One Man’s Decision to Live His Life--and Defend It Too

Those of us who are part of society’s majority never really have to entertain the question of what it would take to get us to fight for our rights.

We can join in marches or rallies for whatever causes we believe in, but by definition it’s always from a personal distance. The vast majority of white civil rights marchers of the 1960s no doubt fervently believed in the cause, but even had the day been lost, their personal well-being wouldn’t have been affected.

They still could have voted, lived in any neighborhood, eaten in any restaurant, stayed in any hotel.

So, the question is, how far would you go in sticking up for yourself? Would you lie low? Would you be an extremist? Would you take to the streets?

Dave Barton had to answer that question for himself. The fact that he’s been arrested three times this year and is currently on probation tells you what he decided.

Now 31, Barton realized in high school that he was homosexual. He now describes himself as bisexual with a preference toward homosexuality.

That came as a disquieting discovery for a boy who was an “A” student and senior class president at Melodyland Christian High School in Anaheim and who had himself ridiculed other gay students.

“I understand the (anti-gay) mind-set because I was raised that way,” Barton said over Cokes at a McDonald’s near the electronics company where he works. “I remember there were two boys in one of the schools I went to who clearly were very effeminate. I remember making jokes about them being faggots and fairies, even though I was friends with these people, and pointing them out so people wouldn’t look at me.”

In the parlance of today’s gay movement, Barton is a radical, although he’s more of a teddy bear of a guy with a low-key manner and easy laugh. He’s a member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and Queer Nation, two gay activist groups whose strategies at the national level included the well-publicized disruption of services at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Barton is under a court order not to get within 50 feet of either Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) or the Rev. Lou Sheldon, two prominent Orange County opponents of expanded gay rights. Earlier this year, Barton interrupted a Dannemeyer speech at a seminar entitled “Preserving the Heterosexual Coalition,” and joined others in depositing bags totaling 170 pounds of manure at the office of Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. And although he didn’t take part in the recent disruption by gays of services at Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, he supported it.

Do you like being an activist? I asked Barton. “I would love not to have to do it,” he said. “Sure, publicity is fun, but I don’t like having my face in the newspapers, and I don’t like having to confront idiots. . . . I can think of better things to do, but until Sheldon and people like him wise up to the fact that we’re human beings and they should just leave us the hell alone, unfortunately, ACT UP and Queer Nation are going to have to be there.”

Why not just ignore them? I suggested. “To be really honest with you, I think about the teen-agers, even the pre-teens, who are gay and lesbian. When all they hear--and there’s always a microphone for the Sheldons and Dannemeyers--is that your life is garbage, that you’re sinful and disgusting, and when you have that very fragile self-worth to begin with and you’re gay to add onto it, it can be destroying. So my concern would be that I’m fighting for my own rights, but also fighting for the rights of people who come after me.”

It seems such a waste of time that the Dave Bartons of the world have to defend their right to live their own lives. All you have to do is keep up with the newspapers and TV to know that Barton isn’t making up his stories of anti-gay discrimination.

“Lou Sheldon and those people want to portray us as having some hidden agenda,” Barton said. “Whatever agenda we have is very out in the open. We want to be treated like everyone else, we don’t want to be discriminated against, we don’t want to be beaten and killed on the streets, and we want to have the same kind of love and happiness and family values--our definition of what family values might be.”