How The Letter Wars started...

 

Tom and I are a "married" gay couple who also happen to have AIDS. I have a fundamentalist aunt -- whom we call Priscilla, Queen of the Northwest -- who had a problem with my being gay.

Every year, my large family would put out a Christmas letter. It was about four pages -- two sheets, with both sides written on. Everyone gets their little mention in it. Well, for Christmas 1991, Priscilla, Queen of the Northwest was in charge of compiling the letter. She did not leave me out. My mention was something like:

"Li'l Wes is doing fine as a CPA down in Houston."

Now, you need a little background to understand why such a seemingly innocuous statement is actually very homophobic:

• I had gone on full disability with AIDS on October 8, 1991. The entire family knew this. I was not doing "fine." Why would my declining health be omitted? Because my aunt didn't want family friends to know the truth about my life.
• The job I stopped doing on that October 8 was as head of computer systems worldwide for one of the three energy trading units of Houston's (then) second largest corporation, Enron. (To be specific, I was head of computer systems for Enron Gas Liquids, Inc.) I had not been practicing "as a CPA" for years. Disregarding my climb up the corporate ladder was another way for my aunt to discount my existence. (Are you beginning to see a pattern here?)
• But most grievous of all, her third lie was a lie of omission by not mentioning the truly big news that year for me: I had met the love of my life, a man named Tom. (The whole family knew I was gay, so there was no privacy reason to leave out that I was in love.)
• For additional context, read this writeup of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and its antigay hate campaign that was inundating the state of Oregon, where Priscilla, Queen of the Northwest lived, at the time.

 

I resolved right then and there that the next year the family would get the truth about my life: I would issue my own Christmas letter and send it to all of the family so that Priscilla, Queen of the Northwest would not succeed in erasing the gay man with AIDS -- me! -- from the extended family's knowledge. And when I say "all of the family" I mean it: My letter of truth would go to not only immediate family, but also to aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, grandparents, great-aunts, etc. Thus was born our first "Season's Greetings" letter in December 1992.

Priscilla's response to that first seasonal letter is, as you might have guessed, to write and tell me that she's concerned about me being gay. Her initial letters are actually rather sweet. But when I continue telling the truth about my life in subsequent years (see 1993 and 1994) -- and proclaim to the whole extended family that the hateful things the religious right is saying about gays is false -- she gets more perturbed.

But the $hit really hits the fan when my family plans an "Uncles' Party" (an unusual 10-year reunion) and Priscilla calls to tell me that Tom is not invited. I challenge her right to exclude my partner and I bring my case to the family.

That is when The Letter Wars start full-force.

 

 

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