This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The conversation was brief when Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson first met Bruce Bastian.
Eight years ago, Anderson was running for Congress and advocating gay-marriage rights. Bastian told the political hopeful he was too liberal. "There weren't a whole lot of people who discussed gay marriage at the time," Anderson says. "It was a very short conversation."
The two didn't talk again until Anderson was running for mayor in 1999 and the candidate became one of Bastian's causes, collecting $15,000 that year and another $22,500 last year in campaign funds.
Perhaps the normally reclusive Bastian's name on Anderson's financial disclosure forms was a political coming out of sorts, because the WordPerfect co-founder and philanthropist hasn't stopped there. He joined the board of the national gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign a year ago and has contributed half the Don't Amend Alliance's budget for fighting Utah's proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage. He was grand marshal of the Utah Pride Day parade this year.
In a way, Bastian has come full circle from that 1996 meeting with Anderson. Local and national politics have forced him out of a self-imposed exile. Now, rather than avoiding the debate over gay marriage, Bastian has plunged himself into its fiery core.
"Those who support [constitutional amendments] to define marriage are saying that they are entitled to certain laws and legal benefits and protections because they sleep with the right person and I sleep with the wrong person," he says. "It's wrong."
Twenty years ago, even five years ago, it would have been unthinkable for the 56-year-old Bastian to say that in a newspaper article. But along with his political sensibilities, his personal and public life has turned 180 degrees.
The son of a Twin Falls, Idaho, farmer and grocer he prefers to call a musician, Bastian was the fifth of six children. Separated from his siblings by a span of years, Bastian was nerdy and quiet. He mastered the clarinet and saxophone and, despite his reserve, was elected student body vice president in high school.
He enrolled at Brigham Young University and decided to major in math. But the choice of study didn't quite fit. After a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Italy, Bastian returned to BYU and studied music. At 28, he married a girl from Canada, his "best friend" Melanie, and started a family.
For five years, Bastian directed the university marching band as a graduate student. But when he was passed over for the faculty job of band leader, fate stepped in. Bastian switched the emphasis of his master's degree from music to computer science, met professor Alan Ashton and designed a precocious word processing program that became WordPerfect Corp.
Now, it all seems so prescribed to him. The "right" thing to do - four kids and a house in the Utah County suburbs. He had known he was gay since high school, but had never followed through on his feelings. Then, on one of his business trips, he fell in love with a man.
"I don't think straight people can begin to imagine the inner turmoil and fear at this moment in a gay person's life," Bastian says. "All your dreams, plans, everything falls apart. The whole foundation of your life crumbles. You can stay the course or follow your heart and go to where every human being dreams of going - to happiness ever after."
It was 1984, at the height of the AIDS scare in America. His children would be harassed, his social network destroyed. Still, Bastian came out to his wife. They continued to live together for several more years; he spent much of his time on WordPerfect business trips. Eventually, he moved out and they divorced in the mid-1990s.
It was the worst-kept secret in the family. His older sister, Constance Embree, was terrified when she found out her baby brother is gay.
"He's my brother, and he hasn't changed," she says. "I just worry about the rest of the world."
Bastian got hate mail from his employees. His four sons were teased at school. His closely guarded privacy was his attempt to protect them from publicity during the brutal high school years. When his youngest son graduated, Bastian's political isolation ended.
The sale of WordPerfect to Novell in 1994 made Bastian and Ashton multimillionaires. And for more than a decade, Bastian quietly bankrolled Utah's cultural arts - $1.3 million in cash and in-kind donations to Ballet West and another $1.3 million to buy pianos for the University of Utah Music Department.
"We have been able to achieve some special ballets and programs that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have his support," says Johann Jacobs, Ballet West executive director. "He is extremely generous in using his money to make the community a better place. He does whatever it takes to stick to his commitments."
Somewhere along the way, philanthropy transitioned to activism. Bastian has reduced his donations to the arts to dedicate more resources to what he considers a battle over fundamental human rights. Besides donations to candidates, he has given Human Rights Campaign more than $1 million in just over two years. And he set up the Alliance's office with donated computers with WordPerfect software and $315,000. This election year, he travels the country for the campaign.
"He has a profound commitment to equality and fairness for all Americans - including gay Americans," says Cheryl Jacques, campaign president. "Where he sees injustice, he devotes himself to reversing it."
Bastian is driven by an image of his lonely adolescence. "As a gay person, you grow up hating yourself. No matter how much you accomplish in life, you will be a failure because you are gay," he says. "I'm doing this for the kid in Idaho, growing up on a farm. I don't want him to go through the s--- I went through."
He left the Mormon church years ago and asked church leaders to remove his name from church rolls. Religious arguments against gay marriage frustrate him. He has more use for the Golden Rule.
"The sanctity of your marriage depends on you," he says. "If the value of your marriage depends on what anyone else is doing, you need to re-evaluate your marriage."
Bastian hopes cooler heads - and more rational arguments - will prevail on Nov. 2.
Uncomfortable with the label "activist," Bastian at times wants to return to quiet anonymity. Despite being surrounded by marble and groomed gardens and five full-time staff in the custom, 30,000-square-foot home he built in the Orem foothills, he often wishes he was in his cramped London apartment.
"I'm just Bruce in London. And people know I'm gay and who cares? It's not important," he says. "I like to be a regular guy."
Periodically, he thinks about leaving Utah once and for all. If he could drop his house in the hills of Tuscany or take his schnauzers Max and Lucas to England, he says, he would do it "in a heartbeat." But then his children and grandchildren live here. He feels as though he is just getting to know them.
So he stays in a conservative community that has marginalized him and his ilk, still hoping that someday things will change.
Anderson worries about the day Bastian might leave. "Most bigotry toward gays and lesbians comes from treating the other as an abstraction rather than a human being," he says.
"We need to be able to put a face on the other to understand that they are entitled to the same kinds of rights and dignity as anybody else.
"Bruce is an important face," Anderson adds.
"I don't think most people who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians can get to know Bruce and come away with those same negative feelings."