Get Used to It: Ep. 128, "Gay History"

(typewriter clacking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Get Used To It. I'm Sheila Kuehl and as always, I will guide you through the wonderful intellectual discussions that we have on stuff, as you know, Get Used To It is a show devoted to issues of interest to and about the LGBT community. But of course, it's for all of you out there. And I know you're watching whether you're gay or not, because it's so interesting. And today is no exception. Today's show is really devoted to a conversation about history, about the role of history in our lives, about the role of the specific history of the gay and lesbian movement of LGBT people and its place in the broader sense of history. How do we teach it? Should we, how do we discuss it? How do we even learn about it? I have three wonderful guests to share with you today. First, I think you probably know all of them, but Virginia Uribe, who was the founder of Project 10 right here in Los Angeles, which is a school outreach program for LGBT youth. She was a teacher in LA Unified School District for 42 years. - Did you have to say that. - You, I think it's great. I mean, and it's amazing since you're only 50, you must have started very young when you were quite young of course. So welcome to the show. - Thank you Sheila. - Our second guest Lillian Federman, who is a lesbian historian of some note, I wanna make certain that I include the two books that we've all read, but of course I'm so old, I'm starting to lose my memory about things, but a really, really wonderful author, an English professor at Cal State Fresno here in California. And of course the author of "Surpassing The Love Of Men" and "Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers". And co-author with our next guest of a book, that's going to be on the stands starting, I think on national coming out day in October called "Gay LA", which is wonderful. We'll talk about it here as well. Welcome Lillian. - Thank you. - And my third guest Stuart Timmons, a writer and gay historian also quite well known for his publication, "The Trouble With Harry Hay" and his research and writing in the area of gay history. Welcome Stuart. - Thank you. Happy to have all of you here. Lillian, let's start talking to you. We talk a lot about history. We think we read about it in the newspapers. We think we read about it in class, but why is it important for us to understand anything about history just generally for our lives? - I think that history is absolutely vital for everyone, but particularly for young people, because I think it's so crucial that young people know that there are those who came before them who share their experiences, who were able to make it through similar kinds of circumstances. I think that that social history is always told from a particular perspective. And when I was growing up, if gay and lesbian people were mentioned at all, it was a negative perspective. And that was just so hurtful to young gay and lesbian people. What's happened thankfully more recently is that finally there are gay historians and lesbian historians who have reversed that perspective, who tell the story as they understand the story. And I think it's so crucial for young people to read that story. - Well, and it's not as though the story is not being told when we don't tell it. - Yes, of course it's being told by those who hate us. It's being told from a homophobic perspective. So it's absolutely vital that that scholars relate history from a pro gay and pro lesbians perspective and that young people read that history. - So you think that the written word actually has an impact on the way people live their lives. Think about themselves, think about other people? - Well, I can tell you that when I came out, it was really the dark ages it was 1956. I was a teenager and the only kind of lesbian or gay material that was available to me were the Pope novels in which lesbians were always drowning in a well of loneliness or committing suicide. And the writings of these sexologists that I found in the library, because I was desperate to know who I was and who came before me. And of course these sexologists beginning in the 19th century, always presented homosexuals in a negative perspective, always suggested that we were sick or evil or not part of the. - So pathology. - Right yes some kind of pathology, of course. And it was a terrible experience for me as a teenager to think that that just my generation, or maybe people a few years older discovered homosexuality, nobody had ever been gay or lesbian before, and we were hated. And it was only when I got older as a scholar that I realized that it was crucial to find the history and to share it with people and to share it particularly with young people. - So what led you personally into deciding this was a way that you wanted to impact the world? - Well, I suppose what led me personally to do it is I'm a scholar and I'm a writer and I wanted very much to use whatever talent I might have to rectify what felt to me was so hurtful when I was younger. There are many ways to rectify the homophobia in the world. But for me it was the written word that I hope would get out to a broad audience. - But how do you decide, how do you decide what to write about? How do you decide what to say? What was your what was the animating idea for instance of "Surpassing The Love of Men", which I think a million people must have read. - Okay, with "Surpassing The Love of Men." I wanted to see who came before me, who came before my generation. And so I decided that I would find out about relationships between women in the 19th century. And I discovered that there was something for instance called romantic friendship in the 19th century, in the 18th century. And