Get Used to It: Ep. 55, "Sex and Morality"

what's up [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila kuhl your uh hostess i suppose i would be with the most s today we have what of course we always hope will be a really interesting show but i have three wonderful guests so i know it will be the gay and lesbian bisexual transgendered community has been very much in the american consciousness in the past several months sometimes because we get to talk about ourselves and try to say what we're doing and sometimes because other people talk about us and say what we shouldn't be doing or that we simply shouldn't be and now as we approach a an election the discussion is heating up quite a bit and it looks as though after the death of communism that we have become the major target for the right wing the major source of inspiration for their fundraising and we want to talk a little bit about what that might mean not only in the context of the election but also what it might mean in the context of the national dialogue about what's important when we're facing elections and what's important when we're talking about uh morality character ethics morals etc my guests today i'm very pleased to say are david mixner who is a world-renowned author i think sold internationally now and certainly a long-time activist and leader in our community welcome david thanks sheila skye johnson who is the director of policy and public affairs not public policy and affairs at the los angeles gay and lesbian center welcome sky thank you and sue burnside who according to the new york times is a national political strategist and i always knew that and i'm glad the rest of the country does too welcome sue great to be here um david let me start with you um as i said in sort of my brief introduction we are the community now uh as our friend joe hicks from the southern christian leadership conference has said in the middle of the griddle uh the light is focused on us there's full page ads about us uh our uh ability to remain gay or truly be gay we must you know be straight in our hearts what's going on why all this attention well what's going on is that political demagogues always seek scapegoats to build their careers and to raise their money and to enhance their agenda it's a old tactic that's been used in america since the days of the great awakening the ku klux klan the southern civil rights movement was used as a scapegoat in the 60s and of course the great menace of communism for almost over 50 years in american politics and part of what's going on sheila is we've become more visible and we've become more powerful and therefore making ourselves a target for these demagogues who would use another person's struggle for freedom and liberty as a way to frighten people to create fear to create division and hopefully turn them away from the real issues of the country like education and health care and and what kind of highways we have in our environment and they don't want to stand on those issues because they're not doing very well they're usually you'll find demagogues beholden to this the special interest and so their job is to turn people away from those issues to force them to focus on scapegoats to raise money off of them to motivate their voters to get to the polls and it's sad that this goes on in a political dialogue in a democracy but it does and in great part though i think and i i think this is important to say we should understand that this comes from our victories you know i remember in 1974 when elaine noble was the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to office i mean who could forget who was around at that time the joy i was in the closet of witnessing that victory as a political person it's something i never thought i would see in my lifetime and i thought she was it i thought that was going to be it and then when harvey mel came along i thought god we got two in my lifetime isn't that great today we have six gays and lesbians who are actually the party nominees for congress of the united states it's amazing we have hundreds of gay and lesbian elected and appointed people people holding power and responsibility conducting themselves with a great deal of dignity and integrity and that kind of power that kind of visibility makes us a target because we're new we're an all known people haven't taken the time to examine the gifts and the resources that we bring to this country but what is the threat of visibility the threat of visibility is people usually think that you're going to get something they're not getting and since we're the new kids on the block people are not quite sure there's enough pie to go around you see well does that mean i have to give up some of my power are they going to get special privileges do i have to be comfortable with them do i have to accept them do i have to like them you know i i'm not sure i approve of them and you know one of the things that i think we have to keep hammering on is that nowhere in the constitution of the united states does the word comfortable appear as a criteria to enjoy the bill of rights you know they don't have to be comfortable with me they don't have to like me to be free but there's that sense that they're being forced into something that they're uncomfortable with that i might get something that they're not getting is the pie big enough even liberal friends are concerned that we are going to take their seats you know so those kind of issues perk to the surface to be exploited by those with less morality and ethics and principles and that's exactly what they are exploiting i mean the the notion that there might be this sort of encode maybe a little bit of concern although anyone thinking about it can't imagine for instance why if i were allowed to marry the person that i love who happened to be a woman why that would really threaten their heterosexual marriage i mean that that notion of that not being an infinite pie never made sense but they do kind of the the right wing has grasped this issue and hammered it home in a lot of ways that we want special privileges at work or we want special privileges in terms of recognition of our families and it it has worked for them but how does that translate into political capital for them well i think what they're hoping is to turn out their vote i hope i think that they count on low turnouts they actually count on democracy not working you know they use the democracy as