By Chuck Fager
Chapter Four
The war began in 1861, and from that time until its suppression in 1865 we were, with brief intervals, not clear of one or the other of the armies in our midst.
--From a Report of Hopewell Friends Meeting, near Winchester, Virginia
"What I mean," Penn said calmly, "is that thy display is seen as inflammatory by several of the other participants, and in the interests of all I agreed to have it moved."
"Moved where?" Eddie demanded.
"We hadn't decided yet, but I think over there would be a possibility." He nodded toward the far corner where we found the display box.
"But the receipt says Number Three," Eddie insisted, brandishing the paper again. "We paid for it. We have a right to that space."
"Technically, thee may be right," Penn said. "But try to see it from my standpoint. What good does it do if thy display there means half the Conference delegates walk out? Thee knows how sensitive some of them are about this. Besides, they said they wanted it out of the foyer entirely, and I stood firm against that. So everybody will see it sooner or later anyway. Does a table really make that much difference?"
Eddie didn't answer. "Just who," he spat, "are 'they?' The Reverend Doctor Ben Goode? What is he doing here, anyway? He's not a Quaker. Thank God," he added.
"That's another part of it," Penn replied. "A lot of the evangelicals were wary of coming here at all. This is outside their base, and they felt exposed. Look, I've been working on some of them for several years. When they said they'd come if they could invite Goode, I went along. I didn't think he'd accept. When he did, I was committed. Now he says he won't preach with thy display right by the main entrance, and the evangelicals are backing him up."
As he spoke, I was remembering a rueful comment Penn himself had made, in the closing session of the Boston Conference almost a generation ago. He had listened to us wrangle for several hours over whether to endorse the destruction of draft files as a form of antiwar protest: "Quakers don't believe in fighting," he had mused wryly, "except in committee."
I'd sat through my share of tough sessions since then, and while the current machinations all sounded pretty outrageous to me, they were not inconceivable.
But Eddie was having none of it. The more he heard of Penn's story, the more furious his face became.
"Preach?" he said, not quite believing what he had heard. "When is he going to preach?"
Penn shifted his feet and lowered his gaze momentarily. This surprised me. Was this pillar of Friendly firmness, who by his own account had pleaded for nonviolence and reconciliation face-to-face with both Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Shamir, actually temporizing? How far had he caved in to these folks?
"Actually," he said, "Goode will be giving the keynote address tomorrow night."
"What?" Eddie's eyebrows jumped, and his face was livid. He pointed at the auditorium. "So now you're going to let that major league homophobe set the tone for the whole conference? This is too much."
He turned and took a few steps away, then whirled around and jabbed a finger in Penn's chest. "Do you realize what this means?" he shouted. "It makes a lie out of this whole goddam event."
"Now, I don't think there is any need for profanity," Penn murmured primly.
But this only make Eddie madder. He ripped the nametag from his shirt and waved it in Penn's face. "You want profanity? Look at this! You're gonna have to throw these away and make new ones that say, "'Some Friends Conference'. Because you're giving a platform to a man who wants to make criminals out of me and all other lesbian and gay Quakers."
He gestured at the doors again. "Hell, everything that comes out of his mouth is a curse as far as I'm concerned."
"I realize this is hard," Penn tried again, "but the committee has agreed--"
"The committee?" Eddie said, and his expression changed, as if he'd remembered something. "Oh yes, the committee. You're right, they're all in on this, too. Very well then, they all need to know just what kind of genocide they're promoting."
Before Penn or I could protest, he had brushed past us and through the doors back into the auditorium.
Penn gave me a mournful look. "Perhaps it would have been better after all, William, if thee had attended some planning meetings. Thee might have helped prepare him for this."
But I just shook my head and shrugged helplessly as he moved toward the doors. I didn't have the same emotional charge about it, but Penn's disclosure was pretty shocking to me too. If I'd wanted to sit in on a Moral Majority meeting, I would have gone to Lynchburg. And I could stay home and watch Pat Robertson's rantings on TV. What did any of this have to do with a Quaker gathering?