that there wasn't the kind of homophobia about women that I was so familiar with in the 1950s and the 1960s that society viewed women's romantic relationships very differently for a number of complex reasons that I write about in "Surpassing The Love of Men." But I thought it was really important for my readers to understand that homophobia is not inevitable. And there were times when people were not homophobic towards women's relationships. So that was a big focus in that particular book. - Well, not only that, but it's, it leads, I think, people to wonder how was it that it homophobia started to be such an important aspect of the public discourse and why? One wonders because there's always a use for these things. People say, well, you know, words can't really hurt people. And yet the truth is it's really words, names, characterizations of communities that sort of soften the society up to feel negatively and then to hate and then I think to commit violence. And you always find the words first. And so it stands to reason it seems to me that words can also be part of that healing telling the truth, exploring what happened? - Yes, what I tried to do also in other books is "To Believe in Women", the subtitle of that incidentally is "What Lesbians Have Done for America", a history. The reason I wrote that book and the reason I titled it that way is it seemed to me that it was really important to make clear the fact that there really is a noble history in America of these unmarried women who formed these loving domestic partnerships with other women in the 19th century, in the early 20th century. And because they didn't get married and have 10 children as Victorian women often did, they were free to do wonderful things in the world. They were absolutely crucial in the suffrage movement. They were very important in opening the professions to women and opening higher education to women. They were very important in of all sorts of social movements that have changed American life for the better, they fought for minimum wage and maximum hour legislation. They fought for social security legislation. And I thought that, that it was really crucial, not only for lesbian and gay people to know that, but for the rest of the world to know that too. - Well, there's been a question as I know, this year in California, anyway, since I proposed amending the California Law, so that the roles and contributions of lesbian and gay people would also be portrayed in the history books, along with the mandated statutory inclusion of the roles and contributions of Black Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, there's quite a list in California Law and it hit a real buzz saw in the governor's office. And around the state though it also touched, I think a note of fairness in people, Stuart you have been working also in the area of presenting our history, a slightly different take on the history as well, which leads me to sort of ask how do you decide what is history? I mean we think history is the true thing. That's what amateurs think history is. And yet everything we read is either saying either something negative or something positive or omission and not just about us, but about virtually everything. How is it that you approach a subject and decide what to say and how it should be said? - Well, I think you need to find what has a story that's waiting to be told that has some real dynamism to it that maybe has the charm of a secret, because there are people who have led heroic lives and done it all in secret had lover and partners that they cared for had entire hidden lives, that they had to struggle through a whole lot of social prejudice to just lead and made contributions because of special talents that might be somewhat related to there being gay people. When there are those kinds of stories, they can grab you with their drama. And I think they tend to grab a reader. And also something Lilian said about gay history being really a part of American history and a much broader part of history attracts me. In this book, we've just finished on Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian History. The treatment of the gay community by the LAPD for example, was bitterly painful for decades. It was a real long persecution. That's nothing strange to African Americans or Latinos in Los Angeles. And once there's an understanding of how there was this common oppression, there may be a lot less tension between different groups. So there are many motives to define the value in these stories to tell. - So let me ask you the same question I asked Lillian, why generally in society, why is it important for us to understand what came before? - Well, I think it makes every individual understand their own possibility and understand something about their own identity of I find that there was a part of my younger years where I would feel a certain absence of wisdom in the gay male world. A lot of life was on the surface. A lot of life was about today or tonight. And it was older guys with gray hair who wouldn't be paid to much attention to who would literally have these pearls of wisdom if you listened. And the climate I think, and a lot of it had to do with the AIDS epidemic where so many people were lost to who you would've listened to eventually, if you'd made some time and then you didn't have the opportunity that became a motivation for me to realize that there's actually a hunger for that kind of life experience to be commemorated in history and in books so that people can understand something about how to get through life. - There's a sort of I think, fantasy in the larger society about history written by straight white men, about presidents, about government, about wars, about all those things that have been somewhat created to be