LOVE ON THE MARCH

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/12/121112fa_fact_ross


Clockwise, from left: Harvey Milk, in 1978; a Mattachine Society ball, in New York in 1967; two active-duty sailors at the San Diego Gay Pride parade, in 2011; ACT UP, in New York in 1990; demonstrators in San Francisco celebrate a court ruling against Proposition 8, the California anti-gay-marriage bill, in 2012.

I. THE CHANGE

The week after Barack Obama was elected President, I attended a music festival at Arizona State University, in Tempe. Because Veterans Day was the following Tuesday, it was a party weekend at the school, and thousands of students swarmed the main strip. The central event of the festival ran long, and around midnight I went with another participant, the writer and filmmaker Paul Festa, in search of somewhere to eat. The only place we could find was a Jack in the Box.

We gave our orders at the drive-through window. A car was idling there, with several college students inside. Moments later, a second car roared the wrong way up the drive-through lane and screeched to a halt. A visibly drunk young man, tall and blond, wearing a standard collegiate uniform of T-shirt over long-sleeved T and jeans, lurched out, shouting, “Some whore called me a faggot!” The cashier handed Paul a strawberry milkshake. Paul and I are both gay; we traded uneasy glances while the guy carried on.

“My parents raised me right,” the blond guy hollered at the students in the second car, who turned out to be his friends. “And I’m proud of who I am.” Paul and I looked at each other again, now in amazement.
A beefy, sour-faced guy wearing a backward baseball cap came around the corner. This, evidently, was the person who had called the blond a faggot. “I’m going to beat you up,” the newcomer shouted. A friend was trailing behind him.


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/12/121112fa_fact_ross#ixzz2BvPOmC90

[William769]

1. Kick & recommended.