Eddie's voice suddenly boomed loudly from inside, and I hurried after Penn back into the auditorium.
Eddie was on the stage, standing at the podium, where he had flicked on the microphone, giving him command of the scene.
"Doctor Goode," he was saying in a harsh tone, "it seems you may not have been fully informed about the Society of Friends in the United States when you accepted the invitation to speak here. This is supposed to be an 'All-Friends' Conference. But not all Friends have signed up with your anti-gay campaigns."
He waved toward the foyer. "Did you see my pictures, Doctor? In fact, many of our meetings abhor your attitudes, and they welcome homosexuals, as does mine. Some of our meetings even marry lesbian and gay couples. es, they do. And we're proud of it, Doctor Goode. Did you hear me? We're proud of it!"
Goode was seated exactly opposite Eddie, between two other men whose suits gave them away as part of his entourage. He was the incarnation of imperturbability, his thick black hair carefully arranged, his large, smooth face impassive except for a faint, fixed smile. He had been heckled before, and had stood his ground well. He glanced toward Penn, hurrying up the center steps to the stage. I stopped at the front row of seats, uncertain where I belonged in this tableau.
"Mr. Chairman," Goode said calmly but firmly, heedless of the fine points of our Quaker jargon, "could I ask what this is all about, and who this gentleman is?"
"My name is Eddie Smith, Doctor Goode," Eddie said before Penn could answer, "and I'm the Co-Clerk of the Lavender Friends Fellowship. It is a recognized association of lesbian and gay Quakers--"
"It's not a recognized Quaker group as far as we're concerned," one of the pastors interrupted, in a stentorian voice well-trained on many a sermon.
He was greying, fat, with a long, mask-like face. Doubtless he could put on the hale-fellow bonhomie for evangelistic purposes, but he looked forbidding now. Squinting at his nametag, I could just make out the block letters: Horace Burks. Under it were the initials EFC-WR.
I knew my Quaker alphabet soup; this was the Evangelical Friends Church--Western Region, with international headquarters in Whittier, California. Burks was its Superintendent, though bishop or petty pope was a more fitting title from what I'd heard.
"We-we don't recognize it in Indiana either," said another pastor, glaring at Eddie from behind thick glasses. Lyndon Coffin, I read, Richmond General Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, home of Earlham College and the largest Quaker center outside Philadelphia.
Coffin's voice was high and thin, without any of Burks's resonance. A bulbous adam's apple worked up and down the front of his prominent neck. His plaid polyester jacket was garish under the auditorium lights, and hung loosely on his sunken chest. He looked more than a little ridiculous.
But I had heard of him; he was another superintendent used to getting what he wanted. "I-I think you should sit down and let us get on with our meeting," he piped. "We have a lot to do yet."
"Oh, I'll just bet you do," Eddie said sarcastically, adding a campy lilt to heighten the effect. "What's next on your agenda, Friends? Approving the death penalty for sodomy? You're really big on capital punishment, aren't you Doctor Goode? Leviticus uber alles and all that? You and your church helped bring it back in Virginia, I believe."
He scratched his chin, mimicking thoughtfulness. "What was it you called the electric chair in one of your sermons, Doctor--Old Sparky? Very clever. And the governor's kept it busy for you, too. So very cooperative of him, don't you think?"
Now he aped concern. "But Doctor, are you sure you won't wear it out when you start sending all the gays and lesbians in the state there? After all, like they say, we are everywhere! What'll it be to keep track of us, Doctor, pink triangles? They worked quite well before. Or do you remember?"
Goode was shaking his large head. "My friend," he replied in a tone passably imitating compassion, "I can see you're in a lot of pain, and I did not come here to add to it. As Christians we try to love the sinner, even as we must hate the sin."
Eddie's tome veered from camp to shrill. "Oh, right," he sneered, "you'll cry all the way to the ovens."
Goode winced in distaste at this, and I did too. Troubling as the situation already was, Eddie's harangue was making me even more uneasy.