important and how they are taking an academic look at this without any kind of self-interest. Whereas, as we had this discussion earlier, the participant historian, which is assumed to be every woman who is writing about women, every lesbian writing about lesbians, every gay man writing about gay men, that they're not academic, that it is somehow, I won't say tainted, but I know that there's a even attention in the way we talk about our stories. Tell me what you might think about that. - Sure yeah. There's that fear that it's subjective and that it's driven by an agenda that's famous gay agenda and in this case. And it it's subjectivity is not a bad thing. It can mean authenticity and a contact with reality that people outside your world and the gay world is often talked about as a world in a sort of a hidden world, the specialists and the outsiders haven't necessarily been able to see that. So I think it is the job of communities to really speak for themselves, 'cause they can only do that only they can really bring that sense of detail and truth and context out and often reveal things that might otherwise just simply even with the best of intentions and just not be understood. - What about not revealing things? - Oh yeah. It's a- - I mean there's a certain fear. I think that we, if we're gonna write history, we don't wanna be thought badly of, and that could be a conflict as well. - That's a big sensitivity, I think for anyone who's writing anything. I mean, you, there's often a stage where a lawyer will vet a lot of things that are published, but writers and historians, I think have an internal vetting process where you worry about the idea of keeping certain things a little less emphasized or not mentioned at all. If they're not so flattering towards a community that's struggling to be seen in a reasonable light. - Well, I think every community has gone through that. I told you the story, what through most of my adult life I've been working on issues of domestic violence and in every single community where we would try to take the message that women needed to be safe and try to help themselves be safe and help each other be safe. Every community was very resistant to even considering the fact that there may be domestic violence in that community. The first speech that I made to the B'nai B'rith one of the chapters here in LA, some of the women threw it was a breakfast and they threw their breakfast rolls at us on the panel because they were so upset that we should think that Jewish men might engage in this. And of course no greater, but no lesser than any other community. And certainly the gay lesbian community has been sensitive about that. Have you seen that it's made a difference though in the way our stories are presented by us? - Well, I think that there tends to be a self censorship factor in a lot of people not wanting to talk about difficulties. There was a strike at the gay and lesbian center in the earliest days and it was incredibly painful and many people to this day still don't wanna talk about it. I sat down with one interview who said, I'll talk about everything, but the strike. And he ultimately opened up, but, and this was 30 years ago. There are always lessons to be learned. The issue of racism in our community is terribly painful. And a lot of people will not want to think about or admit in 2006 bar policies and disco policies in West Hollywood in the 70s and in the 80s, which were very exclusionary and very racist, but it's something that is part of our past. And if you don't face it, you don't get over it. - Well, Gina, we're talking about the people who make the product that goes to the school or to the minds of young people and to teachers and you certainly were engaged from the very beginning in helping to, I'm just gonna use the word rescue LGBT youth at first at your own school and then really throughout the country through Project 10, do you think this kind of knowledge would make a difference to them? - Well, I think that information, the kind of knowledge that you're talking about makes a big difference. What I see as the essential problem in the educational system is the failure or the inability of the educators to even talk about gay and lesbian things, even say the words gay or lesbian. I mean, I would be thrilled to have a lot of academic information coming through just so that the information would be out there and could be discussed, but people have such a, I don't know if it's an internal homophobia, it's like this wall inside of them that somehow I don't know how to break through that. And that is the problem. And what I have been working on is to try and get people to a comfort level where they can discuss gay issues, lesbian issues. I mean, I'm not even at the point where, (coughs) excuse me, where we can get subjective and talk about feelings and all of those, just to get to a point where we can talk about anything gay or lesbian without people, either being afraid that they're going to be perceived as gay or lesbian. That is a huge fear. And that is the fear, not only for gay lesbian people themselves, but also for the non gay, the non lesbian people. They're afraid of being perceived until that can be conquered. It's very difficult to bring that information into the school system. - So what if it was part of the official teaching materials? - Oh, well, if it was part- (indistinct chattering) If it was part of the official teaching material, then of course it would give permission. It would give permission to talk about that. But even then I think that there would be a struggle to get people to a comfort level, to be able to talk about some of the things. And I think that, I was just thinking about James Baldwin, discussing James, how can you possibly discuss James Baldwin