Coming out stories with a twist: Jim Toevs, a married, successful businessman coming out of
the closet and running for Congress... against a closeted gay incumbent.
|
By Jim Toevs | Contact
Jim Toevs is a Gay political activist, commentator, and writer; who divides his
time between his home in Hot Springs, Montana, and a residence in Alamos,
Sonora, Mexico.
Jim was the Democratic nominee for U. S. Congress in
1992 against then closeted Gay Republican, Jim Kolbe, garnering 77,000 votes,
which at that time was the largest number of votes ever received by an openly
gay non-incumbent candidate for U. S. Congress.
In the 2008 election
cycle, Jim is concentrating his political efforts in leading the Small States
Senate Project; dedicated to electing Democratic U. S. Senators from the
seventeen States (34 Senators), which have a combined population of less that
the State of Texas.
|
|
| |
|
"Jim, you are a stroke waiting to happen," my Doctor said, "and for someone as
active as you, I can think of nothing worse than having a stroke."
THAT GOT MY ATTENTION...
It was May of 1980. I was
thirty-eight years old, married to a woman I loved, the father of two young
sons, and from the outside looking in, had a life which was the envy of many.
I was a successful businessman, an active right-wing Conservative
Republican, an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, President of the Board of
Realtors, the local Chair of United Way, and had just been appointed by the
Board of Lewis County Commissioners as the volunteer Chair of the Lewis County
Commission on Tourism.
I was charged with the job of transforming the
disaster resulting from the Mt. St. Helen’s volcanic eruption, which had
decimated the economy of our County, into a tourist attraction which would bring
thousands of visitors, along with their dollars, to our economically depressed
area of the State of Washington.
I drove a candy apple red Mercedes,
owned an office building in town which sported my name in large gold letters,
and lived in a beautiful home on a hill at the end of a long, private, paved
driveway with a fantastic view of the Chehalis Valley and Mt. Rainier.
THAT WAS THE JIM TOEVS THAT EVERYBODY SAW...
Who they
did not see was a thirty-eight years old man who was driven to hide the fact
that he was naturally more sexually attracted to men than to women.
Paradoxically, alcohol was used both to numb the pain of my lonely closet, as
well as on very rare occasions, to provide the excuse to engage in man to man
sexual activity with a friend or acquaintance with the dismissive morning-after
statement, "God, we sure got drunk last night, didn’t we?"
My doctor
was a devout Christian, in the best sense of the word, and he was also a very
good doctor. When all attempts to control my blood pressure failed, he wisely
said, "Jim, I don’t know what is going on with you, but I think you need to get
in touch with your feelings. I have a sense that your life threatening high
blood pressure may be caused more by unresolved emotional and psychological
issues than by physical ones."
OH, F*CK! HOW DID HE KNOW?
About this time, my wife inexplicably started checking out books on
bisexuality and homosexuality from the local public library. One of those books
was entitled, “Barry and Alice – Portrait of a Bisexual Marriage.” Voila! That,
I mistakenly thought, was the answer. No need to break up the marriage, after
all we loved each other and had what most folks would consider an adequate sex
life. (My problem was that after I had sex with my wife, then I wanted to go
have sex.) We also had two young sons, and our “position” in the Church and the
community.
AND THEN I FELL IN LOVE...
We met during the noon
hour in a gay bar/restaurant in Seattle called, “The Park Bench,” and in a short
time, we were living together in an apartment in Seattle, and I had put
everything else in my life behind me. That first relationship lasted for ten
years.
After coming out, my alcoholism became full blown, I was smoking
three packs of cigarettes a day, making up for lost time by becoming a “born
again queer”, and transitioning from being a right-wing Conservative Republican
to becoming a moderately Liberal Democrat, who has since become increasingly
radical in my political views with each passing year.
I got sober and
into recovery from alcoholism on August 26, 1983, which saved my life. After I
got sober, my work in the LGBT Community included being a founding Board member
of the Pride Foundation, the Facilitator of a hugely successful GLBT Spiritual
Support group at Unity Church of Seattle; and I was a Co-Founder, along with
Roman Kalinin, (the twenty-two-year-old publisher of the first gay newspaper in
the Soviet Union), of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission,
(IGHLRC), which was launched at a press conference at the Pushkin Institute in
Moscow on the day that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990.
Professionally, I became Vice-President of Corporate Real Estate for
Seattle-First National Bank, which was subsequently purchased by Bank of
America; and along with Jimmy Carter and Barbara Jordan, (among many others),
was named a “Giraffe” by the national non-profit, The Giraffe Project, which
identifies and honors people who “stick their necks out” for the public good.
In 1990, I had the opportunity to take an early out from Bank of
America. My partner and I sold our house in Seattle for a handsome profit and
moved to Tucson, Arizona. I was nearing the end of my term as President of the
Pride Foundation so as a parting gesture we made the first $10,000 contribution
by a living person to Pride, which was my first step down the road to personal
philanthropy, and my association with the Gill Foundation Outgiving Conferences.
Much has happened since that time, but I think this is a good place to
conclude this first installment. Rest assured, I will have much to add in the
near future.
Until next time... Jim Toevs
