Interview with Meredith Baxter

Matthew’s Place: Congratulations on this experience you’ve gone through. I’ve been reading about your coming out experience, and the interview you did in The Advocate, and looked at the Matt Lauer interview, and I have to say, I wish it had gone that smoothly for me.

Meredith Baxter: I guess it can be perceived as smooth? It was baptism by fire, I just feel like I did it at gunpoint.

MP: Reading The Advocate interview, I thought you made a lot of great points about why you chose to come out and how it was received. And then you mentioned that you were wondering what the next steps would be, if you would be contacted or encouraged to become an more activist or to use your voice more publicly. I don’t want to rehash questions you’ve already been asked and answered, [but] I’m curious how has that unfolded since the interviews took place. Have you been contacted by LGBT organizations or by activists or asked to take any kind of role in the community in the wake of coming out?

Baxter: Yeah, well to an extent I have. I’ve had a slew of invitations to lead lots of pride parades. Which is pretty “not up my alley” at all. I’m not nuts about crowds and I feel like I would feel foolish coming out, to say, “OK, I’m a brand new girl on the block and let me lead your parade.” It doesn’t follow. It’s a little lacking in humility and there’s some presumption there, and I don’t like to align myself with that. But I have responded to the [Human Rights Campaign] and I’ve been working with [their president] Joe Solmonese there. And I spoke In Raleigh at one of their big convention dinners and they had one in Los Angeles where I … presented an award, I think. And actually this weekend we’re going to Houston to be at one of their big fundraiser events. And mainly what I found to speak on is addressing some of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” because its such an odious law that they have and I’m thrilled that that’s being re-examined, and I’m horribly impatient at the way its progressing, its going so slowly. There was a wonderful letter that I read on the Stars and Stripes website from someone saying, “For crying out loud, change the law. We’ll follow the law. You don’t need to interview this and consult that and do panels about people’s perceptions and how do you feel, like who the hell cares, change the law and let’s just do it.” I mean, the pathways are already in place and practiced. I think that would be really important because I read about the harassment of kids in schools, what they’ve had to deal with, when we have a large law in place that squashes the rights of one segment of our society, in this case the LGBT community, and we have another law that says they cannot get married, they cannot adopt, they do not have equal rights. When those are in scripted in our Constitution right now, supposedly, actually in some areas, then that gives everybody the right to discriminate — because the government does it, they don’t think they should be [equal], why should we? That a kid dressing in a way that implies that he’s probably gay — “The government doesn’t like him, why should I like him?” So it starts from the top down, the change will come from the bottom up, probably, because our government moves so slowly, but when those laws are changed, when we no longer have government validation for bigotry, then it will be much easier to effect some change.

MP: You mentioned the idea of being comfortable with what you say about your personal life in the public arena … first of all, some people don’t ever want to talk about themselves personally, and second, people’s feelings about who they are and how they identify themselves in terms of their sexual identity in particular, these are mutable — they change through life based on whom you meet and fall in love with and how your life evolves. My feeling is that you have given a lot of hope to people who are not in their twenties who are still discovering something about themselves — that not only can you come out in the middle years of your life, but you can actually do meaningful evaluation of your own life and your own needs and what you want as your life unfolds. You don’t make all these decisions by the time you’re 25 and then stay unchanged the rest of time. I think that’s what has really interested people in your story, is that you’ve been very open about how this all happened and how it unfolded in real time for you

Baxter: Yeah, I’ve got to say, I thought I was probably the oldest living person in this situation … I thought it was so absurd that I was 54 before anything dawned on me. But if you live a very un-self-examined life based on fear, then you’re not going to grow. You’re not going to become an individual,. You don’t obtain much self-awareness. So of course that’s going to happen. I was at the Dinah —do you know about the Dinah, the big Palm Springs event every year?

MP: Yes.

Baxter: I was there and I met a woman who did a film, a documentary, that she herself came out at 55 and had children and had been married several times, maybe once, I don’t recall. And so she made a film going out and interviewing older women who have just decided, “Oh my God, this is the truth for me!” And I thought it was fabulous, and I thought, that’s going to do so much for people, because we’re so fear based, we’re so afraid of the judgment and … maybe that’s what I can bring. Anytime someone can stand up and say, “OK, yeah, I’m a lesbian, this is what we look like and you know me and I’m not scary, you’ve seen me around and nothing terrible happened, so now that you know I’m a lesbian too, is this a little more palatable? Do you have a little less fear around that? A little more understanding?”

MP: I’ve met other women who came out later in life, had children, were married, were in some cases balancing children and marriage and career. In conversations I’ve had it seemed like, especially women of your generation, were not given permission to be the individuals they fully wanted to be, due to … cultural roles, and that were only just emerging from a period in which women in particular were made to feel that life choices were beyond their grasp or that their lives were not fully their own to plan. Do you sense that is a factor in the lives of lesbians in, say, their 50s and beyond?

Baxter: You know, I can’t speak for any other lesbian but me in that, and I would say that, sure, there is a sense of powerlessness about my life. Always when I was married, but nothing really changed for me until my mother died … and youngest kids, I’ve had five children, and my youngest went off to college. So as soon as I was in the situation where I no longer had someone I was reporting to, even in my mind my mother, or responsible for that’s when things changed for me, “Oh, hello.”

