Rock and Integrity
conditions change
We were channel surfing this afternoon as my husband noted a movie with Rock Hudson and some other actor. Glancing at him for perhaps 45 seconds until we could identify Jack Lemmon, we settleD on the Cowboys versus the Las Vegas Raiders. I can’t help but remember , however, about Rock Hudson’s world.
He was a throwback to another era in several ways. While I don’t go to movies much these days (we are spoiled by watching something on our couch which is streamed in) but I am not sure that ‘stars’ today are quite what they were in the ‘50s and ‘60s when Hudson was on the big screen. I get the impression that because there are so many sources of entertainment available, it’s far more difficult to become quite as big a deal as Hudson. He was a heartthrob I. Films with Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, and on television with Susan St. James.
We have also known for forty years that he wasn’t quite what he appeared in those movies like so many things from that era when we lied about so much. Yet many people want to return to living in that environment as if it were purer somehow.
Hudson’s public death from AIDS in 1985 just shy of his 60th birthday occurred when public ‘sensibilities’ still required him to hide his sexual preference. Obviously he was not the first nor last to confront this delicate problem. Hudson was not unique as allegedly Anthony Perkins, James Dean (who co-starred with Hudson in and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant), Tab Hunter, and many others secretly lived with or dated men, prohibited from acknowledging their true lives for fear the public would boycott their films.. Hollywood, as a microcosm of society’s hypocrisy, would not openly acknowledge Hudson’s ‘aberrant’ behaviour because what would Middle Americans think? It wasn’t all that different from Lucy and Desi sleeping in separate twin beds during the I Love Lucy series as if their marriage was devoid of sex (if it was, might have been due to Desi’s alleged roving hands rather than sexual abstinence). Or there were certainly cross racial relations hidden for the same behaviour by politicians like South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond allegedly had.
I remember the huge news in 1985 when doctors moved a skeletal Hudson by stretcher upon returning from some event he did with long time friend Doris Day in Paris. It did not take long for the official cover story of inoperable cancer to fall away as the increasing recognition across the country that AIDS was killing gay men with precisely those symptoms Hudson evidenced. Hudson’s secretly soon became a topic of open discussion. Arguably he was the first prominent figure who succumbed to an illness that has killed more than 40 million people since it appeared on the scene just over 40 years ago.
Rock Hudson died of AIDS because he contracted it before the the international medical community developed a series of medicines to control, if not cure, the disease. He was not, of course, the only one.
What struck me about seeing Rock Hudson this afternoon was how different the western world reacts to homosexuality today. Gay marriage is fairly common, codified by the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), citing the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 Amendment to the Constitution as fundamental to upholding same sex unions. I never attended law school but as an aware citizen I assumed the Equal Protection Clause would render precisely that decision but that was my simplistic grasp.
Justice Clarence Thomas implied in his concurring opinion on Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization last year that stare decisis (or precedents) in Obergefell and many other social equity cases demanded reconsideration obviously intended to overturn those rulings. Congress responded by passing Respect for Marriage Act into law, codifying the right to same sex marriage in the United States when President Biden signed it late in 2022. Other nations in Western Europe and in several other portions of the globe also legalized this behaviour well after Hudson’s death.
I have known many gay couples over the past forty years. Many of those marriages have endured decades, some have not. I have known many heterosexual marriages over these same years, some have not.
Bill Clinton confronted gay service members as a controversy upon his inauguration. In July 1993, he announced the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ guidance, prohibiting those in the military from divulging their gay or lesbian preferences on pain of court marshal and expulsion from the service. I recall the single most controversial meeting I ever sat through at the National War College on how the military would administer the law. The Commandant believed he needed to discuss the implementation of this anticipated policy as early as February of that year. Colonels were standing in the aisles bellowing at the two star that they would not administer this law. The President wasn’t their President and they would not do it (Really? That seems like a risky stance since Clinton was indeed the duly elected and inaugurated president, even if he was hated by many). The policy stood up for a generation.
The U.S. military reversed the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ position to allow same sex relationships under Admiral Michael Mullen’s tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2010. It was a different country on gays, lesbians, queers, and even trans 16 or 17 years after Clinton assumed office.
Someone happened to introduce me briefly to Admrial Mullen after that reversal finally occurred. I mentioned to him how courageous I believed his stance because even as recently as 2010 the fury from one of the military’s greatest advocates in Congress, the late Senator John McCain, was public. Mullen smiled ruefully, saying not everyone agreed with me that it was a courageous decision as he had received many hostile messages from those who thought the policy should continue.
What Mullen had said in Congressional testimony that so impressed me was ‘It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.’ Further, and this mirrors my own concerns, ‘No matter how I look at the issue…I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me it comes down to integrity—theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.’
The era of Rock Hudson closed gradually over the nearly five decades after his death. There are, of course, still voices arguing that same sex unions are wrong yet my personal experience of listening to people indicates that many Americans, particularly the young, have become perfectly comfortable with those relationships. It is possible some future Congress could reverse the Respect for Marriage law. But this truly seems fundamentally accepted by most in the country. This is a different appreciation of human integrity and preferences than what Rock Hudson and countless others in the history of the United States confronted for their entire lives.
He lived a sixty year life where he obviously had much success regardless of the secret he protected as best he could. Seeing him, even for 45 seconds, did remind me how much our sense of marriage has changed, however. it’s easy to criticize other countries for their human rights positions but we have improved our own by allowing people committed to a long term partnership to live that openly. I prefer this openness to the opaqueness that forces relationships into dark places that can create horrible consequences for many people.
I also have the highest regard for those leaders who stand their ground because of their beliefs in integrity and equality in the face of vociferous arguments. Coming on the weekend celebrating the Sixtieth Anniversary of the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Jr., my respect for those who stand for personal principles that improve the lives of others only grows. Integrity too often requires courageous that too few have in practice. FIN