A Real Live Brokeback Cowboy

For folks like Samuel K. Beaumont Sr., this year's Defense of Marriage Acts, set to appear in November on ballots in Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Idaho, Virginia and Wisconsin, do more than legislate the definition of marriage.

They perpetuate a cruel injustice that Beaumont knows well.

The documentary film "Tying the Knot" chronicles the five-year legal battle Beaumont waged to keep the Bristow, Okla., ranch that he and partner Earl Meadows shared for 24 years. When Meadows died in 2000, a gaggle of his long-lost cousins went to court and evicted Beaumont from the 80-acre ranch, taking at once his home and livelihood. Despite Meadows' notarized will, which left his estate to Beaumont, and what Beaumont calls the couple's "marriage," Oklahoma courts bestowed the estate to the Meadows family.

Life ransacked, resources depleted and hope gone, Beaumont still remains in the lurch where "Tying the Knot" found him back in 2004. In These Times caught up with the 62-year-old rancher to talk about what has transpired since the film's completion.

While gay marriage continues as a hot button issue, your story is also interesting in light of the buzz surrounding the movie "Brokeback Mountain." What do you think about the national conversation this film has spurred?

I have not seen "Brokeback Mountain." I probably won't 'til it comes out on DVD. But I feel akin to it.

As to marriage, they should take marriage and put it back in a church where it was to start with and separate the state from it. If you've been with somebody for all them years, it doesn't matter whether you're both male, both female, or male and female. If you're together, common law marriage, or whatever you want to call it, should work.

Do you think gay marriage will be legalized soon?

I think someday. It's just like the segregation thing was. It's gonna hit the straws. It's got to be done to have everything equal for everybody -- equal rights. The Constitution provides it. It's just getting the darn people who are dragging their feet out of the way. If we hadn't had this president, it probably already would've been done. But the worst enemies that we have are the ones that's in the closet. And the ones that believe all of a sudden they get religion and they ain't gay no more. Heck, if you're born that way, you're born that way. Ain't no changing it. You can get religion all you want to -- the good Lord made you, and he ain't gonna change you.

You have been affected by your inability to lawfully wed Earl

I think the term is "screwed." I lost the estate. It was an 80-acre ranch. It had four houses on it. And of course I had cattle, horses and all that. It cost me a lot of money that I couldn't afford. The attorney told me that he'd take the case for $5,000, and when I got through, I was paying about $33,000, and he still wants another $8,000. And I got nothing.

And I'm still fighting them over my property here, in Cromwell, where I live. Now the estate wants me to sell part of it to pay $13,000-something for taxes and $5,000-something for the lawyer, their lawyer.

Although your union with Earl was never recognized by law, you considered yourself married. Did you have a service?

It was private between us. That was in July of '77. We had gotten together on Jan. 15, so it was six months to the day because it was July 15. We met on a pier out on the Arkansas River. I was sitting there watching the water and the fish go by, and he come up behind me and started talking. We got to talking, and we talked 'til 2:30 or so in the morning. And then I went home, and he went home. Next night, we met at my house.

Did your family and friends know you were gay?

I came out to everybody when I come back from Vietnam in 1969. You mature a lot when you don't know if you'll wake up the next day and live. One day at a time, and you live it to its best. You learn a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know before. 'Course I knew it. I've known it all along, I just didn't know what it was. And so I came out then. I'm sure Earl knew it before he was married, knew it when he was growing up. The thing was, you grew up, got married and had kids.