Get Used to It: Ep. 100, "Show # 100"

(clunking) (upbeat music) - Hi welcome to the 100th show of Get Used To It I'm Sheila Kuelh your host and today I'll be your guide through a look back at a number of those shows you know, our very first show was taped in October of 1992. And you may recall that was a fairly important time for our community and for the country and as it turned out for the world, why? Well, there was an election going on and George Bush the first was running for re-election but some of us had another guy in mind this first show was called simply election 92. - I actually think it's historic, I think it's the most important election in the history of our community, everything's at stake It's like we have the prince of darkness and the prince of light. (laughing) And aside on one side, we have a person who will practice and continue to practice repression, do little on AIDS point more Clarence Thomas's to the Supreme court take away a woman's right to choose. And on the other side, we have a candidate who is committed to passing progressive civil rights legislation and executive orders for gays and lesbians who will declare war on AIDS, who will appoint distinguish people to the Supreme court of this land and the federal court other federal judiciary appointments and who will fight hard to protect Roe versus Wade in the process. - A Clinton victory sends out a green light from the top it puts leadership stamp on tolerance on homophobia, as unacceptable as a form of bigotry. We always say homophobia has become sort of the last acceptable form of bigotry, doesn't mean racism and sexism are dead, but homophobia has been the last to fall. And with leadership that that is, you know, explicitly pro gay rights on certain issues what it does is it means we get to move forward on the issues that we have public support for discrimination the military and so forth. But, but more importantly, it opens up for the nineties, the political space for us to really move forward on domestic partnership and gay marriage on gay youth, gay lesbian youth issues, teenage suicide, you know, three times the national average. And so what you you'll see is a totally changed terrain not only will you see a queer voting block, I mean, it is conceivable that 85 to 90% of our community both Republicans and Democrats. Democrats are gonna vote as a block in this election the kind of money that's been raised in this campaign, and the way that this campaign as, as Charles and David was saying, has really acted in our interest to galvanize and mobilize our own community, thousands of un active people have been brought in. - I think that here to four, we've been able to play a symbolic role we've been involved, we've supported democratic candidates in the past, but we haven't been able to go with the candidate the distance. Now we're beginning to taste victory and I think that's important and significant and it's something we've earned, it's something we deserve. And so now it's just making it to the end, making sure that the candidate wins and that we are there to make it clear to everyone, to remember ourselves and to remind the world that we are here we're not going anywhere so Get Used To It, - Get Used To It. (laughing) - Tell us why was this an important convention? If it was for the gay and lesbian community. - It was surprising to all of us who were openly gay and lesbian delegates to the democratic national convention, that we would have such a position of prominence at the convention, as well as in the minds and hearts of the media and of I think people across the country. - But also we had some presence I think in drafting the platform I know you were involved. - But we had a greater impact on the, on the formulation of the platform and of the battle within the party to get the platform accepted as the, as the governing document than we ever have before we were viewed as a very significant force. - As you'll see over the next hour, our show covered a lot of different issues, many times we were pretty deep and pretty serious other times well. Listen let me ask you a question just to sort of start this I have-- - I just like to say this that picture of you (laughing) it's you I mean perfect. - That was before my latest haircut, do you like haircut? - That is definitely. - I said anything about, you know I did notice, I did notice. - I got all my haircut. - The first led in a vest. - The great thing for me was when I started, because my person who managed me and just act like you're interested, - Oh, I'm listening. - Whoa - Okay. - It's good but we won't get into hair care products now, - Okay - Because not yet, this is a good show, - Cause this is not that channel. - It's not that channel actually, even though we started off that way - You are one of the first people talking about being queer out there. - Well, - And that's there weren't a lot of women out there doing it. - Well and not only talking about it, but making people understand it because I mean you always have been the funniest person in the universe, not just in this genre. - My goodness. - I mean, truly don't you think? - I used to get a galactic thing happening, but okay it's all right Sheila I know there are other people you like now, but I think one of the things about coming out that you know, is so annoying to me and wonderful is that the waste of human energy that we spend on it they could be spent somewhere else. - Worrying about it in advance, you know, I've sort of compared it to that, there was an old shell oil commercial, where you saw a car hurdling toward a brick wall and one, and you think any minute it's gonna impact and it drives right through. And it's just a piece of paper that looks like a brick wall and coming out it is sort of like that but the apprehension