Get Used to It: Ep. 47, "Voices of Our Lives: Morris Kight"

oh what's up [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila kuhl your host and today i have a real treat for you as you know we if you watch the show we have a series a sort of occasional series that we call voices of our lives where we talk to people just one person for a whole hour who have been important to our community who've accomplished goals for our community are just of interest to our lesbian gay bisexual community and today i'm really pleased to have this time to talk with morris kite morris kite who for 40 years here in los angeles but really nationally has been not only a leader not only an activist in our community but really one of our guiding philosophers and really one of our guiding angels this is a man who has put his life and energy into our community and there are i i think there's not virtually one institution in los angeles that would exist had it not been for morris's work and guidance and leadership a community organizer by uh well profession by avocation welcome maurice i'm just delighted it's so pleasing i love this set isn't it nice it feels i'm at home that's alice be tookless there's christopher issue it isn't it yes and the covers of one how daring they were how daring they were in the mid-50s to be publishing gee-whiz well speaking of daring i mean even though your sort of career with our community has started in the mid 50s i'd like to get a little bit of background about who morris kite is and where he came from because there were some years before uh the time that you at least sort of burst on the scene here where where did you come from where were you i was born in proctor texas in comanche county 19 november 1919 to a mother and father and i had a sister and a brother it was the dead of winter the house had one heated room and a midwife came from comanche the county seat seven miles east to bring me and the following day my mother and father said to her we know you get paid and you deserve it we're short of money we have six dollars i would like to give you the six dollars and name him for you her name was virginia morris and that's how i got to be morris it's in jewish moses in spanish moses in french maurice in english morsi and marsh and i think there's a connection there i just think there may be you know but what was it like growing up in texas well i learned very old early on that it wasn't okay to be gay uh i learned very early on that that wasn't something you talked about my consciousness grew fairly fast i don't want to over emphasize it fairly fast i was conscious that i was different and that that was nothing to talk about because you'd be beaten up or driven out of town or harassed or something and so i went about pursuing other things i wasn't welcome to the games there were sports games at school and i wasn't welcome they indicated everywhere in the world that i shouldn't play there were also sex games and while comanche texas was in the puritan south there was lots of sexual activity going on and i wasn't welcome to that and rather than to become any kind of delinquent i filled up the time by writing poetry reading poetry plowing and farming and growing things i traveled a lot all around that section and i'd fill my pockets with seeds and bring them home and plant them on our farm and there were gullies and i dammed those up as a kid with a shovel carrying sticks of wood and making little dams i last saw that farm in 1962 and the ryegrass had grown shoulder high and it was a forest and was a cottonwood blowing in the wind do you know cottonwoods the leaf is so delicate so lovely you know like 60 feet tall and i thought gee where's i planted that i went away annoying i'd never see it again but i can see it as clearly as if it were yesterday now did you know even as a as a very young boy or a man did you know others that you thought were homosexual or that you knew was there talk about any in your town not in high school though i was having sex games uh i was having sex sexual activities with a number of my classmates uh we didn't talk about it didn't dignify it didn't mention it was just done and then you went on however i moved to fort worth texas in 1937 to enroll in texas christian university and there i convinced to meet homosexuals the word gay wasn't used that may have been used in new york or paris or london but out in the wilds of texas wasn't used however i gradually got to know enough gay people to rise there was a or homosexual an underground of activity a kind of an n group you didn't talk about it publicly but you practiced privately and i kind of was i had entree there and but wasn't up to the dignity of being gay wasn't it was quite the opposite of dignity wasn't did you feel ashamed were you made to feel ashamed and the worst thing that could happen to you was to be found out was just unspeakable deer have been found out later on in the early 50s the worst thing you could be in the whole world was obvious that's in our community mind you being obvious being easily identified as homosexual or gay so can't have anything to do with her we used a sexist language in the old days men called one of the sheer her you got anything to do with her because she's obvious she wears what self-hatred that represents doesn't it well but it's understandable i mean if everyone is telling you that you're the worst thing in the world it seems to me to be forgivable to have that degree of self-hatred but you but you