kids from cigarette promotion on the one hand, nor protect them from AIDS by mentioning condoms, on the other.

We know now the scale on which Big Tobacco has been a merchant of death, the extent of their denials that their products are both addictive and deadly. We also know that when reason and science are brought to bear on a virus, the epidemic of AIDS is stemmed. But when Dr. Koop said these things thirty years ago, they were not commonly accepted. They were not in the interest of a tobacco-addicted, homosexual-hating country, as large parts of it were.

In 1981, at the beginning of his term, one third of Americans smoked. When he left eight years later, it was down to just over one quarter. President Reagan's first public mention of the word AIDS did not come until 1987, when it was in the context of opposing safe sex education for schoolchildren.

The U.S.A. today is increasingly a country in which homosexuality is accepted as a natural variation in human society, while smoking cigarettes is regarded as a terrible lifestyle choice. Who saw that coming?

Meanwhile, the late C. Everett Koop was not a perfect surgeon general, but he still stands as a good example. May we also go to work every day to serve people, rather than care so much about what authorities think, or the prevailing prejudices of our time.

The bus

This past Sunday, The New York Times reported on a reality that still surprises many people, straight and gay: that Americans with same-sex partners from abroad have to leave the country to live together legally. (The article doesn’t mention those whose partners’ countries are also intolerant, and who therefore have nowhere in the world to go.) You can read it here (thanks, J.)

To his credit, President Obama has included this dilemma as part of his proposals for immigration reform. There is a lot to be fixed as far as the U.S. immigration system is concerned. And while I focus here on one aspect to be fixed, I don’t mean to question that other failings need to be addressed.

Although this particular failing has affected me personally for more than twenty years. Has changed the entire course of my adult life, more than any other single factor.

Which is why it was so hard to hear that the Senate’s proposed bill for immigration reform has deliberately left out people like me. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said, “There are so many other, bigger issues the Congress has to resolve in immigration reform before we would even get to a point where we would be discussing a change to a longstanding policy like this.”

In other words, we can talk about any number of “bigger” issues-- Latino votes for Republicans? cheap labor for business?--before we can talk about gay citizens, born in the U.S.A., who have never had so much as a traffic ticket in our entire lives.

The threat seems to be that the Senate is prepared to derail all immigration reform unless we, Americans with same-sex partners, are left out of it.

Think about that. We, U.S. citizens with foreign-born partners, can get behind those who, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps under mitigating circumstances, have immigrated illegally. We are assured that those who have broken immigration laws, while having a path to legal residence, will go to “the back of the line.” Meanwhile we, the gays, can go to the back of the bus.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, “has warned that adding the divisive social issue to the legislation could ‘derail it.’” Now, I have more respect than you might think for Senator McCain. His experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam have led him steadfastly to oppose torture by, or with the approval of, the U.S.A., while others around the country have happily clamored for scalps. And he may just have been making a realistic assessment of the situation in the Senate. But it’s hard to escape the implication that we have to wait until there is no longer any controversy about this “social issue” before even considering equal rights.

This past week I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, a novel set partly during the anti-communist hysteria of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s day. In one scene, Kingsolver fascinatingly evokes one of the most horrifying aspects of McCarthyism (detailed in William Manchester’s wonderful history of America, The Glory and the Dream). In the 1940s and '50s, many employers or institutions that wanted to be rid of someone would assure her that, of course, they knew that she had committed no crime against the U.S., nor was she even a communist. She had simply become “controversial.” The mere fact that there was controversy about someone—although that controversy had no basis in fact—meant that she had to go.

Even if we someday get past the controversial stage, it will be too late for some of us. I’ve long since become a citizen of a country that not only has full equality, but actually wanted me as an immigrant. And none of this being asked to wait should surprise me because I am, after all, a woman.

From the American Revolution to the civil rights movement, women are always participating on the front line, only to be told that they were only helpmeets. To demand their rights then and there would not be supportive of the menfolk. Just wait, ladies, we are forever being told.

More than twenty years ago, Anita Hill went up against then-nominee for the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. An all-white, almost all-male Senate watched a black woman take on a black man in his confirmation hearings. One of them had to lose. Justice Thomas is on the Court today, but the message then was that there was a ladder of importance in America, and women of color were on the bottom rung. Where would Anita Hill have been if she were a lesbian? Down in the dirt?

Next month, according to the Times article, this very Supreme Court will be hearing cases that also have a bearing on our situation, including one about the “Defense of Marriage Act.” That, you may recall, is the federal law which (among other things) makes it impossible for the U. S. to recognize citizens' same-sex partnerships, even if the states do. The Court is a bit more diverse, by ethnicity and gender, than it was twenty years ago, but I am still out here.

