The Bonds of Family Hold Fast Against the Tide

Mud’s been the big story out of Iowa: Who was slinging it, who was dodging it, whose name was being dragged through it. The caucuses are history now, but here’s a different kind of story out of Iowa, one that is about neither mud nor politics, but about love.

Well, maybe there’s a little bit of mud, but mostly, it’s a story about acceptance, about ties that bind, about hearts beating in sync.

It is told by Jonathan Wilson, a 51-year-old Des Moines attorney who served on the local school board for 12 years until he was ousted in September in an election that made headlines across the nation.

What caused Time magazine to cover Des Moines’ school board election?

What prompted Phil Gramm to warn of “certain agendas” in Des Moines schools that threaten “the very essence of our nuclear family”?

What was it that inspired nearly 30,000 voters to an election that would normally move only 7,000?

It was something Jonathan Wilson said.

In January 1995, as the Des Moines school board contemplated a recommendation to “thoughtfully infuse” information about homosexuality into school curriculum, Wilson--long the subject of rumors--announced at a hushed public meeting that he is gay.

The fallout was quantifiable: He lost his reelection by a landslide. And he thinks it’s possible, even now, that his law practice could ultimately be destroyed.

But the process of coming out taught Wilson something he puts above the school business, above his job. It taught him the meaning of unconditional love.

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Like any other kid, Jonathan Wilson was raised to be straight. His family was loving and close, but he worried about taking his parents’ love for granted. “I knew things about myself that they didn’t,” he says.

As programmed, Wilson married and fathered two children. He became a senior partner in one of Iowa’s biggest law firms and was elected to the school board. A community pillar.

And then, inside anyway, the pillar began to crumble. Life became “a living hell” as he tried to reconcile who he was with who he was pretending to be. Relief could only come, of course, in the telling of the secret, in the ending of the deception. It was a long process, and, fittingly, it started with his wife.

Then, he says, about six years ago, “I felt a particular need to come out to my parents. They were the first ones I feel I was deceiving, so I felt this need as a catharsis to come out to them.”

One Tuesday, he called to ask if he might spend the following Saturday with them on their farm. And then he broke the news in a long letter, knowing they would receive it before his visit.

Who hasn’t heard horror stories about gay children coming out to their parents--the tales of rejection, of tears, of recriminations, of banishment? “I wish you had died at birth,” said the father of a gay man I know after his son had summoned his courage to tell.

Wilson’s trepidation was understandable.

What he had learned from his father, a minister, and his mother, a homemaker, either implicitly or explicitly, was that homosexuality was a disease.

“And even when it wasn’t a disease anymore,” Wilson says, “it was still evil.”

What would the reaction be at the farm? Would he still be their cherished son, or a stain upon the family name?

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Here was a son, then in his mid-40s who had been as perfect a child as he could be.

“I had always tried to be the best little boy and not draw a lot of attention to myself,” Wilson says. “My sisters were rebellious, but I was the middle child, the great compromiser. I never gave them a moment’s concern about whether I was on the right course.”

Yet the son who had become successful beyond the parents’ expectations would now be coming home to face . . . what?

The two-hour drive from Des Moines was excruciating.

“The last 15 miles took about a week and a half,” he says. “I was literally apoplectic. I could not get my breath, but I couldn’t go back. I had committed myself. The toothpaste was out of the tube. And the fear was overwhelming.”

He turned into the driveway, and as he headed slowly toward the house, he encountered a sight that both startled him and made him weep.

“On the west side of the house is a big oak tree. They had it completely wrapped in yellow ribbons and bows. And all the trees in the front yard had yellow ribbon streamers hanging from them. The yard looked like it had been teepeed.”

In his honor, a red carpet stretched from the driveway to the front door.

Without a word, Wilson’s parents had given him something he had not allowed himself to believe he deserved: their unconditional love and acceptance.

Nothing in the world--not fame, not power, not glory--can equal that.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.