AIDS Tests the True Heart of a City

There are certain, perfect days that come to San Francisco in early autumn. This was one. No wind, no fog, just a buttery sunshine pouring over the neighborhoods. You could sit on the grass, eat your lunch from a sack, and watch the AIDS people hobble by.

There are so many in San Francisco. During lunch hour, a young man emerged from the stoop of his Victorian. A stubble of beard covered his face, and already his arms and legs had gone thin. He came down the steps of his stoop slowly, using a cane.

Across the street, a group of office workers munched their sandwiches. They noticed and managed to pretend they didn’t. Noticing is not polite.

At the bottom of the stoop, a taxi waited. The driver stood by the curb. He was a beefy man, a cigar in his mouth, a cabbie from the old school. You sensed a small drama in the making. Would the old-time cabbie display distaste that he had drawn a plague victim for a customer?

He did not. The cabbie gently eased the young man into the back seat, laid the cane across his lap, and bent down to say a few words. He seemed to be reassuring the young man. Then he shut the door and they drove away.

That is the best part of San Francisco. It is the mythic place, the city of tolerance and civility. If you watch closely, you see it revealed here every day as the plague wears on.

But there is another, unexpected side of San Francisco. And it, too, is being revealed in the midst of the AIDS crisis. For the third time in a decade, an ugly war is being waged here over a proposal sponsored by the gay community. It involves a law that would allow unmarried couples, gay or otherwise, to register with the city as “domestic partners.”

The proposal, known as Proposition K, has been placed on the November ballot. It does not seem much to ask. Unlike past versions, this law would not extend health benefits to partners of city employees. The registration would be symbolic, and the value would flow from the ritual itself. Two gay persons, who cannot marry, would have an official method of declaring their commitment to one another.

A handful of other cities already have approved domestic partners laws, from Madison, Wis., to Seattle to West Hollywood. Even Los Angeles, which does not have a formal law, has granted some leave benefits to unmarried city employees with partners.

Here in San Francisco, where the suffering from AIDS has been so severe, you might think a partners law would generate understanding and sympathy. You might think people would figure the gay neighborhoods of the city could use a little cheering up.

But no. San Francisco has seen some of the meanest fights anywhere over these proposals, and this fall it’s starting all over again. A coalition of churches and homophobes has risen to strike down Proposition K. The churches say Proposition K undermines holy matrimony. The homophobes say it amounts to an endorsement of a sin against nature.

Let’s not flail at these arguments, tempting though it may be. The more interesting question is why they have generated such heat in San Francisco. Why here, in the city with the most visible gay population in the nation?

The answer appears to lie within the question itself. The ugliness here has arisen because of, not in spite of, the size and influence of the gay community.

Minorities rarely get hated until they grow large enough to constitute a threat. And in San Francisco, the gays are threatening. They have taken over neighborhoods and some gay men have become major landlords. They have organized politically and seized power from old coalitions. They have built their own culture, a separate world within the city.

If that description sounds in some ways like the experience of Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, then you see my point. In San Francisco, more than any other city, the gays have become “the other.”

Last week, the San Francisco Examiner accused the establishment churches of practicing a “religion of hate” against gays in the city. There was no other reason, the paper said, for their campaign against the partners law.

That may or may not be. What’s certain is this: The language of this campaign will employ words such as “marriage” and “family.” But the issue will be otherwise. The issue will be power, and who owns it in San Francisco.