Initiative Divides a Family

He was the son who followed the father up into the sky. Like his dad, he joined the Air Force and piloted fighter jets. Like his dad, he flew combat missions in a war.

But the son turned out to be gay, and that’s where this storybook tale spins dramatically off script.

Because Pete Knight is no ordinary father struggling with the reality that his boy David has told him he loves someone named Joe. Knight is, rather, a conservative state senator sponsoring a ballot initiative to ban marriages between people of the same sex. Right now in the gay community, that makes him Public Enemy No. 1.

Many families are jolted when one member’s unexpected sexual orientation bubbles forth. Most work things through--or fail to--in the privacy of their homes.

But the Knights’ family angst has become very, very public, creating a flesh and bone subtext for California’s most emotional political fight of the coming year.

Some foes of the so-called Knight initiative call the senator’s crusade against gay marriage a personal vendetta against a son who failed to live up to his macho expectations. For Knight senior, this sort of talk is garbage, infuriating. A private, diminutive man of 70, Knight says his relationship with his son--though admittedly strained since David’s revelation--is a personal matter, unrelated to politics.

“The opposition is trying to use him--use this--because that’s all they’ve got,” he said.

Knight junior is a willing--if anxious--player in the airing of his personal story. In a commentary published in The Times’ opinion pages last month, he lamented the loss of the father he idolized, saying that their relationship ended four years ago--the moment he told him he was gay.

“I’m not an activist, and I don’t want to make a circus out of this,” David Knight, 38, added in an interview. “But I view this initiative as something intended to spread fear. If I can help block that in some small way, I will.”

No one knows how, or whether, this gulf between father and son will influence the March 7 balloting on Proposition 22. A recent poll showed that 50% of likely California voters favor the measure, with 41% opposed and 9% unsure. But neither side has waged a very visible campaign thus far.

Knight’s initiative declares that only marriages between a man and a woman are valid in California. Although same-sex unions are already illegal, those performed in other states could be recognized here. No state currently permits gays to marry, but Knight says that such a reality could be right around the corner. So Proposition 22 is a preemptive strike, designed to preserve the “sacred institution of marriage,” not “tell anybody how to live,” Knight said.

Thirty-one states have adopted similar laws through legislation or executive order.

Opponents contend that the initiative promotes exclusion and foments intolerance. They view it as nothing short of a referendum on whether gays and lesbians should be treated equally as human beings, or as something less.

“If you are allowed to marry, that’s a recognition of your humanity,” said Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), one of two openly lesbian members of the Legislature. “So even though this initiative is more about divisiveness than substance, symbolically it’s very important.”

Distinguished Career as Air Force Test Pilot

Out here in the High Desert, Sen. William J. “Pete” Knight remains a hero decades after his prowess in the cockpit made him one.

Knight is famous for his daring feats as a test pilot, having flown more than 100 types of fighter, trainer, bomber and transport planes. The career capper was a 1967 flight in the legendary X-15. Knight accelerated to 4,520 mph--6.7 times the speed of sound--to set a still-unbroken record.

For that he was invited to the White House and awarded the Harmon aviator trophy by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Before retiring from the Air Force with the rank of colonel, he also flew 253 combat missions over Vietnam.

Barely 5-feet-5, he has silver hair and a wrinkled face that features the bright blue eyes that he passed on to his son. His dry sense of humor often carries a self-deprecating theme.

After his military career ended, Knight served as technical consultant for a television series about a test pilot (“Call to Glory”) before friends nudged him into politics. First came the Palmdale City Council, then Palmdale mayor. In 1992 he won an Assembly seat; he moved up to the Senate in 1996.

His legislative record is straight-arrow conservative: Help business, fight crime, streamline government. In Sacramento, he is that rarest of birds, a politician of few words. In his heavily Republican district, he wins reelection, no sweat.

Three years ago, Knight learned that a court in Hawaii had found that state’s law reserving marriage for heterosexuals was discriminatory on the basis of gender. Figuring gay marriage could ultimately become legal there, Knight wrote a bill to bar California from recognizing same-sex unions performed in other states.

The senator says that his distaste for marriage between people of the same gender is a matter of morality and plain old common sense: “A man and a woman get married--that’s the way it was designed,” he said recently. “To do anything else is not according to natural law.”

Concern for children motivates him as well. The traditional, man-woman marriage is “the best possible family unit to raise productive, responsible citizens,” said Knight, who wed his second wife, Gail, after his first died in the late 1970s. He once offered a bill to block adoptions by gays and other unmarried couples.

Foes call Knight homophobic, but he bristles at the label: “I’m not prejudiced against anybody, never have been.

“It’s what the whole homosexual community is asking for--and the manner in which they’re going about it--that’s bad,” he said. “They want to be visible; they want to be accepted as normal people living a lifestyle that should be accepted as normal. That’s the problem. If they weren’t pushing so hard to be out and accepted, I don’t think anybody would care.”

