Commentary: An elegy for John, who taught me about love

Published 1:30 am Sunday, January 13, 2019

By Beverly Hoback

For The Herald

I’m writing this for you, John. The anniversary of your death hit me hard. The legacy of your friendship — your unceasing kindness and humor — lives in my heart.

Frequently, when I hear people condemn homosexuality as a “lifestyle choice,” I think that your legacy could have had a broader reach, opening hearts and minds when people hear about your brief and beautiful life.

It must be hard for young people to understand the naivete with which you and I grew up. These days you can’t sing, “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” with kindergartners without getting snickers at the lyrics that talk of “things to make your Easter bright and gay.” But in the 1950s and ’60s, few gay men and lesbians were out of the closet, and the media guarded children from awareness of those who were. I had no concept that there was such a thing as physical attraction to the same sex.

Coming from a devoutly Catholic family and attending Catholic schools from elementary through high school, people like you and me just assumed that one day they’d meet someone of the opposite sex, fall in love, marry and have children. That was what people did.

For me, that was the natural order of things. But life was different for you, as you would tell me later. First in junior high, then in high school you kept wondering when the attraction to girls was going to kick in. But it never happened, not in junior high, not in high school. You were confused. You didn’t understand why you felt all tingly and shy when another boy stopped to talk with you at your locker, or why you couldn’t stop staring at the handsome fellow in biology class.

This remained a mystery until you took a college psychology class. There in your textbook was a word you’d never heard before: homosexuality. And when you read the definition, it hit you: “That’s who I am.” You were rocked to your core. You were, to be honest, horrified.

This was not at all how you had grown up imagining your life. You were very much a devout Catholic and had not rejected your religion, your family or your values. But you couldn’t imagine being physically intimate with a woman, had never had the slightest romantic crush on a female, and couldn’t deny that you were attracted to men.

What you did was keep this to yourself.

You didn’t start getting involved with men until you were 35. Until then you couldn’t figure out how to be true to yourself and fit into the only world you’d ever known.

But subjugating yourself brought incredible loneliness and depression. You had many friends of both sexes who loved you and gave you companionship. But no one knew who you really were. You, like most people, longed for a soul mate to spend your life with.

Eventually, you accepted that a life of solitude was not working for you, and you began to date men, to seek a permanent relationship. You found that person. You had a long courtship and didn’t move in together until you were sure things were going to last. You filed first for domestic partnership status, and when same sex marriage was made legal, you were married.

Yours was a monogamous relationship, and in marriage you found a peace deeper than anything you’d ever experienced.

Tragically, the bipolar disorder that tormented your mother throughout her life was in you genes, too, and when medications and hospitalizations no longer worked, you took your own life.

So, here I am missing you.

Those who condemn homosexuality as a deviant lifestyle need to know that at your memorial service, person after person stood and talked about your generosity, your love for family and friends, your humility, kindness and humor.

I know because of you that homosexuality is not a lifestyle, not a choice. Nor is it “curable,” as I was led to believe for many years, by — of all people — folks I personally knew who talked about being gay until they had a conversion experience. They claimed they were no longer homosexuals and were happier because of it. But over the years, I observed the lives of most of those friends and saw they didn’t have romantic relationships with anyone. Others were simply perpetually single.

Some organizations built around conversion therapy have shown themselves as troubled when their founders and other leaders could not keep up the lie they were not straight.

What became clear to me was that because someone says they’re no longer homosexual, it doesn’t mean they stop being gay.

I know that my hetero orientation is innate, not something I chose. And I find it incredibly cruel for straight people — who have always had the option of marriage and parenthood — to tell gay men and lesbians that their orientation was fine as long as they didn’t act on it.

I know this because I knew you, John, and saw your happiness when you accepted who your were with all that meant concerning your family, your faith and your friends.

Rest in peace, John. I firmly believe that keeping our minds open as we actively seek truth is the key to getting along in this difficult world. Than you for teaching me so much. My life is richer because of your.

Beverly Hoback lives in Arlington.