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They Held Out for Marriage; After 6 Decades of
Decorum in Public, Gus and Elmer Eloped

James Estrin/The New York Times

Elmer Lokkins, left, 84, and Gustavo Archilla, 88, who hid their sexual orientation for 58 years, were wed in Canada.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 16, 2003, Tuesday
By ANDREA ELLIOTT (NYT) 1644 words

In the language of their generation, Gus and Elmer were friends. They worked together, took cruises together and sang in the same church choir. They lived together for nearly six decades but never held hands in public.

Then, last month, Gustavo Archilla, 88, and Elmer Lokkins, 84, crossed the Canadian border near Niagara Falls and were married.

''We eloped,'' Mr. Lokkins said in his Manhattan apartment one recent afternoon, before breaking into song. ''To Niagara in a sleeper, there's no honeymoon that's cheaper.''

Then he paused, and his tone shifted. ''We waited a long, long time.''

Mr. Archilla and Mr. Lokkins did not marry for political reasons, financial reasons or legal reasons. Through their 58 years together, they mostly stood by as others fought for rights like civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Marriage meant more to them. It was something sacred, they said, an institution they cherished even as it shunned them.

The couple capture what some in the gay rights movement say is an essential but unappreciated point in the argument for same-sex marriage: it offers something more basic and profound than survivor rights or shared health care. For many gays and lesbians, the power of marriage lies in the sanctity of its tradition, its social legitimacy -- the very thing opponents of gay marriage are mobilizing at the highest levels to protect.

For Mr. Archilla and Mr. Lokkins, the need for an official blessing was so basic that until they married, they could not make their relationship public. It was only on the evening of Nov. 12, after they wed, that they embraced in front of others for the first time.

''What we did was finally cap it all up -- make it seem complete,'' said Mr. Archilla, the son of a Puerto Rican Presbyterian minister. ''It was about fulfilling this desire people have to dignify what you have done all your life -- to qualify it by going through the ceremony so that it has the same seriousness, the same objective that anybody getting married would be entitled to.''

For years, each man attended the weddings, funerals and baptisms of his partner's family, but felt he lacked an official link.

''I wanted to marry into his family,'' Mr. Lokkins said. ''I wanted to be an Archilla also.''

The lives of Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla have traced an arc in gay history: they came of age at a time when gays and lesbians could be jailed and the medical establishment deemed their sexual orientation a mental illness, treatable by electric shock.

They now live in a transformed country, where the word ''queer'' pops up on daily television listings and gay characters are a staple of Hollywood. They have seen changes they never imagined possible, from the Supreme Court's striking down of sodomy laws this year to the ruling by the highest court of Massachusetts in November to legalize same-sex marriage. Canada had legalized it several months earlier.

''It's been a period of wonderment,'' Mr. Archilla said.

Although Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla have remained largely at the margins of gay activism, they have been leaders in other realms: Mr. Lokkins was the registrar of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Mr. Archilla was his assistant. Mr. Archilla was the chairman of the board of their co-op in Morningside Gardens. As eldest siblings, they consider themselves the heads of their respective families: their annual Christmas letter has 415 recipients.

Being gay, they say, is not a significant part of their identity. They acknowledge it in a quiet way: they donate money to gay rights organizations, but they socialize mostly in heterosexual circles.

They are, in part, a product of their time -- a time when people hid their sexual orientation as a means of survival.

''It was like a secret society,'' said Terry Kaelber, executive director of SAGE, a gay rights organization for the elderly in Manhattan.

It was dusk on Sept. 16, 1945, when Mr. Lokkins first spotted Mr. Archilla walking through Columbus Circle. Mr. Archilla was on his way home from voice lessons at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Lokkins had just been honorably discharged from the Army and was visiting from Chicago.

''I had never seen anything so handsome,'' Mr. Lokkins said.

They chatted and then agreed to meet the next evening to hear a live performance of the radio show ''Town Hall Tonight.'' After the show, they walked the streets and finally retreated quietly to the hotel room where Mr. Lokkins was staying. There, he boyishly unpacked a bag filled with keepsakes from his wartime military duty.

''What appealed to me was the childlike manner of him,'' Mr. Archilla said.

Within days, Mr. Archilla took Mr. Lokkins home to meet the family. Mr. Archilla's parents had died, and he was in charge of his eight younger siblings. He introduced Mr. Lokkins as a friend.

Neither man ever considered discussing his sexual orientation with family. Mr. Lokkins was engaged at the time to a woman in Chicago; Mr. Archilla had been briefly engaged to a woman in New York.

''Living a lie was the hardest part,'' Mr. Lokkins said.

