Jim Andris, Facebook

Jim Alexander (Dignity)

Carol Cureton’s Introduction

 It is a great honor, actually, of presenting the next speaker for the evening. There are many, many institutions that have been around this world for lots and lots of years. And from some of those institutions, we would never expect spokespersons from an organization that serves the gay population. One of those institutions is the Roman Catholic Church. Our next speaker, a board member from Dignity, Mr. Jim Alexander. [Applause.]

Jim Alexander’s Remarks:

 Thank you very much, Carol. It really is an exciting and great pleasure to be here this evening to see so many gay people in this particular setting outside a dark and smoky room where people are stepping on my feet, [laughter], burning cigarettes into my arms, and spilling booze all over my new shoes. Yes, I’m from Dignity, and Dignity is an organization consisting of gay Roman Catholics, and as we put it in our periphernalia , and other people, which means just about anybody else who wants to fit in. Everybody’s welcome. Our organization is indeed a unique one in many ways, simply because it does exist within an organization that has been, throughout the ages, narrow and criticized for its responsibility in oppressing people.

My goal this evening is neither to defend or criticize the Roman Catholic Church, because I have a great deal of love for that church. I think it’s important when you look at the Roman Catholic Church to think about it as an institution that has existed for nearly 2000 years, and its history is indeed long and complex. And in that history there have been many great moments, and also many moments that perhaps we feel a little ashamed about today. But it is a great institution that consists of many people, and it has saved many people and brought much happiness and grace to people throughout time.

Our purpose in forming an organization for the Roman Catholic Church is to bring dignity to gay life, and that sounds like a rather trite and simple thing to say, because that’s the name of our organization. But I can’t state it any more simply. I’m sure that many of you would agree that straight life last week was a [?] , and heaven knows that gay life is even worse in that regard. At least it has been in the past.
And one of the things that we’re here for tonight is to work towards the establishment of a dignified lifestyle. We meet twice a month. We meet one time at our community MCC because we’ve had a hard time getting a church home, and we’re very lucky to be able to meet here. And we appreciate the generosity of MCC inviting us to hold our meetings here. We have mass once here at MCC and another time at various members’ homes.

And perhaps it sounds a little like personal testimony, but if it hadn’t been for Dignity, I suspect my coming out experience and my growth as a gay person would have been significantly more painful that it has been, because by going to Dignity, I got to know all different kinds of gay people. I got to know young gay people, middle aged gay people, and old gay people, and I got to know them as human beings, which to me is far more important than getting to know a person physically or as an object, or as a piece of meat standing over a counter. These things are important to all of us, I know, and that’s why I’m a member of Dignity, and I encourage each and every one of you to come join us in our fellowship.

There’s one other thing I would like to say this evening, and I realize that time is running short. And I was warned not to confuse myself with the main speaker. [Laughter breaking into applause] And whoever gave me that advice does not know me well. [Laughter.] This past week has been for me, as I am sure it has been for you, a week of many emotions, many different emotions. It’s been a week of despondency and despair, and anger and hate, and maybe hope. Although one wonders about that hope at times. … I could talk to you about the whole thing, but I still feel very angry about it. So I’m glad that I can come here tonight. But during those past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things. I’ve been thinking about straight life and gay life and the kind of life that we all want to lead, namely a normal life.

And I know that as soon as somebody mentions that word, all of a sudden the red bells go off and the red flags go up because that’s the term that all the straight people use. But for me a normal life is a life that I can be comfortable with, as long as I’m not impinging on another person’s rights. And all the straight people, they’d like us to lead a normal life as defined according to their terms. And we all know that we can’t live according to those terms.

So I thought a lot about this meeting tonight, and I was a little skeptical, I must admit. I was skeptical when black people started talking about black pride. It’s a little like talking about white pride. It’s like feeling great because Queen Elizabeth was white, and I’m white. You know, I don’t take much credit from the fact that she’s descended from whomever she is descended from. I don’t feel good in that regard.

But black people find it necessary to look back upon the past, because they found that white people had wiped out that past. They found it necessary to orient themselves to the future by looking back to find out where they had been. And the same is true for us. I think it’s a real temptation now to look back and think about Michelangelo and about all the rumors going on about Shakespeare now, I’ll forgive you for that. [Laughter.] And you know all the great names, [Coswell?] and Wittgenstein, you know, it’s easy to look back on them and say “Yes, they made it; they were great.” But you have to ask yourself, “Were they great because of or in spite of?” Well I suspect it was a little bit of both.