a tool and hope for a low turnout and hope that their voters will be motivated to turn out for whatever institutions they mobilize through whether it's religious institutions or whether it's community institutions and then they hope to seize power by making people fearful enough to turn out to vote uh and to elect their candidates the elected demagogues to power and they're counting on us staying home they're counting on our family and friends to stay home and they're they're they're the assumption they're making which is wrong i believe is that we don't care enough about our freedom or our families don't care enough about us or our neighbors don't care about enough that they'll stay home and that there are people that they can scare enough and cre feed them enough misinformation it's a big lie you know it's like taking marriage that somehow us getting married and having full equality you know immigration rights uh family leave rights taxation rights all of those rights that come with marriage somehow demeans their institution you know and instead of focusing on the real problem which is that they have a divorce rate of 60 percent you know and that maybe together we can help work as gay and straight to resolve some of those problems that all families have so what was the role of these full-page ads about our potential for conversion and uh you know this this this monologue by supposedly former lesbians or gay men where does that fit in this kind of strategy i think they were reading their polls and one of the things their polls were showing is that if people believe that we were born this way that this was not a choice they overwhelmingly support us having rights and they become more comfortable with us and more accepting because they realize that's who we are and that's what we bring and so but if people believe that this is a choice we start losing ground in the polls so it was setting the tone in an attempt to draw us i think into a debate whether a choice or uh born that way and the fact of the matter is i i think it was a bad strategy on their part i thought that we shouldn't respond too much to it because i think most people have come to accept that we're born this way and also the more we come out and the more of our family and friends who know us they know that well i think originally though the question arose almost in the legal arena because like race or gender which are considered in the law immutable characteristics if you can just fit into that category then you could be protected under the constitution because you shouldn't be discriminated against for something that you were born with or that you can't change and it never made sense to me necessarily as a legal strategy because religion is nothing you're born with you choose your religion so if we were to say you have to be born with something in order to be safe from discrimination so if you're a jew too bad you weren't born with it and if you were you chose it anyway it just doesn't make sense now we have a particular place in our hearts in this country for religion so some have said oh you know well that's a different matter but it seems to me that that strategy could be maybe not quite the right choice for us well i i agree totally with that i mean we have to remember to colin powell when he opposed gays and lesbians in the military distinguished between us and the struggle for african americans to be in the military by saying he didn't have a choice and we did and that was the sum total of his whole argument but the fact of the matter is sheila is that the argument i think has been won i think people know where we come from and what we come out of because we're coming out of the closet and that's what they were responding to or those polls and you know it's it's not even an issue you see of whether they believe it or not and we must never get drawn into those side shows and i think those are all side shows to raise money you know they get a topic they get a newsweek cover and then they send a mailing out then they bring up another topic whether it's marriage or gays and lesbians in the military or adoption or any number of issues we shouldn't get distracted by those sideshows because there's only one issue it doesn't make any difference if someone chooses to be gay or is born to be gay or chooses to be a lesbian or born to be lesbian or bi or transgender transgender or transsexual the fact of the matter is we all have rights under the constitution you know the constitution doesn't deal with born or choice it deals with basic human liberty and basic rights you know and we shouldn't ever get distracted from that what do you think sky on the local level are you seeing that this is playing very well in california working i mean your work is a lot to do with legislation with initiatives with the sort of public policy aspect uh and you see that david has said we're we've gained a lot of visibility we've gained a lot of clout people think that we uh maybe have pushed our agenda forward for better for worse depending on who they are others then are trying this counter punch to make us sort of the issue how do you think it's playing well in terms of the initiative with the ads earlier this summer we haven't seen any any indication that it's playing particularly uh here in california but for that matter we haven't seen any indication that it's playing elsewhere in the country i think david's right they spent 500 thousand 000 on these ads at least and uh there hasn't been any real uh indication that the american people are buying the basic premises or even care uh any fundamental level about the arguments that they're attempting to put forward there was some polling that was done in the aftermath of the release of these ads and uh significant pluralities of folks thought that and in fact it wasn't a choice that gay people didn't have the option of changing their sexuality the way you would change a coat or a jacket and i think that that shows a level of sophistication an increasing level of sophistication on the part of the american public but again it goes back to the key word that you mentioned several times and that david did and that is visibility the other side's arguments have always depended upon the acceptance of myths and stereotypes about who we are and what we do and the more of us that come out the more places whether they're political or not political uh activists or not activists but the more people