The bus of U.S. immigration reform is leaving. It remains to be seen whether we will be in the back of the bus, or thrown under it.

Holding out for a hero

My guest blog at Women and Words is here. I'm also one of 20 authors answering the same question this month: Which of your own characters would you date? For fascinating responses, including disclaimers (about dating imaginary people?) and classic lesbian discussions of What Dating Means, please read here. Thanks much!

The Next Big Thing - A Blog Hop Post

As part of 'The Next Big Thing Blog Hop,' I was tagged by  author Q. Kelly in her post last week. The purpose of this hop is to expose you to writers and their work that perhaps you haven't heard of, whether a new release or a Work in Progress (WIP). This is week 20.

According to the rules of the hop, I will be answering some questions (the same ones for every other blog hopper) about either my newest release or my WIP and then at the bottom of the post I've listed authors who will do the same thing in their blogs next Wednesday.

Thanks--here we go!

What is the working title of your book?   The Trees in the Field is my new novel, just published in August.

Where did the idea come from for the book?  For several years I'd been reading news stories about an island in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia, which was occupied by United States forces and has been used for a base ever since. I wondered about the displaced inhabitants of that island. At the same time, I wrote a short story about a tough woman in the world of Washington politics--Raybelle McKeehan. Finally, I'd promised that the next book I wrote would feature a handsome diver--the other main character, Tomas Jefferson. Those different strands of story grew into a novel in my mind.

What genre does your book fall under? I write general fiction--there are love story and thriller elements, but the main theme is always the hero's personal journey.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I was all set to answer this, then realized the two main actresses I had in mind are approximately the same age. While this proves that I find women in their fifties sexy, it wouldn't work for these characters, who are fifteen years apart. I'm also afraid of what's been called the "Clark Gable effect"--that is, if you've seen the film Gone With the Wind you can only ever read the character of Rhett Butler as Clark Gable, the actor who played him. My characters look the way I've imagined them, and I've given my readers the words to imagine them too.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  Raybelle McKeehan, one of the only women in the U. S. Senate, must choose between her lifelong political ambitions and fighting for her true ideals.

What is the longer synopsis of your book?

Dr. Tomas Jefferson stays aloof from life and love, but is strangely drawn to a war-ravaged Marine at a Chicago street clinic where she volunteers. When he dies on the streets, she undertakes notification of the next of kin, but it’s clear that Senator Raybelle McKeehan finds the matter inconvenient.

Raybelle McKeehan was ten when she knew that she would be President some day. Now a Republican senator from Tennessee, there is no room in her life for deviations and distractions, but her brother’s death and the compelling Dr. Jefferson both throw her off her carefully charted path.

Horrified by her brother’s circumstances, and that of other veterans, Raybelle must decide if she can go toe-to-toe with powerful men to uncover self-dealing and criminal acts that strike at the heart of the Constitution and the democracy she loves. Tomas agrees to advise and though Raybelle denies it to herself, feelings emerge...and so do rumors that could ruin her career.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The Trees in the Field is published by Bella Books.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote it over the course of the year 2007, which is when it is set.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I love, and am fascinated by, people who stand up for what they believe is right, regardless of how unpopular it makes them. I wanted to write a hero--Raybelle--who hasn't forgotten why she went into politics to begin with: to fight for a just cause. She is a human being outraged by injustice, and she won't be talked out of it by cynicism. By creating such heroism, I hoped to show that it is possible.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
The timeliness of it. The Trees in the Field was published shortly before the U. S. election and look, a lesbian was just elected to the Senate. The issues of security, liberty, and justice that Raybelle struggles with are urgent issues for political leaders today.

Next Wednesday check out the Next Big Thing from the inimitable Cheri Crystal, who writes my favorite combination--funny and sexy at the same time.

If you're a fellow writer and would like to participate in this Blog Hop, please reach out to Cheri and let her know! The more the merrier :)

JEK

Understanding Without Agreeing

Just before the U. S. election seems a good time to come out and say that I understand why some people are voting differently from how I voted.

“I understand.” That is not to say “I agree.” A distinction that seems often to be lost, especially in the polarized environment of contemporary U. S. A. politics. For many people, it feels impossible to be friends or even talk with people who will be voting differently; it feels like a personal assault.

And I can understand that too. There are aspects of what the national Republican candidates stand for, or say they stand for, that I can neither agree with nor understand. Like taking health care away from children, or denying it to people with pre-existing conditions. To go along with that platform seems really tough.

But I can understand some things without agreeing with them. One of the comments going around the Internet lately, from playwright Doug Wright, has gotten me thinking. “I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest,” this quote begins. “[L]ook me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, ‘My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights.’”

