Marriage equality is one of those symbolic things that is significant and I certainly believe in that being made available, it is not available at the moment in Australia. Marriage in Australia unlike the United States is governed by the Federal Constitution and is a Federal power. The Federal Legislation not only does not provide for marriage equality, it forbids any recognition of marriage equality by any court or any state legislature in Australia. This was something that we copied from the United States, in the so called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act in 2004. And until the Federal Parliament changes the law we won’t have equality in this country. However, though it is an important symbol, people can get by without being married. Many people nowadays, including younger straight people don’t get married, and in my own case with my partner Johann, we’ve been together for 46 years and it’s getting a little late in the day for our confetti and marriage celebrations. Indeed, we’re not absolutely certain that if marriage were available we would get married. In some ways that is mimicking an institution of straight society and we don’t feel the need for it, personally, but we certainly believe it should be there for those citizens who want it. In the mean time, there’s a lot of other things that need to be addressed in Australia, for example the exceptions from anti-discrimination law, in favor of religious groups, which allows schools with public funds to be established in Australia, or maintained in Australia, by religious organizations, Christian and non-Christian to discriminate against LGTIQ students.

I think the next generation should think of what it can give back to straight society. I do think that on a whole, LBTIQ people have a more realistic attitude towards human sexuality and human expression and experience. And instead of simply going along imitating straight relationships, I think it may be that in the future, young gay people will have lessons to teach straight people. The notion, for example, that you should break up a relationship of many years, simply because somebody has had a sexual experience with another person is something that would strike most gay people as irrational. And therefore, on the whole, young gay people have a more realist attitude. The idea of cheating on somebody, is an idea that has its foundation in ownership, and that isn’t a really stable basis on which to build a life experience.

Time Magazine found that long term living together is good for people’s health. And as you grow older, it’s even better for your health, to have somebody who cares whether you live or die. And the notion of destroying that opportunity on the basis of cheating, is a very old fashioned and rather patriarchal attitude towards sexual relationships. So I think instead of asking what straight society will do for us, I think it’s important for LGBTI, people to think of what they can do for straight society. By example, by research, by thinking, by expression. And that is really picking up President Kennedy’s statement in his inaugural address. “Ask not what America can do for me, but what I can do for America.” Well, LGBTI people should ask not what straight people in the world can do for them, but what they can do for straights.

I was more open about my sexual orientation as I got older. And then HIV AIDS came along and I became involved in both local activities and national activities concerned with the epidemic. I was invited by a very great international civil servant, Jonathan Mann, who was the head of the original global program on AIDS of the World Health Organization, to get involved in the global commission on AIDS, and so increasingly I was engaged in activities for the world wide response to HIV and AIDS. In Australia we did better in this respect than the United States and most other countries. We did that because we had a federal Minister for Health who later turned out to be bisexual, and we had an opposition spokesman on health who was a professor of public health, and therefore just by a chance confluence of these two men, we did better. I got involved in that, that was a kind of code language for my sexual orientation. And most people who were watching understood that. And that was in the 1980s, 1986 and thereafter, but my exact declaration of my sexual orientation came in the 1990s, and at that stage it seemed a natural and proper thing to do.

(To any young person reading the blog) I would say to do what can safely be done to uphold science, to uphold the principles of kindness to one another. And to be honest. It’s a terrible thing in a young person to require them to be dishonest, especially to their parents and to their siblings, and to their immediate family and neighbors and work colleagues. And basically we all know it originates not in some scientific basis, but in the fact that some people get upset if they hear the truth. The truth is that a small proportion of people have a sexual orientation towards a romantic sexual interrelationship with people of the same gender. Well, get over it. It’s important that young people, especially, should try as far as they safely can to be honest and to change the world. Because until now, LGBTIQ people have basically been conspiring in their own disadvantage and second class status by going along with the pretense. The pretense has to finish. When it finishes, we’ll get back to a scientific reality, that this small proportion exists. And we in the world own a great deal to Dr. Kinsey, Alfred Kinsey, of Indiana University in the United States who did the research on sexual orientation in the 1940s and 50s and his publications began the moves to change things and those moves will keep happening until it has been changed throughout the world. Medieval demons in the minds of some religious people, mainly men, will ultimately have to give way to scientific truth.

The biggest challenge I have ever faced for being gay was when the superintendent of schools where I worked tried to fire me on trumped up charges. It was very devastating to see the kind of bigotry expressed to me all hidden behind obvious lies. Fortunately I prevailed because no one was going to destroy my reputation as a top notch educator. My biggest success I think is an on-going story for it is the spiritual journey of coming to know my true self and trying to live life from that center and not from the false self of ego.

The gay community in Cleveland is like that, I think, in my mid-west cities. It is very diverse from those being very out to those being very closeted. I have felt a tremendous support for a great variety of gay organizations over the past 25 years since I came out including, but not limited to: The LGBT Community Services Center, the North Coast Men’s Chorus, the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland, GLSEN Cleveland, inclusive churches of several denominations.

My coming out story is that it took a long time to acknowledge the person I am even though I knew I was different from the time I was 5. After two marriages to women and three children, I could no longer live pretending to be someone I was not. I was having difficulty with my children, with my work, with my wife at the time, and had to do something. After several months of very good therapy, I came out and have been grateful for the support I have had all along the way. Both of my wives and my children (all now adults) have been incredibly supportive.

One challenge I have had, is to fully and completely accept my gayness, Another was to deal with the guilt I felt about leaving my wife of 25 years, she is a wonderful person. I sometimes put myself down for being gay (sounds strange doesn’t it?) Successes are making many new friends, being less concerned about being myself, I was able to leave a toxic marriage.

Through my partner Rich, I have met many friends that are my age, and some younger ones. All of the men I have met are accepting, kind and generous.

I came out when I was 65. I had been living in the closet all my life. It caused me to hold myself back. Coming out finally removed a heavy burden from my back. I no longer had to pretend and hide. There is more to tell. I found love and acceptance that I never thought I could get.