Pride in transgression: A Barr Family tribute

by Troy Williams in Queer Gnosis | 0 comments

It was several years ago when I first despondently sunk deep into Helen’s living room sofa. I don’t recall the details but I remember expressing impatience with my parent’s inability to accept that they had a gay son.

It’s easy to talk with Helen. She is a kind Jewish woman who is the superstar mom of two queer kids Ben and Geraldine. She’s also my landlord. For generations her family has owned an historic apartment building built around the 1890s. Throughout the years it has been home to Mormon polygamists, holocaust survivors and more recently a revolving door of queer tenants. Over the past century the springtime rose gardens and weathered brick have offered a haven for all the myriad outcasts of Utah. For me it has been a place of emotional refuge and growth.

Helen also taught me the Jewish phrase “Tikun Olam.” When we engage in social justice she explained, we begin to heal the world. When we work to improve the lives of others we begin to repair the universe. She encouraged my budding radio activism and saw it as an earth-saving endeavor. Tikun Olam is embodied in the lives of all of Helen’s children. Geraldine is an outspoken feminist who used to cause trouble with Mormon heretic Sonja Johnson. They would even protest at the downtown LDS temple over the Equal Rights Amendment. She is truly a dyke after my own heart!

Ben is also a Utah legend. In the mid ’80s he began his lifework to assist people suffering from HIV/AIDS. This was taboo in the day. His parents were initially fearful of this path but he persisted. He transgressed boundaries. In a hostile culture of religious piety he cared for the people that many considered pariahs. He was one of the first executive directors of AIDS Project Utah. He would later continue this work in California. Ben’s mom and siblings all speak of him with loving adoration. The foundation for HIV prevention and care giving that he helped establish in Salt Lake City still exists today.

Helen has another daughter Roseanne, a self-diagnosed “borderline bipolar paranoid, obsessive-compulsive Jewish Mormon.” But that didn’t hold her back. She went on to play a working class feminist mom on a number one-rated sitcom. Roseanne fearlessly (and comically) tackled taboo topics ranging from labor disputes, birth control, teenage masturbation, sexism and LGBT rights. The first gay marriage I ever saw happened on Roseanne in 1995 between Leon and Scott (Martin Mull and Fred Willard). This was long before the national debate over marriage equality really took off. I’ll also never forget Roseanne Conner leading a walk out of Mehlman Plastics after confronting her asshole boss. I vowed in that moment that I would never vote for Fred Thompson if he ever ran for president.

I first met Roseanne in a dive coffee shop in Los Angeles. Within five minutes of talking about feminist philosophers she asked, “Troy, have you ever read Mary Daly?” “Fuck!” I thought, “I’m going to flunk Feminism 101 right in front of Roseanne Barr!” I nervously confessed that I hadn’t. “You need to read Mary Daly!” she insisted. I promised I would. A few weeks later sister Geraldine came to my rescue, “Troy, I’m sending Daly’s book to you!” Sure enough, Pure Lust: An Elemental Feminist Philosophy arrived at my door. For those who don’t have the wiki-feminist app on your phone, Mary Daly was a radical lesbian separatist. This was a tradition of womyn who went off and did their own thing. I sat in the Barr Family rose garden nervously holding the book. Is this allowed? I wasn’t sure. I opened the pages with a feeling of transgression. This was not a tome written for men. And I quickly whispered a prayer to Mary right there: “I hope this is OK. Roseanne and Geraldine told me I could!” Daly’s writings unfolded a wild, mystical feminism suppressed by patriarchy and exploited by capitalism. She described a “volcanic dragon fire” rushing forward, re-awakening. Roaring. It was exciting reading.

I admire lesbian separatists. I recognize that for something to be reborn it requires a period of isolation and gestation. But I hope (as I suspect so do Roseanne and Geraldine) that the magical eco-gnosis described by Daly will re-emerge, overwhelm and transform the horrible institutions killing our planet. It is these lusty womyn – these crones, witches, sprites and dykes who offer the earth an alternative to necrophillic patriarchy.

I often write about “full spectrum social justice” – the idea that we must work collectively on all fronts to help shift society. Queer issues are inter-dependent with all other movements: labor, feminism, race, immigration, the environment. It’s all the same struggle. We must collectively resist the phallic wizards that are pathologically pushing society to the brink, be they Wall Street executives or gun-toting homophobes in the Utah Legislature. It’s all the same ideology of oppression and domination.

Helen calls this work “Tikun Olam.” Mary Daly might call it “metapatriarchal metamorphoses.” Roseanne would call it “messianic narcissism.” I guess another term is simply “pride.” Not the prickish pride that leads America into war, but rather the proud commitment to live big and loud, to speak out for the oppressed, to offer a haven for those who are suffering. Because sometimes we just need the courage to transgress. We need the pride that allows us to sin defiantly against a false moral order. For me “Gay Pride” means Ending Oppression for All.

This year Roseanne is our Grand Marshal and queen. Ben is also returning to receive a long-deserved lifetime achievement award. Both siblings in their own way have crossed forbidden boundaries and paved new liberated territories for folks to follow. The world is a better place because of them. Helen Barr had no idea the forces she was unleashing on the world. Or maybe she did. Maybe this was her master plan all along; to heal a broken universe. Such work can be our proudest achievement. If we dare to transgress.