Guest Blogger: John Ater

By John Ater on 04/09/2009 @ 01:26 PM

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I grew up on the family ranch in Texas outside a tiny town much like the fictitious Anarene in The Last Picture Show. Everyone knew everyone else’s business so I never got away with much of anything without my daddy and mama finding out.

After I came out in 1992 and settled down a bit from my initial exuberance of shedding the closet, I reflected on my journey to that point. I realized with some certainty there were several queer couples living in and around our tiny town; the “old maid” school teachers who lived in one bedroom houses and had been “roommates” for years; the “bachelor” ranchers who ran together as boys then bought land to become “ranching” partners and lived out their lives together. All of them, without exception, were well respected in the community, serving as school and bank board members, church and community leaders.

Though I cannot state with certainty their relationships were more than plutonic, my gut tells me and my heart believes they were part of our queer family. Long before I came to admission and acceptance of my own sexuality, I heard the town gossips’ whispers about them, but no one ever talked openly about their relationships and, as long as there were no outward admissions, the town and community practiced a tolerance that spilled over into acceptance.

None of the couples had children but they all had aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and various kinfolk who played major parts in their lives. While I do not know the details, I do know that as their lives ended, the surviving partners inherited their estates through carefully drawn wills and not one family member contested any of them nor did their families or hospital and nursing home staffs refuse admittance to their “partners”.

Watching today’s hysterical gyrations from religious and political leaders and conservative talk show hosts in light of my own experience gives me pause and quiet amusement over their claims of destruction of marriage sanctity, our nation’s descent into perdition and apocalyptic warnings should gay marriage become law. Those couples I knew as a child practiced a gentleness and love that is too often missing in our daily interactions with each other.

The Vermont legislature today overturned their governor’s veto of the nation’s first legislative action allowing same-sex couples to marry. I can’t help but believe the “old maid” schoolteachers and “bachelor” ranchers of my youth would smile and nod their approval. Vermonters’ reputations for independence, intelligence, skepticism, generosity, stubbornness and honesty were affirmed by their Legislature today and, beyond that, confirmed those loving relationships in a distant state from so long ago.

John Ater, a professional photographer, lives and works in San Francisco. After more than 20 years editing small town newspapers around Austin and six years as legislative aide and chief of staff for two Texas House of Representative members, he now devotes his time entirely to photography. His fine art photography has won juried competitions and earned solo and group exhibitions.

To contact John Ater, visit his website at http://johnater.com.