i never experienced you as ever expressing that you were ashamed yourself never isn't that marvelous uh i know that sounds a little well it sounds in any case i tell you sheila q that i never in my lifetime had the slightest guilt feeling about being into man man's sexuality i never wanted to see a psychiatrist a psychologist a minister a counselor a teacher anybody i just thought it was good for me it was fine for me i i just didn't ever have any guilt feelings and isn't that wonderful that gave me a leg up early on because i felt i needn't deal with that i could deal with other people who were feeling guilty i could deal with other people who were in trouble or troubled and gee whiz there was such a lot of in trouble lesbian women and gay men such a lot of troubled dan lesbian people a man i i knew was into younger sex it was a very dangerous thing and he got in court i was sentenced to a psychiatrist one hour a week and he saw the psychiatrist he talked about his skills he was an opera singer very good by the way he would remind us something hadn't been of us and he called me one day saying oh he's found out he knows i've been revealed i said frank what are you talking about he said he knows that i'm like that you're paying a guy a hundred bucks a week to tell him your story and he takes it a little leadership explaining who you are and you're unwilling to do that and you're complaining that mind you that was 1957. well you had how did you get to california i know you took your degree at texas was quite deliberate i was in northern new mexico and i was doing some underground organizing underground in that people who were self-identified as gay knew that i was of service i have training in social service and they knew that i would be helpful on a non-judgmental basis and i was doing more and more of that and i was conscious in 1957 that we could have a gay revolution nonviolent of course and uh i traveled around the country a lot the most likely place in the world to do that from was los angeles i'd visited here a lot i had tested the waters i'd learned a lot about life on bunker hill downtown where i had friends and and i felt at home there and so in 1957 i just disassociated from everything i resigned for the new mexico conference on social welfare i resigned from all kinds of committees and activities including environmental including native american concerns another concern of mine and so i moved to bunker hill i settled at 341 south hope street where now the first interstate bank building is way up high 60 70 stories i was on the ground 341 south hope street where i paid 35 a month rent lights water and gas included didn't cover a phone because the phone was big i spent lots of money for a phone and from that location i passed the word that i had a degree in social service that i have a degree in public administration that i could be of service to troubled or in troubled people and i started getting calls the first calls were timid how to come on to me how to talk to me and whether to trust me or not and as people developed that trust they passed the word it was nobody else there was just nobody else and it passed the word and i served more and more and more and uh picked up more and more skills and then urban removal came to bunker hill and improved it and wrecked all those elegant old homes and also slum dwellings and i moved to westlake park which turned out to be terribly fortuitous i hit west lake park just when it was no longer where the great rich lived that fled leaving behind great old houses and smart shops and diet stores and vegetarian stores and walking in the streets and was just heaven westlake park itself was the ideal place fishing and boating and traveling at night we go around the park it's not that anymore now it's something else but at that time it was the perfect place to organize from and knowing that we didn't have any social life except bars i had at my house which is at 716 south bonnie brain i had on my good samaritan hospital good samaritan is not far away not far away uh good samaritan is four blocks east so yeah the railroad the trolley ran down the middle of the street and we'd go out and leap on the triangle down 10 cents downtown any case i had receptions on friday night i had a party on saturday are gene vicina who was at 6 13 and a half south coronado on the other side of the park indeed there was a trail a road a walkway ran through the park from gina's house to my house gina entertained on saturdays or i entertained on saturday or i always had a reception on sunday afternoon the monitor rap groups h rap brown a black revolutionary ins in new jersey invented the phrase rag because his first name was rap talk talk talk beef what that became i was doing we had what's it like to be gay how do you get that way how what do you do about you have an arrest what do you do a friend gets killed how do you handle that that's serious business now maurice this but in in terms of your community organizing and the work that you were doing now in the in the late 50s it was not the first that you had been involved uh in community organizing i mean you really cut your teeth on other kind of as many of us did a little bit later in other movements yeah even but even during the war i think that possibly is the one thing which puts me out there is that i've always been to coalition politics i believe that many hands make little work if lots of people believe something and lots of people take a little of this and