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I urge you to read this lovely essay by Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, on the courage it takes to love publicly and openly (and how much harder we make it for gay couples).
It's not widely known, I don't think, but Ronnie and Nancy were close friends for many years with William Haines and his partner, Jimmie Shields. Haines was a very popular movie star in the twenties and early thirties who pulled the plug on his own career when he refused to step into a closet he'd never before occupied. It was widely known in Hollywood that Haines was gay -- he and Shields were once described by their close friend Joan Crawford as "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."
In the thirties, when pressure was put on the studios to make Hollywood and its pictures more family-friendly, Louis B. Mayer insisted that Haines begin to put on a pretense of being straight. He refused, though he knew it would mean the end of his career.
At the urging of Crawford, Haines instead went on to be a much-in-demand interior designer, and it was through this second career that he came to be close to the Reagans.
Haines and Shields remained together for more than fifty years, until death did them part. So I can only wonder what Reagan, were he still lucid, would make of Dubya's announcement today. I've no great admiration for Reagan, and he was not always strong on issues of gay rights (though he occasionally and perhaps surprisingly stood up for what was right in that regard). But I can't help but believe that, remembering the lifelong love shared between his friends Haines and Shields, he'd disapprove of this blatantly political and utterly divisive move on the part of our Great Leader.
Posted by brett at 08:41 PM | TrackBack