“Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.” ~ Nelson Mandela
Huzzah! Talk about milestones. In addition to this being our fabulous National Coming Out Day issue, it’s the 1,000th Family Portraits column I’ve written for PGN. Over the past 19 years, I’ve been writing this column almost weekly. I thought I’d take a moment to share some highlights and favorite moments and explain how the column came about. Some of this has been covered in previous columns, but here’s a refresher in case you don’t know.
If you noticed, I called it Family Portraits, which is how I originally proposed it. My idea was to reference “family” as in, “Uh huh, you know he’s family.” My initial concept was to feature a picture of each interviewee in an ornate frame, but that idea never made it to print.
The initial column was about a quarter of a page and consisted of a short description of the person, about two questions related to their subject, event, or job, and maybe three random questions. Don’t ask me how I’ve managed to stretch it into the two-page profile it’s become, but I’m sure it has a lot to do with the wonderful responses many of you have shared with the paper and expressed to me. I thank all of you who have honored me by sharing your stories, and those I’ve met out and about who tell me about a favorite Portrait or how much you enjoy reading about the people in our community.
So how did it start? Many of you remember the late, great, effervescent Donald Carter. Donald was a dapper man with salt-and-pepper hair who attended just about every function in the city. He was a Black Republican, which he’d say was because someone had to do it. He was so much fun and so amiable that I couldn’t hold it against him. I wonder what he’d do today, though I have a sneaking feeling he’d still be fighting from the inside.
Anyway, I think it was at the queer film festival, then called PIGLFF (Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival), when it all started. I was standing with a group of people talking to Donald and a few others. As Mr. Carter walked away, my girlfriend at the time, Vicki, said, “He’s such an interesting guy. We see him everywhere. What does he do?” I scratched my head and replied that I didn’t know. She asked how long I’d known him, and I sheepishly told her about 12 years.
To take some of the heat off me, I asked the others in the group if they knew. Sadly, they didn’t either, and as I looked around, I realized I didn’t actually know much about some of the people in the group whom I’d casually socialized with for years. I thought, “What a shame.” We see people regularly at LGBTQ+ functions, and it’s “kiss, kiss, nice shoes, where’s the line for the bar,” and other superfluous conversation. It would be nice to learn more about them.
So, I decided there was a need for a vehicle that allowed us to get to know the people we see out and about—in our stores, behind the bars, and fighting for our causes. I put in a call to our family friend, Mark Segal, and thus Family Portrait was born.
My first column in 2005 wasn’t a profile of Donald—it took almost a year to get him to sit still for an interview. My first Portrait was filmmaker and editor Brian Gannon. Brian and I are still friends all these years later. One of the joys of writing this column is the many extraordinary people I’ve met along the way. I’ve had the chance to have some incredible experiences and have become friends with quite a number of people I’ve profiled.
I’ve interviewed celebrities and people from all different areas of our community. I like to introduce you to individuals who often go unnoticed and to discover something new about people we’re more familiar with. Frequently, I’ll uncover a little tidbit, and the person’s partner will exclaim, “I didn’t even know that!” I live for those moments.
It can be a little awkward when I channel Barbara Walters and ask questions like, “What question would you ask your dog?” or “Would you rather be a zombie, vampire, or ghost?” to celebrities or some of the more serious people I interview. I remember Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls trying to answer one of my silly questions about a favorite movie line. I teased her, “I’m stumping Amy Ray!” She responded, “You really are, but I love this!” Fortunately, like Amy, most are willing to play along.
Something you may or may not have noticed: often the interview goes a little longer than planned, and I can’t fit it all into the print version. Luckily, our accommodating editor, Jeremy, allows me to publish a longer version online.
On occasion, I’ve had people say, “I really wish you’d asked a follow-up question…” or “Sometimes you make the questions so short!” The truth is, most of the time I do ask follow-up questions, but that doesn’t always mean I’ll get an answer, or perhaps I receive an answer that’s way too long to include. Often, the questions have to be trimmed as well, so the question I ask someone—“What is it that you do, when did you start, and what does it entail?”—gets cut down to “Work?” I’d rather leave more room for their answers than my questions.
To commemorate National Coming Out Day, I thought I’d share a few blurbs. Over the years, I’ve heard a myriad of coming-out stories—some tragic, some funny, and happily, more positive experiences than you would think. I’ve had people use this column to come out to family members and others use it as a way to thank the people who supported them. I’ve shared this first one a few times, but it still makes me giggle.
Trans activist and baker extraordinaire Nima Etemadi talked about coming out to his parents in stages.
“There were all different levels of rebellion at first,” Etamadi said. “Like, “I’m never going to get married” [laughs], then it was like, ‘OK, I’m never getting married to a guy …’ then it was, ‘I AM a guy.’ I was really lucky that they were very liberal and open-minded, especially being from a Middle- Eastern background. They were very much of the mindset that their children’s health and happiness was of primary importance. So as much as I’m sure certain parts were confusing for them, they’ve done their best to adapt to it. So yeah, they’ve been really great. There were some family members who they were nervous about telling, like my grandmother, and she turned out to be the easiest to tell. She was like, ‘OK, great! I have another grandson!’”