without discussing gay issues? I mean, gay in this, but yet it's done, it's done. And that I think is the biggest problem. And of course, in the absence of that, the absence of the ability to discuss that, I think that a whole part of people's lives are really deprived. I mean I feel like, I was half a person until I came out and I came out later in 1956. I didn't really come out publicly. I mean, until around 1980. And I feel now as I look back on it, that I was like half a person up to that time because I was deprived of any history, anything to look up to. - And I think the history of sort of the hard stuff is also important for kids to know. And I think they're quite able to know it State Senator Jackie Speier, who just ran for Lieutenant governor here in California has two kids. And one of her sons came home one day and said, "Mom, we're studying Oscar Wild. Did you know he was gay?" And Jackie said, "Well, yeah, I think I actually knew he was gay." And her son said, and I think her son's about nine maybe or 10 said, "But did you know he was put in prison because of that. And he probably died sooner because he'd been in prison. Just think mom, if it hadn't been for that, he could have been Shakespeare." - That's right. - And here's this young boy who got it. And it was not a happy story. - Well I think a lot of our history is not happy. It it's oppression. And so very oppressive and much of our history is the struggle to get past that oppression to make some kind of a impact in society. But I think that struggle is very important for people to know. - So in your sense of what the reality sort of what kids get outta school, it's not just class of course, in many cases it's much more outside, but do you get a sense that the general atmosphere of a school is safer for gay lesbian kids if there's some discussion of gay lesbian issues, not just- - Well, I would have to say that it would certainly be safer for kids. The more discussion that exists, even if part of the discussion is negative. If you have a really good teacher, a good teacher can diffuse. So that can allow different points of view and can sort of put down the fire. And when that occurs, it's a wonderful teaching moment and it's very beneficial to all the kids that doesn't happen as often as we'd like to see it happen. - Well, there was a lot of discussion about whether we would have to out people in order to discuss, the contributions of gay people. But I mean, it seemed to me that there are plenty of examples that could be used, or just to say, those people you already know while they're gay. - I think that that's an argument that is used by people who don't know what they're talking about. I mean, I think that there are many examples of gay and lesbian people who are self, whatever you call it. I mean, it is by their work or by circumstances around their lives. It is known that they are gay or lesbian. I don't think anybody has to be outed. I mean, even the content gay and lesbian content in the curriculum, there're not going to be thousands of references. So it's possible to pick things that are significant in society that are well known, Oscar Wild, I mean, how can you discuss Oscar Wild without discussing that? - Well, I'm interested 'cause I read the new book, which I'll mention again, is coming out on really a national coming out day, October 11th, but probably available before that. What led you to wanna write this book about "Gay LA" Lillian? - Well, I love Los Angeles. I grew up here, but it seemed to me that there was just such an important story that nobody told before a story going back even before there was a Los Angeles, going back to the times when American Native Americans were the primary population in Southern California. And there were just so many really crucial little stories that have never gotten into print. What life was like in the 1950s for lesbians and gays, what life was like in, at the beginning of the 20th century for lesbians and gays, what we wanted to do in that book was just get the whole sweep of history beginning with the 19th century, all the way up to the present to see how lesbian and gay people made their lives in a city, as big as Los Angeles, how they struggled and how they achieved and just all of the complexities of how you make a life and how you make a community, even at a time when society is so much against you. - So what do you see as a, I mean, as the major themes kind of, that might be that are presented in the work that you've done and the work other people have done that might be presented, that would be sort of helpful. I mean, you don't just write a book and throw it out into the universe and say, "Okay, I'm done with this." I've said what I wanted to say. It seems to me, at least I've never done it, but everybody writes because they think someone's gonna read it. And if they think someone's gonna read it, they think it will be sort of to a purpose. what are the major themes that will resonate that you want to, people to pay attention to no person in particular, just everybody? - Well, the struggle I think, and the social injustice, I think that those are certainly things that, that motivated me. And I would think that that's something that would appeal to young people since social justice. And I think they need to know about the struggle. - Yeah I think along with that, there's a real fascinating aspect of what people got away with. Here in LA there's a part of a reevaluation in lesbian and gay history against the idea that everything was in total darkness before Stonewall or before the homophile effort in the 50. And sure it was dangerous and there was horrendous suppression and hazards, but there was a lot of fun. There were incredible networks of friendships, support networks. There was a