that you feel before you do it, how is it going to impact? I mean you had to wonder I would assume. - Sure and I used to put a lot more energy into it and it's ironic that sort of, that thing soon as you stop thinking about it it happens you know what I mean? And I talked about this sort of the big coming out interview that I did with The Advocate which is it happened on the anniversary I got that phone call, you know that infamous that call from representation saying. (gasps of joy) - You know it's gonna be a national, you know some trashy publication and it was on the anniversary of my brother's death and you know, sometimes that impacts your life. You know these anniversaries can, and it's like sometimes they blow by this happened to be one that I was having some awareness of and was thoughtful about. And when that phone call came, it was like, oh, who cares? You know, because in the grand scheme of things, it just really didn't have any weight. - Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep doing community work and coming to community banquets and saying yes, to these things and being on the air and saying, okay I will talk about it. - Well, it's not my line but somebody said, you know, now that there's no more communism, the religious right is just glammed on to the gay community with such venom and hate and until that goes away until that dissipates greatly. I mean, there is still a, the purpose for our wellbeing and our children and our children's children to be able to live our lives truthfully and honestly, and presently without condemnation, you know. - Now more than ever. - Yeah. - You know. - That's why. - We're Jewish we have to give back, you know, you have to give back. - Kate Clinton. (laughing) - I know you're a good Catholic school girl, still inside. - Kol Jewish. - Kind of a kol Jewish. - Well even though we kept a light touch on many of the shows others dealt with some of the most pressing and serious issues of our day, religion, spirituality, preserving our history, countering right wing propaganda and the fact that you don't have to be gay to be queer. - And so I kept trying to fit in with everybody and getting people to like me and they didn't I mean, you know, the harder you try the more they sort of push you away. And it wasn't until I finally one summer went to a performing arts camp, and all of a sudden I, there was this whole group of people who were not just literally queer but they were outsiders and we were all there together. And I understood what I'd been wanting for so long was not just to fit in, but to contribute and make a difference and find a cohesive family that I, that I knew that I was part of. I was overweight, I was weird, people didn't understand me and so when I look at your community, I feel extremely empathetic I know what it feels like to be prejudiced against pushed aside discounted. And what I so love about the community is the willingness to be courageous in being who you are. - Given the Tetra Hedron configuration, does that mean that each one of you feels you have an independent relationship with each of the other three? - Absolutely. - Completely. - Yeah. - Yeah - But was that harder or kind of just not so hard. - It's hard it's difficult. (laughing) - Go Robert. - That's good. - I'm still working on mine. - All three of them. - Yeah. (laughing) - But the truth is that you have as much of a relationship with each of us as each of us does with each other. Yours is of a different of a nature, our connections are powerful I mean you resist, - Yeah. - You resist talking to Herb and Jonathan stuff, but your connection with my experience is that that my relationship with you is every bit as powerful as my relationship with Judith it's just of a different nature. - One of the things that we've often talked about is that because Robert is here and willing to hang in, it's a very unusual position for a straight man. To me I have a lot of respect for him for being willing to be in the situation, and many times Herb and Jonathan have said to him, particularly Herb said you have to understand that you are a model for the straight community off of your relationship with two gay men, because it is an unusual relationship. And that's to go back to your point about what we're talking about this being exemplary I think each one of us in our own individual way is exemplary, and as a group we are exemplary. - I realized recently oh, actually about a few years ago that most of the men that I knew that I were connected to were gay because they were willing to share and talk. And I, and Herb said, you need to get into a men's group, and I resisted that for about a year or two, and finally get into a men's group where there are, I think there are one or two gay men in it, but most of your straight guys and it was, it's an interesting experience for me to be around straight guys and to have a conversation and to be willing to push ourselves through that to talk about real issues. - I saw and was completely inspired by the gay agenda I was so upset when I saw it I thought it was very slick, very effective of course full of lies and distortions. And I, it got really depressed, and then I thought no, you know, gotta do something about this or I could be really depressed, or I could do something about it. And I decided to do something about it and talked to award women, winning filmmaker, Francis Reed and together we made the film and it ended up being the first pro gay. You talked about the gay agenda being distributed among the, at the Congress, and this was straight from the heart was the first pro gay lesbian film that was shown to an audience, of senators and Congress people, bipartisan audience. - And the academy got to view it too. - That's right. (laughing) - Yeah it was nominated