I had known Eddie Smith for five years, ever since he joined our men's group at Washington Meeting shortly after he began attending worship. He'd been drummed out of the Navy, where he'd been a crack computer operator, after being caught in bed with an ensign, and this turned him against the whole military system. He had put his computer training to work on a
Naderish, gay-oriented Personal Privacy Project. There he tracked the ever-increasing number of ways government and corporations can spy on people through database technology. His reward was low pay, long hours, and a justified paranoia.
I'd listened to lots of his fear and anger about what was done to homosexuals in our society. Sometimes it all seemed repetitive, even self-indulgent, yet mostly I sympathized with him. But this tirade was getting scary.
I caught a glimpse of Rita, at the far end of the table. She sat with her face in her hands, her braid hanging over her left shoulder, clearly wishing she was somewhere else. The other liberals were sitting stony-faced, their ecology tee shirts looking faintly absurd at the moment. None of them was good at dealing with conflict head-on; no liberal Quaker I knew was, including me. Passive aggressives, that's us. Besides, Eddie was displaying terrible manners.
But the superintendents were not so timid. "Lemuel, this really must stop," Horace Burks declared loudly, banging a fleshy palm on the table for emphasis. "Doctor Goode is our guest. This is no way for him to be treated."
"Oh my, aren't we butch," Eddie mocked. "Is this where Arnold Schwarzenegger comes in, 'Hasta La vista, baby', etc?"
Then his finger was thrusting again and the effeminate tone was gone. "Well, let me tell you something, Superintendent. The days when we hid in the closet and quaked when homophobic fascists like you and Goode growled are past."
Rita finally spoke up. "Couldn't we have a period of silence?" she asked, turning toward Penn. "If we could center down, perhaps we could begin a time of healing."
"I'm afraid not," Eddie persisted. "The time for silence is past. In my Bible--"
"Friend, would thee please be quiet." Penn was moving toward him, and raising his voice.
Eddie ignored him. "--In my Bible, Doctor," he repeated, in what was almost a shout, "it says you reap what you sow. And you had better watch your back, buddy, because--"
"My Bible says that, too," Goode shot back, "and that verse comes back to me every time I read about AIDS."
"You bastard!" Eddie's voice was almost a screech, and he started to come out from behind the podium. But Penn had reached him, and deftly flipped the mike button off. Burks and Coffin were on their feet now, red-faced, shouting for him to get off the stage.
Eddie yelled something back at them, but I couldn't make it out. Burks pushed his chair away; it fell over and clattered off the stage. Then he was beside Penn, and the two of them were prodding Eddie toward the side steps, blocking his view of the committee behind them.
"Get away from me!" he yelled, and I could see his hands clench into fists. My own palms suddenly went damp. Were we going to have a brawl, for God's sake? I felt a pull toward them, and a thought, Do something, echoed in my head.
Then I was up the side steps, putting my hands on Eddie's shoulders from behind, not roughly but with a kind of tenderness, as if protecting him from the two menacing figures blocking his view of the group.
"Come on, Eddie," I coaxed softly, "let's talk about this outside. Come on now." Then I was guiding him down the steps and up the aisle, and he was crying and muttering something over and over, which I couldn't make out, but to which I repeated, "Yes, yes, I know," several times.
Back in the foyer, I kept an arm around him, and said, "All right, it's okay now, Eddie. Let's just take a few deep breaths, and maybe center down a bit while we do it. Count with me, okay? Inhale: One; now let it out. Inhale: Two--"
But then he was pulling angrily away from me.
"What was it you called Goode up on Skyline Drive?" he said bitterly, wiping at his eyes. "'A marvelous indigenous American folk art form?' Yes, that was it. Jesus, Bill, you really don't get it. This is not just talk. It's a matter of life and death for me. For us."
He raised his arm toward the display board behind us. But he was too close. His hand struck one of the grinning pictures, and the whole hinged assembly tumbled over in a heap.
"Oh, christ!" he shouted, and ran through the doors into the hazy late afternoon.
Copyright © by Chuck Fager. All rights reserved.