But I think tonight it’s worth being proud about the fact that we’re gay, and that gay offers each and every one of us a tremendous opportunity to grow and to love and to become better people. We should also think about all the aspects of gay life which do not instill us with pride, and I’m sure that we can think of many of them. Last night I went to Bob Martin’s Bar, a bar which I am sure some of you have been to. [Laughter.] I won’t tell. And I met a very handsome person, young man from another city, and I won’t share where that was. And he was very critical because our bars were terrible. I’ve got to admit I agree with that. You know, I don’t want to make any offensive comments because the people in the bars, they’ve been very kind to us in many ways, but I’ve been in nicer bars in other cities.

Anyway, his comment was that in his city they have over 60 bars. Well, I thought about that for a while, and I thought about the bars and I thought about the park. And I thought about standing at the bar weekend after weekend and looking around and seeing people standing there smoking. And drinking. And sniffing amyl nitrate. And I thought about the tremendous things we do to ourselves to make ourselves beautiful or attractive. And yet how destructive all those things are to us as human beings.

And I thought that maybe our emphasis has been wrong, and that hoping for more bars, when in actuality we shouldn’t be fighting to be able to have sex in the park or to have more bars, whether they be in South St. Louis or they be downtown or in the Central West End. But perhaps we should be fighting for the opportunity to meet each other at church, at work, at play, or when our family gets together. And I think that that’s important; I think that we should think about those things this evening as we begin to think about an aspect of ourselves that is essential, which is important.
It’s only been within the past six months that I’ve actually begun to feel confident that it’s a part of my personality, and I know that I’m not going to be able to be straight five days a week and come out on a Friday and Saturday night and then go crazy. And do some very trashy things … whatever they are. [Laughter.] I hope it’s not all a bad idea. [Laughter.]

I hope you don’t misunderstand me, because I’m not making any moral judgments about people who may have sex in the park or in the bars. I don’t find that meaningful, and as far as I’m concerned—well, let me just put it this way—if we took every hour that we all spend in the bars or in the park and invested it towards working for legal change, the reform of our laws, Anita Bryant probably wouldn’t even be able to come here to St. Louis to make an orange juice commercial. So I think that’s something we should think about. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, MCC, Dignity, Integrity, all the groups that are represented here, and MLSC, St. Louis Task Force for Human Rights, Missouri Gay Caucus, and so on, these are the organizations that are going to give us hope in the future. The bars are a place where we can meet right now, but they’re not the end, they’re not the final point. Nor is non-harassment by the police department the final point.

The final point is building for ourselves a life that we can find meaningful, and we’re the only ones who are going to be able to do it. I think we can win, but it may not happen in our time. And that’s the final point that I want to make. I felt real despair on Wednesday, and I thought at one time, that maybe in a couple of days, in a couple of years, we would all be free, and free forever. But the election on Tuesday made me think twice. I think we will be free, but we can’t let Tuesday get us down. We gotta be able to come back and change our attitudes, and fight even harder. And, uh, I think we can do it. It’s just a question of time. And I don’t know how long it’s going to take.

But I reflected on the black experience in this country, and I think their experience would give us a lot of direction in what we want to do. The reason why, well, let me put it this way, when 1960 came around black people could look back to Marcus Garvey, William White Harrison, and W. E. B. DuBois. They had 200 years of protest behind them, they had people who were able to stand up and say to white people, look you can’t push us around anymore.

We are presently in a seed time of gay rights. We’re planting the trees, no pun intended, that will eventually bear fruit for our future generations. I don’t think I’m ever going to have any children, and I don’t know how many of you are going to have children, but I look upon the future generations of gay people as my progeny, and I’m willing to make a sacrifice now, maybe not to get as good a job as I want, or to endure some kind of embarrassment, so that future generations of gay people in this country and throughout the world can have freedom, and can lead the kind of life that they consider normal, enjoyable and beautiful. And by God, I don’t think you can ask for anything more. So thank you very much. [Applause.]

Transcribed by Jim Andris August 10, 2017 from a copy of a tape made of the event provided by John Hilgeman.