who tell their parents tell their co-workers their brothers and sisters that they're gay the less likely it is that these stereotypes and these myths will have any traction and they're losing ground gradually day by day year by year in the overall we'll lose an occasional battle here and there but ultimately over time this tide i don't think can be reversed do you think we're an issue then in the california election i don't think we're an issue in this upcoming election this year i think maybe in the year 2000 there will be more visibility pete knight as you know has been circulating petitions to get a so-called california defense of marriage act on the ballot he submitted those petitions last well they're being reviewed right now uh by the secretary of state's office to uh to uh check on the validity of the signatures it appears as though it will qualify so that means that there will likely be uh an initiative an anti-gay initiative on the ballot in the year 2000 here in california so obviously it will be a higher profile but for 1998 uh there's no indication this is an issue that's playing at all anywhere in the state but there's always the possibility i mean i know every year when we put our legislation in in sacramento it's january february the latest um there is always a sort of a a couple of people who will bring a bill so that we're secured in our ability to be able to at least try to adopt children on an equal footing with everybody else and somebody who wants to put in a bill that says we absolutely can't adopt children for instance uh do you see any way in which one side or the other has gained kind of a sentence you mean based upon what we've seen in the last couple of months or just in in general well since you i've been doing this job which is more than the last couple of months well i i think we're gaining ground all the time again with the qualifier that there are gonna there are setbacks and there are there are homophobes then there will always well we hope there won't always be there but they will be for the foreseeable future here in california and you know from your experience in the legislature there are certain individual members of pete knight to name one one more time who has made this a particular obsession of his he's introduced legislation before unsuccessful legislation think thankfully but before he did the initiative he tried several times to get anti-gay legislation through so there are those people who who exist now but if you look at dan london who is no friend of our community has made a very very concerted effort to style himself as a moderate he has made some faint effort to sort of extend an olive branch to gay and lesbian folks to at least suggest that he's not as hateful as we have seen him to be in the past so he even recognized he even he recognizes that the politics of being explicitly anti-gay in a state like california and in a lot of other states around the country does not work polls taken again in the aftermath of these ads national polls one poll that i saw just yesterday asked the question of americans across the country if your congress person spoke out against gays and lesbians would that make you more likely to support your congress person less likely or wouldn't it make any difference 17 said speaking out against gays and lesbians would make them more likely to support their congress person 46 said less likely and the the balance 31 that it wouldn't make any difference so that's overwhelming plurality uh and again that's consistent across the country an interesting dimension of this conversation is that there is a very very distinct regional imbalance in the south and the southwest anti-gay rhetoric does play if you're in south carolina or oklahoma you might be able to make some hay on this issue at a statewide level but if you look at almost all the rest of the united states americans resist the the idea of of stigmatizing they're opposed to discrimination and that's why the right the the radical right the social conservative right is trying to change the subject they don't talk about discrimination they don't talk about employment discrimination because they know they've already lost that debate so they want to talk about sin or conversion some effort to find something that they can hold on to that will that can give them uh a a foothold to continue to fight this fight that they know they're losing well it is interesting i mean uh we we certainly have seen an example of uh ways in which the the right wing wants to define morality as related only exclusively to sex or sexuality in our case and if that's the case it's bad news for our community if it works because we are seen primarily only to be different because of who we have sex with i mean never mind if some of us think it's about love everyone else thinks it's about your sexual activity and if morality is only about sexual behavior then it's easier to characterize us as the immoral minority um and yet what it does is just like you said it's got and david too it's like sleight of hand it's like a magician saying don't watch what i'm doing with your social security be over here where i'm bashing gays because that's you know where you should be looking and i think that that's been a strategy that hasn't worked very well the letters to the editor you know in a number of newspapers as i travel are simply saying you know why aren't they talking about uh the speech at the u.n for instance or anything that starving children things that have to do with real morality absolutely i don't think we've won our battle to win over all americans but even for the for the a large percentage of those that we haven't won over they recognize that this issue is not the issue upon which western civilization will fall that there are real critical issues facing all of us in this country that david alluded to some of them before in education healthcare i mean the litany that we hear in every political campaign these are the things that voters care about and they are rightly skeptical of someone who comes in raising a flag saying look at these terrible people they're going to bring the foundations of the society crumbling underneath our feet folks are smarter than that and i don't think that this effort to change the subject is going to work because what they're changing it to is something that people will also resist americans in general although they like to think of themselves we like