for an academy award as well. - Through going to the Institute for the event study of human sexuality, part of becoming a sex sexologist was to look at all kinds of sex educational films. And I would say 95% of them were rotten they're just boring and terrible, and I said, oh, I know I can do better than this. So I decided to start doing my own films, not necessarily sex education films, but more of the documentary about, African American lesbian and gay people. And I convinced them to have, as part of my dissertation work to do a video on Black lesbians, and then I've done others like for the Black gay lesbian leadership forum. We have a legacy which is a history of historical and contemporary African American lesbian, and gay people. One definition I read about art is that the purpose of art is to make the comfortable, uncomfortable and to make the uncomfortable comfortable hetero sexism is comfortable and homophobia or dealing with sexuality is sometimes very uncomfortable. And so if you use art to make people more, I guess calm and sane and at least trying to discuss it instead of going crazy, some people do I think that's very helpful and that's a very good use of art. - Yeah and I think that's, what we are trying to do I talked about using this as sort of a starting point for a conversation about what is obviously a very difficult issue and that that is homophobia and hetero sexism. And we purposefully made it, made them both under 30 minutes so people could sit people with like, most of us with a short attention span and sit. And then what we wanna do is go around the country and actually train local activists, how to sit with those folks watch the film, and then facilitate a really meaningful discussion about people's fears and concerns. - This is without question the world's largest repository of historical material documenting the experience of gay and lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people on the planet. The one Institute and archives is the preeminent institution of memory, on planet earth in terms of gay and lesbian experience. - Now how did the strands come together to form this Institute? - Well, it's a, again we're talking about 1,001 stories and going from the personal to the collective as you might say, and that's how this collection started in 1942 a very dear man by the name of Jim Kepner started acquiring the first books in his San Francisco apartment. And it, the collection just grew and grew and grew and grew over the years. - We touched their lives we touched their beings, it makes it to be not an academic thing, but a real living thing so that people can come here no different than the tourists who now go to my family ranch and they get a picture that's very different from what you see on television. As far as ranching people can come here instead of giving getting the television picture, they get the real feeling of what it was really like to be gay and to be in the closet in the 1940s and fifties. A time when you couldn't associate openly with other gay people you couldn't send things through the mail you couldn't dance with other people socially. There were all of these things that were able to do today that were against the law then and it, this is a place where that all comes alive and so we get that perspective and that measure and that living ness of history where we came from and where we are now. - I remember in the early eighties, specific instances where there was a painter or a photographer or a poet whose parents came in quick, especially when these deaths were quick, parents came in and obliterated everything. There's nothing left their art is gone, there is no, their poetry is evaporated, their paintings have been burned, their words are lost forever. That won't happen now, people will have the foresight to make sure that these works of art are preserved that's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it which is so emotional to me and so moving is that so many of my dead brethren are are alive in this room. I mean, and will not die as a result of being on these bookshelves in the photo collections they will be imortal in this space. And we know also that a lot of gay and lesbian people, the point was made eloquently by Karen Oman. I'm not gonna steal it from her, but that a lot of gays and lesbians don't have children. They don't have a trusting, loving family to leave their things to this is the place for it to go, they don't wanna die not knowing where some of their treasures are going to go. Some of their painting whether they're artists or not some of the things that they've collected that are pertinent to our lives, to our lives and our lifestyles. - One of the recurring themes we saw as we looked back through these shows was identifying issues of interest, not only to our community, but to the larger world as well. And not only looking at the problems, but also trying to identify solutions and strategies as well. - What is racism know to us as a community? You know, I think that you're absolutely right that many gay lesbian people, believe that our community is more progressive on the question of race, because they believe that when you talk about racism, you talk about burning people's homes you know, you talk about violent attacks. And certainly that is a part of racism, and if it is sufficient to just eliminate those activities and to say, we've eliminated those activities in our community on the question of race, therefore we've eliminated the whole issue of racism. That's a mistake that in fact is not enough the elimination of racism really involves creating a society and a culture and a community that truly reflects diversity of that society, that culture, that community, that truly celebrates and includes each and every one of us and