In the late evening of July 7, 1984, Charlie Howard, a 23-year-old gay man, and a male companion were walking in downtown Bangor. Three teenage boys, while cruising the streets in their car that night, spotted the pair, stopped their vehicle, jumped out and chased after them, all the while yelling anti-gay epithets.

When the young assailants grabbed Charlie and hoisted him off the ground, he cried out that he could not swim, but they proceeded to throw him off the bridge and into the Kenduskeag Stream where he drowned.

Charlie Howard’s murder received national media attention and brought renewed scrutiny to hate crime, teen male violence, and the need for public safety and civil rights protections for sexual minorities. This horrendous event also spurred gay men, lesbians and their allies in Maine to organize politically and, over the course of the next two decades, to develop a network of gay-affirming cultural, educational, and advocacy groups.

In 1984 I was living and working in Bangor and just beginning my coming-out process as a gay man. As I look back, three things stand out: the ordinariness of homo-hatred, the silence of good citizens, and a terrorized gay and lesbian community.

About anti-gay hate, I recall reading in the Bangor Daily News about the interviews a court-appointed psychologist had conducted with the three youths who had taken Charlie Howard’s life. These young men, boys really, were not social rebels acting in opposition to prevailing social norms, but rather social conformists who had acted in a way they believed their families, schools, churches and the community at large would affirm and reward. They were not wrong in their calculation. When these youth, after being placed in the care of their parents, returned to their high school, they were literally cheered as heroes.

About the absence of public outcry, I found the silence of “good, decent” people perhaps most disturbing. As a person of faith and teacher of women and men preparing for ministry, I had expected that the leaders of Bangor area churches would protest, sound a deep lament, and call the wider community to account for this act of violation and murderous hate. Except for the pastor of the Unitarian Church in Bangor and the courageous members of that small congregation, there was no public outcry.

About the traumatized gay community, I should point out that despite a palpably hostile environment in Bangor following the murder, gay men and lesbian women, along with their straight friends, family, and co-workers, gathered almost immediately to plan a memorial service for Charlie and a public rally to protest his death and call for community protection of its gay and lesbian citizens. Despite the intimidation and collective trauma, people mobilized and showed remarkable courage and resiliency in exploring ways to move forward. For some, that meant packing up and leaving Maine; for others it meant staying in place and banding together to insist on safety and respect.

During the two decades since these events, how far has Maine come?

In terms of homo-hatred, some evidence can be cited of greater social tolerance toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities of Maine. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C., has examined 30 years of U.S. public opinion polls on attitudes toward gay people. In 2003, 80 percent of the public approved of gays serving in the military, up from 51 percent in 1977. In 2003, 61 percent approved of gay men and lesbian women as elementary school teachers, up from 27 percent in 1977.

A 1999 Gallup survey shows that 6 out of 10 Americans would vote for a well-qualified gay presidential candidate, up from 1 in 4 in 1978. As researcher Karlyn Bowman concludes, “There’s been an enormous increase in tolerance – that’s the bottom line.” For myself, however, I would say that tolerance is good, but not good enough. That’s far too small a social or moral vision. The goal should not be “mere” toleration or even acceptance, but rather social and cultural transformation, so that all persons are treated with dignity and guaranteed the conditions so that they can truly flourish.

In terms of the silence (and, therefore, the complicity) of good, decent people in the face of anti-gay oppression, there is also evidence of change. For more than a decade Maine has had a statewide interfaith network of clergy and other religious leaders, the Religious Coalition Against Discrimination, that engages in education and advocacy for extending civil rights and other protections to the gay community. In addition, many congregations in various denominations have identified themselves as gay-friendly and welcoming. Yet another sign of progress is that an out gay man serves as pastor of one of Bangor’s mainline Protestant churches.

In terms of a traumatized gay community once fragmented, fearful, and under siege, perhaps the most hopeful change of all is the emergence of a diverse and vibrant gay rights movement in Maine (and beyond). The Maine Gay and Lesbian Political Alliance, a statewide political organization, has recently renamed itself Equality Maine. Outright organizations serve LBGT and questioning youth in numerous locations around the state, and there are highly visible cultural organizations, including the Maine Gay Men’s Chorus and Women in Harmony. The Maine Community Foundation has established its Equity Fund to provide financial and other support for LBGT organizations, and there are important health organizations, including AIDS service groups and lesbian health projects.

In taking stock of changes since 1984, it is important to recognize that movement has been propelled forward less by the pain of oppression and more by the rising hope of a marginalized community with its vision of an alternative possibility. When people begin to see more constructive ways to live in community and claim their self-respect, there’s hardly a force on earth that can stop them.

In seeking a more just, safer, and welcoming church and society, we do well to remember St. Augustine’s insight about change. Hope, this fourth-century theologian wrote, has two beautiful children, anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to do something to set wrongs right.

Speaking of courage returns us to Charlie Howard. Charlie was not only a gay man. He was a “flaming” gay man who “flaunted” his homosexuality because he adamantly refused to participate in his own oppression by hiding his identity. As a youth he had been tormented by school bullies who had tried all sorts of tactics of intimidation in order to keep him silent and invisible. (He refused to attend his high school graduation because he did not want to expose his family to the abuse he had long suffered.) Instead, he lived his gayness with bravado.

His death should also stir in us a strong measure of moral outrage that in this broken world, fear of difference too often precipitates violence and hatred toward those deemed different and wrong. Today it is no less important than it was twenty years ago for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons to claim our right to exist, the dignity of our lives, and our moral power to love and be loved against the odds. We honor the memory of Charlie Howard, and we honor ourselves, whenever we, too, go public with our passion for freedom and justice and refuse to settle for anything less.

Marvin M. Ellison teaches Christian ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary and is author of “Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis” (The Pilgrim Press, 2004). This article is adapted from a talk given at the University of Southern Maine at its April 2-3 conference on “Charlie Howard 20 Years Later, How Far Has Maine Come: Anti-Gay Discrimination and Violence in Maine, 1984-2004.”