What My Brother's Life Taught Me About Pride and Solidarity

June 4, 2023 • 1st Sunday after Pentecost • Trinity Sunday
Readings: Quotes by Solange Nicole, Desmond Tutu, and Gary Wells
Rev. Jeff Wells

[You can view the full worship video recording at: https://youtu.be/RwnEVxZqk-c]

Welcome to Pride Month at the Church of the Village. Today, we begin a month of Sundays focused on Pride, communal love and care, Queer liberation, and how God inspires us in all of that. Today, we are focusing on what Pride and solidarity mean for us – individually and as  chosen family and community.

I am using my own experience of growing up with, loving, and learning from my brother, Gary Wells. So, let me introduce you to my Gary. 

Let me introduce you to my brother. He was born, as I was, in the small town of Sparta, in west-central Wisconsin, on November 11, 1959. He was a fun-loving, creative, and adventurous kid. When he was 3 years old, he rode his tricycle, all by himself, a mile away to the Dairy Queen. Of course, he didn’t have any money, but they gave him a little ice cream cone anyway. He didn’t know the address but, thankfully, he knew he lived on North Street, and the police managed to get him safely home.

When Gary was 5 and I was 7 years old, our family moved to La Crosse, a small city of 50,000 on the Mississippi River. From early on, Gary started to express his gifts and passions. Unlike me, he stuck with the piano lessons my parents arranged. He also learned to knit and weave. He mastered baton twirling. And he studied ballet. As far as I know, my parents never tried to discourage any of these pursuits. But, as you can imagine, they elicited a lot of snickers, name-calling, and bullying from some other boys in the neighborhood and at school. So, there were many times when I found myself defending him in his presence or when he wasn’t around and some kid would think that I would somehow be sympathetic to their meanness. I remember a particular incident when I pushed a neighbor boy much larger me and told him to get out of our yard when he called Gary a “faggot.” The most traumatic experience for me was when my best friend since the third grade called Gary the “F” word and I refused to have any contact with him for six months. When I finally talked with him about how angry I was, he apologized and agreed it was wrong. We have been friends ever since. 

I wasn’t some natural born LGBT ally or superhero. At that time, I wasn’t consciously defending him because he was Gay – I don’t think either Gary or I were aware of that fact at the time. I stood up for him because the things being said or done to him were mean and unfair and he was my brother. 

Gary and I were only two years apart, so we overlapped for a couple years in high school. There were no “out” Gay kids in our high school. I only found out about some of them much later, either when I heard they died of AIDS or because Gary told me, since he knew who at least some of the closeted kids were. Much later, he told me that he and another boy he liked, would sometimes go on double dates with two girls and then ditch the girls and go off and make-out with each other.

Gary really thrived in that period of his life. He was active in the theatrical productions not just in school, but at the local Community Theater and in a program for gifted kids at a local college. We were both in some of those productions, but while I had bit parts, Gary often had starring roles, like Prince Chulalongkorn in “The King and I.” 

So, it wasn’t surprising that he dropped out of college after one year and headed to New York City in 1979 to try to break into Broadway as a singer, dancer, and actor. He achieved some success for a few years off-Broadway and in Broadway traveling shows. Being the creative and resilient young man he was, Gary managed to make a living between shows as a sought-after pastry chef and baker. 

I believe it was 1979 that Gary came out to me. On October 14 that year, we both attended the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights – he came down from New York and I came on a bus from Madison, Wisconsin. At that rally, Audre Lorde declared this message of determination solidarity and struggle from the podium: 

“Affirmation and work does not stop with this march on Washington. Each of us has a responsibility to take this struggle back to her and his community translated into daily action. Let us carry this solidarity that we are professing here today back with us into our everyday lives tomorrow and the day after and next week and next year. And let it be reflecting in a renewed commitment to a struggle for a future where we can all flourish, for not one of us will ever be free until we are all free.” 

I followed my little brother to New York in 1980 to pursue left-wing political activity. He let me live with him for the first six months in his unfinished loft apartment on Sixth Avenue. 

In 1982, after 3 years in NYC, Gary wrote a “coming out” letter to our parents. It said, in part: 

“The past 3 years in New York have been a period of self-discovery and adjustment to see who I am, who I can be, and, mostly, just getting to know me. And also, to really feel okay about myself. The main purpose of this letter is to tell you both that I am gay. That is something that I wouldn’t have ever said to myself, let alone ever think it, up to as recently as 1 year ago…. I have been to all ends of the emotional spectrum, [from deeply painful to] supremely happy. 

There is so much I have wanted to share with you and felt I couldn’t, because I thought “you wouldn’t understand.” Well, maybe you won’t understand everything at first. But I don’t want to deprive you of sharing both my joy & sorrow, and I want to be able to feel comfortable with you as a part of my life, which I miss very much…. The most important aspect of all of this is that I am very happy to finally be able to see myself and like who & what I see….

