Gay, Catholic, and American

My Legal Battle for Marriage Equality and Inclusion

Greg Bourke

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780268201258
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Catholic Greg Bourke's profoundly moving memoir about growing up gay and overcoming discrimination in the battle for same-sex marriage in the US.

In this compelling and deeply affecting memoir, Greg Bourke recounts growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and living as a gay Catholic. The book describes Bourke's early struggles for acceptance as an out gay man living in the South during the 1980s and '90s, his unplanned transformation into an outspoken gay rights activist after being dismissed as a troop leader from the Boy Scouts of America in 2012, and his historic role as one of the named plaintiffs in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. After being ousted by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), former Scoutmaster Bourke became a leader in the movement to amend antigay BSA membership policies. The Archdiocese of Louisville, because of its vigorous opposition to marriage equality, blocked Bourke's return to leadership despite his impeccable long-term record as a distinguished boy scout leader. But while making their home in Louisville, Bourke and his husband, Michael De Leon, have been active members at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church for more than three decades, and their family includes two adopted children who attended Lourdes school and were brought up in the faith. Over many years and challenges, this couple has managed to navigate the choppy waters of being openly gay while integrating into the fabric of their parish life community. Bourke is unapologetically Catholic, and his faith provides the framework for this inspiring story of how the Bourke De Leon family struggled to overcome antigay discrimination by both the BSA and the Catholic Church and fought to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.

Gay, Catholic, and American is an illuminating account that anyone, no matter their ideological orientation, can read for insight. It will appeal to those interested in civil rights, Catholic social justice, and LGBTQ inclusion.

1

EARLY YEARS—READY FOR THE ’80S

In the years before my husband, Michael, and I met at the University of Kentucky (UK), I had to face and embrace my sexual orientation while trying to reconcile it with my faith. This included maintaining membership in a Catholic Church that was generally not supportive. Before I went to UK, I attended the University of Louisville (U of L) and graduated with a bachelor’s in sociology. I then went on to get a master’s in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. As part of my coming-out process I scheduled a few counseling sessions with the priest who’d been the chaplain at my all-male Catholic high school, Saint Xavier in Louisville. Unsure of how he would respond, I was pleasantly relieved when he reassured me that God loved and accepted me just the way I was. For a troubled nineteen-year-old coming out in 1976 and seeking that acceptance, it was the encouragement I desperately needed. It was a pivotal point in dedicating myself to finding a way to make my sexuality work with my faith and within the Catholic Church.

Michael De Leon and I met on March 20, 1982, at The Bar in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time I was twenty-four years old and had just started an MBA program at UK. Michael was twenty-three and wrapping up his bachelor’s degree in agriculture at UK.

It was still against Kentucky’s sodomy law to engage in “homosexual” behavior. You could get two years in prison. You couldn’t fully and safely be “out” at school, at work, or at home without fear of condemnation and even potential prosecution. In those days, Kentucky had a particularly harsh, conservative Bible Belt environment that did not tolerate any perversions that deviated from collective Christian-inspired norms.

UK and Lexington in those days were both still pretty conservative and lacking even minimal tolerance for gay people. There were no LGBTQ support groups, no campus student groups, no Pride festivals. Besides a couple of other spaces where gay and lesbian people sometimes congregated, The Bar was the only semilegitimate meeting place for LGBTQ people. It was the go-to place, the only relatively safe space in an otherwise hostile environment. Beyond its doors, if you revealed your sexual orientation to the wrong person, you might lose your job or be kicked out of your apartment. You could even face physical harm.

After Michael and I met, we discovered we lived just three doors apart on South Upper Street, a few blocks from campus. That area was not a predominantly gay neighborhood by any means, so our proximity was a remarkable coincidence. It facilitated frequent visits to one another in our first weeks and months as we started dating. It was one of those sappy love-at-first-sight experiences. We’d met on a Saturday night. The next night we were back together to attend a showing of the classic movie Streetcar Named Desire at the Kentucky Theatre with some of Michael’s other gay friends.

