Fostering a new activism

Alan Weeks came of age when gay meant happy, not homosexual, and coming out was for debutantes.

“I am a 78-year-old man who grew up in Los Angeles when you did not tell anyone you were gay,” he told me. “We all just lived in a separate world inside the straight world. It was a totally secret world.”

He has never been to a Gay Pride parade; never worn a Speedo or 3-inch heels; never considered trying to marry the man he loved and lived with for 22 years. He spent his youth consigned to what we now call the closet, uncertain and ashamed, at times, of his sexuality.

It was a “rough period,” he recalled. “There’s a burden to living a double life.”

But the recent string of suicides among young gay men has Weeks wondering if his generation wasn’t blessed in ways they didn’t realize back then.

Sixty years ago, homosexuals had to practice discretion. “We were under the radar then,” Weeks said. They valued privacy; that spared them from scrutiny. “No one,” he said, “ever made fun of or harassed me.”

This generation, with no need to hide, celebrates freedom and individuality. That openness must feel liberating. But if you’re the eighth-grade boy with pink hair and heels, or a love for flowers and not football, it can also make you an easy target for others’ cruelty.

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The recent toll of that cruelty is heartbreaking — four teenage boys mocked, bullied and taunted until suicide seemed to them like relief.

It’s hard for Weeks to believe that “kids could be so vicious,” he said. And it’s almost as hard for him to imagine boys in elementary school contemplating their sexual identity.

“Boys must be maturing a lot earlier these days,” said Weeks, an Eagle Rock retiree. I’m not sure “maturing” is the right word, I told him. They are growing up in a different culture, one soused with sexuality.

Weeks didn’t figure out he was gay until he was 22, he said. “I don’t remember anybody in school that I thought might be gay.” He dated girls at Eagle Rock High.

Coming out was a process, “like waking up,” he said. “Little things happen and you ask yourself, ‘What does that mean? Does it mean I’m gay?’ Then you realize it’s true. And, oh my God, it’s terrible.”

He suffered through “the guilt, the shame, the whole religious thing. That lasted a very long time,” he said. “I thought I was going to hell.” He stopped attending the church he loved “because I felt like a hypocrite. The only people who could understand were other homosexuals.”

Finding them wasn’t easy back then, before Internet chat rooms, West Hollywood clubs, Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John.

“I would look for any little article in the newspaper,” Weeks recalled. He subscribed to a gay magazine, mailed out each month in a plain brown wrapper. He found a club that held meetings on “homosexual issues,” from the works of Oscar Wilde to the subterfuge required to avoid getting fired.

He found nirvana on a bar stool at the Maxwell, a gay bar in downtown L.A. “It was 1954 and the place was roaring!” he recalled. “There was a band and there must have been 200 gay men, and women. I had never seen anything like it.

“I just sat there with my eyes wide open. It made me feel different, like I belonged. You had to be so careful everywhere. We only felt safe with one another.”

But things got better, and life as a gay man ceased to seem odd. Weeks came out to friends and found “it didn’t matter.” He found a job he enjoyed and a man he loved. He and Victor spent 22 years together; his family and friends came to love his partner.

“We had a house, a dog, just like straight couples. You go to work, mop the floor, mow the lawn. We weren’t much different from our neighbors. Everybody accepted us,” he said.

That lasted until the 1980s, when the HIV epidemic swept through gay Los Angeles. Victor was diagnosed in 1986, and Weeks took early retirement to care for him. Five years later, Victor was dead. Weeks would spend the next 10 years working with AIDS groups as a volunteer.

“Everything crashed,” he recalled. Gone was the veneer of normalcy. Activism was thrust on them. “There were no service centers, no support groups, nothing,” Weeks said. “We had to rally around each other.”

Gay men were, once again, pariahs — ostracized, pitied, feared.

“Young people don’t think about that today” with their freedom and flamboyance, he said. “But I look at what’s happening now and wonder, how much progress have we really made?”

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Gays couldn’t have seen it then, in the midst of all their misery, but the AIDS epidemic would reshape their movement, forge a sense of brotherhood and engage the larger community.

That fuels Weeks’ hope that this troubling patch of high-profile cruelty will ignite a new generation of activists — straight and gay — who will coalesce to fight harassment. “It feels like we’re losing the battle,” he said. “But that’s the little battle with all this hate and violence going on.

“It’s the outrage that’s encouraging; the entertainers and politicians and regular people, all standing up for these gay kids. The overall battle for the minds and hearts of people in this country, I think we are winning that one.”

This generation has tools that his didn’t, such as the YouTube “It Gets Better” campaign featuring videos of gay adults encouraging teens not to let bullies get the best of them.

I asked Weeks what his video would say to gay kids. “I really don’t feel smart enough to give advice,” he said; so much has changed in 78 years.

Being gay wasn’t easy, he’d have to admit. “If I could push a button and be straight, I would. But I played the cards that I was given. And I don’t have any regrets to speak of.”

Here’s what worked for this old-timer, looking back on a satisfying life, well-lived: Accept who you are as soon as you can, but don’t be in anyone’s face about it.

Make as many friends — straight and gay — as you can, while you’re young. True friends will stand by you, no matter what.

It does get better, but you have to reach out. Being old and gay can be a sad, lonely time if you don’t have a network of people you love.

sandy.banks@latimes.com