Mahu Fire

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It had been a tourist office day on O’ahu, with sunny skies, temperatures in the eighties, and a light trade wind sweeping in over the beaches and chasing the few wispy clouds up into the mountains. We had a parched winter, and as April began, and with it our dry season, there were already reports of wildfires in on the leeward side of the island, in Nanakuli and Waialua.

I stepped out the door of my apartment building in Waikiki as dusk was falling, and the smell of distant smoke rolled over me. There had also been a couple of arsons at gay-owned businesses in the past couple of weeks, and I wondered what was burning-a few acres of mountain scrub, or the property and dreams of a gay man or lesbian.

Hawai’i had been one of the first states to consider legalizing gay marriage, and though Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a few other states had moved ahead of us, the movement in the islands was still strong, and in fact, the media had tied a rise in violence against gays and lesbians to the renewed visibility of the campaign, led by the Hawai’i Marriage Project.

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