understands that we have valuable contributions. - We've seen racism evolve in the lesbian and gay community we've gone from requiring people of color to produce three picture IDs to get into a bar that was at one time. And now we've seen it evolve into the systematic exclusion of people, of color in the decision making process and I think that's the worst form of racism in our community. Our biggest challenge is to start addressing these problems because before we can start demanding rights from other people we need to get our own house in order. And I think this you know, forums like this are very positive. - Differences are okay and they're okay to address them and it's okay to not be okay with addressing them just as long as they're out in the open and we're not invisible. And we're not made to feel like as women we're made to feel a lot of times that it's all in our heads. That's where a lot of my anger comes from, is that invisibility and that feeling like I don't have anyone that really mirrors me in my community. So I start from ground one and I, I wanna become that person for other people like me, other young Latina lesbians or whoever they may be, because one turning point for me when I came out was meeting an Asian American lesbian. And I said well, you know, there's Asian American lesbians there must be Latina lesbians, that was really a big turning point. I would not deal with being a lesbian or I didn't deal with being a lesbian until I met someone of color. So that mirror, that someone that looks like you is very important. - Why all this homophobia in the military? - Well I think the military is the good old voice club and they had problems with anybody who didn't, wasn't quite like the white patriarchal male. They had problems with Blacks and other people of color and certainly the language to prohibit them is close to the same kinda language that they used to prohibit gay men and lesbians. And they really had problems placing women in full use and still are having problems with women in combat. So racism, sexism, homophobia, all birds of a, you know, the same stick, so to speak birds of a feather Black together. - I go to Capitol hill and I've been traveling all over the country for the campaign for military service, organizing people to prepare for this vote. And every question I go, especially by the local press is what is the homosexual agenda? You know like I don't let me see, where is it here? - Well, they've seen the tape that's why. - And I say, we do have an agenda, we do have an agenda I said I fess up, I admit we have an agenda. And that is, we want the same protection under the constitution of the United States that's given to every other American citizen no more, no less. And that includes the ability to serve our country with dignity and honor, and not have to lie and not have to live in fear for the right to serve our country. - The military is very, very guilty of double standards when there is a war, they tend to re look at who they have dis inducted out of the army. - That's right. During the second world war, they were looking at re inducting gay men who had been put out of the army, because they were gay if they had not done any public homosexual offenses. So, I mean, the double standard has been there from the very beginning, and the two you listen too, and what side of the fence you wanna sit on. And all we're saying is let's get rid of the fence and let's all sit together. - We're going to talk about the national endowment for the arts public broadcasting system and the, the new contract on America, which seems to want to defund not only these entities but others, a question that will hopefully explore today is what's going on about this. And in terms of the fact that it seems to many of us that our community is being used as a wedge issue on all of this defunding discussion. - The importance of federal support's is a very complex issue and, you know, we'll have to weave in and out of some of those complexities in the show today but that is accountable to the mandate of our country to represent all of the people that are living here. And so this is, this is in a nutshell, what they wanna do is basically turn culture over entirely to the commercial domain and to mark forces, and to prevent agencies such as the NEA providing support, for artists who are pushing the envelope of consciousness. - The actual effect of defunding organizations like the NEA is that it will simply be harder for artists who don't have inherited money or access to wealthy patrons to spend full time on their art. And actually I think that what the conservative right is after given the kind of economy that they're pushing in which there is gonna be no middle class, there's gonna be the very rich and the very poor. Is to create a situation in which people who perceive of themselves as ordinary folks, working people won't aspire to an artistic wife and in fact, art will become the province of the elite, because I think that what these folks are after is lowering poor people's expectations of the amount of joy and fulfillment and self-expression that a working person is entitled to in life. - The first crucial building block, where I understood who I was as a gay 14 year old in the San Gabriel Valley was by watching K C T and seeing a Trinity, a Trinity theater production of a play about Oscar wild called feasting with Panthers. And suddenly they're on TV, you know sitting in you know, on the deep pile shag carpeting, I'm seeing something that immediately registered as, wow, that is me. This is like there's a history, there's a culture there's a tragedy, because this great wrong that was done to one of you know, our great queer writers Oscar wild. And it was like 5,000 light bulbs going on in my head at that moment and it's, you