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Dad agrees, if Steven promises to raise his arm. Scott tells his son that symbols can be stronger than words. "Think of it as a call for people to unite, that we're standing up for kids' rights and gay rights and that we'll press on." Steven rolls his eyes.
Scott is adamant about the arm. In addition to regular media coverage, a documentary about the Cozzas, Scout's Honor, is being produced by the Independent Television Service for a national PBS audience. Scott envisions his son's speech before thousands as a great climax to the film. "The picture freezes with his hand raised while the credits go by," he says, playing director for a moment. "It's an image no one would forget."
The march is running long at Steven's appointed time, and organizers are trying to edit the speakers. They tell the 15-year-old to just go up and say his name and what group he is from. "No way!" Steven thinks to himself. "I didn't come all this way for nothing. I have things to say." Alone on the stage, facing a crowd of tens of thousands, Steven makes a snap decision: throw out the prepared speech and just say what he remembers from it, what he believes matters most.
"As Martin Luther King said, we must not allow any forces to make us feel like we don't count," Steven says clearly and boldly, in his deepening voice. He is growing tall and strong and has a confident presence onstage. He looks into the sea of people gathered around the Washington Monument. His hair only has bleach-blond tips for now, his body free of piercings for a few more months. "Be proud of who you are despite what the Boy Scouts say!"
At that, his clenched fist flies into the air and the crowd cheers.
Back home in Petaluma, Steven watches a tape of himself speaking at the march and likes what he sees. "I was more proud and loud," he says. "I felt stronger about the issue."
He compares his most recent performance to tapes that are now a few years old, when he spoke publicly at 12 and 13.
"Wow, I was just saying words back then," he says. "Now the words mean something."
With two teenagers home on summer vacation, the phone rings all day. Anne and Steven are out, so it's up to Mom to take down the urgent messages of high school gossip and romance -- and fend off the girls after Steven. Between calls, Jeanette tries to clean her trilevel tract home with the nicely decorated lawn and basketball hoop next to the two-car garage. Mornings are chaotic for the Cozza family. Scott was in his Honda at dawn to inch across the Golden Gate Bridge on his commute to San Francisco. Anne left behind a mess as she packed to go camping with her boyfriend. Steven, who is training for the mountain biking team, was already peddling his way to Mount Tamalpais, hoping he'll be the strongest sophomore.
Jeanette impatiently waits for her son to get back so she can take him to a doctor's appointment. He pulled a muscle a few days earlier but continues to hit the trails. Sometimes, Jeanette wishes she could strangle him.
"He'd like to think it's true when people call him a star, but believe me, he's no god," she says. "This kid is the slob of the world and moans about doing anything around the house. You can't tell him anything -- what to do, how to dress. He knows all. He's a very typical teenager."
Posters of bikini-clad women hang on his bedroom wall. Cycling magazines are on the floor, along with a copy of Maxim, the "For Men" journal that always has a buxom model on the cover and a tag line announcing its contents -- "Sex, Sports, Beer" -- in order of importance. As a freshman last year, Steven went to a school dance with two friends who were suspended for showing up drunk. "I know all kids get into trouble. If not this time, maybe next time," Jeanette says. "I just have to trust him."
The doorbell suddenly buzzes, putting the Cozzas' giant Australian shepherd into a spastic fit. Jeanette tries to hold back her dog and let in the guests she forgot were coming. Over Teddy's piercing yelps, the phone rings again. Someone wants to know if Steven can go to the X Games. "Not today," she tells them. "He's already late for something else." Hanging up, she lets out a mock "Calgon moment" scream. The visitors laugh. The film crew in her living room has come to capture such gems of mundane suburban life for the PBS documentary they are making about the Cozza family.
"You have to wonder what's going on and ask, "Can this be real?' Yes, I was incredulous at first," says director Tom Shepard, who has followed the Cozzas for more than two years. "When it comes to parental involvement, you think science fairs and Star Search, not social justice. But I was impressed at how ordinary these people were, and yet they are doing something truly extraordinary -- something Steven very much wants to be part of. Does that make him a superkid? No. He's a kid who mouths off to his parents, especially his father, and who is a real, normal, rough-and-tumble teenage boy."
Jeanette offers the film crew a drink as they shield the camera and boom microphone from the dog. She is used to the spotlight by now, though she wouldn't mind if the picket signs cluttering her living room were gone. She would definitely like it if the Scouts changed their policy. Maybe her family could finally return to a regular life. But that doesn't seem likely.
Some of their Petaluma neighbors and various parents in Steven's Scout troop have shunned the Cozzas. And homophobic strangers from all parts of the country have left vitriolic answering machine messages and e-mails. Death threats and security consultations with the FBI have erased any hopes of a true return to normalcy for the Cozzas.
