Floridian who came out of closet at 75 recounts decades-long journey
Posted on 06/01/2002 7:23:55 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Floridian who came out of closet at 75 recounts decades-long journey
'I did what society wanted me to do. ... I lived a straight life'
06/02/2002
ORLANDO, Fla. - At age 75, after almost 50 years of marriage, H. Austin Rogers finally acknowledged that he was gay.
Mr. Rogers said his wife, Dorothy, had always pretended his secret didn't exist. His only child, Barbara, never knew, even as she lay dying of cancer.
"Ever since I was a youngster, I did what society wanted me to do," he said. "I had a family. I lived a straight life."
Mr. Rogers offers his story as an example of what happens when intolerance forces gays and lesbians to deny who they really are. It comes as tens of thousands of gays and lesbians arrive in Orlando this week to celebrate Gay Days at the area's theme parks, and as Orlando officials consider adding sexual orientation to the city's anti-discrimination laws.
On the ballot
Floridians face two other gay rights issues this year: an effort to legalize adoption by gay parents and an attempt to repeal a law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation in Miami-Dade County.
Mr. Rogers, 82, a sharp-minded man who bears a passing resemblance to the actor Christopher Plummer, came out of the closet seven years ago. He wears a gay-pride rainbow pin on his lapel and keeps a similar sticker on the dashboard of his car. Both his ears are pierced with tiny studs.
David Smith, a spokesman for the Washington-based gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, knew of no recent demographic data on older gays.
But anecdotally, for gays and lesbians, "the older you are, the more likely you are to have been married to a partner of the opposite sex in your life," Mr. Smith said. "As society accepts gay and lesbian people ... older people are finding it safe to come out."
Mr. Rogers, who grew up in Erie, Pa., said he always knew he was different from other children.
At age 13, an older brother enticed him into performing a sex act. It was his first sexual experience, and he said he realized he liked men.
In high school, there were other sexual liaisons with boys classmates, friends on a camping trip. But he was careful to act straight, dating two or three girls, though he never had sexual contact with them.
"You were like an actor constantly on the stage," he said. "The only time you got off the stage was when you went to bed at night."
He met his future wife when her family moved into his apartment building in Erie. Dorothy was a devoted Christian Scientist, reserved and practical to a fault. Her sweet personality is what Mr. Rogers noticed.
After dating her for several months, he broke it off, because it just didn't feel right.
In July 1941, Mr. Rogers enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He worked as a communications officer on missions in India and Burma until 1946.
While other soldiers talked about their girlfriends back home, Mr. Rogers had nothing to say. He began writing to Dorothy just to fit in.
During a leave in 1942, they dated several times. After that, they started writing romantic letters to each other.
In 1943, he had gotten a commission and was told he was going overseas. Mr. Rogers proposed to Dorothy.
On their wedding night in January 1944, he couldn't perform sexually. Being stationed away from Dorothy and with only a few chances to see her, it would be another five months before they finally had sex the first time he had sex with a woman.
"I won't say it was done solely on the basis of the 'in' thing to do, but I have to be honest, that played a ... lot in my decision to get married," he said.
Mr. Rogers thought marriage would set him on the path of a straight life. It didn't.
After the war, he settled in Orlando with his wife and infant daughter, working as a mechanic for a business that made equipment for gas stations. One day, he met a salesman in a flower shop. They flirted. One thing led to another and soon they were having regular sexual encounters at Mr. Rogers' office.
Truth revealed
It took about a year for Dorothy to find out.
One night in 1947, Mr. Rogers and Dorothy lay in bed together like two strangers.
Dorothy complained that Mr. Rogers wasn't paying any attention, that he was distant.
Finally, Mr. Rogers told her, "I guess I'm not the person you thought I was."
That mystified her even more, and she got mad. "Is there somebody else?" she asked.
"No," he said finally. "I'm really a homosexual."
She didn't understand at first. Then she began to cry.
She asked him whether he loved her. He told her that he did. She asked him why he didn't say anything before they got married. He told her he thought it was something he could control. She threatened to get her brother to beat him up.
They hardly spoke the next day.
The silence lasted several days until Dorothy laid down the law. She told him he was going to stay with the family and help her raise their daughter. Mr. Rogers knew that Florida's paternity laws were extremely strict and that if he left, he would have to give his wife most of his income.
She forbade him from dating other men.
It was 25 years before he had sex with a man again.
All alone
When Dorothy died in 1993, Mr. Rogers was all alone. His daughter, Barbara, died of cancer in 1991. His two granddaughters and son-in-law lived in Massachusetts, and he hardly saw them.
About a year after Dorothy's death, Mr. Rogers realized he had nothing in the world but his house and his Labrador, Max.
"I thought, 'This is great. You've done everything that society expects you to do, and here you are alone.' " he said. "I started to get very angry."
He told himself that from now on he was going to live his life the way he wanted. In an act of defiance, he went to the shopping mall and got his ears pierced.
He next wrote a form letter to 26 family members and friends telling them that he was gay. The news was surprisingly well-received.
"It had never crossed my mind," son-in-law James Bodkin said. "I felt sort of bad that he had to live under cover for so long."
Now, at an age when some people start to slow down, Mr. Rogers' life began to bustle. He volunteers at the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Center where he sometimes counsels gay men who find themselves trapped in unhappy marriages. He made friends with a group of older gay men.
Two years ago, he found a companion, Bill, a 37-year-old carwash worker. Mr. Rogers helped Bill, who didn't want his last name published, overcome alcoholism and drug abuse.
"For too long, I denied myself," Mr. Rogers said. "Now it's time for me to be myself."
Are we supposed to hail this guy as some kind of hero? Who cares about his sexual "journey?" Why does the Left believe that every pervert deserves a stage from which to tell his tale of woe?
It's a twisted day in the neighborhood.
AIDS is a cure for alcoholism and drug abuse? That's a new one.
Of course not! He was tired of living a lie. He had to be true to himself! His perversion demanded to be recognized. Sure, some people got hurt, but at least he wasn't pretending anymore.
And that's all that's important.
Yet, counseling men, or women, who are in unhappy homosexual relationships is verbotten. I don't know who is worse, these perverts or their enablers.
Once again, a perverted queer who wasn't born that way -- he was molested that way. It is a mental illness.
The world was a better place when everyone knew that no one was interested.
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