Knight’s first gay marriage bill made it to the Senate floor before dying. When a second bill failed to get a hearing, he opted for the initiative route: “We’ll let the people decide.”

A Slow Process of Coming Out

David Knight lives in Baltimore on a leafy street of turn-of-the-century homes. A furniture maker who also restores antiques, he is slender and handsome, a near carbon copy of photos of his father as a young man.

The house he has shared with Joe Lazarro for six years has cedar shingles and a wraparound porch. The couple won their neighbors’ undying gratitude when they renovated the place, which used to be the worst eyesore on the block.

David Knight knew he wanted to fly before the top of his head drew even with his father’s belt. The second of three sons, David hoarded the family airplane models and looked forward to trips out to the dry lake bed near Edwards Air Force Base to watch his father land the X-15. It was basic boyhood reverence: “Everything he did, I wanted to do.”

Aside from the death of his mother from cancer when David was in high school, it was a happy childhood: “I was not deprived, we were not dysfunctional. He was a good dad.”

And a proud one.

When David announced his intention to enroll in the Air Force Academy, his father helped out. When the rebellious cadet got suspended after getting caught--underage--in a bar, his dad figured it was a “boys will be boys” thing and urged an academy disciplinary panel not to kick him out.

At David’s graduation from pilot training, Pete Knight gave the commencement speech and watched his son--a squadron commander and gifted flier--take three out of seven awards.

“He was extremely proud of me then,” David recalled. “He loved to take me to events where I would show up in my flight suit and be his boy who was flying F-15s.”

Although he suspected as early as junior high that “something wasn’t quite right,” coming out was a slow process for David. His life in the Air Force--as a young lieutenant deluged with invitations to social functions--made revealing his sexual orientation out of the question.

That changed abruptly in 1991, soon after his return from combat in the Persian Gulf War. David had plans for a life in the sky, but two epileptic seizures grounded him. Unable to fly, he saw no point to an Air Force career.

While it was a devastating shock, his medical discharge was liberating as well. Suddenly, the fear of discovery that stalked him during his military days was gone. About four years ago, he wrote his father a letter informing him that he was gay and no longer wanted to “live the lie.” While his father’s response “made it clear not to show up on his doorstep with my boyfriend, I didn’t feel like I was going to completely lose the relationship we’d had before.”

But ultimately communication dwindled, then all but stopped. He has seen his father once since the fateful letter was sent--at a Thanksgiving dinner three years ago that marked his dad’s first and only encounter with Lazarro. Sen. Knight remembers the dinner as “amicable.” David and his partner give a different description.

“He would not make any eye contact; there was no effort to get to know Joe,” David said. “It was one of those times when you want to cry and put your face in your mashed potatoes.”

Lazarro, 35, nods his head slowly in agreement, still wincing at the memory.

Sen. Knight’s Brother Was Gay, Died of AIDS

Pete Knight says David’s letter brought shock and disappointment. The news was not, he said, “what you would want for your son.” But it was not the senator’s first family experience with homosexuality. His younger brother, John, also was gay. He died in 1996 of complications from AIDS.

“My brother and I never discussed it,” Knight said. “Why would we want to discuss his sexual activities? John and I got along fine.”

As for his son, Knight disagrees with his lifestyle but says that he still cares for him deeply. He also believes opponents of his initiative are using David: “I suspect he was pushed. I don’t think he would have done that on his own.”

In fact, David Knight said he reached out to help with the anti-initiative campaign, spurred by his hurt, anger and desire to make a difference. It is difficult, he says, hearing his family name attached to a ballot measure that attacks his very essence. It is painful, he says, to see his father’s picture featured in gay newspapers that call him a villain.

“It’s fine that he has a different opinion on gay marriage,” the junior Knight said, “but does he have to lead the fight?”

After David Knight’s commentary ran in The Times, Sen. Knight was deluged with calls. Some came from friends expressing their sympathy and “telling me to hang in there.” Others were interview requests, from “Good Morning America,” national magazines and other media. “They want to turn this into a Jerry Springer episode,” says Andy Pugno, Knight’s chief of staff. “It’s absurd.”

David Knight got the same calls, and says he has no plans to become a poster boy for the anti-Proposition 22 campaign. He agreed to grant just one interview--to The Times--and he declined to be photographed, feeling that might make him appear hungry for attention.

Going public with his feelings has yielded a bounty of good tidings for David Knight. Numerous former friends and Air Force colleagues read his essay and called or wrote to express support. One fellow Air Force pilot even apologized for a gay joke he once made in Knight’s presence.

His father called too, but David says that they remain at odds. He hopes that will change. Though he says he has his brothers’ love, he regrets that things aren’t what they were with his dad: “Feeling like an outsider isn’t fun.”

As for the senator, he cannot say whether he might come to accept David’s homosexuality.

“We’ll see. That’s between David and me. That’s for us to work out as time goes on.”