Within the first couple of weeks of dating, we began attending Mass together at Saint Paul the Apostle Church in downtown Lexington. I had moved to Lexington in January 1982 and was going there myself on the weekends. Michael preferred services at the Catholic Newman Center on UK’s campus. Saint Paul was convenient because it was a short six-block walk from our apartments. I have always been more of a church architecture traditionalist and preferred the grand old-style church setting surrounded by statues, stained glass, burning candles, and incense. Michael enjoyed Mass at the Newman Center because it was more contemporary and the congregation was predominantly younger college students.

In reflection, it seems rather odd we would have been going out to the local gay bar on Saturday nights drinking and dancing until the wee hours of the morning, then getting up later for Sunday Mass. But that’s what we did. I suppose there might have been straight couples doing the same thing, but looking back it probably was pretty extraordinary that this young gay couple was going to Catholic Mass together on Sundays in Kentucky in the early 1980s.

Our lives have always been sort of a paradox. I suppose that was just another way we didn’t conform to expectations from either gay or conventional perspectives. We were not being radical or provocative; we simply chose to practice our faith together because that’s how we were raised.

During our time in Lexington, we occasionally went to the Newman Center together and a few times to the Cathedral of Christ the King. Even in those days, young people liked to church-shop for one that fit with their theological beliefs and provided the right combination of comfort and spiritual satisfaction. We settled on Saint Paul the Apostle Catholic Church and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. Of course, it’s not like Saint Paul had a gay ministry in those days. Michael and I simply showed up and attended services and never spoke the g-word. Don’t ask, don’t tell worked well in that era as we appeared to the clergy and congregation to be just another couple of college students attending Mass together. We got what we wanted and needed, but we kept a very low profile.

Both Michael and I come from what would have been considered traditional Roman Catholic families. Our parents married in the Church and practiced their faith unwaveringly from birth throughout life. Michael’s parents were married forty-four years when his father, Abel De Leon Sr., passed away in 1997. My parents were married sixty-seven years when Timothy Bourke Jr. died in 2017 at age ninety-two. In our respective families, weekly attendance at Mass was mandatory. I took the traditional Catholic educational path, attending Catholic elementary and high schools and later the University of Notre Dame for graduate school. Michael went to military and public schools.

Our parents were strong role models, fully dedicated to the Catholic Church and the institution of marriage. Michael and I continued to go to Mass every week even when we left our parents’ homes. We both absorbed their values as we grew up and brought them with us into our relationship together.

In those early years together, Michael and I never had an ultraserious or contentious discussion about getting or staying together forever. There were no ultimatums or threats or pleas or proposals, or anything like that. If we had listened to societal advice from the gay or straight world, we wouldn’t have even bothered trying to stay together for decades. That was against the law. It wasn’t promoted in any way in the mainstream media or even in gay culture. We didn’t know of any long-term gay or lesbian couples. We had no role models to steer us into what we were embarking upon. On the other hand, there were countless role models of opposite-sex couples in our families and in our parish church who valued and respected the inherent blessings of long-term committed relationships. They ended up being our role models.

Make no mistake, Michael and I had both been involved in other relationships before we met each other. When we met, we certainly didn’t expect to become life partners. In the early months, our relationship was like what we southerners call “courting.” It was serious but not the complete focus of our lives. That was not the world in which we lived. We were students, we both had jobs. We were working hard to achieve our respective educational goals and finding sustainable employment that would ensure our independence in adulthood. We took our relationship and our lives one day at a time. A long-term relationship just wasn’t a realistic possibility. Yet, from the outset we did seem to hang out pretty much every day. We had no idea what was coming.

Then in August 1982, I had a traumatic personal experience that managed to propel our relationship to the next level. I came home one day after a long day of classes and work to find my studio apartment ransacked and burglarized. As a poor graduate student, there weren’t many valuables in my apartment, but the thief stole my used black-and-white, nine-inch television and two tickets for the upcoming UK vs. LSU football game. When I walked into my apartment and saw that carnage, every drawer open and my personal belongings strewn about the floor, I remember feeling violated and shaken to the core.