to think of ourselves as a moral people don't like moralist telling individuals how to lead their lives and these folks who run around saying well the bible says this and the bible says that and using their selective literalism are not going to be persuasive when americans stop and take a look at where that would lead if we use the bible as a literal example of or as a literal guide for how law should be framed in this country then that raises all kinds of implications for things like divorce and what you name it but we are not iran or afghanistan we are not a theocratic society and and you know diversity of religions and religious beliefs and across the board americans will resist in the imposition of anybody's morality on them or their friends or their families or the rest of the country sue you've uh been handling a lot of campaigns lately as we not only read but we all know about you and a bright shining rising star you always were a star but everybody's now seeing it did some work on lois capps campaign and a number of others around california and probably a bunch i don't even know about we've done a lot of theorizing about how whether we're and you know truly being focused on and whether this is working and you're the sort of the pragmatist here with uh doing the campaigns what do you think well i think it was interesting because the um the summer articles in the new york times and the la times were coincidentally timed for the hawaii initiative it was the the beginning of the campaign and it seemed like they were really focused on aiming their target at hawaii not so much a national perspective but what it did was yield some national media through nightline and through the newspaper ads and i think if you look at the disclaimer on that ad you'll see that the majority of the money was given to those ads by conservative groups but when you look at the bigger list you see that a lot of the money came from hawaii and so they were trying to frame the debate in hawaii is what i really think they were trying to do by spending that money because the polls are dead even right now and so what they're trying to do is find some kind of either moral high ground or some kind of message that actually overturned some of the gains that they've made in hawaii so it actually hedges the bet in terms of polling and stuff in order to actually get a lead in the campaign the interesting part about the pete night initiative is you know it it looks like it will be if we if we're lucky enough to have a march nominating primary it will actually define who the nominees are for each party so we will get a more conservative member of the democratic party as a nominee we'll get a more conservative or what looks like a moderate conservative in the republican end of it and what it's doing is just trying to drive voters or drive our candidates into the middle of the road and so anytime we step out of those middle-of-the-road candidates we really don't always get what we want it's always a constant challenge kind of like you were saying we present a bill in the assembly on adoption they present one against adoption and when we get moderate looking candidates or similar looking candidates it's really hard to get what we want politically in terms of the things that we think are just basic civil rights so you think that this this initiative that was if if the signatures are found to be valid and there are enough of them it would go on our presidential primary ballot if our primaries moved up to march but either way would probably be on that ballot do i hear you saying this could cut against vice president gore in his ability to because he's been pretty um open with our community certainly friendly uh definitely and you you think this would cut against his nomination i think it's definitely will be an issue and what it's going to do is it really defines their nominee on the republican side of the aisle it defines who their leader is going to be so whoever walks out of that primary whoever wins california will for the first time in california really know who the candidate is on their team that the conservative conservative person no matter how moderate they look whoever wins is really going to be the candidate who's working against us in terms of a community so yeah i think it hurts uh gore we do have a lesbian running for congress who who won her nomination for the democratic party in san diego and there's some interesting stuff going on down there very open people feel that they're pretty open-minded as a community in san diego for all of us in california we think it's kind of you know one day one way one day the next way politically but we're finding there's no difference between someone voting for a lesbian for congress or someone voting for just a woman for congress and so we've done a lot of a lot of work down in san diego's to show that she's really viable to our own party as david said earlier you know we're fighting for seats that are traditionally democratic seats or we're actually borrowing the seats from our liberal friends or in your case our liberal friend we just took the seat and and so um it's very interesting to see the dynamic there the scary part about the whole debate here is what's going on in hawaii right now as you know there's a an initiative on the ballot that was put on the ballot and it's very similar to the pete night initiative it says marriage should only be between one man and one woman and the primary in hawaii was just saturday recently and what's happening is you're seeing that the volume of hatred has just gone through the roof recently the christian coalition and the hawaii marriage freedom coalition funny name huh freedom coalition putting that freedom for us but not for you yeah exactly they put an ad on tv that is just shocking um it's um it's a commercial with a little boy sitting there reading a wedding invitation and basically his dad's getting married but his dad's get a white man getting married to an african-american man so we're seeing all the levels of hatred being piled on top of each other and it ends with what kind of example is this going to set for our children well you know if it's all of us sitting here at this table it's going to show a good example because you're treating everyone as an individual so personally i think it's a good example that you're showing there but by piling on racism by shoving the child into the commercial you're just bringing