Mr. Lokkins returned to Chicago, broke off the engagement and, several months later, moved into a vacant bedroom in the Archilla family's Washington Heights apartment.

No one suspected anything at first. But soon, Mr. Archilla's siblings began to wonder.

''We noticed that he didn't date too much like all my other brothers,'' said one of Mr. Archilla's three sisters, Idalia Chimelis, 83.

The two men kept their relationship a secret. But as Mr. Archilla's siblings moved out, one by one, and Mr. Lokkins remained, the unspoken truth began to emerge. He and Mr. Archilla stayed there until 1957, when they bought a sunny top-floor apartment in a Morningside Gardens high rise.

With time, they became ''Uncle Gus and Uncle Elmer'' to members of their families. They rarely missed a family gathering. They doted lovingly on their nieces and nephews. But they never doted, publicly, on each other.

''They were never demonstrative,'' said Mr. Lokkins's sister, Helen Thrun, 81. Their discretion was essential to maintaining good relations with the family, she said.

Still, acceptance was sometimes hard won. For 40 years, Mr. Archilla and Mr. Lokkins remained estranged from one of Mr. Archilla's brothers. This year, when the man fell ill with Alzheimer's, Mr. Archilla called him and they reconciled.

Mr. Lokkins spent half of his childhood in an orphanage in Normal, Ill. He has a hard time talking about the brother who never accepted him, or about a love letter from Mr. Archilla that wound up in the hands of an aunt.

''I just wiped those things away,'' he said. ''It was terrible. I don't remember.''

Only once did Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla take an active part in the gay rights struggle: in 1993, they held a banner for SAGE during a march in Washington.

''It made me appreciate the big job that other people have done for us,'' Mr. Archilla said. ''It made me feel some shame that I had not done more.'' But he and Mr. Lokkins told only a few friends about the march.

Their wedding, 10 years later, was a very different kind of act, they said.

''The emotion was different -- it was spiritual,'' Mr. Archilla said.

The idea occurred to them when they heard about Canada's legalization of same-sex marriage. In November, they had planned a trip upstate to Depew, N.Y., to visit some ailing relatives. The night before they left, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla began talking about following through with the marriage.

''I couldn't sleep,'' Mr. Lokkins said.

At 6 a.m., they called Mr. Archilla's nephew, a lawyer who lives in West Seneca, N.Y. He tracked down some phone numbers in Canada and, two days later, the couple were driving with two witnesses -- Mr. Archilla's sister-in-law, Buelah Archilla, and her brother -- across the border.

They got their marriage license at the Niagara Falls City Hall and were married in a 20-minute ceremony at the home of Dr. John R. A. Mayer, the chaplain of a Unitarian church in St. Catharine's, Ontario.

They were the oldest couple ever married by Dr. Mayer, who performed only six or eight marriages a year until the new laws were passed. Since July he has performed 50 ceremonies -- 40 for same-sex couples.

After the ceremony, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla and their two witnesses stopped at Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast.

''They were flying high,'' said Daniel R. Archilla, 40, the lawyer who helped arrange the wedding and saw them at their evening celebration in Depew.

Some of their older relatives were still getting used to the notion of same-sex marriage but seemed ready to put the couple's happiness first.

''I'm a Christian,'' said Buelah Archilla, 75, who was the host for the party. ''It wouldn't work for me, of course. Whatever works for them is good.''

As newlyweds, Mr. Lokkins and Mr. Archilla say they feel a novel freedom.

''I feel a sense of relief,'' Mr. Archilla said. ''The maximum is getting married.''

Mr. Lokkins, left, and Mr. Archilla as young men, at the Cloisters in the late 1940's, a perilous time for gays.

© 2003 The New York Times

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Gay and lesbian couples find hope in Mass.
ruling, challenges in building families

David Peterson, Star Tribune
Published November 30, 2003

For complete news story, click on this link.

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Resources

Rainbow Families is a nonprofit organization for LGBT parents, prospective parents, our children, and those who support us in our quest for basic human rights. The group serves over 2,500 families throughout the upper Midwest. They provide resources, education, and support to LGBT parents, so they can build strong families and openly confront society's injustices. Rainbow Families also provides public education and advocacy in the larger community to transform the institutions that affect the lives of its constituents.

Mission statement: to build a safe, just, and affirming world for LGBT families and our children.

Address:
711 West Lake Street, Suite 210
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55408

Phone: 612-827-7731

Fax: 612-822-2759

Email: connect@rainbowfamilies.org

Website: www.rainbowfamilies.org

Publication: Rainbow Families Newsletter.

Supporting and protecting the families of gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender parents.

