I don’t usually have pictures to go along with my column, but this time it’s the picture that might say more then these words. This picture represents a giant sea change on how far we have come as individuals and how that has changed society.
I was talking with a long time friend the other day, the owner of Knock, a gay bar/restaurant in the Philadelphia’s Gayborhood. His name is Bill Wood and he’s commonly referred to as Woody by us locals. He began to tell me about his high school class’s 55th anniversary reunion, then added, oh, by the way, Elizabeth was there as well. The Elizabeth he was referring to is our mutual friend Elizabeth Coffey Williams, a trans women who lives at the John C, Anderson LGBT friendly senior apartments. Woody then sent me a picture of him and elizabeth posing with a group of their former classmates.
It’s a typical photo of a group celebrating at a High school reunion until you realize that they graduated in 1966 and the classmates are now standing proudly with their fellow classmates who they didn’t know at the time were a gay man and trans women.
Northeast catholic high school for boys, to say the least, was not LGBT friendly in 1966, nor was any high school back then. Neither Woody nor Elizabeth could be out at that time. When I asked Woody if he could be, he said “probably not.” Consider that he was the President of their class. Elizabeth recalled a story about when she grew long hair; when he saw it, the disciplanarian of the school chased her until he cornered her in the cafeteria.
Now, both of them are out and proud of who they are and the part they’ve played in our struggle for acceptance. And in this picture you see them being themselves and their former classmates from 1966 getting to know them as they truly are: a proud Gay business owner and a proud Transwomen and activist. I wonder if they realize how simply being proudly themselves moved the needle on equality?