It’s
a new year — that’s kicking off with reminders of an old,
old habit.
Living so deep in the closet that you have hangers for earrings is a time-honored
way of getting through life. Hiding homo-ness has often been a wise, necessary
move. Still is, sometimes.
But hiding out has never been free of cost. Occasionally it costs more
than a Lexus, a world cruise, and several rounds of Botox combined.
Phyllis Gates paid a price, and she wasn’t even gay. Gates, who died
on Jan. 4 at 80 years old, was Rock Hudson’s human shield, otherwise
known as his wife. In 1955, as rumors about Rock being a man’s man
grew, she married him.
“I was very much in love,” she insisted to Sara Davidson, Hudson’s
biographer. “I thought he would be a wonderful husband. He was charming,
his career was red-hot, he was gorgeous. How many women would have said
no?”
I must agree. The man was so gorgeous, I don’t think a ladybug would’ve
said no.
If Gates did marry Hudson for love, rather than to be his beard, what a
tremendous crash to earth she endured. She put an end to the sham marriage
in 1958 and never remarried.
She was The Accidental Victim. Not a lesbian herself, but hopelessly tethered
to one. Hudson had to hide to have a career, and she, as befits the ’50s,
was just a hula hoop — wobbling along on his hip to prove he could
do it.
The price people around you pay when your unlisted address is the closet
must be on the mind of the Rev. Lonnie Latham these days. The day before
Gates died, coincidentally, Latham was arrested in Oklahoma City for suggesting
to an undercover male cop that they go get frisky together. Now Latham
is experiencing the number one fear of those in the closet: getting drop-kicked
out of it.
In his case, he landed smack in the media spotlight, for ol’ Lonnie
was the senior pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church, on the board of directors
of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and a member of the executive
committee of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The good reverend had
spoken out against gay marriage and supported a SBC directive that members
make friends with gays and lesbians to induce them to “accept Jesus
Christ as their savior and reject their sinful, destructive lifestyle.”
In other words, Latham has been throwing stones and now he himself has
a beauty of a shiner.
He says he’s innocent, that he was “set up,” but not
many seem to be buying that. He’s resigned from those three official
positions — all because of his apparent interest in positions of
a different sort.
Soulforce, the group trying to persuade organized religions to stop vilifying
LGBT people, put out a press release on Latham’s arrest. “The
false anti-gay teachings of the Southern Baptist Convention have claimed
yet another victim,” said one official and other statements similarly
laid blame at the SBC altar while being sympathetic to Latham.
Whew, good thing I’m not required to take such a high-minded approach.
I appreciate that Latham has likely been suffering a long time and that
his family is in pain. But the man has been a colonel in the campaign against
us, so I prefer to point, yell “Hypocrite!” and resign myself
to the fact that I won’t be on Soulforce’s Christmas card list.
Phyllis Gates got stuck in Rock Hudson’s closet and Lonnie Latham
has been blasted out of his. For such small spaces, closets sure can pack
a lot of danger per square inch.
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