do a little that and somebody else raised a little money here and somebody got a leaflet here so when i came here i involved myself with the watchtower preservation committee the city of los angeles wanted to put down this pushed down this marvelous folk art project donna watts created by simon rhodia as appeal to america it was an italian immigrant and he felt that it was reaching to the sky with colored glass and junk but it was all put together and so they want to put it down and i joined the watchtower preservation committee and that prevailed at the time the latino latino population of the chavez ravine were being evicted from their houses to make room for a modern housing project somebody somewhere said it's not a modern housing project at all it's a scheme to get the land to have a baseball stadium and so i joined in their defense knowing that i no one else could avoid their eviction but at least we could fight for them to get fair price so i joined that as a gay person and school segregation was a major problem it still is still a problem and so i felt that that was the denying access to other cultures and were you welcome in these other movements as an openly gay man not not entirely not entirely there was there were barriers however i didn't accept the barrier and i think that's another reason why my coalition politics is work better than maybe anyone else except maybe you and is that i wrote it over i just didn't pay attention i said well i won't deal with that because if i deal with that then i have to educate them and so i do the education the other way around by revolution by example i think is the phrase in gandhi revolution by example that you indicate that there's a better way and they say well gee whiz this guy's kind of okay and so i did that until 1965 when i had a dramatic change to almost 180 degree turn around in my life the war into china arose and since i'm a ganjan pacifist and since i felt that the war was the wrong place the wrong time the wrong enemy the enemy was us i dropped out of the underground gay and lesbian activity to join the war fighting against the war and that turns out to be terribly fortuitous since i had worked with a lot of lesbian gay people i invited them to join me in the dial action committee i had formed the dal action committee to zap dalcombe before the manufacture of napalm herbicides and defoliants i invited them to join me most didn't say i was a communist a comedy sympathizer un-american unpredictable so what words were his words but enough dead and then in the diwali committee they found they could express themselves as gay persons there was that personal liberation and they found how to write leaflets and how to commit civil obedience how to deal with an arrest how to deal with the press how to deal with the police how to deal with spy agencies they learned how to cope and some of those same folk joined me in the gay liberation front in 1969. we use the dow action committee as our training school you have to get your training somewhere it doesn't it just doesn't happen you just don't suddenly leap up in the streets and say i am you have to learn how to say that and so they joined me and the rest is glorious history well the rest of the glorious history though is uh it needs more than just a few sentences because here you were uh your house was kind of a as you painted it a social center though more than that absolutely a refuge almost was a remembrance of the community an organizing place your phone bill was was so enormous that the phone company was probably sending you flowers safe house a safe house a place where people could come and rest and get a respite i i moved on fourth street and a latina lived across the street from me and she called me one day and said i need you in a hurry so i rushed over and she said the fbi want to rent my front room to spy on your house and i told him i want to do that i didn't understand that that there's nothing i want to deal with but however i need to tell you that they saw dr martin luther king come into your house and they photographed that they saw reyes lopez tirina come and they photographed that there so ann braden come and they freaked out because ann braden was up to here in radical organizing in the south so yes i used it as a headquarters we wrote leaflets there we organized from there we used the telephones from there and from there then we went out we went to the new federal building downtown constantly we went to the old federal building we went to police station and demonstrated it was red tagged on every spy agency in the country particularly the military they took it hard that i was fighting so hard to get honorable discharges for in-service gay persons and they they want to try to talk me out of that i s please don't don't try to talk me out if something makes sense either you keep them in or you give them an honest charge and so they want to know what about specific sex acts i said no we won't talk about that i would allow this man to tell you that he has whatever i won't do that you just either accept him or you throw him out so that was my life and uh i loved every moment of it we went to the dow action committee every monday we met every monday night meetings were alive and they were terribly gay and terribly lesbian we danced and then we went to the bamboo inn a chinese-american restaurant at the corner of 7th and westlake we loved it the food was cheap and believe me we were on the cheap 1.65 for a full course dinner