up all those other things that the right wing or the republican party has used as a stepping stone to get to this point because especially in california we've seen that we're not the first minority to be picked on last time it was the latinos and thanks to them being picked on they're the highest voting population for democrats now than ever before and they're voting in numbers for our issues so we're like the last stepping stone in terms of discrimination here but it was just frightful to see that it wasn't just you know two men getting married it had to be an interracial couple and they brought the child into it so we have all these different levels of images that can be drawn from this commercial that are pretty disgusting and would be the nicest way of putting it well it's a funny thing i mean you talk about that it's kind of the desperation of it because there have been so many different sort of tricks employed um the right wing first of all had to take over its own party right and i think that that was a different strategy in a way for them to see how to capture as many republican votes as possible to come through early on when they were running for school boards etc to come through those primaries to really capture it now some of it was a lot of money in california mr amundson and a number of other people put a lot of money in 94 into the primaries brought those candidates through we saw the same thing in 96 a little bit and that was i think a slightly different strategy were we also a target i know that you're not a republican strategist but were we and and i guess i certainly could open it up were we also a target in that takeover because that was the first step really toward moving um the agenda right oh definitely as part of the first wave of the moral agenda and you know it talked about you know their agenda was about choice and it was about having the right family and family lifestyles and what is a proper family and it was the first agenda you know in california we've seen anti-gay rhetoric blow up in their face in some of these assembly races and i think deep down people want to be understanding and i i'm going to go back to our good friend tori who says you know it's about coming home it's about talking about who we are and that we're not different and we're just like you and me we're all the same we're all one cluster so i think i think it's hard when you look at this moral agenda that you know we have it's like almost a polarized extreme we both have we're saying here we are we're here we're part of your society we're an integral part of your society and here they're trying to redefine us did it arise at all in lois capps campaign i mean when a walter capps congress member who passed away his wife ran her opponent in the final election was a republican very conservative man tom bordenaro who is a colleague of mine in the assembly and were were we mentioned we were mentioned in the republican primary tom bordenaro utilized the the what is a very structured information email fax tree system that they use in order to bash brooks firestone on being his republican opponent his republican opponent exactly much more moderate very acceptable we could probably all live with him on any given day um versus tom bordenaro and um they basically insinuated he was gay because he voted for gay legislation before and that was the real question interestingly enough he did not right exactly i wish he had which is very funny i would have the gay student build today brooks firestones exactly so so they bashed him on what they thought they could nail him on on this kind of a whisper campaign in the bigger campaign though it was back to basics abortion partial burst abortion a woman's right to choose that she's killing babies their definition of morality again and clearly it was an amazing race i just want to say that that was the most money ever spent on one issue in a congressional special election like that and we're really lucky to have a list because there was never a poll that showed her winning during the whole special election so the issue of the you know them trying to define morality didn't work in that race you know one of the things that never changes with these characters is the big lie you know they they they have no regard for the truth you know we saw it in the joseph mccarthy period we see it on the sexual mccarthyism going on now with ken starr we see it in the you know in the fight against communism and a woman's right to choose uh you know hundreds of dead babies being buried under convents i remember growing up as a catholic hearing that the fact of the matter is they have no regard for the truth and and and it creates a climate of hate which we then feel very hurt and we're drawn into that debate you know and one of the things that's very important i think as as a sophisticated political community is that we have to get better at not responding to such blatant hatred and and charges and the big lie because you can't answer a lot because they just make the lie bigger it's like this big sinkhole that they pull you into and what you have to do is have people of conscience stand up and and call it for what it is the big lie and draw the line in the sand and create a counter force of truth well this has been the issue with coming out i mean it as sky indicated and all of you really this this puts a a face that essentially says that is a big lie because here i am although it does create a i was thinking when you were talking about that it creates an additional problem for us because many members of our community are ashamed of those people who might be stereotypes they don't want to talk transgendered for you know god's sake much less dikes on bikes or people with you know piercing or i mean we have a student activist day in the capitol where students from all over the state who are gay or lesbian or bisexual and some transgendered actually come to lobby and some of my colleagues go oh my god these kids are going to go into somebody's office and talk to them i mean look at them and you think yeah look at them i mean they're just as beautiful as straight kids who look almost exactly the same with you know whatever absolutely and you know and the point but still there this embarrassment like we have to present this squeaky clean image is a problem i think for us well it's a problem for those people who feel that way i think i mean we're not all the same we