real sense of a culture that you can find these traces of again and again. And it's absolutely fascinating to see that there was a female impersonator who actually called himself Covert as a stage name and was mentioned in the newspapers and got jobs as a dancer in a couple of Hollywood films in the, in the twenties. It's I think it's, it's inspirational to see that there's, there's a lot of light flicking, flick flickering along in, in all that darkness. - What also fascinated me is what we discovered about Hollywood in the past, the huge lesbian and gay presence in Hollywood from the beginning of the movie industry in the 1920s and 30S and 40. And for instance, lesbians in Hollywood really influenced fashion for American women, how they were just such pioneers and American women didn't understand precisely that these beautiful images of women in pants at a time when women were supposed to wear dresses, they came to these women because of their association with the lesbian subculture. I'm thinking of women such as Marlena, Dietrich, or Greta Garbo. But what American women saw is that these women in pants looked gorgeous. And so women started wearing pants and now hardly anyone wears a dress anymore, in fact, but it, it came from this lesbian influence in films in Hollywood. - But what about, I mean, it's interesting because you talk about fun. I know it wasn't all about fun, 'cause it was dangerous as you said. The influence of Hollywood, which is I'm sure a lot of people are gonna be turning to that chapter right away, in the book. But then you talk about struggle and I think we see both sides of this. I mean, there is a theme of this darkness of the kind of oppression and the danger, the somewhat, not, not just camp be, but I think celebratory nature of, I mean, why choose the word gay for instance? I mean, when you think about it's to say, that's what we are and yet, and the struggle is not just in those times, but continues when we talk really I think Virginia, you're talking as much about political struggle and you do draw this line all the way through the book. - Well, we are a marginalized group and I think as a marginalized group, it gives us a perspective that perhaps is different than certainly than the mainstream. And I think that perspective probably has come out so much in the creative arts. You know, you wonder what the world would have been like, had it not been for gay men and lesbians doing the writing and the directing and all of that and the creative arts. - So what other major themes do you see? - Well, I, I think that there's a, a theme that was very interesting to observe for me about the fun and the struggle to tie two threads together in the fifties when the so-called homo files in Los Angeles started one magazine, which was the first gay publication to go on newsstand around the country. - Maybe we should just interrupt for a minute and see if you can get a shot since we have some one magazine covers up here on the wall, we normally don't do this and we're not even lit for it. (chuckles) - But I dunno if you can see them, but there are several of the covers of, or copies of the covers of one magazine up on the wall. Tell us a little about what that magazine was? - It was the first real national effort at creating an intellectual community. People who were isolated in small towns and even on farms would spend an extra dollar a year because the subscription was 20 cents an issue or 25 cents an issue they would spend it a little, little more for a brown paper envelope and the classic brown paper envelope, which we forget about today, but which was necessary for survival back then and be able to read about what efforts were at law reform nationwide, what the hotspots were in police persecution, what cities to avoid during what seasons and also they were able to read stories in poetry and get a little bit of a bigger sense of, I think this emergence of gay identity, that it wasn't just necessarily going to a bar and going home with someone. The aspect of that that was so interesting to learn about was that the, the people who put out that magazine in an organization called one incorporated were absolute diehard volunteers. They were working often jobs on top of 60 which volunteer weeks. That same enthusiasm, which one activist described as a four year adrenaline rush happens in act up in the, in the eighties and nineties when government and standard social channels, just aren't doing enough to really deal with a killer epidemic you had in the teeth of so much oppression, 30, 40 years later, a similar kind of gleefulness and energy and creativity. So it's, it's I think really helpful because you know, Sheila trouble is never over. It's never over. - No and of course trouble's a good thing to make too sure. If you want to use the word in sort of a, in a double way, but I was thinking while you were talking about the power of the written word, how is it we know about these things? I mean, we only know about the past, through the power of the written word, some film now, because it goes all the way back and you can actually see someone making a speech or see someone, I saw a photograph of Florence Nightingale that had just been discovered, was published in the paper yesterday or today. And just looking at her, just, it brings the arrow back. It brings her work back. But in a way, I wouldn't know what that photograph meant if it weren't for the written word and the same thing about act up, how did we know what they were doing? I mean, it was, they were doing it, but you still, that could have been quite in secret in a way, unless someone is letting the rest of us know, now that's more journalism than history, but there's. - Some role there. In some cases, the, the written word is not the published