“I transitioned while I was [at work] and they were really wonderful about it too,” he said. “To acclimate them, I sent around an email to everybody saying, ‘Look, I’m going to be the same person you know … just hairier.’”
Entertainment agent Linda Lewis discussed coming out to her mother at age 20.
“Having raised us for a time as a single mother, she thought at first that it was her fault, but I told her that she raised my sister Karen just the same and she wasn’t gay, so it had nothing to do with her. It was really sweet. She decided to go to the library and learn all she could about it. She went to one of the PFLAG meetings and asked me to go. She said, ‘You’re coming out, but I am too, as a mother of a gay child. I want to learn all I can so I can help you and be supportive.’ At the time, I thought I was too cool for PFLAG, but my friends ganged up on me and said, ‘If your mother is that cool that she wants to do this, you’d better take your uncool self and go with her.’ So I did.”
Writer and producer Chaz Bono [and son of Cher] first realized he was attracted to women at age 13 but it took him “a number of years to really figure things out.”
“My first career was as a musician,” Bono said. “I had a band that was signed to a record label and I was outed in the tabloids as being gay. My partner, who was in the band, and I were under a lot of pressure to stay in the closet and act in a ‘feminine’ manner, I guess to make us attractive to male fans. Luckily for me, only my family and a few friends ever bought the album, so I didn’t have to suffer through a long career.”
A more difficult coming out came from David Christopher Keener, who was one of the nearly 13,000 military soldiers drummed out of service during “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” When he came out to his mother, she gave him a hug and said “We’ll get through this.” However, the military did not treat him with the same amount of love. Despite being awarded a medal for a daring search-and-rescue mission, Keener was outed and discharged.
“There was a court-martial [case] regarding an incident,” he said. “Within the court-martial, I had to defend myself and, in doing that, I had to reveal that I was gay. The case was not regarding me being gay, but it came up when I was under oath. I’ve never lied, period, about being gay, even in the military: I would just tell someone that it wasn’t relevant or their business, but I never lied…I told the truth and as a result got screwed.”
Music master Shayne Frederick’s coming out came courtesy of applying for a job at this very publication.
“I remember I was thinking about going into writing and I’d written a letter to some potential employers, one of them being the PGN,” Frederick said. “I showed him the letter to get his feedback. He looked at the letter addressed to Philadelphia Gay News and said, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting. OK, the letter looks good, son.’ It was one of those moments where nothing was said and everything was said in one moment.”
A reverse coming-out story was from Ellen Braun of Chumley’s, the lone queer bar in State College, PA. We’d had a great talk about gay culture and the many people she’d met over the many years she’d bartended there, when I asked about coming out.
“I’m actually straight! I think I probably appear to be a lesbian; in fact, when I first applied for a job with the company that owns the complex, the HR director looked at me with my short hair and dress with no makeup and said, ‘I think I have just the place for you,’” Braun said. “I came down and talked to my future boss and he said, ‘Have you ever been in a gay bar before?’ I said no and he said, ‘Well, come in on a busy Saturday night and see how you feel.’ I came in and saw a million people I knew and thought, ‘This is going to be fine.’ Twenty-two years later and most people still think I’m a lesbian. I’m totally comfortable with that.”
Philadelphia activist and icon Gloria Casarez recalled being 17 and having never really dated before.
“I remember friends in high school having their hearts broken by guys and thinking how silly they were, that I would never be caught crying at my locker over someone,” she said. “And then I had my heart broken by a girl and there I was in school thinking, ‘Oh my God, I just want to stand at my locker and cry!’ but by that time, I was in college and we didn’t have lockers!”
Student Jeff Antsen’s story may not have started off well but it did work out in the end.
“I went from having no idea what was going on with me to coming completely out, which was amazingly liberating,” Antsen said. “My mother didn’t take it too well. Right after I told her, she got on the phone with her sister and was sobbing hysterically. I thought, ‘Gee, couldn’t you at least have called from the other room?’ I wasn’t torn up about it, though. I got on the phone with a friend and was joking, ‘No, she’s having an awesome reaction!’ But it all worked out.”
In contrast, comedienne Tammy Peay’s coming out to her father when she was about 14 was simple.
“My aunt always had these turbulent relationships with men and I told my dad, ‘I’m never going to go through that. I’m going to live with a woman, and we’re going to pay our bills on time and we’ll have a nice car and a nice house,’” Peay said. “He looked at me and said, ‘Whatever floats your boat.’ And that was it, he never said anything negative about it.”
These are just a few random samples I pulled out. I could add hundreds of other moving and memorable moments here but you’ll just have to look at the archives and read them yourself.
By the way, what did Donald do outside of being a dashing man about town? After receiving a master’s in ancient Roman history at the University of Cincinnati (he said the Saturday-morning gladiator movies with the men in skirts, bulging biceps, and lots of leather got him interested in mythology), he taught there for several years before retiring and becoming an activist and lecturer. He was once a “Jeopardy!” contestant and said being on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” was a high point, as he got to represent Philadelphia on a national platform.
I miss Donald and so many others I had the privilege to talk with and honor—people like Gloria Casarez, Dante Austin, Desiree Hines, Michael Hinson and several others we have lost. In many cases, I was the only or last interview they’d done.
In February, I will be commemorating the 20th anniversary of the column. Stay tuned for more memories and a special celebration!