I'm From Driftwood

by Dave Mittlefehldt

I’m not gay, but my younger son is. You may have read his story; he’s from Clear Lake, TX.

I was clueless of my son’s sexual orientation until he revealed it. Rafi came out to his mother and me his freshman year in college. It was an awkward moment. Not because it was unpleasant news, rather because I had not anticipated it and didn’t know what to say. I tend to be flippant, but for serious issues I want to have serious discussions. In this case, Rafi floored me. I didn’t have any comforting or supportive words to say. I honestly don’t even remember what I said at the time. Do you remember, Rafi?

Afterwards, I had lots of time to think about what Rafi said. It made me realize a couple of things.

One was that I had partially failed Rafi. As a father, my number one job is to prepare my children for life. But how could I do this for Rafi? I have had no gay experiences that I can draw upon. There is a whole part of his life that I cannot help him with. I fret about this. How can I help my son with relationship issues? Are they the same as heterosexual relationships? I simply don’t know. Neither can I help him with his interactions with society at large. I do not know how he might be treated at the corner store, by the car mechanic, a police officer. I know how he ought to be treated, but that’s not the same. I still struggle with this issue.

The second realization is the more important one. When our son came out, he mentioned that he had known since he was in seventh grade, some six years earlier. Why didn’t he tell us sooner? I presume it was because he was uncertain of our reaction. I mentioned that I tend to be flippant. Did some of my flippant remarks make him feel uncomfortable as a gay man? I hope not. That would never be my intent. But I do not hear my remarks with the same ears a gay man does.

The bottom line is that I could not love Rafi more, or be more proud of him, if he was straight. I take delight in his triumphs, and I share his pain when things don’t go as planned. I don’t have a straight son and a gay son. I have two of the most wonderful human beings who call me dad.

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by Burt Likko

This is the story of the only time I ever breached my ethical duties as a lawyer.

I was not that long out of law school, and in the mid-1990’s in Southern California, it was a tough job market for new attorneys. I got a job working for a public interest law firm. It was actually fun stuff, Constitutional law mainly fighting speech codes on college campuses. The organization got a lot of donations from politically conservative funders. But who the funders were didn’t concern me very much; not only was I making money but I was protecting free speech rights along the way. So I had fun with it.

Until I was assigned a case of a straight guy who wanted to march in a gay pride parade carrying a sign that said “97%” to “represent straight people.”

“Hey, we’re on the wrong side of this one, boss,” I said to the lawyer in charge. “The gay pride people should be able to have their parade if they want to, the way they want to. We ought to be on the parade’s side keeping this guy protesting on the sidelines.” 

His response: “Our funders say, if gay people can get a court order to march in the police parades, then straight people should have the right to march in the gay pride parades.” That didn’t sit right with me – it sounded like we were selling out instead of standing up for our real principles. He could tell I was unhappy. “Look,” the top lawyer said, “the parade happened three weeks ago and he wasn’t in it; go and meet with the guy and find out what he’s looking to do now.”

I said I could do that, naively hoping that I could talk some sense into the client. I took the train to San Diego on the day of a hearing in the case, and met with the client beforehand to find out if he was ready to call it a day.

Unfortunately, the guy was pretty much as obnoxious and ignorant as I had feared he would be. He wanted to press on to get into the next year’s parade. And it was my job to be this guy’s advocate despite my distaste for him. Worst of all, the lawyers for the parade had filed a counter-suit against him, asking for a whole bunch of money and my client looked to me to protect him from that risk.

On the train ride back to L.A., I happened to be sitting across the aisle from the very capable opposing attorney, who somehow had let me know that he was gay himself, without ever saying a word to that effect (This must be what people mean when they joke about “gaydar.”). I was happy for the conversation on the ride back to L.A., and hey, we’re both professionals, so we talked for a while to pass the time. Mostly it was shop talk until he broached the subject of our case.

“You don’t seem like your client at all,” he said to me. (Maybe he knew I would find that remark flattering.) “Tell me, why would a group like yours, that says it’s for free speech, represent a guy like this?”

I took this as a challenge, so I put my game face on. “You know, I’d really like it if this case would just go away. But your client’s counter-claim has really escalated the stakes, so I don’t know if we can resolve this stupid thing short of trial.”