It’s a powerful quote in its entirety. But what it made me think is, is Doug Wright surprised? Do most people, however they identify and/or vote, really care about their neighbors’ civil rights more than their own economic issues?

It sounds horrible the way Wright puts it, but it’s kind of normal. If I’m out of work and struggling to feed my family, or otherwise at an economic loose end, I’m honestly probably not thinking as much about the civil rights, poverty, or health care situation of someone down the road. Maybe I should be, but most people are not prophets. The world is not made up of Martin Luther Kings or whoever your favorite American is.

Now, my understanding this does not mean I think most Americans’ financial situations would, in fact, be made better if Mitt Romney became the next president. Moreover, I’m not convinced either man being elected on the 6^th of November would make as big a difference to voters’ pocketbooks as a lot of them, and both candidates, seem to think. The economy is a global monster, and even the president of the United States, whoever he is, does not have that much power to change it.

What the U. S. federal government does have the power to change is whether I could go home to the United States, or whether that country is even going to feel like home to me in the future. As I’ve explained before, the laws that made me leave were the responsibility of Democrats as well as Republicans. I am not optimistic that they would change in a second term for Barack Obama, and there seems to be no chance at all that they would change under a Romney presidency. But, Romney has changed his mind about a great many issues like this before. So who knows.

In the same way that understanding does not equal agreeing, people can be opposed to something without necessarily making it against the law. Again, this concept seems to pass a lot of contemporary Americans by, but it’s part of living in a free society. Many Democrats and liberals might point to social issues as an example of where we should “live and let live”; traditionally, Republicans and conservatives would tend to say that as few things should be against the law as possible.

And I can understand that also, to a point. I think a lot of kinds of speech are offensive and hurtful, but that doesn’t mean I want to take away people’s First Amendment right to say them. Of course, I draw the line of “as few things should be against the law as possible” where I think is a reasonable limit. I would draw the line at poisoning wells and letting E. coli into the food supply. Others would draw their own lines.

The aspect I can most understand—though not agree with—about Republican voters is the desire to throw out an incumbent. When people feel that things are not going well, they are disinclined to give the present government another chance. In general, voters on all sides exaggerate the extent to which an incumbent deserves blame, or credit, for everything that has happened in the past four years. (This was true in 2008 also. Luckily for Republicans, they did not have an incumbent to re-elect, and so everyone got to vote for someone new.)

Rather than leave you with a conclusion that tells you whom to vote for or condemns you to no longer being my friend (perhaps that would be a release?) I just wanted to share this basic thought. That it is possible to understand where someone is coming from without agreeing with him. It seems so obvious, and yet, I don’t believe it’s said enough these days, in the country I was born in and still care about.

Stove-Top Stuffing: What's in a Name?

Today in the U. S. A., the 2nd Circuit Court ruled that the federal statute defining marriage as between one man and one woman is unlawful, because it denies federal benefits to same-sex couples who are married.

DOMA, as it is not so affectionately known among queer types like me, is the Defense of Marriage Act. It was signed into law back when I was still living in the States, by Bill Clinton. No excuses accepted--Democrat or Republican, it's been a long time since a president didn't overreach and do unconstitutional things with his power.

This particular law is unconstitutional, for reasons that have essentially nothing to do with gays or what you think about gay rights. The Constitution (a document often quoted but less often read--see the Bible) makes it pretty clear that part of being the United States involves each state honoring the other states' contracts.

So, if some kooky, Mitt Romney-governed state like Massachusetts wants to start issuing marriage licenses to any old couple--straight or gay--it's all very well for another state not to do so. Say, Virginia. But that doesn't mean Virginia can insist that people married in Massachusetts aren't really married.

And it certainly doesn't mean the federal government can deny equal benefits to one kind of couple married in one of the states. At least, it didn't mean that, until DOMA came along.

"Defense of marriage" is such an odd name for this law. I mean, I left the country back when Bill Clinton was president, because of the denial of equality by the federal government. And I have been waiting ever since for one man and one woman to tell me how, thanks to DOMA, their marriage was saved. Without all those pesky gay American citizens around, trying to legally live with their partners in their country of birth.

Partners. Spouses. What's in a name?

Not everybody, gay or straight, wants to get married. Same-sex marriage may be the last frontier now, but not so many years ago, in Ontario, a province that passed it even earlier than Romney's state--well, it wasn't so popular there. Not among straights. Among gays.

What are we thinking? asked an Xtra! forum of the time. We don't want marriage. We're different. Queer! Queers are supposed to be different. We are supposed to be out and proud, pro-sex, living lives of activism and protest.

