Okay, this is another long one, guys, so beware... Hope it keeps your interest.
I wrote the following in May of 1981. Since Dunner has asked for some more historical perspective from me and, since Dunner is a twenty-four year old youngun, it is, perhaps, at least a curiosity, that I wrote the following probably in the year of Dunner’s birth. (God I’m getting old!)
Also, it’s important that you know who George C. Wallace was before you read this piece.
George C. Wallace was the governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1967 who, during that time, physically blocked the door of the University of Alabama to black students in 1963. Wallace ran for President in 1968 on the American Independent Party platform and garnered almost fourteen percent of the vote. He ran on an anti-desegregation, law and order platform.
In his youth, Wallace had been an amateur boxer.
He was reelected governor of Alabama again in 1970 and, in 1972 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in Maryland, was shot by Arthur Bremer and was, thereafter, paralyzed.
Wallace did, eventually, recant his 1963 declaration of, “"Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" and spent his last term as governor by championing black voting rights and, in fact, appointing many blacks to state offices.
Upon that attempted assassination, I wrote the poem that ends this post.
Then and Now: Lack of Real Commitment
(Published May 29, 1981, in Out Front magazine under the pseudonym Michael George.)
I didn’t go to the Moral Majority rally on the steps of our State Capitol last month. I wanted to go. I tried to go. I drove around the block three times searching in vain for a parking place. But, alas, the requisites of my employment dictate that lunch hours be only so long; that come hell or high water or Jerry Falwell, my desk must be occupied one hour after I leave it for lunch.
I remember another rally on the steps of the Capitol. It was in the fall of 1968 when our Country was afire with the intense emotion of cause after cause after cause. The war was on then and the despicable pure evil of the deaths of young men was communicated, vividly, constantly, day after day, on the screens of our color TVs. Civil Rights was the code word then and the justification for Black Americans to march in the streets and demand and demand and burn, baby, burn, and it was a noble cause with ignoble elements. There were hippies in love and high, with flowers in their hair and turned off to everything except the quagmire of their sweet nirvana which was induced with pills and weed and the oh so comforting words of one guru or another sitting cross-legged in white robes on soft pillows … while young men spilled their lives in blood-red hues amongst the mud and filth of the endless war ten-thousand miles away. Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Hell no, we won’t go! Dump the Hump! Dump the Hump! Yes, and into it all, upon the steps of our Capitol on that October day in ’68, strode the feisty, ex-boxer from Alabama, Governor George C. Wallace.
The crowd at the Capitol that day in ’68 was split, half and half, between those for and those against Wallace’s down-home, red-neck philosophy. And, as Wallace peeked over the top of his bullet-proof lectern, the crowd clapped and hollered and jeered in response to his credo of win the war, shear the hippies, and curb the excesses of those wild-eyed Negroes burning down the great cities of America. It was a loud and exciting rally. And, it was a loud and exciting time in our history when Americans believed in something; when Americans dared to take to the streets and holler and scream and sing together with their bodies close to one another as comrades facing the impenetrable leviathan of the enemy which was powerful and official and no less than the United States Government itself. Oh, those were not paltry times and the causes espoused were not paltry causes. There was something to believe in then. There was something to hold on to then and it was called truth and it was the truth of a good and decent cause.
With the memory of the Wallace appearance in my mind, I watched the television coverage of the presence of Jerry Falwell and his clean-cut minions preaching and singing to the “…crowd of thousands…,” as one commentator described it. I saw the ever present smug countenance of Falwell’s face and the sweet, toothy smiles of his fair-haired followers clothed in the purest of white. I saw Sam Zachem – State Senator extraordinaire – touch Falwell’s flesh as if Christ incarnate were before him. I saw Carol Lease, appearing for all the world as a proud lesbian, explaining why Falwell’s presence was offensive. And, I saw a few signs and a few brothers and sisters and I heard a few moans and groans and then … it was over.
Since the ’79 Gay/Lesbian March on Washington, I have hoped that, somehow, each of us would realize that we have a cause to pursue; that we have something to believe in; that we can bring back some of the emotion and camaraderie and, yes, even some of the fight of the late Sixties and early Seventies. I have hoped that we could become visible en masse, and audible en masse, and effective en masse. But, our condition lacks the passion of real, total commitment.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote in Either/Or, “Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. …Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants through all generations, they sin.”
Where is our passion? Where is our commitment? I suspect our passion and commitment lies elsewhere than ideological pursuits.
Yes, I suspect my friend, Carl, hit in on the head the other night when he said, “Listen,” while sucking on a Camel and rhythmically tapping his can of Coors on the bar as Dolly Parton belted out, There you go again… “If faggots ever get to the point where society accepts them without question, it won’t be fun anymore to be a faggot. It’s like an underground society of conspirators … sorta like outlaws … living on the fringe of danger all the time. You know what I mean, Michael?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, Carl,” I said, as I watched him finish off his seventh beer – I had been counting – and then he stuck his tongue out and picked a couple errant bits of tobacco off the tip; he wiped the recalcitrant brown specks on his black, leather chaps. “But, Carl, what about equal rights and housing and jobs and parenting and all the stuff gay rights stands for? What about that, Carl?”
“Hell… Fuck ‘em! Fuck them do-gooders. I don’t wanna be made normal. I don’t wanna be accepted by them fuckin’ straights. I’m having too much fun the way it is now. Fuck ‘em… Fuck ‘em all!,” he said, slurring his words slightly as he struck a match and attempted to maneuver it towards the end of his half-smoked Camel which had fizzled out twenty minutes ago. He ordered two more beers, handed me one and stumble away from the bar and into the crowd where he sided up to one of his black-leathered buddies, grabbed the guy’s ass, and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on the guy’s mouth.
Yes, I suspect my friend Carl echoes the sentiments of many of us – we are committed to our passions rather than our passions moving us to commitment. And, I suppose it is difficult to get fired up about fighting for the rights of men to love other men when you or I or any of us are loving men, passionately, every day and night of the week. The dynamics of the Gay Rights Movement are certainly curious. Invade our bars and, brother you’ve got a fight on your hands. But, kill us off, one by one; destroy whatever sense of dignity and worth we may have; classify us as no different from murderers or rapists or child molesters; degrade us in ten-thousand different ways and there is barely an audible squeak from a few brave gay souls. It becomes clear then: the enemy he is ourselves, not Jerry Fallwell.
Falwell will pass, in time, as George Wallace did. But, Wallace will be remembered for a very long time. Wallace was at least a human being, mirroring the passions of the Old Testament and Shakespeare and having that rare quality of being able to draw those same passions from the breasts of many of us. No matter what we thought of Wallace and his ideas, we will remember him. Falwell, on the other hand, is, for me, as ho hum a banality as cold cream of wheat. The man is plastic and cold and smug and self-righteous and yes, he is incapable of arousing the greatest mass of gay brothers and lesbian sisters into action. To arouse the greatest mass of us all into action will take a better man than Falwell; will take a more passionate cause than equal housing or gay parenting; will take, probably, forever … as our sweet, suffering gay/lesbian predecessors turn, once more, in their graves, cursing their descendents throughout all generations, waiting for the good fight to be fought … someday … someday …
On The Attempted Assassination of George C. Wallace
When they shot the little boxer
down
and all those red necks
reddened
And when
some bad-assed singer of the blues
(Not so much blue as black)
Sang a slow, boozy, draggin’ song
“Fo tha lil crackah who got hisseff plugged…”
Then
my dear
you and I began to understand
the nature
of
divine
justice
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