word. And what's been so exciting for us as historians was to discover these written words that weren't published, that people haven't looked at for a 100 perhaps if nobody had recorded it, of course it would've been lost to history, but we've been able to find these fascinating records that are really crucial in a historian's work. - So diaries journals. - Sometimes diaries and journals. Sometimes law reports, we found, for instance, the beginning of the masquerading law in Los Angeles, the law that said was in 1898, the law that said that women were not permitted to appear in public wearing pants and having short hair and- - False whispers - False whispers (chuckles) and men, of course, weren't permitted to appear in public dressed like the opposite sex, but it was just so exciting for us to discover something like this. And I don't think anyone actually had looked at that particular law book where it was written down since it first was written down in 1898. - In a dusty cardboard box in the LA City Archives Lilian found it. It was just incredible. - But we, we found so many gems like that, that were such fun. But you know, a lot of what we wrote in, in "Gay LA" is of course, it's about the history of our movements and the struggle that we've had with the police and how things got better. But we also were interested in personal lives. And we both found just so many little personal touches that I thought were just fascinating. For instance, we discovered that there was a point in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s, even through the 60s, when a gay man and a lesbian would become friends and they would decide that they would cover for each other, there'd be front dating and front dating was very popular in Los Angeles. It was extremely popular of course, in the movie industry, but not just in the movie industry, also in private life, or they would go even further, there'd be what was called Twilight tandems or lavender marriages. They would get married. And of course they would just be very good friends, but again, they would cover for each other at a time when something like that was so crucial. So that, that was fun to find little personal stuff as well. - And when you think about how during the 70s, when I came out, lesbian separatism was something every gay guy had to learn about quickly and the concept of lesbians and gay men having deep social and personal bonds, that for some of the people we interviewed lasted their whole lives. There are crowds of lesbians and gay men that fronted for each other that are now in their mid 80s. And they're still friends after all these years. And it gives another view of how to be then certainly was kind of formative for a certain generation. - And if that doesn't get written down, it's lost to history. As Stewart said, as recently as the 70s, there was this terrible conflict between lesbians and gay men and things did get better, but who would know that there was a time when lesbians and gay men would go out on dates to be fronts for each other. - Well, and how critical they were of people who had families, who had children. And that was really only until the last, I think, 20 years, maybe until some organization of lesbian mothers who were quite timid about even admitting that they were mothers. It was harder to do that in the lesbian community. And there was no place for them really until they organized. I mean, I'm a big fan of organizing and began to talk about, why would we give up this a very important part of our being and not be parents. And suddenly of course, it's gone completely 180, so that families now are a very, very, very big part of our community. Not though criticism the other way, as much as they was expected about people who don't have children no more like the real world, where some people do and some people don't are kids writing things down. I mean, I was thinking after we passed the anti harassment law in California, how deeply involved the students were in making sure that was enforced and they would come up to Sacramento and tell their stories on Queer Youth Lobby Day. And I'm thinking now about their stories. I mean, after your book ends, sort of the current thing, are any of them? - Well, I think many of them are writing things down if they have a venue in which to write, I don't know there's necessarily within the school system, but, if they are associated with organizations that basically have a feel for social justice, that's what gets, 'em going. Then they write and of course, when they do write, it's amazing what they write because they truly write from the heart in a way that, well, we can understand it, but it's hard sometimes for the outside world when they read what these young people are writing or when they hear them in testimonies, up in Sacramento, they can't believe sometimes that these young people have reached such a level of personal understanding. So we do encourage that. Yes, we do encourage them to write whenever we can. - Cause we think about history of stuff that passed. And then we think about the present as quite ephemeral, I think of newspaper stories or although there was a newspaper at UCLA. - 10%. - 10%. - Yes. When did that start years ago? - About 1980 yeah. - You were there? - I was there. I was involved in the, in the founding year of that and it had to go through a real battle to become accepted as a so-called special interest paper. It was one minority group after another getting recognition and a teeny bit of funding. It got established in 79 and went into print, I believe in 1980. - Now, why do that Stuart? - There was a growing student population that was, this was just a decade after Stonewall. And there was a real awareness that the gains of that new movement were new and they might not last. So