Or not. The other big gay argument has been that we are exactly like "everybody else." We raise kids, do laundry, pay taxes, and are too tired to have sex. Please, just let us get married and live our boring lives in peace.

Of course, both are true, and true even of the same people, at different times. Which brings me to Stove-Top Stuffing.

Do I need to get married? No. Do I think homophobia will end if only we can get married? I'm not holding my breath.

I don't oppose DOMA because it's marriage. We don't have marriage in the United Kingdom either, and some people are pretty upset about it. We have civil partnership, though, and--here's the crucial thing--civil partnership conveys all the same rights, legally, in this country that marriage does.

If through some other institution--call it Stove-Top Stuffing--the U. S. government granted equality to same-sex couples under federal law, then that would be fine. The divorce rate for straight couples could continue to go down, saved by the absence of gays from the sacred institution of marriage. Thousands of binational couples, meanwhile--couples where one partner is a U. S. citizen and the other is a $%*! foreigner--could make a free choice where to live, legally, and maybe even contribute to American society.

But immigration is federal (despite Arizona). So are hundreds of other matters, the equality of which is denied to us: veterans' survivor benefits, Sally Ride's pension, and so on. So it doesn't matter what individual states do, as long as DOMA is on the books. All fifty states could pass same-sex marriage--as if--and that wouldn't change anything at the national level. Which, from outside the nation, is what matters most to me.

It would be better for no state to have "marriage," if the country as a whole had Stove-Top Stuffing.

Paralympians and politicians

I’ve been watching the Paralympic Games in London. They’re finally getting some air time in the U. S. A. this week, and it’s about time. In Atlanta 1996, the athletes’ village was being torn down while the Paralympians were still competing.

From an early age, I was interested in stories about people and read lots of biographies. Three of my favorites were children’s biographies of Louis Braille (who invented the alphabet for fellow blind readers when he was barely a teenager), Helen Keller, and Annie Sullivan, the “miracle worker” who herself struggled with visual impairment all her life.

I remember being horrified at children who told “Helen Keller” jokes, but also, that the main thing that impressed me about Braille, Keller, and Sullivan was not their disability, as hard as that was.

It was the fact that they made a difference, even worked miracles, in the lives of other people.

Helen Keller, once she could reach out through language, was one smart woman (she earned a degree cum laude from Radcliffe College, among other things). So she said a lot of smart things. My favorite quote is “I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

You could take that as referring to what, physically, Keller couldn’t do (see or hear). But I don’t usually think of that. I think it is an instruction about how every one of us should live. We can’t do everything or solve all the problems of the world, but that’s what makes it all the more important that we each do what we can.

Something.

Which brings me to the Paralympics.

Having left the United States and, therefore, heard of the Paralympics for the first time some years ago, I’m sure I thought how great that athletes with disabilities can compete at this level. But I’d rarely *seen* the competition for myself.

London 2012 has changed the way I see.

Of course, these are by far the most successful Paralympic Games in history. The crowds are as big as those for the Olympics (or bigger; fewer seats for VIPs and media, more for the screaming British public). The venues are selling out. Even athletes from first-time countries like Guinea-Bissau, coming in last in their heats, are setting season’s bests in front of the biggest crowds they will ever know.

I find myself watching wheelchair basketball and just thinking "it's basketball"; I no longer think right away what is the disability we are dealing with here. It truly is transforming the way I perceive people, the things their bodies can and can't do. If these Paralympics leave a legacy, that may be the most important one. Hearts and minds, as the Americans say.

When I hear the packed Olympic stadium cheering a blind sprinter and her guide runner, I know that what NBCSN shows to American audiences will make people unafraid of disability, and they will perceive sports in a whole new way.

At the very least, it’s a distraction from the politics of the moment, because it shows us all that is good and inspiring about human effort. People shout for the athletes because they are accomplishing something great, not just to hear their own noise.

There is a family story that my aunt Karen was once having trouble getting her car started. This caused the driver behind her to get stuck, so, he sat in his car and honked the horn.

After a while, still having no success, Aunt Karen got out, went back to the other guy's car, and spoke through the window. "How about this," she said. "You come help get my car started, and I'll sit back here and honk your horn."

Fortunately, he laughed (rather than shooting her).

The Paralympians are the metaphorical car starters of our world. I don't care if your favorite politician is Paul Ryan or Edward Kennedy (neither, not that you asked), most people can barely imagine what these athletes have to overcome. *And then* they go out and fight for gold medals.

What would the world be like if there were fewer horn honkers out there? If instead of just sitting and shouting, we got up and helped fix things?

The bumper sticker says “Honk if you love” so-and-so.

Well, don’t honk if you love the Paralympics. Get up and help start something!