My life experience to that point was based on a very quiet and safe working-class neighborhood in Louisville. I’d never experienced any type of criminal victimization. It was paralyzing at first, but after gathering my composure a bit, I walked over a few doors to Michael’s apartment and he consoled me in my time of distress. I knew I could not go back to that apartment again. After talking it over, Michael and I agreed I should move in with him and his roommate, Paul, who was also gay. They had a nice two-bedroom unit on the first floor of an old house that had been converted into apartments. Having another tenant meant the monthly rent was reduced for everyone, so Paul agreed to the move.

I always think of that August 1982 episode as the time in our relationship when we made that first real commitment to one another. There were no vows or rings exchanged, just an agreement we would try living together, sharing a bedroom in a shared apartment. We did not discuss how long the arrangement might last or even if we thought it would. We just figured out we wanted to try living together and sharing our lives more completely.

Those early months were very much the honeymoon period of a relationship that many enjoy and look fondly back upon in later years. We were happy and content, broke but satisfied in doing everything we could together. Not only would we go dancing several nights a week, but we frequently enjoyed classic movies at the Kentucky Theatre. Besides attending Mass weekly, we liked “picking” at the weekend Georgetown Flea Market and tent camping and hiking at Red River Gorge in eastern Kentucky. Perhaps most memorably of all, we attended numerous UK football and basketball games together. UK students considered attendance at those games almost mandatory.

We had a small core group of gay friends we spent time with when we weren’t working or pursuing our studies, but we found that as a couple in a world without couples we sometimes didn’t fit into Lexington’s gay scene.

Perhaps we were simply young and stupid, but we had no idea how high the odds were stacked against us as we launched our life together at that time and place. We didn’t consider the lack of same-sex couple role models, the condemnation by our Church, or the legal challenges we’d face as nonmarried cohabitating adults of the same gender. Like many young people, we just didn’t care. It may have been precisely that lack of concern that allowed us just enough time to shut it all out and get our relationship well-rooted before we developed greater awareness of the challenges we’d face together. We just held on tight to each other, alone, and forged ahead.

Soon after we moved in together, our extended families began to get to know each other and become intertwined. It was pretty remarkable for those days how quickly our siblings, parents, and extended family got used to us being a couple. My father was a World War II veteran, and Michael’s father was a retired U.S. Army sergeant who served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, so those two reveled in telling their respective war stories. That common military link was something that eventually made it easier for our families to merge and develop a shared sense of family identity. Michael’s sister was also a student at UK and became a frequent visitor to our apartment. There were many times we went out to yard sales with Michael’s family or out to dinner with mine. Of course, whenever we could, we’d join family to attend Mass on Sundays.

Coming out to our families in Kentucky in those days, we were prepared for the possibility of rejection. By the early 1980s, we both were already into our early twenties and essentially financially independent, so that made it a little less risky. We initially did not force the issue of our sexual orientation with our families. We simply presented ourselves as a couple, and that was exactly how we were treated, fairly and equally. My parents were initially a bit apprehensive about the situation, more out of concern for me and my well-being, but we managed to allay their fears in private. It was a great gift from God that our families were so welcoming and accepting. They were remarkably supportive. What a blessing it was not having to deal with family rejection over being gay while trying to establish our relationship at the same time.

Both Michael and I grew up in relatively progressive households loyally aligned with the Democratic Party. Louisville, then as now, is the largest city in Kentucky. As the 1980s progressed, the city saw slow but growing support for gays and lesbians. Things were starting to change for the better elsewhere in the country. There was more open discussion about “gay liberation.” We’d developed national leaders such as Harvey Milk. Although the media was wasn’t always flattering, at least it was covering us. Painful-to-watch perpetuations of gay stereotypes at big-city Gay Pride parades gave us some visibility. In the 1960s, the public wouldn’t have even known we existed. Things were moving more quickly on the East and West Coasts of the United States, but in the heartland things were changing at a snail’s pace.

