Victor D'Lugin was a prominent activist in both Connecticut and Provincetown, a sharp-tongued political radical whose tenacity and brilliance helped shape gay and AIDS politics for a decade (1986-1996).

Victor was never afraid of a good fight: in fact, he picked quite a few. He took on Archbishop John Whealon when Connecticut's Catholic bishops tried to cut gays and lesbians from the state's hate crimes bill. He stared down Health Commissioner Susan Addiss, whose policy on the collection of names of HIV-positive individuals he opposed. He led the consumer takeover of Provincetown's AIDS Support Group, ousting a regime that had become numb to the true needs of those it intended to serve. And few can ever forget his one-two knockout sparring match with Rep. William Wollenberg on the State Judiciary Committee, which convinced many lawmakers to support Connecticut's landmark gay civil rights bill in 1991.

Born in the Bronx in 1945, Victor never lost his working-class, New York, Jewish chutzpah. Graduating from New York University with a Ph.D. in political philosophy, he became a champion of the rights of women, minorities and eventually, after coming out in the early 1980s, gay men and lesbians. As a professor at the University of Hartford, he inspired hundreds of students, many of whom credit Victor with shaping their political and social consciences.

Victor wasn't afraid to criticize even members of his own community, calling gay men and lesbians on our own sexism, racism, neglect of AIDS and sexphobia. Railing against the mainstream drift of the gay movement, he said, "My view is not about convincing society that we share their values, but rather, it's about transforming what those values are." In short, he made a lot of noise. He provoked. He prodded. He challenged. He helped articulate the activist goals of a movement in change. For many young gay and lesbian activists in the 1980s and 1990s, Victor was a mentor -- the moral, uncompromising absolute. Whether it was putting in context for us our rage over the gay-bashing murder of Richard Reihl in 1988 or spearheading a more militant response to Reagan-Bush inaction on AIDS, Victor left his inimitable mark on Connecticut and Provincetown politics.

Yet to those of us who broke through his reserve, his brittle arrogance, the legacy of Victor D'Lugin goes much deeper than legislative or electoral gains. We discovered a man of great insight, a superlative listener, an unconditional- if demanding- friend. Yet the demands made upon us were nothing more than the demands he made upon himself.

Victor was- first and foremost- a teacher, and not only in the classrooms of the University of Hartford, where he served as an professor of political philosophy until his retirement in 1995. Teaching was his great passion- even greater than the passion he had out in the dunes of Provincetown with a dozen other men on a starry night, and that's saying a lot. Teaching was in his blood, in his soul, in the very essence of his being, for that is the way Victor led, how he changed policy, how he ultimately made a difference.

"What I demand most in my life," he said in 1991, on the steps of the State Capitol on Gay Pride Day, the day he came out publicly as HIV-positive for the first time, "is a fundamental respect for who I am. Yet I have no right to demand respect from others unless I am prepared to give respect to others based on who they are."

The lessons were abundent, and the most important ones were about compassion and challenge. Over his desk, he kept many quotes. James Baldwin, Audre Lord, Jung and Plato. But this one, from Agnes de Mille, carried perhaps the most telling resonance: "Life is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."

At the beginning of 1995, Victor moved to Provincetown. He loved Provincetown: there he felt more at home than anywhere else. The wind on the breakwater, the red sunsets over the dunes. For the first time, his health was being seriously affected by the virus he'd carried around in his body for ten years.

Yet his retirement was hardly an ending. "It's not enough," he told us, again and again, "not enough to change laws. It's not even enough to change minds. We need to touch hearts and souls."

And so, he leapt into the dark- as he always had. In Provincetown, he took long walks along the beach. "There's so much to be learned from the stillness," he told us. In those final months, the old rage transformed into something else. He was no longer only a teacher. He was once again a student, listening to the wind and thanking the waves.

Victor died in Provincetown on August 13, 1996, just as a whole new series of AIDS drugs appeared on the scene. Many of his longtime friends were distressed that he did not reap the benefits his activism had sown. But there was no distress for Victor. While the old warrior never wavered in his conviction that his death was the result of America's collaboration with indifference, his spirit proved mightier than even his incredible mind. He knew, finally, there was one more leap to be taken into the dark. In his last months, he had one final lesson to teach us: that all of us will die, that death is simply one part of the ingenious cycle of creation, and that, in between, comes love.

"The moment we cease to hold each other," Victor had said, quoting James Baldwin that scorchingly hot day on the steps of the state Capitol five years earlier, "the moment we lose faith in one another, the darkness engulfs us and the light goes out." Then he added: "The moment I let a friend hold my hand, the light engulfed me."

Yes, Victor D'Lugin changed gay politics in Connecticut. But more importantly, he changed all of us who knew him. -- William J. Mann and Timothy Huber

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