know, I was actually reading, I'm writing about this right now. And I was reading in my journal, which of course I was keeping at 14, - Of course. - about every experience. (laughing) - That's how performance artists are made, but I think actually they don't want those light bulbs to be turned on. And that's part of where this war is so crucial and they, they're very cany, they it's dangerous for them to build those light bulbs to be turned on by keeping Marlon Riggs, extraordinary film tongues untied about the experience of African American gay men, an incredibly silenced and large population in our society. And by keeping that off of two thirds of the markets they kept some x number of, powerful light bulbs being turned off, being turned on over these, you know, young Black men's heads all over this country. And that's an incredible and shameful, victory for them because it's gonna create, you know, massive ongoing self-esteem problems, silencing closet, Inness, dis empowerment, all of the things, which of course are right along the right wing agenda especially as it relates to lesbians and gay men. - We've become a country I think that wants instant change in whatever it is that's troubling us and government is slower than that. And so at the next two years they say, we asked you for this you didn't give us this off with their heads I do think though, that there is a trend back maybe away from the radical right. I think Newton company gave everybody a really good view of what that would look like and I don't, I think that's why Clinton was reelected in part. And I think that has a lot to do with the radical rights social agenda, I think they've done better on their economic front than they've done on their social agenda but they can't get, it's like holding the tiger by the tail. They can't give up the social agenda or they lose a huge block of their voters so they hold onto this social agenda, which includes homophobia and all of the other phobias that they're scatter around with their every breath. And the problem is that whole bunches of people in America just don't buy that stuff anymore. - I think the challenge is for the left in general whatever the heck that is for progressive forces in general, and for the gay and lesbian communities, how do we move beyond our own issue? How do we have meaningful coalitions? You know, that really means something, and how do we forge a vision, which the right wing will never be able to do that speaks to the best that speaks out beyond our own self-interest that engages people in activism and in changing the world the way we saw in the sixties and seventies. - Getting to a point where we understand that because someone is different doesn't mean that they can't contribute, In fact, America has always taken in and absorbed and benefited from many of those differences but we haven't been willing to treat the people that bring those values and those ideas here we haven't been able, been willing to treat them as peers until they acculturate until they assimilate. I think that we have to redefine, what we mean by progressive look at it we say progressive we don't even say liberal anymore it's a dirty word. - Oh, no I think-- - In that instance where the murder victim was a gay man and it was such a horrible anti-gay crime that it was particularly important that our voice be heard. The reasons we did that are, are pretty straightforward first of all we know that, the legal system has enormous fallibility. Mistakes are made all the time and in fact, that's a significant part of our work as a civil rights organization, dealing with homophobic bias in society and in the courts we know that there are mistakes and that there's bias. There's bias from the US Supreme court as we all saw 1986 with the Georgia sodomy decision, the Bowers against Hardwick decision, the court wasn't even didn't mince words they said our claim to the same privacy right, that everybody else takes for granted was facetious. - The appellate process is interesting though, because if we try to eliminate that expense as legislatures in some states and the federal government is trying to do by limiting how much habeas corpus is available, you'll start executing we will start executing innocent people approximately one out of every hundred on death row is found to be innocent actually innocent. And it usually takes about seven years to discover that so if you bring habeas corpus down to two or three years you have to be willing in that process to start executing innocent people. - I think this is a broader issue, of how values in this society get codified in law and how ideas about fairness, compassion, and justice, and, you know, including the response that people have to violence and to violent crime in a society that sanctions violence from the top. - These kinds of issues about tolerance get attacked at a very fundamental level school by school, by school. - School, by school, by school and also it's really frightening to me in that they go ahead and argue that, you know something about this so-called parents rights and again parents only do have rights have rights to elect a local school board they have a right to enroll their children in public school versus private school. But again, this particular, if you focus in on the actual issue, is there such a, does the law truly say that kids can't be exposed to gay issues? That's not true at all I mean, again, what Norma and Cynthia are doing on all these other people are doing they're just trying to talk about culture. They're talking about acceptance, they're talking about discrimination they're trying to create a safe, a safe place for all kids. That's all that's going on and that has nothing to do with sex education or sex. - I think that children are born loving and