“Let me ask you this,” my adversary said, choosing not to press on the fact that I hadn’t really answered his question. “Has nothing to do with the case, I’m just curious. Do you think gay people should be able to get married? Just your personal opinion, not necessarily your firm’s party line.”

“I – you know, I’ve never thought about that question before in my life.” This was the mid-nineties, back before same sex marriage was a big issue. “I guess the answer is yes, I do. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if you did. You should have the same rights as me. There’s no good reason I can think of for gay people to not get married.”

“You really are different from your client then.” We moved on to other topics in our conversation. But on top of my discomfort with the case and the issues it raised, the fact that I had never thought about that issue before told me that there must be a whole world of problems that gay people have to confront, problems I had the luxury of never thinking about. I didn’t like feeling that ignorant.

When I got to the office the next day, I told the top lawyer, “I can’t work on this case any more in good conscience. We’re on the wrong side of the law, we’re acting contrary to our mission as free speech advocates, we’re undermining our own credibility by doing it, and frankly, we look like bigots.”

“No. I need you on this case. Now go represent our client.”

In retrospect, I should have had the moral courage to tender my resignation on the spot. I had considered doing exactly that. But I didn’t have any reserves of cash to live off of, and no leads on a new job. So I slinked back to my office, berating myself for my cowardice.

Then, I got a flash of inspiration.

I drafted a motion to dismiss the other side’s claim against my client, based on the most technical possible reading of the law I could find. It’s far too obscure to describe here, but trust me, it was very clever. So a few weeks later, the motion was heard and the same lawyer who had spoken to me on the train opposed my motion with all of the skill and cunning of a master of the craft. But he wasn’t the only good lawyer on the case, and the judge granted my motion.

Just like that, the money claim against my client was now gone. I confirmed for the record, “So there are currently no claims of any kind pending against my client, just my client’s claims against the parade?”

“Yes, counsel,” the judge said, “That’s how I see it.”

“In that case, I move to dismiss my client’s claims immediately and with prejudice.”

My adversary did a double-take and appeared too stunned to react. The judge looked surprised, too, and asked me, “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Your Honor, this farce has gone on long enough. It ends today.”

“You got it. Motion granted.”

No one had won. My client would not be able to disrupt the gay pride parade, but he was free from the threat of a ruinous money judgment.

Technically, this was a breach of my professional ethics. Dismissing cases voluntarily is a client’s decision, not a lawyer’s, and my client had not authorized this. Obviously, it also put my job on the line. But I didn’t care – redeeming my earlier failure to resign, and using my position to advance the ideals that had made me want to be a lawyer in the first place, was more important than playing it safe.

You might think the same-sex marriage question my adversary had asked me that afternoon on the train had been a clever tactic to puncture my morale for the case. But I still think he was just passing the time. I still fought to protect my client from his client’s claim best I knew how, successfully. He obviously hadn’t expected me to just dismiss the case.

But his question had made me realize that I’d never before thought about the issue, and that I needed to take stock of my attitude towards gay people, and my attitude towards what I was doing with my life. I realized that although I lived only a few minutes’ drive from West Hollywood, I barely even knew any gay people and all my friends were, to my knowledge, straight.

It took a couple of months after this, but I found a different job. The work wasn’t as much fun as what I had been doing before, but I was free of the pressure to do things that were morally indefensible, and as a bonus I was making more money. I didn’t go looking for gay or lesbian friends either, but somehow I found them, and my life has been made richer for their friendships.

Finally, I’ve been inspired to become an advocate for same-sex marriage ever since that time, both personally and professionally. One day, we’ll look back on that issue and wonder what all the fuss was about. I hope you’ll join me in making that day become a reality sooner rather than later.

Oh, and no one has ever complained to the Bar about my unauthorized dismissal of a particularly nasty little lawsuit.

by Sara C.

I’m young. Really young. But I have really strong opinions for somebody my age. I consider LA my “growing up” city because that was where I truly figured out exactly what my opinions and beliefs were.