so we went one evening our meeting was later than usual we had a fireplace in the meeting room and we were in front of the fireplace it was all terribly romantic i mean people were dying vietnam we were sitting in the fireplace so it went to the bamboo inn and nobody was there but us so they locked the door and we ordered and they went in the back room and talked among themselves and they came out with a fortune cookie that they had used their chinese american fortune cookie friends to make and said they presented them to us open them to open and said be warned you were being watched by the fbi everybody had the same fortune cookie and then they said you don't know what it's like to serve you every tuesday of the world they show up here did you leave any leaflets did you leave any notes did you make any marks on napkins who was with you martin luther king was with us one evening and they wanted to know about that who was he sitting with and where did reyes lopez tijerina distinguished new mexican uh non-violent revolutionary uh was with us they wouldn't know what was like mind you this i was as a gay person and there were gay persons among us and at first i think that was a barrier but gee whiz you can grow used to anything isn't the name of the show get used to it well you can get used to it can't you and so they said well give up on them they're just going to be gay last minute so what we do about that but it's interesting people working for their own liberation are always tagged as some kind of communists or socialists or radicals or as though that you know is a dismissive way to do it when it's really a pretty strong organizing tool to say this is a community 1955 two fbi men came into my house at 610 12th street northwest albuquerque new mexico flashed their badges and said standing mr kite are you communist and homosexual i said whatever kind of question is that coming from you there's no federal law of any kind controlling homosexual behavior there's no law for you to enforce so why are you asking me that also there is no federal law to regulate membership in the communist party oh you wish there were but there isn't and so that question is irrelevant so why are you here what was it no no why are you here and i just halted the conversation and then talked to them that was in 1955 heavenly knows what my fbi dossier must be like i started with dr leo zellard s-z-i-l-a-r-d one of the developers of the atom bomb los alamos director albuquerque is not far from los alamos and after hiroshima nagasaki he knew that was wrong but that was immoral and uh so he used his scientific credentials and his br to talk about it imagine living in northern new mexico and fighting against the atom bomb it was well where people were getting their living and that tagged me on the fbi it's been an interesting love affair i've had with them well i i imagine under the freedom of information act they would have to bring your records to you in crates because i think you're probably on everybody's list the state list i don't want to do that i don't that's a serious question and and you deserve an honorable response i don't do that i don't want to use the freedom of information act because for one thing there were so many spy agencies the government has 22 regular spy agencies and so i'd have to write them all that'd take a lot of time and then i would have to call them ld i could be calling somebody to get them out of jail it'd be somebody serving somebody who was troubled instead of calling them let's say what about and then they would come and then it would be big and there'd be names of people whom i've worked with who weren't all that trustworthy i just don't think i i don't think i want to do that well you're probably right but you know when you mentioned you were uh involved in the in the dow action committee uh start you know helped to start it and from that there was a kind of epiphany about of activism and bringing people into it and people increasingly out but there's a next move really in your life that had to do with with truly organizing in the community and the and the origin of our center will you tell about that i'm so glad you used the word epiphany i got my epiphany october 17 1969 in the polar grounds of golden gate park in san francisco it's big huge we had an anti-war march big big big heavy mobilizing and the we built a stage four stories tall way up on pipes and boards and i looked out across the crowd and uh i had an inspiration that a lot of vietnam veterans among them i had the administration were going to the microphone and saying i see there are great many vietnam veterans here i guess many of you have medals and i think you're not awfully proud of them we have made an arrangement to send them to the pentagon those of you who want to shed your battles from there and so the whole stage was you know we were walking around medals and we boxed the buttons and the pentagon denied what went on and so as the afternoon went along 350 000 people out here most of them very young most seeing the dentist every six months their teeth were wider and cleaner than ours most were better dressed they were cleaner they went to the laundromat more than we did they had homes and family and connections and i had an epiphany uh let me tell something for the first time in my lifetime and i hope i don't become emotional a song came in my mind i'm going home in 1926 my mother prepared a picnic lunch she was not a terribly romantic person but this was