TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110890/1108582.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.2 KB | 140 lines

                                                                                THE CHANGING FAMILY, Page 78

COUPLES

The Lesbians Next Door


They are probably as numerous as gay men, but they don't get
the press. They are America's invisible women.

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- Reported by Scott Brown/Los Angeles
and Leslie Whitaker/New York


    When Samantha, a consultant to a California nonprofit
corporation, is invited to company events in which spouses are
welcome, she brings her housemate, Jill, a college professor.
The two women are rarely explicit about their relationship. They
just assume that co-workers will infer, correctly, that they are
lovers. "I never came out and told people at work I was a
lesbian," Samantha says. "You don't come out and tell people
you're straight. I felt it was up to them to figure it out."

    By the standards of the homosexual world, Samantha and Jill
are more than usually open, or "out." Their bond is no secret
to their families or neighbors -- in fact, they discovered after
moving into a suburban-style home that four other lesbian
couples live on the same block. Their friends know too: one year
the couple sent out a tongue-in-cheek Christmas card depicting
them entwined in a romantic cliffside embrace. Yet they are
still wary enough, with Jill's tenure on the line, that they
refused to have their real names included in this article.

    This relative invisibility, and their middle-class
life-style, make Samantha and Jill typical of the estimated 6
million to 13 million lesbians in the U.S. If the higher number
is right, about as many women are lesbian as are black and many
more than are Hispanic. While a small, strident minority reject
men altogether and advocate feminist separatism, most lesbians
are fully integrated into mainstream American life. They can be
found in locales ranging from Chicago and San Francisco to the
rural enclaves of Northampton, Mass., and Brat tleboro, Vt. In
Finding the Lesbians, author Janelle Lavelle claims she and her
friends have "managed to find other dykes in such alien places
as: a Liberty Bible College rally (the campus Jerry Falwell
calls home); a Jesse Helms-owned radio station; a Garden Club
meeting . . . and working in the ladies' wear section of a
K-mart store."

    Yet unless they proclaim themselves vehemently, lesbians
generally remain overlooked. While two men living together
typically occasion comment, women living together don't. Simply
being unmarried and of mature years can subject a man to
scrutiny about his sexual preference -- it happened to David
Souter after his nomination to the Supreme Court -- but an "old
maid" more often faces just pity or condescension. Although most
social scientists have rejected the view that homosexuality is
far less common among women than men, the idea persists in the
public at large. When homosexuals are discussed in the media,
men are almost always the focus, with women at best an
afterthought. The very word gay has come to imply male, and AIDS
has ironically exacerbated that distortion, even as it helped
propel women to the forefront of gay leadership because so many
of the male leaders were sick or dying.

    "Are we the gay wing of the women's movement or the women's
wing of the gay movement?" asks Torie Osborn, executive director
of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Los Angeles.
In truth, lesbians have often been made to feel unwelcome as
either. Within the gay movement, men have stressed sexual
freedom and increased funding to fight AIDS. When lesbians raise
such issues as the pay disparity between men and women -- which
hits lesbian couples doubly hard but, paradoxically, can benefit
gay male couples -- they are often dismissed as irrelevant. In
some corners of the women's movement, lesbians are still viewed
as an embarrassment: their presence might buttress the
conservative claim that feminism leads to the decline of family
values.

    The sense of not belonging can begin in adolescence or
before. Even the most sensitive parents want to disbelieve a
daughter's assertion of homosexuality and may dismiss their
child's hard-won sense of sexual identity as "just a phase."
Mary Falkner, 21, a senior at Queens College in New York City,
recalls that when she came out to her mother, "she took it
great. But she asked, `Do you want to tell the rest of the
family?' Without waiting to hear my answer, she said, `Good, we
won't.'"

    Despite this hint of shame, Falkner's experience was
unusually easy. Many families reject lesbian daughters as they
reach adulthood, and in turn, many lesbians do not reconcile
themselves to their nature until after marrying and, frequently,
having children. One Dallas-based businesswoman says she came
out just a year ago, at age 65, after decades of unhappy
marriage and raising four sons. In all, an estimated 1.5 million
U.S. lesbians are mothers. Most bore their children while
married, though adoption and artificial insemination are
becoming increasingly popular among lesbian couples. Maria
Cristina Vlassidis, 31, a Chilean-born law school graduate in
Manhattan, has a son Erick, 8, from her former marriage, whom
she is now raising with her lover, Marie Tatro, 29, a law
student. Both women attend parent-teacher conferences; both
support the child financially; they tell his playmates that they
are both "Erick's Mom."

    This life-style carries risk. "People freak out when they
see us interact as a family," says Maria. Neighbors in their
Hispanic district have escalated from hurling insults to
flinging garbage to tossing firecrackers through an open window.
Even in more tolerant communities, lesbians may face subtle
discrimination. Angela Bowen, 54, a divorced, free-lance writer
in Boston, has maintained a union with Jennifer Abod, 44, a
media producer, for 11 years, but because the relationship has
no legal status, Abod's health insurance will not cover Bowen or
Bowen's daughter.

    For most lesbians, however, being gay is basically a joyful
experience. They seem to find lasting relationships more readily
than gay men do. They face somewhat less harassment from
strangers. AIDS does not haunt them as a constant personal
threat. And many share a deep sense of community, bolstered by
the philosophical and practical successes of feminism.

    Happy lesbian couples with long-term relationships are not
hard to find, though not many want to broadcast their existence
beyond a circle of trusted friends and co-workers. Rose Walton,
53, and Marge Sherwin, 49, are more up front. Walton, who chairs
a department at the State University of New York's School of
Allied Health Professions, and Sherwin, a physical-therapy
instructor at Suffolk Community College, have lived together,
without much incident or fanfare, for 13 years, after meeting
on a blind date. The women have exchanged rings and, says Marge,
"absolutely would not go to a party the other is not invited
to." She adds, "My father, who is 85, has never been sat down
and told. But when my mother died, Rose spoke at the funeral, at
his request." Says Rose: "Being gay has never been an issue
with me. I was always a civil rights person. That doesn't mean
I've worn a banner or carried a sign. I've simply lived my
life."