I remember when I was six we went to a Pride festival at a beach near our apartment. In my eyes, this was something that I had never seen before. But it had a great effect on me. When I told my father on the phone what I had done that day, he threw a fit and was outraged. From that moment on, my support of the LGBT community strengthened. I couldn’t believe how somebody could be upset over something so simple. In my six-year-old mind, the men (and women) holding hands and kissing was just normal. I didn’t think of it any other way. It wasn’t surprising, it wasn’t horrifying. I compared men dating other men to men dating women. Love was love, right? 

After that festival, I began to notice the gay couples in the movies my family would watch together, or in TV shows, or even in the streets. Many of my uncle’s friends were gay as well. I understood that in our house, this was all normal. Regular. Typical, even.

When I moved to a small Southern town, I realized that not many families were as accepting as mine. Kids in school would say harsh words, or make gay jokes. And whenever somebody would say something mean, I would call them out. I wouldn’t tolerate it, and I still don’t. I’m heterosexual, but that doesn’t mean that I will let such cruelty and ignorance just pass me by.

To me, any type of love that goes against society is beautiful. That is the kind of love that has no boundaries, that takes risks. That’s the kind of love that’s so strong, it doesn’t care what people think of it. That is the kind of bravery and courage that I wish everybody could have.

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by Dan Doughty

During the summers of my early teen years while my brother Josh and I were romping about our suburban neighborhood committing various acts of arson, minor cases of animal cruelty, and other semi-criminal activities, our younger brother Kyle was usually at home. Inexplicably, Kyle preferred cooking a gourmet meal or playing house with the neighborhood girls, to detonating rudimentary homemade explosives lodged in cow excrement, or the thrill of exploding a grasshopper with compressed air.

Deep down, we knew that Kyle was fundamentally different than us, and that of course led to massive amount of teasing. The insults we hurled at him seemed to roll off the tongue so easily, “fag”, “homo”, “butt pirate”. Actually, I’m not sure we knew the term “butt pirate” back then, but if we did, we most certainly used it against him. The funny thing is that for all the verbal tormenting we bestowed upon him, implying that he was attracted to the opposite sex, the thought never crossed my mind that he might actually be gay.

I do not recall his exact words when he came out to me, but I do remember the feeling of utter surprise. “But what about your ugly girlfriend you were always sucking face with?”, I replied. Kyle always had questionable taste in women. In retrospect it all makes sense. How could I have been so oblivious? In my naiveté I found myself wondering- maybe we turned him gay. Maybe we told him how big of a cocksucker he was one too many times, to the point where he actually believed us.

You see, growing up in a highly Mormon, suburban neighborhood in Utah, I had never personally known anyone that was openly gay. So to have someone so close to my life diagnosed with this “condition” kind of blew my mind.

Over the years Kyle and I reconciled our differences, and I now consider him one of my best friends. He has been my gateway to meeting hundreds of people who live an alternate lifestyle which has contributed significantly to me becoming a more open-minded person.

A few years ago I came across some research by Alfred Kinsey that suggests human sexuality does not normally exist as an absolute condition. Rather the sexual preferences of the majority of people fall into a spectrum somewhere between heterosexual and homosexual. He developed the Kinsey scale to numerically describe a person’s sexual orientation. On this scale, 0 means completely heterosexual while 6 represents purely homosexual. Based on my experiences during the debauchery Kyle and I have gotten into, I think I can confidently say that we are outliers on the Kinsey scale and find ourselves diametrically opposite each other on our respective sides. Maybe this created the balance that has allowed us to come together as friends.

I have to admit that he does make a hell of a wing man. More than once I can attribute his dedicated service to my getting lucky, and I believe he would say the same about me. I never had to worry about competing with him for women, and thank god because they always go on about how “gorgeous his eyes are”, to which I reply with a smirk, “yeah, it’s just too bad he’s really, really gay.” Likewise I have never been insecure working the gay bars with him, because I know that there is really nothing there that interests me at all. I find nothing repulsive about homosexuality, it’s just not for me. I know Kyle has the same feelings about heterosexuality, and this is why I am certain that it is not a choice. He could no more choose to be straight, than I could choose to be gay, and that’s exactly the way we like it.

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NOTE: Dan’s brother, Kyle, did a Video Story, and their mother Gay Lynn shared a written story. You can see them both here.

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