Dear Dan: In a former life, I was a staunch Republican and voted for antigay ballot initiatives. Then, after a bad divorce 18 years ago, I moved to another state and fell in with an artistic crowd. Over the years, I became close friends with people with vastly different life experiences, and I’ve developed an entirely new attitude toward gay rights. My dilemma: When SCOTUS handed down their ruling making marriage a right for all, I congratulated all my non-straight friends on Facebook. One of those friends posted a note thanking me for “always being in [their] corner.” My asshole brother then commented that not only had I not “always” been supportive, in my previous life I campaigned against gay rights.
Several non-straight friends jumped to my defense, stating that it couldn’t be true. I am ashamed of the person I was and have worked hard to be a better person. Is there any point in apologizing?
— Don’t Have A Clever Acronym
DHACA: Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, also wrote the majority opinions in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which declared laws against sodomy to be unconstitutional, and Windsor v. United States (2013), which overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. Kennedy will obviously go down in history as a hero to the gay-rights movement — but his record isn’t perfect.
Anthony Corbett Sullivan, a U.S. citizen, legally married Richard Frank Adams, an Australian citizen, in 1975 in Boulder, Colorado. The men had been issued a marriage license by a county clerk who couldn’t find anything in state law that prevented two men from marrying. Sullivan and Adams applied for a spousal visa for Adams. Here’s the response the couple got — the entire response — on official U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services letterhead: “ You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.”
The couple sued, and Kennedy, then a circuit court judge, heard their case — and he ruled against the “two faggots.” Sullivan and Adams had to leave the country to be together.
Exactly 18 years passed between 1985, when Kennedy signed off on the deportation of Adams, and 2003, when Kennedy wrote his first major gayrights decision.
In Obergefell, Kennedy wrote that “new insights and societal under standings” changed the way many Americans — including a majority of Americans on the Supreme Court — see gay people. The same goes for you: New insights and understandings have changed how you think, feel and vote about gay people. And that’s exactly what the queer-rights movement has been asking of straight people all along: to think, feel and vote differently — and you have done all three. You can and perhaps should apologize to your gay friends for the antigay attitudes you once held — and for antigay votes you once cast — but they should immediately thank you for being the person you are now.
You can be ashamed of the person you once were but proud of the person you are now — unlike Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, four men who are as shameful now as they ever were.
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