The Internet reported today that a majority of heterosexual males  now support gay rights, something I have instinctively supported since October, 1960. That is when I first confronted the issue of gay rights and why  I have no choice but to support equality for gays. It is directly related to the civil rights movement in the early sixties.

 First, a prologue. In 1959, I attended  the ABA convention in Miami Florida which had a student component. Being somewhat penurious I traveled by bus. It required a couple of changes. One of them was in the Carolinas. While waiting for the bus I met a black woman at the station and struck-up a conversation with her. She was waiting for a bus back to Brooklyn and trusted me, as an obvious Northerner, with her sentiments. Speaking of her fellow blacks she said: “I can’t stand these people. They put-up with this stuff. I can’t wait to get back to Brooklyn.”

 The following year I was on active duty with the Army attending Tank Platoon Leader training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. We had two room private quarters in a converted barracks befitting our rank as officers, even very junior ones. I had a roommate, I’ll just call “Jim.” He was a Mississippi National Guard officer from Mississippi’s Dixie Division.

 We were young men who shared mutual interests in “girls” and football among other things and we had, at firs, a good natured, bandying about North-South relations, but once he remarked to me: “the trouble with you guys up North is you don’t know how to treat [Ns]. That’s why you’re in trouble."  I demurred, and began to recount my encounter at the bus station in the Carolinas. “Well, I met this black lady…” The word “lady” had barely escaped my mouth when, when he interrupted: “You can’t call her a “lady.” She was a [N]. Only white women are ladies. [N] females are women.” I was not deterred, and continued, “well this black lady said…” He barely heard me out and we changed the subject of the conversation. Later, towards the end of our training period, we shared some  drinks at the Officer’s Club.

 “John,” he said, “I just can’t get used to this.” “What do you by this?”  I asked. “All this luxury,” he said. I looked around. It was a nice cocktail lounge: smoked glass behind the bar with gold spider webs etched into it. There was a piano nearby, painted, as I recall, with gold colored paint. I shrugged. “It’s nice, but not so different from a lot places.”

 But something was eating at him. “Down in Mississippi, there are two kinds of people we can’t stand: Commies and Queers. We don’t let them live.” He must have seen me blanch, for he continued, “I don’t mean we kill him. I mean we drive them out. They can’t get a job or place to live. We drive them out, drive them out.” There came to my mind the vision of a homosexual man, living in an attic somewhere with a linoleum floor. He can’t work, and can’t find a decent place to live. “That’s too bad,”  I said. We changed the subject.

 Jim’s comment to me had laid bare the essence of discrimination: the “other” who threatened the integrity of the tribe.

 In the years that followed, I was a supporter, largely silent, of a homosexual rights that Jim so aptly summarized and the necessity for those rights. Everybody has a right to earn a living and a place to live. At the same time, some of the fiercest struggles erupted over the struggle for civil rights for blacks (not yet identified as “African-Americans.”) In September 1962, I was duty officer for the Fifth Region Air Defense Command the night that James Meredith integrated University of Mississippi. The teletype kept ringing that night as we (and very other command in the US Army) received moment by moment updates of the ensuing riots from Army Intelligence. I couldn’t help but wonder where Jim was.

 In 1964, I was married, practicing law in Syracuse with my wife Rene who in April gave birth to our first child, my daughter Lisa. In meantime, people much braver than I, were trying to register  voters in Mississippi. Three of them disappeared in the vicinity of Greenville. Those “commies” weren’t driven out. Those “commies” were murdered.

 In 1972, I was a candidate for State Senator in New York. I had handily won a Democratic Primary (“McGovern giveth,” afriend noted). I was slated for an indorsement interview with a committee of the Americans for Democratic Action, the “ADA.” Prior to the interview, I was pulled aside by a friend. “You should know that the chairman of the committee is really committed to gay rights.” Sure enough, during the interview, he confronted me. “I note that you didn’t return our questionnaire on gay rights. Why not?”

 “Well,” I replied, “I had no troubling answering the question about equal employment and equal housing, but then I can to a question about supporting the teaching homosexual techniques equally with heterosexual techniques in high school, I decided that I wasn’t going to answer that questionnaire.”

 The committee chair smiled: “You’re right. That was a stupid question.”

 I was endorsed by the ADA (and many others) but lost the general election (“McGovern taketh away,” as my friend noted.) The issue that killed me was abortion. I was a pre-Roe v. Wade Catholic supporter of choice. I was denounced by flyers distributed the Sunday before the election at all the churches in the district. Although I received more votes against my incumbent opponent than  anyone before or since and carried the Bronx part of the Yonkers-Bronx district, I did poorly in the Irish sections of both Bronx and Yonkers. I lost.

 In the years since, as someone who was deeply involved in reform politics in NYC, the words of Jim have come back to me time and time again as I have confronted issues of civil rights for all Americans: every one has a right to live. To my fellow heterosexual males, who have now seen the right, all I can say is: “Welcome aboard.”

 Http://johnklotz.blogspot.com