Well, we’ve certainly had some interesting things happen in the country recently, haven’t we? The ruling by the Supreme Court on gay marriages certainly took most people by surprise, even, I suspect, many of those who actively lobbied for it.
The first thought that came into my mind when I heard the news was that I wished my younger brother, Jim, could have been alive to see it. Not that I think he would have taken advantage of the opportunities involved, but simply because he could have had the option to do so if he chose to.
He told me in his later years that he was no longer active as a homosexual, but rather that he considered himself to be asexual, or totally inactive sexually. He had seen too many of his friends die unpleasantly from contracting AIDS.
And, technically, at the time, he was married to a long-time friend named Andrea. I officiated at the ceremony at his cabin on the very edge of the Sequoia National Forest, but I suspect that marriage was more for appearances than anything else. He had obtained the ownership of a small weekly newspaper, and it was more practical in the small town of Springville to appear married than gay.
I’m going to digress here. Jim, Andrea and her then-husband, Richard, had been followers of a man named Werner Erhard, who founded a philosophical organization known as EST. Through the intensive mental procedures involved in membership Richard decided (or discovered) that he was gay, split with Andrea and formed a relationship with actor Rock Hudson’s personal assistant.
Hudson had given that employee one of his sports cars, and Richard and he were riding in it when it was involved in an accident that left Richard a paralyzed quadriplegic. Ownership of the car had yet to be transferred, and Richard eventually received a settlement in the neighborhood of $7 million from Hudson. For what it’s worth, all of this is merely an explanation of how I learned of Rock Hudson’s lifestyle before the rest of the nation found out through the tabloids.
Jim and Andrea remained together for several years after their marriage, but were not together at his death. End of digression.
New topic: It’s long been my practice to switch channels whenever I see some politician giving any kind of a speech, on any kind of a topic, but when I turned my TV to catch the noon news on a certain day last week, I was mesmerized by President Barack Obama’s address at the tribute to the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.
There will be those who downplay that riveting speech, not because of what was said, but merely because of who said it. When I think back to all the speeches I’ve heard in my lifetime, I can only say that Obama is the first president since, maybe, Harry Truman, who actually went on record as saying exactly what he felt about anything, instead of trying to please as many people as possible by telling them what he thought they wanted to hear.
I’ll concede that breaking out into song may not have been a spur of the moment emotional response to the reason for the gathering that day, but it certainly worked. Oh, yes, as near as I can recall, let me add one other president who had the guts to say what he was actually thinking. That was when President Jimmy Carter chided the American people for wanting too much, too quickly. True as it was, that speech won the Presidential Lead Balloon Award of the century.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