very romantic she prepared the picnic and she said children we're going to be with your father today for lunch and so the three of us walked bagging the the basket up to a field where he was plowing my father was a vigorous athletic man and he was a free man he was singing i'm going home and and she said let's pull back and let your father and so there the three of us stood at the edge of the woods while my father was singing i'm going home meaning of course going home but i stood on that platform and said to myself i'm going home and cecil williams uh robert c williams came to me uh dalton trumbo the academy award winner who wanted under a made-up name they came to me they said something's happening to you i said yes i'm having what the southern baptists call a revelation i was just i could hardly wait to speak i wanted to get to the microphone the moment i got i left the stage and went down a tunnel and up to in judah car on on vanessa avenue and rode downtown and went to the airline terminal got a psa ticket to la twelve dollars believe me everybody psa tickets from san francisco l.a were 12.90 i hope you take my word for it and i paid 12 to come home and all night resigned from committees and groups and so on the following day i called the first meeting of the abortion front and the first meeting occurred at a storefront up on capoeira boulevard 16 people came and i said now we're here to create a radical activity for lesbian and gay people and they all want to know not how bad that is but how good that is how do you get radical and i knew full well that i was on top of of non-violent dynamite that i was there was some synergy going on and so as a community organizer you paid me a great compliment a true one i am a community organizer i knew that we had to have something dramatic and so i suggested that we march down to santa monica boulevard and take the stay outside down from barney's beanery barney's bean area restaurant since we're seen all over the country we have to explain was a restaurant on santa monica still there they had a big sign actually let's show them the sign because morris brought this sign and while we discuss it maybe you'd like to take a look at it spelled f-a-g-o-t-s right alternative spelling that's an okay spelling they're too spelling but i don't think barney anthony knew that i think he was an ignorant old man and he was with his chalkboard and still he made it salsa to me it was the same as colored waiting room or whites only or colored right in the south it was just saying that we were inferior and worse still we put up with it think that from 1950 to 1969 we tolerated that doesn't that say something about the fact that we needed to a kick we needed somebody to say come on fight back don't put up with this nonsense and so we went there and picketed for three weeks we did a change in it's a kind of attacking thing to do but then non-violent warfare has its own rules we went to change a bill could you break a 20 uh no i i don't think i'm going to break a 20 i want to break a 10. um maybe a 20 after all i we did a shop in ordered coffee the cheapest thing on the menu and side of the table with it occupying paying space and uh we drove the owner to madness it took three weeks and came off with the sign which we must know because here it is within the three weeks a tactful deputy there are taxable deputy sheriffs they're good ones great officers some of them and he came and said we want you off the street you're attracting a lot of attention you're giving a lot of notoriety what would it take to i said have the owner agree to give us the sign never discriminated against gay and lesbian persons in service never discriminating gay and lesbian persons in hiring this deputy went to the owner and he said no i won't agree to that so we'll go right back yay give me a g give me an a give me a y give me a pig i said we were right back he said you're just going on i said please of course we're going on we have work to do three days later the owner agreed and gave us the sign mind you that part of it was that the sign would go away and never reappear in 1984 when the city of west hollywood was formed one of the first responsibilities of the new city council was to march to barney's main ring and take down the reincarnated day outside i guess the story is that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance that's right if you ever let up they'll move in on you it was very interesting morris that i mean obviously being a very experienced organizer but to bring together people uh for this for the gay liberation meeting and 16 people show up and when you said you were kind of on a powder keg of non-violence it's a very interesting phrase but i know what you mean there's an energy there that needs to be directed and your decision was the energy should be directed in an action in a demonstration which we had also learned from the reverend king and from gandhi and others that it's it's also like bearing witness to show up in order that something be done and what you characterize as these sort of uh petty pieces of taking the tables you know making change etc it's all very effective i'm being interviewed a lot by uh writers journalists and so on and they asked did i ever get depressed i don't know where the question come from never did i ever get depressed i do however contemplate and my contemplation is mohamed sk gandhi he knew you had to write he knew you had to publish and so he published magazines and newspapers