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<\/a><\/div>\nI was recently interviewed for an article in Options<\/a>, a local BGLT <\/a>oriented magazine. I was holding forth about how we at the First Unitarian Church<\/a> were not only welcoming but were aggressively involved in the work for marriage equality in our state.<\/p>\n The interviewer asked how it was that I\u2019d become an BGLTQQI <\/a>ally.<\/p>\n I was flummoxed.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t have an answer.<\/p>\n I guess it was like a frog in water gradually boiled. I was raised in a homophobic household. Who wasn\u2019t may be the more interesting question. At first the social issues within the milieu in which I lived were the Vietnam war and race. I think it would have been very hard to not be concerned about racial equality in that time. And war gave everything some urgency. And right on all these things it was equally hard to ignore women\u2019s issues. Noticing how women were mistreated by custom, and, well, by me and most everyone I knew was so close to home, too close to home. I was vulnerable to challenge. And, so, well primed by thinking about war and peace, about race and about women, when issues of gay rights began to be raised, it made simple sense to me.<\/p>\n However, if there had to be a moment where I moved from being gay positive to a more activist stance, it would have to be on this day in 1978, when San Francisco\u2019s mayor George Moscone<\/a> and the city\u2019s first openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk<\/a> were assassinated<\/a> by former supervisor Dan White<\/a>.<\/p>\n