Chapter 11: Building Relationships

Saturday, July 26, 1986

It was finally interview day with Kelly Peterson. I met Angie and Paige for lunch at the MSC prior to my turn with her. They had nice things to say about her, but told me she’d asked them not to get into specifics. That seemed fair enough.

When I got to the office, Kelly met me at the door. She was likely a year or two older than me, with wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and was fairly tall for a woman and a touch on the curvy side. Cute, by my standards, at least.

She shook hands and said, “Thanks for agreeing to this. I appreciate it!”

She led me to the same conference room where Jas and I had talked to Marc Viguet many months ago. The offices were busier than they were back then, but still pretty quiet. Much of the staff was out of town for the summer, so The Batt only came out three times a week and the issues were thinner.

Once we were seated, she pulled out her notepad, ready to take notes. She took out a tape recorder, too, and asked, “Mind if I record this?”

“Nah. It’s fine.”

She pressed record, then said, “Interview with Steve Marshall. Saturday, July 26th, 1986.”

Then she said, “I know you spoke to Marc Viguet in this room. I’ve read that piece, of course. It’s pretty interesting. Marc covered a lot of the ground I would have. And, honestly, I mostly want to write about Angie and Paige.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m biased, but they’re more interesting.”

“You’re interesting, too. And more relatable to the average student. Few of them are gay. Nearly two-thirds of our readership is straight guys. And being engaged to a woman gives you a lot more credibility on the ‘straight’ part. People can look at you and think, ‘What if my sister was gay? What if some of my best friends were gay? How would I handle that?’ Now ... we’ve got a lot of pretty conservative people who think they know what they would do. But, if push came to shove, many of them would turn out to be less conservative than they think they are, I bet.”

I nodded, and said, “That all makes sense. In a way, it’s a point I make, but put differently. People like me matter because straight people matter. Their support matters. If this turns into ‘gay people versus straight people,’ gay people always lose. They don’t have the numbers. But if it becomes ‘people are people, and who they love shouldn’t matter to how you treat them,’ that’s an entirely different subject.”

“Which is a variation on things you’ve said before. And been quoted about, nationally.”

I shrugged and smiled.

“It’s surprised me every time. Lizzie and Janet’s prom was news. I didn’t expect my comments to be news, but ... it makes sense. And ‘60 Minutes’ is news, by definition. Still ... that I wind up in a national address? That was a surprise, twice over. Even Marc’s piece was a surprise, though for a different reason. Yours? Another surprise, though I should have seen it coming.”

She chuckled and nodded.

“Modest, but honest. That’s a good combination. Let’s jump to the proposal, which is where all of this starts. Like I said, it was the original focus of the article before I kept finding more layers to unearth. Anyway, how did it feel when a producer approached you?”

“Insane,” I said, chuckling. “Who expects that? The funny thing is, Penny might have approached Jas and me if it was just us. She started out looking for a fun human-interest story. Then Angie proposed and ... suddenly, it was a bigger story. The human-interest story is still there, but now it’s connected to a national story. That might be interesting for what she wanted, but it also gave her something to pitch to the people on the news side of things.”

She chuckled again.

“And once they start digging, they find that you, Angie, and Paige — and Jasmine, I don’t mean to leave her out, and your friends Cammie and Mel, who Angie and Paige told me about — have been adjacent to or connected with some of the biggest gay-rights issues of this decade. Oh, you missed most of the fun in the GSS lawsuit, but were here for the finish. Angie took over in time for Baker v. Wade. Then there’s your friends’ prom, which leads directly to hundreds of gay couples dancing at their proms across the country. It’s fascinating, really. And then there’s the campus part. ‘Howdy is for Everyone’, for instance. A brilliantly simple way to make an inclusive statement.”

“It’s our part of the arc of the moral universe,” I said.

She grinned.

“Quoting Doctor King! Points to you,” she said. “For the record, I agree. Sometimes it’s a very long arc, though. There’s plenty of reason to believe gay relationships were treated much better in various ancient cultures than they were at most points throughout the Middle Ages.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I believe there are exceptions, but that sounds true. I’m not actually an expert on the history of gay rights. Most of my concerns are in the here and now, making sure my friends and family are treated the way they should be. And, by extension, everyone’s friends and family.”

We shifted to some of the obvious questions: What had I thought of New York? How intimidating was it to sit down across from Diane Sawyer? Was I worried about a backlash on campus? I gave the best answers I could, and she seemed to like them.

“So...” she said. “What’s next?”

I laughed briefly, then said, “I’ve got two years to finish my degree. Oh, I could run over, but I want to graduate on time, and I fully expect to. I expect upper-division business classes, and classes in my minors, to take up a lot of time. That, and friends, family, and then there’s this wedding to plan...”

She chuckled and nodded.

“Putting it a different way: I don’t know. All of that is true. But, say, our attending the Rose Parade was all about the proposals. We had no thought at all of press and politics and all that. It might not be usual for people our age to want our parents and future in-laws present for the proposal, but we’re not the usual couples. Our parents have supported us for years, and we love them. How could we get them somewhere special? Pretty much: make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. No part of that told us that we would wind up in the national media. It just happened. Is there a next thing that will ‘just happen?’ History suggests yes, but what it is? I have no idea.”