I think now is the time for us to get to know each other again. 

I love you both so very much, Gary”

My parents had always been proud of and loved Gary very much and they seemed not to have too much trouble accepting this news. Perhaps, like many parents of LGBTQ children, they had known, at some level, for a long time. 

In the 1980s, Gary blossomed. He dove head first into gay pride and advocacy. He was a founding board member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, which was hosted for several years at the Washington Square United Methodist Church. He was active in NYC Pride in those years too. And he was an early volunteer with Gay Men’s Health Crisis after it formed in 1982. 

Also, while later in life Gary was not involved in a church, he was always a very spiritual person. And in the late 1980s and 1990s, he was active in the Metropolitan Community Church, which, for several years, met at Metropolitan Duane UMC in this building. 

In the meantime, Gary fell in love and moved in with Rafael Infante, a beautiful, smart, gifted, and very kind man who loved my brother. They were so happy together and our family loved Rafael so much. 

Unfortunately, part of Gary’s journey of self-discovery and self-love was being active in the culture of the baths and leather bars, just as HIV-AIDS appeared on the horizon. Both Gary and Rafael were diagnosed with AIDS in around 1987. I remember when Gary called my parents to tell them. It was devastating. My parents then called me and it was the first time I heard my father cry. At that time, HIV seemed like a pretty immediate death sentence. 

A few years later, Gary and Rafael moved to Milwaukee, where Rafael pursued a Masters degree in political science. This is where Gary really thrived as a leader in the LGBT community. In 1990, he joined the Milwaukee Lesbian/Gay Pride Committee. By 1992, he was the president and served for several years. And in 1993, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Stonewall 25 project, which was both a celebration of the 25th anniversary, and organized a huge march on the United Nations to demand that lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights be included in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. It drew at least 150,000 marchers. Gary was also active in the Milwaukee AIDS Project.

After Rafael died in 1997, Gary completed his BA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, majoring in music with a minor in theater. He was certified as an American Sign Language interpreter and worked in the Milwaukee Public School system.  

May 17 of this year was the 20th anniversary of Gary’s death. I managed to live with HIV for 17 years. On my last visit with Gary, when he was hospitalized near the end, I asked him if he was afraid to die. He said “no.” In fact, he said he was looking forward to being with Rafael again – who he called “the love of my life.”  

My brother’s life and my relationship with him, with all of its ups and downs over the decades, and including up to now, has been a huge shaping influence on who I have become. 

I learned from Gary, first-hand, what LGBT Pride really means. That it is something that has to be felt inside before that light can be shown out to the world. 

I also learned that true, deep solidarity is about more than seeing injustice and fighting it. Deep solidarity is about deep relationship. It’s about seeing and knowing and loving and standing with and suffering with other human beings who are all beloved by God. That kind of solidarity is possible, only when we have a relationship with another person.

This evolving understanding for me has also been a part of the evolving and ever-becoming ethos and understanding of our community, our chosen family of the Church of the Village and its predecessors since at least the 1970s. That’s what we try to do – building relationships that lead to deep solidarity through love. 

We are like mirrors to each other – seeing ourselves in Jesus and Jesus in one another. In looking deeply and seeing each other, we can find our full selves.

My brother was fearfully and wonderfully made, as Psalm 139 says. And growing up with his queerness and experiencing it as we were adults, surely helped to make me queer, in my own ways – unorthodox, loving, radically inclusive, not afraid to lead change in the face of resistance. 

I am so proud of who Gary was and I know that, in the end, he was also proud of me. I was my brother’s keeper and he was mine. 

Copyright (c) 2023 - Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.

Readings:

“Sometimes it takes more than shouting it to show your pride. It takes more than a sign, a fabulous outfit, or a month of parades. Pride has to resonate from within; shine out to everyone around you. It has to mean something to you and only you first before you announce it to the world.”

– Solange Nicole

“We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God’s family.”

– Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner

Together in Pride. What does that mean? In October of 1990 at the International Association of Gay Pride Coordinators Conference, I voted for that slogan as the International Theme mostly because it sounded better to me than any of the other suggested ideas. Over the past nine months, I hope I have discovered a deeper meaning behind that phrase. To me, Together in Pride means that every person who considers himself a part of the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual community will be given the opportunity to fully self-express their pride or self-respect without fear of reprisal either from within our communities or from society at large. Whether Black or White, Male or Female, HIV+ or -, Drag or Leather, we must never judge that one person's sense of Pride or self-respect is any less valid than another’s. I believe it is time to set the past aside and to create a new vision of the future. One that is inclusive rather than exclusive. We must each, in our own way, set aside the prejudices we have acquired whether they be racial, gender based or other. By working Together in Pride we can create a community that is supportive and nurturing for all of its diverse elements.

– Gary Wells, President, Milwaukee Lesbian & Gay Pride Committee (1991)