The first same-sex couple married in Marin County 17 years ago celebrated another milestone last week — 50 years together.
But Michael Gonsalves had to put the party together several months before their actual anniversary of March 25, 1975, because he suspects it will be the last time his husband, Jim Campbell, will be able to celebrate the occasion.
Campbell, who lives at the San Francisco VA Medical Center at the former Fort Miley Military Reservation between the Richmond neighborhood and the Pacific coast, has Parkinson's and dementia, Gonsalves said, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the Vietnam War.
"He couldn't talk, but he mumbles," Gonsalves said, recalling the party that was held January 11 at 2 p.m. "He was very amused. It was a nice experience. I think he knew it was our anniversary. We have done so much to reach that goal after we struggled over the years."
The pair met shortly after Gonsalves moved to San Francisco.
"One of the bartenders at a little disco bar on Polk Street introduced us," Gonsalves said. "I was one of the guys hanging out in the doorways. I didn't know they were hustlers."
Gonsalves said due to the reputation of some young men on Polk in those days, Campbell "followed me to see where I'd go and who I'd hang out with" for weeks before they'd actually been introduced.
"Back then most of the young guys that were there were there on business," Gonsalves recalled.
Gonsalves, 69, is a Bay Area native, born in 1955 and raised in Petaluma. He moved to San Francisco seeking a more supportive environment in which to be gay. Campbell, 75, born in 1949, came to the city in 1974 by way of Seattle after his time serving in Vietnam. Campbell would befriend young men like Gonsalves and help them find jobs — or obstruct people trying to get them hooked on drugs, Gonsalves recalled.
"He'd take them in, give them money for food, try to get them jobs, and he knew who the bad people were," Gonsalves said.
He said early on the couple would tell strangers they were cousins — but an encounter with the late Supervisor Harvey Milk when the gay rights icon was registering voters in Civic Center Plaza changed all that. Milk encouraged them to never deny who they were, or their love for each other, Gonsalves said.
"That was when we told people we were gay," Gonsalves said. "We didn't make a point of it, but we told people. ... I will never forget him telling me to be out and to be proud."
Initially a security guard at the City Disco in North Beach, Campbell eventually started his own private security company, JGC Investigators, through which he played a key role in the city's gay history.
After the discovery of AIDS in 1981, it was unclear for several years what was causing it. Eventually, in 1984, it was announced to be a virus, which is now called HIV. But before then there were many theories the CDC investigated, and it was popularly theorized to be related to sexual promiscuity or drug use.
San Francisco had a number of gay bathhouses, but the lack of clarity as to the viral cause of AIDS, civil liberties concerns (sex between men in itself had only recently been legalized), and economic incentives led to fierce debate within the community as to whether these establishments should remain legal, or be patronized.
Thus, Dr. Mervyn Silverman, the city's health director at the time, was hesitant to order the bathhouses to be closed.
However, in spring 1984, an ordinance was passed banning "unsafe" sexual practices at them, and in response the Department of Public Health hired undercover investigators to see if the bathhouses were in compliance, as Randy Shilts' book "And The Band Played On" states.
The report documented that though condoms were available at bathhouses, patrons largely did not use them.
Campbell's firm was contracted to do the investigation, hiring off-duty police to do so.
"Our neighbor was Tom Steel, an ACLU attorney, and he was fighting to keep the bathhouses open, and Tom and him almost went to blows," Gonsalves recalled, referring to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Steel, a renowned civil rights attorney, died in 1998, according to his New York Times obituary.
In October 1984, Silverman cited the noncompliance of 14 bathhouses and sex clubs as the rationale behind ordering their closure; they reopened hours later. Later that month, a San Francisco Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order that shuttered nine gay bathhouses and sex clubs. In late November of that year another judge lifted the restraining order but imposed new rules on how the bathhouses and sex clubs could operate. No longer could they rent private rooms, unless they secured a hotel license, and employees had to monitor the sexual behavior of patrons.
After that, the gay bathhouses closed, and the rules for them weren't lifted until 2021, as the B.A.R. reported. Similar rules embedded in the city's police code were removed by the Board of Supervisors last year.
Marriage
Campbell and Gonsalves left San Francisco in 1984, moving to the North Bay as they were disheartened by the epidemic. But they had another rendezvous with history in June 2008, when the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage for a brief window of time before voters decided to make it illegal again.
"We saw the news that it was legal to get married," Gonsalves said. "Everyone ran down to the Marin Civic Center and there was a huge line. There were supporters, straight people coming down with roses."
While they were waiting in line, county officials announced they couldn't marry same-sex couples just yet — the marriage licenses all said "bride" and "groom" and so they needed to print new ones.
While they were waiting, discussion veered to how long couples had waited for the historic day.
"They asked how long we'd been together, and we said, '33 years,' and they asked the people in line if it was OK if we went first," he said. The two were wed at the Frank Lloyd Wright garden at the civic center, in San Rafael.
"It was a very touching experience," Gonsalves said.
Though Proposition 8, passed in November 2008, once again banned same-sex marriage in the Golden State, it became legal again in 2013 after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which upheld a federal appeals court decision that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.
But even before they were married, Campbell had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
"Eventually I had to shut down the business," Gonsalves said, relating that through the years Campbell's symptoms worsened.
The couple loved camping together, but now on trips, Campbell would get confused and, not remembering how he'd ended up in the car, think Gonsalves was kidnapping him and his dog.
Eventually, Gonsalves said he needed help from Congressmember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) to get Campbell into a community living center for veterans at Fort Miley.
Supply didn't increase with demand as Vietnam vets aged, Gonsalves said, leading to yearslong waitlists, and without Huffman's help, Gonsalves said he would have had to sell the couple's Monte Rio cabin to pay for up to the $30,000 a month in private facility living expenses.
Huffman's office did not return a message seeking comment.
Gonsalves said he visits a few times a week.
"I feel bad because I cannot be there every day," he said. "When you spend 50 years with someone, it's very hard. I do trust that they take really good care of him. I'd promised him, we'd had a conversation, and he said, 'Please don't put me some place.'"
When things had gotten to the point Gonsalves felt he had no other choice, his own health took a nose dive and he contracted Legionnaires' disease, he said.
Having a golden anniversary on federal property came with hiccups, Gonsalves said.
"I got in trouble because we all did a toast with champagne," Gonsalves said, saying a social worker told him it was against the rules to bring alcohol to the VA facility. "I told him if he [Campbell] knew that was the rules, he would've insisted on it."
The party continued until after sundown. Among the guests was Gonsalves' brother Mark.
"Jim looked really good," Mark Gonsalves recalled to the B.A.R. in a phone call. "It's quite an achievement — 50 years being together. He's always been around, always been part of the family. Just a great guy and quite the jokester. I'm quite proud, and amazed."
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