MP: You’re in the prime of your life and you get to do what you want to do with your time and love who you want to love.

Baxter: I would call that post-prime, but it felt like prime. I was 54, and that’s a little late for the pin to be dropping — you’d like to think you’d get the news a little earlier so you can capitalize on it and learn a little more about yourself in the process. But you can only control so much, it happens when it happens.

MP: Would you have advice for young people, say in our readership, about seizing the opportunity to come out earlier — or would you not want to rush people into that decision?

Baxter: I do not give a lot of advice. I wouldn’t urge people to an action because, God knows, everyone’s situation is different. But I can only say that I fought it tooth and nail, although I did have a very small window to do any kind of fighting because I didn’t really have a choice. I was put in a situation where it was going to come out and it was going to become either someone else’s story to run with and treat it as they wish, or it was going to be mine. And I was determined to make it mine. But it felt like the price I was going to pay was to go on national television and make an utter fool of myself, I was sure, to make some public announcement. And here’s a public announcement from someone who had not been on primetime in 20 years, so, why are you here? And why do we care? And why are you up there? And who gives a shit anyway what you’re doing? Some comments were that it was some desperate attempt for a job. So I was horrified at what I was being advised to do. But I will tell you, it has been such a relief. Thank God no one else — well, not “no one else” — but that is not necessarily the road that people have to take. There is a much easier, softer way, I’m sure, and a much more private way. There is such a freedom that I never anticipated. Because, I’d be out with my partner — and I’ve always hated that “people-staring-because-I’m-an-actor [thing]. I don’t know why I have that reaction, but of course I always take it personally. And then for a long time I was concerned that, OK, something is going to get out, don’t hold hands, don’t sit too close. But now I realize, heck, everyone knows anyway … I don’t care. I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to worry. Now my girlfriend has been out since she was 21, she’s a singer in a band, she’s a contractor but has been in this band for many, many years and we are going back in two weeks to play. I’m going with her to watch, to listen, to hear her play in an area where she and her band have not played for about 15 to 20 years. And the last time they were there they were hounded off the stage for being gay and expelled from the establishment and threatened — and we’re going back there, time has changed. There is some trepidation because you don’t know how much it’s changed. This will be interesting to me because I haven’t run into a lot of discrimination, I haven’t had to deal with that. That’s the upside of coming out very late; I did a lot of other stupid things and dealt with a lot other stuff, but I never dealt with that. I understand not wanting to come out if that’s been your experience, if you’ve been targeted and victimized by it. By people’s hostility or lack of understanding or their own fear. So I don’t know what to say to someone in the face of that, that’s very painful.

MP: How has all of this played out in your relationship? I assume your partner has been supportive and so forth, I’m not asking you to speak for her but was it odd for her to watch you go through this experience when she had come out so early in life?

Baxter: Yeah, I think she thought I was a pretty dim light bulb. (Laughs.) I haven’t heard what she says about that, but I do think it must have been odd. She did this, probably in some quietly painful way over a period of time, 35 years ago and here I am, I’m 8 years older than her and she’s having to watch me, going, “Oh God, Meredith.” I am so slow to everything. I am a really late bloomer. But … she’d been there, done that. And now I have to do that with flares and fireworks — wasn’t there another way?

MP: Well it seems to have worked out well. I don’t want to keep you on the phone all morning, but it strikes me that you’re certainly politically aware. Does this add at all to your interest in politics or your interest in activism? Do you feel an additional impetus to be more publicly involved, say like you mentioned with HRC or potentially with other public policy efforts or public awareness efforts?

Baxter: Perhaps. I don’t know. I used to do a lot of work for the Democratic Party. I’ve kind of moved away from that. I think Obama’s heart is in the right place, he’s taking it awfully slowly, I don’t know how much I would to get out there in front. I loved working with HRC, I think they’re great from my experience with them. I just take it as it comes I don’t know. I don’t like being the new poster girl, I haven’t been around long enough, I haven’t earned it. I kind of just like trotting along and doing things as they arrive.

MP: There’s some real wisdom in that. We occasionally hear there’s been these young kids who get involved in disputes over their high school proms and they’re sort of deluged with all this media attention, and I look at the Shepard family who we of course work with on a daily basis, and think about the real upheaval — that you can sort of allow this upheaval into your life, or you can manage it, or you can try to duck it ,but it’s a tough decision almost every way. And there are real cost you can choose to pay, to really wear your sexual orientation on your sleeve and dive into activism before you realize what a meat grinder it can really be — to dedicate yourself to doing that on a daily basis. Sometimes we feel compelled to remind people that life is meant to be more balanced — that 24-hour-a-day activism, every day of the week … you [also] have to actually go out and live your life too.

Baxter: I would like to play a part in some way, but in the same way, you don’t want some one out there speaking for the military experience and going to fight and support the military when they’ve only gone to the USO dances. So I’ll find my niche; I’m just not sure how it’s going to evolve.

MP: Well, please let us know if the Foundation can help you leverage your voice or if you’re interested in learning more about our work at some point in the future. We just wish you all the best and I think the best of this experience is probably yet to come for you, I certainly hope it is.

Baxter: I look forward to it. I really do.