and prasad and on and on and so there's a bulk of writing and that divination is there that he had to sell other indians other residents other hindis other muslims he had to sell them on how to do nonviolent warfare could you imagine the march of the sea to get salt here they came in phalanxes and went and faced the british troops who beat them down and clubbed them and the women carried them in a way and the next wave came and the next wave came and finally the troops walked away they couldn't stomach beating people who didn't fight back that's how india came about they're celebrating their 50th birthday right now isn't it marvelous it is non-violent warfare it's the only way particularly for lesbian gay people if we had ever armed ourselves it would have given them all the excuse in the world to march on wipe this out of course the tanks would have been in front of our house well and dr king said we will wear them down with our suffering and it was at the time you want to go no no you know we really need to fight back but when you're out gunned and when the moral virtues are really on your side then you say over time people will see it now i'm curious though i have a question because we were homosexuals for so long and then suddenly it seems like we were gay yes do you know the origin of of this word for us it comes from two places or their theories everything but the two i believe are french theater uh that guy was a guy g-a-i guy was being different being made up wearing a harlequin outfit projecting beyond yourself and so tomorrow we march against the enemy that was guy it was a different way of life it was it was a sorority or fraternity or the other and i think the other one i like the most comes from scots guy g.i scott's describes a woman who lives out the edge of town has a lot of trees and flowers and birds and things around and chickens and takes care of wounded birds and animals and has herbs and berries and seeds to share and counsels of the children i think in another world it's called witch that's called guy and isn't that a noble thing to be it is now but we didn't we have to reclaim all of that yes we do and make it honorable make it seem realistic and and and then you get the whole business of science science has is a marvelous thing but science will get you nowhere science will get you to manufacture the atom bomb they were scientists they never thought of what they were going to do with the bomb they never thought it was going to roast 250 000 people alive and we're still they never thought of what to do with it and so we're all turning phosphorous now i can see that you're getting a little your cheek you get a little phosphorescence absolutely i'm touched ward valley here in california near the colorado river on a on a subsoil moisture plane an aquifer they're planning to plant dead atom bombs that atomic energy there we can't get rid of it we have it everywhere they plant a tunnel in in nevada thousands of feet down that same spot where they're going to place the wasted energy was 10 000 feet deep in the ice age ice age came down the ice age obliterated everything and we wouldn't know this there i think what i'm saying is that science has a place but you need to humanize it bring people back to humanity well and it was science that was in a way our enemy the in in whenever you talk about unnatural whenever you talk about what science knows for sure to be natural it's all sort of politically or culturally manipulated i mean this notion that i know that the the right wing for instance now just this month is saying uh well the gays are not like african-americans because african-americans race is fixed it is immutable at but sexual orientation is not and so some of what we're saying back is oh yes it is uh we know that it is we know when we're born what we are therapon hangs one of the contradictions that i've had to deal with is that yes indeed being lesbian gay is a natural thing a natural state a natural sort of affair that sexuality is from here to here and on the kinsey scale of 10 some people are out here vigorously heterosexual and some people are moving in and then and sometimes there's a little crossover on that that's a perfectly natural thing however when you turn that into a rhetoric and you say to somebody who's trying to oppress you please don't oppress us we're just a result of nature you know nature made us this way then you're almost apologizing there's another way of saying that i am deal with it so right um morris i wanted to kind of move us to from here we are kind of having a gay and lesbian center operating out of your house people calling people coming by doing rap groups uh but we we eventually moved to more of an organizational structure and i know you were instrumental in that tell us about talk about that was done when you found a what is to be a major and heavenly knows its major social service organizations the very first thing the planners do is to provide a needs assessment what is the need why do you need this place we didn't need to do that because i conducted a needs assessment from bunker hill in 1957 from westlake park and from hollywood i had determined that the needs were to be affirmation counseling techniques and coming out techniques of expression that was number one the next second need was alcohol alcohol was a serious problem for us if everybody you see says you're sick sinful deviant variant so you can finally say well just get drunk and forget it so alcohol was a