In Bed With Tom, My Experience with “Gay”

In 1983 I began considering the possibility that two men or two woman committed to each other by marriage vows might just be a good idea. At that time this thought was a new idea of mine. I had never heard it mentioned by anyone else, but it soon became clear that a lot of other people were thinking the same thing.

My friendship with a homosexual man named Tom had a great deal to do with this. Tom was a fantastic violinist, a lover of philosophy, a partly Jewish son of refugees from World War II, and the honored guest who played violin at my wedding in 1973.

Before I was married Tom and I often went camping together. Once we traveled by car from Chicago to Seattle and shared the same bed in a number of motels along the way. Upon arriving in Sheridan, Wyoming on evening, we found all the hotels occupied and had nowhere to go. The bar tender in the hotel where we inquired told us he had an extra room in his house, and invited us to stay there. Unfortunately, the bed was not quite a normal double bed, and we didn’t sleep real well. But the generous bar tender charged us nothing, and even trusted us to lock his house in the morning, as he needed to go out early.  Nothing sexual happened between Tom and me that evening or any other time we spent together. We were friends and that was all.

Five years after my wife, Kim, and I were married, we decided to cross the Pacific (to her part of the world) and be missionaries. Tom came out from Chicago to Minnesota to to see me off. That was when he told me for the first time he was gay.  I’m sure he had a real struggle in himself over whether he dared to take such a risk with a “religious” person like me.  I was delighted that I had finally earned his trust to that he would let me in on his secret. No, I didn’t appreciate the “intolerance” tag he had placed on me because of my faith commitments, but then I had  many things to learn from him too.

I read Boswell, Scanzoni, and a lot of other things from the gay rights movement, but the Holy Spirit and the scripture did not allow me to support their conclusions.  Nonetheless, Tom’s and my friendship continued despite our different opinions about a lot of things. And we also went camping alone together again after I had returned from East Asia. But there is a sad part of the Tom and Phil story that I also wish to tell.

Tom had been forced out of the army because his homosexual desires were too much to hide all the time. He appeared to resent the humiliation, but didn’t seem to have been unhappy about leaving the army. It never was what he wanted to do anyway, having been drafted. Playing violin and staying up all night to talk philosophy were much more suited to his temperament.

Although the army tossed him out, the army did show enough sympathy for Tom to give him an honorable discharge. That qualified him for veteran’s benefits. Tom was somewhat older than I, had few relatives, and actually not many real friends. I believe he died in a veteran’s home in Dallas, TX, but I’ll never know for sure. At one point, when I hadn’t heard from him for a long time, I called the veteran’s home to find out about his welfare. I was firmly told that HIPPA rules prevented them giving me any information about him. I could not learn even whether he was dead or alive. I presume by now he has passed away. That is the sad ending.