BY KAREN OCAMB | Mark Thompson was a seeker, a diviner of the gay soul and its scrumptious flesh, this era’s Walt Whitman. As an early activist in the Bay Area, it was his duty to challenge the heterosexual norm. As a writer and editor at The Advocate from 1975 to 1994, it was his delight and responsibility to plumb the burgeoning gay movement and capture its culture and history as it was happening. And as a gay man with HIV during the AIDS crisis, it was his personal joy and agony to wrestle everyday with the existential dilemma of why he got to keep rolling that bolder up the mountain.
Mark found meaning in myth and in the spirit of new life illuminated and sung and danced by naked gay men together at gatherings of the Radical Fairies. Something in him deeply believed what his friend Harry Hay said – that gays are different from straights and have their own contribution to make to the world.
Mark also loved deeply his beloved husband, Episcopal priest and civil rights hero Malcolm Boyd. They flaunted their vast age difference as its own spiritual defiance to rigid societal custom in the name of love. Malcolm preceded Mark in death by a year, laying a table for him to rejoice together in their spiritual reconciliation.
Mark’s friends—including Rev. Troy Perry, lesbian feminist icon Ivy Bottini and academic activist Chris Freeman—will also rejoice at a memorial and reception on Sunday, Sept. 18 from 2:00-4:00p at ONE Institute, 909 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90007. Only 100 chairs are available inside for the ceremony (which will start promptly at 2:15) but there is a reception afterward for more sharing. Free parking is available in the area. Please visit Mark’s webpage for more about him and his writing and visit The Pride LA story for more about his life and times.