children are born wanting warmth and wanting touch right? I think they're taught to be intolerant, I think they're taught to hate, and we do have to kind of retrain them. And I think the earlier that we get in and start talking to them about diversity, I really don't like, I know the word is kind of tolerance but I really don't like using tolerance. I so much more appreciate diversity and celebration, celebration people's for their differences so I believe very much in getting in early with that message of, you know, what, what you came up with and what you know, to be real is what's right. And all that other stuff is stuff that you're learning and stuff that's coming from somewhere else from outside of you and that really fuels me, fuels my passion and I love working with young people really inspired by young people. - I can't imagine that everybody would go, oh, isn't this wonderful we're gonna have, you know, plays about tolerance on the basis of race well we can do that, that's okay. That's American now but gay lesbian stuff I can't imagine everybody just welcomes, even if you call it tolerance, skits that have anything to do with our community. - Yes, yes, though the play includes tolerance based on religion and race, and disability and class and gender and appearance size weight. The fact that we also say that it's important for people to be appreciative of diversity in families that not all of us have a mom and a dad some of us have one mom or two moms, two dads, an older brother who might be gay. We say that everybody with every, whatever family structure they have needs to be treated with respect. And I think that there are sometimes families who think that to say that you have to respect someone no matter what their sexual orientation, nor their family structure is to say is to start talking about what people do in the bedroom. - Hmm. - And we don't go near that. - You know, even though we didn't start out 11 years ago to create an oral history of our community, it's been a tumultuous decade. And as it turned out, the individual stories of people in our community became the documentation of our history. We called these shows voices of our lives. - I wanna be part of creating I will be one of some people who will be helping to create I think, some unprecedented models for mobilizing the gay and lesbian community for activating, for connecting, our community based infrastructure of organizations, more into trans, paralleling it more into political, sort of more traditional political terms. And you know it excites me I think it's really necessary I am very very concerned about what's happening in this country. And I also feel we need, we deeply need antidotes to the despair, the loss the political disillusionment with Bill Clinton is fierce. The sense of having been let down at the same time as we experience continued to experience death after death, after death and the fragile ecology of our community of our family networks of our friendship networks constantly being ripped apart by loss upon loss. And for me the, if I've learned anything, it's that connecting to something larger than yourself can give you what Gandhi called that sort of transcendent sense of purpose and creating a sense of, it's not just fighting back as an individual, but joining with others and has one poet said where hope and history come together. - I been living with HIV disease for 15 years now, It's weird I say that a lot I guess, (laughing) but I think I'm very, very lucky, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be 40 and for the most part I have lived a life that has been full of love. I have a family that has always been supportive, I have been fortunate with great friends I have been lucky enough to spend my life doing work that I feel strongly about and passionate about. And I believe that I've made a difference, and I guess when you're that lucky, you have to give something back there's a price for that and I guess I just try to pay my dues. - I'm saying that we're at a turning point, I think that the passage of the welfare bill was a wake up call for all of those who love justice and believe in progressive and liberal politics. If we can pass a piece of legislation that puts a million children into poverty, and have it signed and not a peep be uttered than something is seriously wrong. And just like in 1968 when older America remained silent as their sons and daughters were being shipped to Vietnam and it was the youth of the world who woke us up. I think it's their turn, I think they have to save our children, save the poor and once again, awaken our conscience to the problems of this nation. - And what if they're saying to themselves, what's that got to do with me? - Well, it's got everything to do with you because if you walk down the street and don't feel safe, it's most likely you don't feel safe because of drug abuse or poverty. If your taxes are going too high and going down the drain it's most likely they're going too high because they're not being spent wisely and it's not, we're not planning for the future. We're trying to do patchwork if you can't swim in the river because it's polluted it's because no one's doing anything about it has everything to do with you. It's the whole quality of life, you cannot build enough gated communities to protect yourself from the world you live in. It is our world and it's our neighbors and where you're gonna accept responsibility for it or we're not. - You know what I feel like, I don't get on national TV all that often now you're putting me on this afternoon. - (laughing) - I'm happy whenever I do though, I get a call from the guys at Kelly's in Chicago saying you look great or a you know, lesbian in Kansas, that feels good about something. That really excites me, the number of real