At
our Rotary meeting last week one of the club’s past presidents got up and
volunteered to pay a “happy fine” to provide money for the club’s community
service efforts. What he said (and I’m going from memory here) was:
“My
daughter, who lives in Brooklyn, started going out with a Coast Guard officer,
and one thing led to another and they fell in love, and now they’re engaged.
And I am so grateful that they are living in the state of New York, which
recognizes gay marriage, and can get married.”
The Dog That Didn’t Bark
The
interesting thing about his announcement was the reaction to it, which was,
well, nothing. He got a round of applause, paid his fine, and the meeting
continued with no further notice of a declaration that I can’t imagine having
been made before the club when I joined 23 years ago.
Our
club’s lone clergyman, a Presbyterian minister, wasn’t on hand to react, but I
could make a pretty good guess as to what his reaction would have been. When we
were chatting after a meeting a year ago, the Reverend told me how the scales
had been lifted from his eyes on the question of homosexuality.
He
had been practicing his trade in another town, he said, and was invited to
dinner by two male members of his congregation who were a gay couple. Spending
an evening in their company, he realized they were as committed and happy as
the heterosexual couples he ministered to — perhaps more so. The Reverend would
probably have been one of the first to congratulate our past president after
the meeting.
A Rotary Club’s AIDS Project
More
than two decades ago, the Los Altos Rotary Club, located in our district, which
takes in most of Silicon Valley, launched an ambitious AIDS project. It was one
of the first ever attempted in Rotary, and the story behind it was, again, a
personal one.
One
of the longstanding and much-beloved members of the club, Dude Angius, had learned
that his son, who lived in New York, had AIDS. Feeling powerless over such
devastating news, he made an announcement at a meeting, and the club decided to
get an AIDS project up and running. There was some opposition at first, but
then it turned out that two members of the club — including the man who played
Santa at Christmas parties — were HIV positive.
That
turned the tide, and the club developed an ambitious AIDS project that
eventually became the subject of a highly praised documentary film, “The LosAltos Story,” and a model for similar projects undertaken by other clubs and
organizations.
When the Political Becomes Personal
What
these stories have in common is a story line in which personal knowledge of
someone in a situation changes previously held positions. I truly believe that
prejudice and dogmatism can begin to dissolve when people become aware of the
effect their beliefs might have on someone they know and love. Most, though not
all, people are willing to let personal sentiment and loyalty override an
ingrained belief, and that’s a good and very human response.
I’m
very happy for our past president and for his daughter. How wonderful that she
now has the freedom to follow her heart, a freedom most of us take for granted.
And how wonderful that her family and friends can share in her joy as she does
so. It may run contrary to some concepts of religion, but to me, it’s a
spiritual thing.