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Reports, Studies,
and Media Coverage

Teenage Kids of Same-Sex Parents Fare Well
Study: Older Children of Lesbian Couples Develop Normally

By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Medical News

Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD
on Friday, November 12, 2004

Nov. 15, 2004 -- It's not the sexual orientation of the parents that matters in nurturing a well-developed teenager, it's the quality of the relationship that the parents have with their child that counts, according to a new study.

Researchers found no difference in school performance, psychological adjustment, and sexual behavior among children reared by same-sex parents compared with those reared by opposite-sex parents.

"Regardless of whether they lived with same-sex or opposite-sex couples, adolescents whose parents reported having close and satisfying relationships with them were more likely to have made positive adjustments at school as well as at home," write researcher Jennifer Wainright of the University of Virginia, and colleagues.

Researchers found that teens living with same-sex parents reported feeling more connected to school than did those living with opposite-sex parents.

The results of the study appear in the November issue of Child Development. . . . [Click here to view the complete article.]

American Psychological Association Briefing Sheet on Same-Sex Families and Relationships

June 2004

What Does the Psychological Research Say About Same-Sex Families and Relationships?

The issue of same-sex marriage has become a topic of much public debate in the United States. The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ordered the state government to issue marriage licenses without regard to sexual orientation beginning May 17, 2004. The U.S. Congress and a number of state legislatures are considering legislation to amend the U.S. or state constitutions, respectively, to prohibit same-sex marriage. Furthermore, marriages of same-sex couples have been performed openly in California, New Mexico, New York, and Oregon in recent months, and cases arising from those marriages, as well as other cases that predate the performances of marriages, are under judicial consideration.

This briefing paper is designed to inform the public policy debate on same-sex marriage with knowledge gained from psychological research. Much can be learned from the extensive empirical literature on sexual orientation, lesbian and gay couples and their children, and the effects of prejudice and discrimination.
[Click here to view the complete article.]

Gay couples help all find civil rights

By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Detroit Free Press
(www.freep.com)
February 20, 2004

It's a little known fact that Martin Luther King didn't really lead the March on Washington.

What actually happened is that the marchers, a quarter-million strong, grew impatient waiting for the event to begin and stepped off the curb ahead of schedule. When they found out what had happened, King and other march "leaders" had to scramble to catch up.

Forty-one years later, that vignette from another era offers an irresistible analogy to frame what has been happening these last few days in San Francisco. Public opinion seesaws between tolerance and intolerance, courts and legislatures debate civil union and marriage and abruptly, thousands of gay and lesbian couples decide to stop waiting for other people's decisions.

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom makes the quixotic decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and suddenly gay men and lesbians are rushing as fast as planes, trains and Nikes will carry them, to the city where Tony Bennett left his heart. Critics say the mayor has acted in defiance of state law, but Newsom calls same-sex marriage "inevitable."

Could go either way
In the long term, he might well be right. In the short term, it's a dicier question. The issue is being fought in the courts even as we speak. Gay marriage may move forward to legality, may move backward to prohibition; it remains to be seen.

The one thing that seems beyond debate is that the issue is indeed moving.

There is something uplifting in the manner of that movement. It comes not at the behest of some charismatic national leader or the bidding of some strident national organization. People are moving, rather, two by two, moving upon decisions made at dinner tables and in front of televisions, moving upon a conviction that now is the time.

When you get past selective application of biblical injunctions and pious invocations of moral concern, that intolerance usually boils down to this curious bit of reasoning: Discrimination against gays ought to be allowed because, unlike skin color and culture, homosexuality is something people "choose" and therefore, can un-choose.

So, critics say, society ought not be required to extend civil rights protections to gay people. Rather, gay people ought to be required to change.

An absurd argument
The most absurd of the many absurd things about that argument is this: It asks us to believe a man might have his choice of a sexuality that is accepted and celebrated and one that will leave him open to ridicule, estrangement, physical abuse, job and housing discrimination, and the loss of basic legal protections . . . and he would take the second one. If that's not the dumbest thing I've ever heard, it's definitely in the top 10.

Granted, science has yet to figure out what causes homosexuality. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter, does it? The people who have been flocking to Mayor Newsom's city did not decide to be gay. Anyone who is watching them with that thought in mind is missing the point.

What they have decided is that they are human beings worthy of human dignity. What they have decided is that they are tired of waiting for people to get that.

What they have decided is that it's time to step off the curb.

LEONARD PITTS JR. appears most Wednesdays and Fridays in the Free Press. Reach him at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; toll free at 888-251-4407 or at lpitts@herald.com.

Copyright © 2004 Detroit Free Press Inc.

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In summary, there is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that home environments provided by gay and lesbian parents are as likely as those provided by heterosexual parents to support and enable children's psychosocial growth.