having a paper on campus seemed really fitting for idealistic college students who happen to be lesbian and gay. - And I think it's just so important for young college students to know that there are others like them on a campus so that they have a voice and not only a paper, but a place to go, that kind of thing is absolutely crucial, I think, to young people for their wellbeing. - Well, it seems to me outside the bounds of the kind of sort of prescribed curriculum and very careful managing of information to students. I mean, what kind of information do they really get in schools? It's so spoon fed and kind of arranged when you say, you know, there's hardly any discussion. People are afraid to, you know, even speak about it. Why are they afraid? Because the administration may say, that's it for you, Bob. And- - But I think the fear is, is deeper than that, because I don't think that most people, they may say they're afraid because of the administration is gonna say something, however, certainly in a school district, as large as the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has all kinds of legal protections, it's not the administrator that is going to keep people from speaking out, speaking about gay lesbian issues. It's gonna be some internal fear that they have a kind of a cancer inside. I hate to call it that, but it is like that, that prevents them from feeling comfortable in speaking about it, for gay people, if they haven't resolved the issues themselves, they're afraid to talk about it because they'll be identified as gay for non gay people. There's this pervasive feeling that if they talk about it, they'll be considered, promoting homosexuality that's the famous term. And that cripples a lot of conversation. And I think that only maybe the, as society evolves and conversations about these things become more common because of the internet and television and your writing and so on, maybe those, those inhibitions will break down. - So what do you see for the future? Do you see a lot of pushback in terms of do we have alternate histories being written about us? I mean, there's certainly a lot of homophobic material out in the world. - Well, it's very funny. My biography of Harry Hay, who was an early gay rights activist is actually sold by a lot of right wing presses, verbatim, uncensored, because he had been a member of the communist party. So they say, aha. (chuckles) So in some ways, I think smart, some smart kid who's growing up in a radical right household might just get inspired by getting the information. But I think even more so the work that Lillian has done so much of, and that I've been so privileged to work on in getting some new, old stories in print is gonna allow a new generation to start to find this material. and think about it a little more than they've been able to, one of the interesting things about researching this was that you can research almost anything on the internet. If it happened after 1985, if it happened before 1985, you really have to go to a library and to push those things that are so obscure out into the popular consciousness. So that hopefully there will be a few reviews of our book on the internet and people can, kids can read those things and start to get a sense that there's a whole lot more in the world. I mean, that I think is the hope you really can't control information once you get it out there. - Well, but that's really part of my question. Is there an anti-gay history movement, one that, sort of like the Holocaust never happened movement with a complete re-casting because we were invisible, there was silence about us and that was difficult enough. And then we started to talk and name our own history. That is probably a dangerous thing to the right wing because frankly from their point of view, information is not a good thing. The less people know the more they can tell them what to think. And, books in the internet are quite unfortunate, I think, for the right wing except their part of it. But do you see a, a sort of a pushback? - I see certainly a, a lot of antigay material, but I don't see serious attempts to do anti-gay history. I think what's happened in the past and sometimes continues is that the way anti-gay gets expressed by historians is that they simply ignore us. They can tell a whole story with individuals who were lesbian or gay and not mention the fact that they were lesbian and gay. And I think some serious historians have done that in the past, but it seems to me that if those of us who feel passionately about this, keep writing, keep publishing surely eventually it won't be possible to write a history that ignores the lesbian and gay presence. - Well, I know more and more universities and colleges have gay and lesbian studies or LGBTQ studies. Are you seeing that that's making a sort of a new difference in terms of scholarship. - Or I think that makes a big difference. And I think that a lot of the organizations that have developed like the gay straight alliances, which pop up, not in the high schools in the high schools, I mean, that's very important and it gives people, the kids, the hope is with the kids. That's the way I see it, that that gives them an avenue where they can discuss some of these issues and, different gay alliances produce different kinds of kids. But some of those kids, young people that, that find their way into the GSAs are the ones who will then find their way to your material and they will have a strength that you don't see in some of the adults now, the young people that get the message early on and are comfortable with who they are, they're the ones that will go toward the things that you're writing, and that will give them strength. - But how about new scholarship as well? Do you see? - Oh, I think it's