The Column That Wasn't. Pride 2004

Note: For the one-year anniversary, I rewrote this piece and called it “One Hill at a Time.” The second version has a bit more of the main character’s (yes, that’s a version of younger me) personal life woven in, and the narrator (yep, a version of me again) is a little less reserved, not so timid about her outrage, let’s say). Not sure which title I think is better.

“Can a man and a man have a baby? No.” Our editor paced. “Can a woman and a woman have a baby? No.” He glanced toward my wall of protest—a rainbow flag, clippings from a recent Pride gathering (still half a decade from official, a few hundred souls rallying at the state capitol), two brides as my screensaver. We were in the middle of a standoff over a column I’d submitted.

It was 2004. I was young in my career, fresh out of college and a journalist for a small-town biweekly paper in rural West Virginia. State law defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and a new statute had banned same-sex unions four years earlier. A federal ruling against bans was a decade out. But San Francisco had seen the first legal same-sex marriage in the United States earlier that year. And our readers had the subject on the brain—as evidenced by a recently published letter to the editor “decrying,” to put it politely, the possibility of a change in the Mountain State.

At the Pride rally at the state capitol, a combination of joy, fringed daisy dukes, and nascent courage, I’d found myself taking the kind of breaths that make you realize you’ve been living too long on shallow sips. This place, its velvet lakes to slip into naked under moonlight, careful of sleeping snapping turtles; its hills like misty blue seers; its old-growth forests thick with ancient hemlock, black cherry, and music picked on banjos for going on three centuries, had magic. And in my time here, I’d come to love its people. Still, there was a clinging to tradition, an acceptance of the jagged scars it carved as inevitable, even sacred, that tightened around me so I had to stop myself from bolting.

My world as I knew it, my staying here and my marriage, was a jenga tower, tottering. As for the marriage part, yes my husband and I had both pulled out blocks willy-nilly, threatening the stability of our structure. But so had that fearsome grip of tradition.

The relief I’d experienced at the rally was nothing compared to that I felt with my editors’ tacit “permission” (raised-brow disbelief) when I’d announced support of marriage equality would be the next topic for the opinion column I’d been granted. I researched the history of marriage; tallied rights afforded married couples; located an employee of the rolling mill that was the backbone of the local economy who, despite decades of labor, couldn’t offer her beloved partner the same benefits male counterparts could theirs—all of it like sucking long gulps of sweet air into my lungs. To say nothing of my hopes for closeted friends and the people who loved them without truly knowing them. If my work could make a difference, maybe the tower of my life could hold.

I’d told my editors on my way out one evening that I'd submitted my column for their approval, suggesting they read it right away and give themselves space overnight to consider. Not entirely naïve (just mostly), I was nervous.

But I’d rewritten it so many times I’d lost count. And I’d held in my heart the people here. I’d thought of the volunteer firefighters who’d tried to give me a scanner so I could keep up with them “gettin’ ’er done” and wore “good old boy” like a blazing emblem. I’d held close my poker buddies, who could put away cans of Bud as fast as they traded wins or losses and would bury a body with you or wail when someone who had a piece of your heart was put in the ground. I’d pictured the city council members, mostly old men whose forefathers had known this land since honey first flowed from its rocks, who’d welcomed me into their offices or homes even when I was teasing threads they didn’t necessarily want pulled. I’d written to all of them—not to shame but to suggest, face-to-face. To tell it like my heart saw it.

Later, toasting with a friend who’d come out to hardly anyone but me, I’d let nightfall cloak the fear and hope in his eyes as we debated what the morning might bring.

The next day, my editors looked like I’d asked them to consider a burning horse, not a column. Still, it was a go—for that Thursday’s print run. Or it was for a day anyway.

I should have seen my editors’ initial willingness for what it was—a vote of support the likes of which I’d never had. But instead, when the publisher pulled rank, saying the column would never be printed, and my editors followed suit with obvious relief, I was incensed. My heart was raw with what felt like my own impotence. People were living with a visceral pain—living in fear, not just of not being afforded rights, but also of losing jobs, friends, love, even life if an integral part of them was known. And I couldn’t even speak to it, my voice all I had. I gave a deadline for them to change their minds and taped my rainbow flag above my desk.

“Our advertisers will pull. Our readers will cancel subscriptions.” Give people more credit, I argued. “The haters will eat you alive.” Let ’em try. “There are no gay people in this county.” I spluttered, willing neither to dignify that nor break confidences. “This is not Holly’s platform to build her career.” That one stung.

When it became clear their no wasn’t budging, I rode backseat, my friend shotgun, together slamming the better part of a six-pack while his boyfriend wound the car through country roads, Rage Against the Machine blaring from the speakers. Then I smashed that tower to the ground and went at the blocks with a blowtorch. First up, an embarrassingly long, fiery, and visceral letter of resignation. (Divorce and a cross-country move followed shortly.)

A decade later, on October 9, 2014, West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin ordered state agencies to comply with federal court decisions on the unconstitutionality of marriage bans. That year, 310 same-sex couples were married in the state, followed by 490 the next. I have no idea if the woman from the mill was among them. But I do know, from social media, a friend from back then and her wife are raising a bright-eyed girl, a trio of devotion so clear it’s a joy to witness.

I want to be clear. I don’t include here the words of my editor to bash him. I appreciated that lanky man whose dark eyes softened easily. He’d had my back, notably when a sheriff’s deputy had tried to back off words he’d put on the record (once that record, now in print, caused a ruckus) and on another piece when I’d raised the question of a black man getting a fair trial in our county. Not to mention his initial yes to the column.

So, my heart broke a little when I heard what he’d said as he paced—and partly for him. He was missing a truth, a block that mattered to him: If that loyal, oft-reticent man considered the question of marriage equality in light of it applying to someone he cared for, rather than a faceless hypothetical, he wouldn’t give two shits who could or couldn’t produce offspring. If he, who’d dedicated his life to uncovering truth and championing justice, could shake the fear that changing what felt like had always been “the natural way” would topple something important, he’d see it was his own tower, when it came to values and the people who mattered to him, that was tottering.

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As I write this today, 19 years on, I consider how we’re becoming more aware of the many other ways people are fighting to live their lives authentically to who they are inside—to be free to represent that on the outside without fear. I consider the people I hold dear for whom that means gender expression many see as “nontraditional.” I think of awful times when that old fearsome grip of tradition has threatened to stifle the bright flame of their hearts.

I think of the people who would tend those hearts if they knew them—would see things differently if they envisioned someone they cared for, not just a faceless hypothetical being quietly gutted by tradition. And I feel weary, my heart raw.

The hasty legislation being sought and set today puts me in mind of the 2000 West Virginia statute and others banning same-sex unions—still on the books today, only trumped by the 2014/15 federal ruling requiring states to issue same-sex marriage licenses despite the bans.

Still, I do believe humanity will win out over fear.