people who say you being there means something to me. And I think that's profound and fundamental and then beyond that, I think it is saying as a role model those get sort of Hackney terms, but to say you two can do as well. We laughed today at committee, and you said you're near 60, I'm near 50 we're kind of moving along we're doing pretty good for everybody. One said for a couple old scruffy broads, (both laughing) but they're the 20 year olds and the 30 year olds and look how they will be, and so it is the mentoring and creating a foundation or an openness. I feel if I'm just kind of like wedging the door open if I do nothing else to then provide a door stop to make an entrance and by which the floodgates are open then dozens of more, you know, young, ambitious, capable lesbians and gays come forward, that will have been a lot. - When we look at the pages of the gay papers this obsessive issue with vanity what one looks like liposuction and Botox this and muscles that and what where have we learned? Have we learned any lessons? Isn't there something that we need to solve and fix on the inside? Shouldn't we be looking at what's inside I'm concerned, I'm concerned about my generation and I'm concerned about the youngsters. The other thing is I think that still young men are zero converting because they wanna be part of the club, they feel so ostracized. So less than, - To be negatively. - Disconnected they wanna become HIV positive, - Right? - to become part of this fraternity it looks good, it looks glamorous there's support group. And I am so conscious of this that, you know, learn the lessons without becoming HIV positive if I had it to do over again I would've learned these lessons without zero converting. The advantage here is, to listen to people who have lost and those from the grave who are sometimes speaking to us like Paul Mernade and Jim pickett, et cetera, one need nots zero convert to be, to feel powerful or to feel a part of. And I think that that's out there I just think that when we act like AIDS is over and I hear this repeatedly and act like AIDS doesn't exist any longer, we are back into a state of delusion and denial that could only be matched by the early eighties as we end the nineties. And I think that we have to wake up all over again and reassess the issues and particularly look at the youth. - I finally came to the realization that I really did, I really was attracted to men and I felt that any woman who I was going to invest all that energy and trust in and who was gonna invest all her energy and trust in me deserved better than a husband who was gonna be running out to the Greyhound station every night, you know, looking for a hair seller. And so I shut that part of my life off I just said this is not gonna be, I'm not gonna be able to live that way honestly and so I chose to live to the gay way, which was the honest way for me. And a lot of you know, a lot of gay men are repelled by women and have a real problem with women and I adore them I mean, I embrace them and my closest business and personal relationships are with women. So, I mean, my manager is a woman and my agent's a woman and that Midler is my longest standing business relationship it's been almost 30 years and she's several women. (laughing) - At least. - This is not practice for something else this is what I do and I better have a good time doing it or do something else. And I realize I do have a good time doing it, and if I want to do something else, it's within my power to do something else, but clearly I'm doing what I like doing. And most people don't recognize that about themselves they go to their graves denying that this is the real thing. And I think that barring some hideous, misfortune, we have the power to give ourselves the real thing, and the sooner we do with the happier we are. - In my first teaching assignment was an older woman who was a lesbian, who was very willing to talk to me about it, who told me I was a lesbian I thought, oh, what does she know? She says you're a diet kid you know I said but Carol, how would you know that? And she says I know and I remember that conversation I wasn't offended, I just thought, you know, that's a kind of a crazy thing for her to say, but I was involved in starting the Women's Liberation Union in Los Angeles, which I would say was at least half lesbians. And I had a lot of, of friendships with lesbians I was very close to women women were have been throughout my whole life, women have been more important than men as friends although I have men, male friends but they the women are, have been my closest comrades and allies throughout my life. And at some point I was in the Bread and Rose's theater, and one of the lesbians who began spending more and more time at my house, and one thing led to another and we got into a relationship. And I was shocked that I did that I really was, I cuz it wasn't how I saw myself I thought, what does this mean? Who am I. - To learn about every issue and to know your constituents, you know it takes a lot of energy to do that and we thank God that you are doing it for us but we also know that there has to be time I think for the human person to reflect and to make some sense of it all. And I think that's really in the best sense what religion does, which spirituality does, it gives us that opportunity to reflect and to put what we do in a larger context, in relationship to other people, to relationship to society. And as a religious person, I believe in relationship to the force that, you know, creates the universe and keeps it nourished and going. And I, really think that it also helps us clarify where we stand in terms of our ethics and our values and our morals, and I think in our community that's a dialogue we sometimes don't have often enough with