major problem syphilis and gonorrhea were syphilis gonorrhea hepatitis scabies herpes herpes simplex major problems that's the reality of life that sexually transmitted diseases are real for everybody so we had to deal with that and we had to deal with housing because property owners found reasons not to rent to you so all the departments went there just a moment ago or employers employer would if you were a minute over 30 an employer would come to you and say we'd like to promote you but we see that you don't seem to have a wife and you'll get your mail at a post office box you don't live in a post office box do you this company is a family oriented company and the best we can do is chief of the mailing room that's in advance because you were just a mailing clerk so employment was a very real problem and uh the whole business of of integrating establishing enclaves establishing enclaves and we've done that and so all those components of reality the fact that uh that our families the nuclear family we love them all but they mistook us for sick and so they sent one of my counselees off for electoral convulsive shock therapy in 1955 and he's still a counselor of mine he doesn't want to break the habit of relying upon me and he's not gestalt he's not whole because 220 volts of electricity went through his body to burn out of him his desire for homosexual contact it did that but also left him stuttering and stammering and he runs into walls he's not whole and so all those things led me to join with a cadre from the gay liberation front in the gala bush in front met at 5 55 and a half north vermont on the second floor at a meeting in april of 1971 i said to a meeting of the galapagos in front i think we should soon disband because i think we've done our work i almost had to be safe from the mob these non-violent people said why you rat fink how dare you double process maybe of course you're a sellout i said say what you want you will find out that we have done our work we disabuse gay people of any notion of their alleged inferiority because we are not inferior indeed i had to fight people who wanted to become superior we're better than anybody else well you're just as good but and so all that then led to a cadre who met to discuss a proposed gay community services center gay services center because we hadn't yeah lesbians didn't not lesbian youth i remember the day that they added and lesbian in handwriting in 1980 right and so uh we met and then again an epiphany occurred los angeles police the presence of a sergeant called me to say mr kite we've heard your comments about us so we know what you think of us however we can be right and we're telling you that you're running a potentially very dangerous activity we had a storefront at 4 400 melrose two storefronts 100 feet wide and 150 back and because we were kind people because we were decent people to provide food and and so on and we also had mattresses that we put on the floor at night to house the homeless then the non-gay homeless moved in on us and they started exchanging body lice with the lesbian and gay people and started fist fights and broke out the front window and so the sergio police said i'm telling you sir it's over you just can't go on and i realized he was right because he was bringing me up to date and so i called a meeting of the governor's front and i said we're here to pay our bills to give our possessions away and we're here to do something else and so in april of 1971 we had the first meeting of gay of the gay community services center the first activity was the house on edgemont a seven bedroom house 175 a month how things have changed and so we housed people there and also did our business from there and then in october of 1970 1971 we went to 1614 wilshire boulevard the press called it a mansion it was really kind of good-natured slum it was that eastlake designed house terribly interesting but thin and really used up it was 100 years old the the four boards were six inch wide pine and for mopping they had bucked up you know they was a interstate between the cracks and uh so october 17 1971 we got the lights on and got the gas on and got the key and we started calling people to say we're open tonight and 19 people came not particularly to secretly service we were not prepared they wanted to be to be to be a part of that moment john vincent brittany one of the co-founders of the center uh is kind of a mystical man and he recognized that something was happening and that maybe a little mystery would be okay and so he started chanting amen amen shalom and i shall rule glass around the room and people were weeping and they were clutching one another they were into a moment of history and now all these many years later a four-story building and a lot of property around and well-established and world famous and the first of what may be a thousand they're in asia in europe and so on but they all had their genesis in the sitting room at 7 16 and a half south bonnie bray where somehow or another i was able to create a symbiosis i was able to create a symbiotic relationship that we could be better that we could be different that we could be gestalt they could have belonged to one another in those following days i talked about a lot about lesbian gay enclaves and now we have them pastoral districts and it's just heaven isn't it montrose in houston the moment you get there you can tell that something has changed suddenly you're a gayer you're a more lesbian you're with brothers