unstoppable and Lilian and I used to talk about how every single one of the 14 chapters in our book could have been an entire book easily. There there's so much to delve into and so much you have to select. So I believe this kind of material is so intimately entwined with people's passions, not just their sexual and romantic passions. It really, I believe has to do with a deeper kind of identity about who you are during your whole life and where you have been historically. So the curiosity I think is only gonna grow and only gonna bear more, more fruit in this way. - Well, I think it's also interesting to me in a really deep sense coming out of what essentially all three of you have been talking about when you said the book that you wrote about the difference that lesbians have made in America to believe in women and even discussing fashion, in the movies, in the forties and the, what the women wore. And then what, America started to wear so much of theater and music, so much art and sort of outlaw work, because as you said, Virginia, we were and are in our own way kind of Outlaws. I think that's something yet to be explored really what the imprint has been and what a difference is made for someone to be gay or lesbian in their life in terms of what they then are free to say, or free to talk about, or feel like, I have to be the one who says the emperor has no clothes, cause I'm the outlaw. And what a difference that might make in history, in some of the individuals, in your book and some of the individuals we know in LA, I think there are probably other examples of just the impact that people have had for instance, on the city of LA, think of a example or two from your book to give us one that particularly struck you in terms of how it impacted the city eventually. - Well, of course, Hollywood had a huge impact on the city. And what we've discovered is that so much of, of Hollywood was dependent on gay talent, not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera as well. It's been absolutely crucial. It's impacted the city because there's a huge Hollywood industry here, but it's also impacted all of America. But I think that the gay and lesbian presence in Los Angeles has had this huge impact in many other ways, as well. For instance, we found it so fascinating and exciting that the first ongoing homophile organization began in Los Angeles, the first gay and lesbian center in the country began in Los Angeles. The first gay and lesbian church began in Los Angeles. The first gay and lesbian synagogue began in Los Angeles. There, there was- - The newspaper, the advocate. - First, the first gay newspaper began in Los Angeles. And it was interesting for us to try to figure out why that was so, and I think one of the reasons is that we're sort of on the edge of the continent and we've been into here in Los Angeles. - That's a good way to put it too. So as another aspect of the, kind of the inspiration question, or what has America kind of gained from us, or looking at us, what about sort of the, the later days here, when all the movement stuff that was happening, not just in LA, but all around the country? - Well, we focused on Los Angeles. That's the, the nature of our book and what happened here, which I don't think was quite replicated in any other city. There was a certain level of activism where people just threw their lives into the movement. Troy Perry, who was a minister by training was suspected of being the next gay person to be well, the first gay person openly to be elected to the LA City Council, because he was such a brilliant diplomat and politician. There was a guy named Dave Glasscock, largely forgotten, who was probably the first appointed official, who was openly gay. Oh, the Betty Bizan, who was a therapist who became the first lesbian member of the board of the LA Gay Lesbian Center. All of these people just had meeting after meeting, after meeting sometimes several times a day, let alone several times a week. It was this sort of glorious fever that turned into institutions and organizations that were often the first and most long lasting in the country. It is inspirational. The center here is a model for organizations around the country that, that wanted one and MCCs have sprouted up all over the world. So there's always a little bit that's lost when something becomes institutionalized. And that period where people were just so driven by their passion to do the right thing in the gay world is just extraordinarily inspirational. - Do you think there are other movements that sort of have, have their eye on us? - I think we were inspired by the black movement and LALASA And I think that it's happening that finally slowly, perhaps people from those movements are understanding that we've had common enemies. We've had the same sorts of struggles. There have been inequities that we've had to fight too. And I think that for many people, it's beginning to strike a note. They realize who we are and who we are is not who they were told we were for so many generations. - Well, I think that's a really good note to end on. It's always hard for me to believe that like a whole hour went by and I'm so happy that I got to talk to you. It's very selfish for me to say, I think I'll do a show on this, and I'll ask these people if they'll show up and just talk in my fool living room, about these things, but thank you, Stewart. Thank you, Lillian. And thank you, Virginia Uribe, really happy that you were here to discuss it. And as you know, I think friends, there's an old saying that if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. But actually I think in this context, wouldn't mind repeating some of the good LGBT history, knowing about it. As a matter of fact, I think we should all get used to it. (upbeat music)