one another let alone with anybody else. And I think that there is in our community, a great thirst and hunger for that. - I had these three parts of my life, and in fact I divide the book into three sections I was once Lilly, the child of this unmarried immigrant woman who worked in the sweat shops. And then I became Lil this tough adolescent who became a a pinup model and later a stripper and who frequented the, very rough Butch femme bars in Los Angeles. And then I became Lillian, this PhD, who wanted to do lesbian scholarship, and I, needed to figure out coming to my age, and I, started thinking about this a couple of years before I knew I was gonna turn 60 soon. I needed to figure out how this diverse life came together how did all of those parts make up whoever I am now? And that what I try to do in the book but I try to do it, I think not just as me, but it's sort of a universal statement that is all of us have diverse parts of our lives. Where is the core? How do you find the core? - Well just as in any family in any community, some of our friends are no longer with us, here are three people will sorely miss. - And when Socrates says that an unexamined life is not worth living, he doesn't mean that the examined life is gonna be easy or people or the people are gonna agree with it. So, one has to be tough and one has to not let it get under one skin, and we do the most I think by being role models for one another, we did be, we barely had them when we were growing up. We are them for other people, and I think that's terribly important and all the lies and all the not saying the truth that gay and lesbian people go through when they're 10 and 12 and 15 years old they finally get a sense of well those people seem right. And they. - Well that's the important thing you know, somewhere there's a 17 year old watching this show who wants to write and probably knows he's gay and is in the closet and scared to death. And I don't know whether watching you he'll say, oh, now I can do it. - Right. - Because it, the difficulty of it is apparent and yet I heard you say the joy of it, it sort of overcomes everything. - Oh, it does it does it's just, you never have to hate yourself in quite the same way again, after you've come out we've all said, well, who would choose to be gay? It's so it's so tough. I think that we don't even have to say it that way because you become so involved with a human struggle. Listen what can you and I do about some kid in Somalia or some kid in the Sudan, the world is coming apart at the seams, and therefore if you don't do something for someone it despairs the only thing that will happen. - And there's always something within our grasp to do. - That we have achieved, I it's amazing to me to, to find it in many high schools and many many colleges are gay lesbian support groups and good for them. I mean,I just think that the sooner that you can start understanding yourself for real the better off you are. - Let no one allow you not to be yourself, be yourself it's the most important lesson we can learn it's the most important thing we can do. And we all know who ourself is, if we'll listen to the quiet still voice inside, not that committee up in your head, cuz they make a lot of noise. But all of us I think have that quiet, still spiritual voice that tells us how to be ourselves. And I ask folks to just listen to that and, you have to practice and become studied at it before you can hear the voice cuz we try to discount it and you know nah, nothing like that exists, but it does exist. And it exists in all of us, and it'll guide us through every path we need to take. - If you are gay nobody knows that, the attending physician, the midwife, the mother, the father, the minister, nobody knows that. Nobody knows that except you and you learn that before you're three years old and you also learn, there's nothing to talk about. There's nothing that you mention with any pride because you get beaten up or thrown out or so on, and so the first 18 years of our life are a period of great denial. If only we could find out how to cut through that if only we could say to non gay people please allow us to be brothers and sisters to our young brother and sister I swear we won't molest. We just will love if only we could break through that then we could go to total liberation to call restart but we can't. And I challenge out there everybody, the philosophers of the, world help us to find out how to deal with our younger brothers and sisters that we can love them and not be arrested. - What lesson would you want to leave with our viewers, about the way you've lived your life and what recommends it. - Never again, never again, will we treat as sick sinful deviant variant, we are whole we're gestalt we're achieving, we're earning, we're learning we're mobilizing. We are real we're of service, We have something to offer the world and we invite them to share it with us, to welcome us to table that at the table we can all be co-equal Get Used To It. - Yeah get used to it, you know a lot of people have asked me where the title of our show came from. And as with so many things in our community, of course it came from a chant we were marching or we were sitting in or we were demonstrating and we used this chant we are here we are queer, Get Used To It. And it became the signature sign off line for our show as well please go to the Match if you don't go to Washington, do something here just do something and Get Used To It thanks a lot. About any of these issues Just Get Used To It, We better get used to it. Get Used To It. Get Used To It. Get Used To It. Remember we're here we are queer Get Used To It. And so for the 100th time and since we'll be here for the next 100, 200 or 300, I'll say to you just Get Used To It. (upbeat music)