and sisters uh greenwich village in new york city i founded somali 25 several years ago to to celebrate the stoma rebellion and i projected to be an international celebration and oh it was and i went to greenwich village and held a news conference in christopher park next to the george siegel sculptures uh and the press came and and they realized that i that i was loaded i was i was full of it and they took advantage of that and the cameras panned in and so that we would create an enclave in the north beach in san francisco uh in chicago south beach in miami it's so gay you just it's all there is i mean you you chief wiz get used to it we're gay well it's been um a good 25 years more than 25 i guess since the since the center started it's an extraordinary time for us now and so just in the few remaining moments i'd sort of like to ask you a couple of things uh one is your opinion of the of the queer youth of the young people coming up who are taking so much for granted but also very um sort of active in their own way tell me what you think a very painful question that came very late in the show so let me talk a little bit if we run out of time just say with your time's up uh the youth i'm thrilled and despairing about gay youth i'm thrilled that they have a place to call the television filled with you know they have a place to go for free just get the bus fare get there i'm that there are opportunities there's socialization there's the eagle school they're gay youth caucuses all over however the other half of that is not so good is that if you're born black you know full well that you in your lifetime are going to suffer some discrimination but you're black and you belong and there is a community and being young is just part of the concern if you're a chicano chicano latina you all know that sometimes if you're a woman you know full well that sometimes nothing could be called a name or treated as inferior or treated as a servant if you were 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 this nothing to talk about there's nothing that you mention with any pride because you get beaten up or thrown out or someone 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 be last we just will love if only we could break through that then we could go to total liberation to quote his talk but we can't and i challenge out there everybody the philosophers of the 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 well there's a celebration that i'm going to uh at the end of this millennium at the end of this century uh the celebration of your 80th birthday yes and it's also a little more than 40 years of activism but i think we're calling it uh 40 80 kite forty eighty i'm forty years old this year and friends are saying coalition building and founding and dynamism and creation and vision and so on and in november nineteen nineteen ninety i'll be 80 that's just a few weeks before a brand new millennium a whole thousand years and here i'll be just at the edge of it won't that be fun it's going to be a great party you know a lot of us are saying to ourselves now how am i going to celebrate this turn of the century my grandmother told me stories about the turn of the century from the 19th to the 20th and i have been thinking probably for 50 years now what am i going to do to celebrate this and i think what's going to happen is maurice's party will start in november and it won't stop yeah until january so that really solves it going to be wonderful the bands will come and the men's chorus and if they don't know how to sing it between now and that time i'll get an expert to teach them how to sing we shall overcome and what about you come over come we shall overcome someday today won't that be wonderful a little big room full of people all singing can't you clutch somebody even now and what about coming home yeah that you told us about i go so emotional about that and moreover it kind of insinuates me into a former christianity and while i'm understanding of all religions i'm a proud humanist i'm a card-carrying humanist it simply means that given a level playing field and given some rules of decency and equality and fair treatment that all people can be achieving happy healthy wouldn't that be wonderful and it seems to me that the hallmark of your life if i may be so bold has been a a very successful yet unending attempt to create a place i mean i was very struck by your talking about this song and your father singing and the notion of coming home to create a place that is welcoming not discriminating not filled with hatred but welcoming no matter what your sexual orientation your gender your religion your race your work on the human rights commission here what would you say in in our sort of wrap up what lesson would you want to leave with our viewers about um the way you've lived your life and what what recommends it never again never again will we treat this sick sinful deviant valiant we're whole we're gestalt we're achieving we're earning we're learning we're mobilizing we're 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 to the table that at the table we can all be co-equal get used to it hope you enjoyed this as much as i did morris kite thank you very much i hope that you'll make it an international celebration morris's 80th birthday in november of 1999. until then this is the joyful the creative and the visionary uh man and part of our movement so glad you were here get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you