2

TIME IN NEW ENGLAND

Michael and I came from modest working-class families. We both needed to work to pay our tuition and living expenses at college. Michael worked a well-paying job at UPS in Lexington loading trucks in the evening, while I worked in marketing for the Irving B. Moore Corporation, an industrial rubber manufacturer and distributor. My part-time position was arranged as an internship through the MBA program, and I continued working there after the internship ended. The company was dominated by non-college-educated employees and management, and they thought that with my background and education I could bring some needed skills and new ideas to the industrial company.

As I wrapped up my MBA program in May 1983, I began a job search focusing on the Louisville and Lexington areas. At that point in history, the U.S. and Kentucky economies were in recession, unemployment was high, and none of my graduating classmates were getting any job offers. Things were pretty bleak both nationally and in Kentucky. But Irving B. Moore Corporation came to the rescue and asked me to move to its Hartford, Connecticut, division to assume the newly created position of marketing director.

Move to Connecticut? At this decision point, Michael and I faced the first real challenge to the future of our relationship. We talked about the situation and opportunity that presented itself. We had already been living together for more than nine months, so he didn’t really hesitate when I asked him if he wanted to come along with me on this bold adventure. The hardest parts were knowing that he wouldn’t have a job when he got there and would have to move far away from his family and friends in Kentucky. We either had to make the major commitment of keeping the relationship going or taking the opportunity to go our separate directions. I don’t remember any fights or tears or even long conversations about that decision. There really wasn’t much of a decision to make. In July 1983 we loaded up a rental Ryder truck with all our fabulous tragic college home furnishings and started that long drive up to our new apartment in Connecticut.

When we arrived, we didn’t know a soul. My only contacts were with people at my place of employment. Although Connecticut was already infinitely more progressive than Kentucky back in 1983, I just wasn’t ready to be fully out of the closet at work and face potential harassment and discrimination. Michael, with his freshly minted degree in agriculture from UK, swiftly found employment as a representative for New England Country Folks, a New York-based publication for which he worked remotely. It required him to travel all over New England to call primarily on farm equipment distributors. It wasn’t a great job, but it afforded him a great deal of freedom, and he got to travel all over the beautiful New England countryside.

Our experience was much like many young couples who have graduated college and moved away to launch careers in another part of the country. We were young and free and would take off on excursions whenever we could get time away from our jobs. Without a base of friends and family locally, we spent our entire lives together, exploring our new world and making plans for the future. We could go on day or weekend trips to New York City, Boston, the Berkshires, Cape Cod, the Maine coast. There were so many wonderful and romantic...

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyrights
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• 1 Early Years—Ready for the ’80s
• 2 Time in New England
• 3 My Old Kentucky Home Again
• 4 Family Matters
• 5 Introducing the Infant to Our Church
• 6 The Freedom to Marry
• 7 Married with Children
• 8 Scouting
• 9 Back in the Closet
• 10 Crossing Over to Boy Scouts
• 11 Suffocating in the Scout Closet
• 12 Ousted
• 13 Live United
• 14 Scouts in Protest
• 15 Inclusive Scouting Summit
• 16 Windsor and Prop 8
• 17 Bourke v. Beshear
• 18 Judge Heyburn’s Decision
• 19 Preparing for Round Two
• 20 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals
• 21 Reversal
• 22 Road Trip to DC
• 23 Michael’s Birthday, and Oral Arguments Too
• 24 Going Home
• 25 Marriage Equality Day
• 26 Meet the Press
• 27 New York Pride
• 28 Back to Work Scouting for Equality
• 29 An Audience with the Archbishop
• 30 Life after Scouting
• 31 Notre Dame Our Mother
• 32 PrideCats
• 33 Catholic Persons of the Year
• 34 Catholics for Fairness
• 35 The Freedom to Bury
• 36 Summer Break
• 37 Adoption Day—The Sequel
• 38 Pilgrimage of Mercy
• 39 Reconciliation
• 40 The Ancient Order of Hibernians
• 41 Scouting on the Fringe
• 42 Bourke DeLeon Endowed LGBT Catholic Scholarship
• 43 Notre Dame Law Forum
• 44 Time to Reflect
• 45 What Would That Even Look Like?
• Index