are an enormously diverse community it's been a cliche of our movement from the beginning but it's cliche because it's true i mean we come from everywhere all shape sizes it's the important thing is not that we all agree with each other because we never will or all be on the same page in terms of any kind of political strategy but even if the folks who are or get anxious about those folks those young people who are all they need to do is come out themselves as long as they're out there if we all come out wherever we can to to whomever we can and and and show ourselves as we are then the big lie will fall it will fall of his own weight uh there's no way in what you can continue to well you look at how the stereotypes have changed when i was a when i was a teenager trying to figure out what it meant to be gay and which a word which wasn't even current in in that time uh the the stuff you read if you could find anything was that that gay men were these sort of dysfunctional folks unsuccessful couldn't have a relationship with a woman uh pathetic characters over the years obviously that that in some ways that stereotypes been turned completely around now you hear gary barr going around talking about how we're all high powered we've got you know millions of dollars we run hollywood go to the gym all the time and just you know and all that sort of stuff so so it's clear that by coming out uh we change uh we we we knock down these these barriers these stereotypes and and uh i i don't believe that we can be we can be turned back harvey milk in the 1970s was saying and this remains as true today as it was then that the most important political act any of us can make is to come out if our organizations are strong or not strong it's better if they're strong but even if they're not if people continue this person to person one to one then the other side can't win and you know we have to be careful not to buy into this conditional freedom argument that if you only become this will give you your freedom or if you separate yourself from these people and practice intolerance towards others we'll give you your freedom if you dress a certain way then you can have the bill of rights nowhere does that apply to anybody you know and i all the time when i speak to straight audiences they say to me can't you do something about those gay and lesbian pride parades do you really have to have them and i say do you really have to have mardi gras you know and can't you do something about those ridiculous outfits people wear at football games you know where they paint their bodies and they don't have any clothes on and they make hog noises you know i mean i don't want my children seeing that you know i mean it's that conditional freedom they don't even look into their own communities but all they want is you to be this perfect little person that doesn't challenge them to look at the world differently but don't you think it's all a matter of control anyway i mean we're not the only community that's told if you look a certain way um you or if you better yet if you could pass for something you should do that i mean this thing about marriage people say why are you always flaunting everything why are you always talking about this stuff why is it always in our face and i say you know no one in my community would even have had the courage to bring an initiative to say we must get married or we must be allowed to get married no we didn't bring it up but as long as we're talking about it um we're not you know unable to put our side of the argument out on the table still i think that it is really about control it's this morality thing too if you can control people's sexuality you can use shame some very powerful emotions then you can control all kinds of populations they've done it with women for years i mean they they get molested as children they're supposed to be ashamed they get battered as grown women they're supposed to be ashamed and it's very powerful it's very powerful and it's really i'm sorry it's really interesting i mean they will do anything they can to get converts they talk about us going after converts the whole purpose of religions is missionary work you know to bring everyone back into under one tent thinking the same believing the same without the scent and if you descent you're a sinner you're a heretic you're you know you're you're not normal you know and and what the most marvelous thing uh about the wisdom of our founders is that they still remembered their oppression where from where they came from and in the england and the calvinists and the puritans and the pilgrims and they had the wisdom and the memory of that pain to create the bill of rights you know and they said and that bill of rights was meant to protect an unpopular minority from the tyranny of a majority from a majority forcing a minority to think and act exactly as as the popular majority why are we still paying the price for those for the puritans and the calvary i mean seriously can we talk i mean to go back to the uh i i would really like your opinion of this don't you think that this country suffers from it's not just voyeurism or the press focusing on stuff but this real feeling that when you talk about somebody being immoral people think right away of their sexual behavior exactly am i wrong no you're absolutely right and you know i mean to me i mean i watch the current events and i'm just amazed to me what went on in vietnam was much more immoral than anything we could conceive of today you know to have 20 years later robert mcnamara write a book saying oop we knew all along we couldn't win and that we were wrong and the way we were telling people was a lie and to know that they sent tens of thousands of americans to die in that war and hundreds of thousands of vietnamese to die and that were knowing that the policy is wrong now that's immorality that's a lack of ethics that's a lack of principles and then to make money writing a book about oh i'm oops i'm sorry is even worse uh those are the real issues of morality and ethics uh remaining silence and genocide and rwanda you know a children who doesn't have a computer or can't read or write or get a decent meal those are issues of morality and principle and not not who you sleep with or what you do when who you sleep with and when you do it and where you do it it's quite frankly no one's damn business i think that's the position of a lot of americans not just in our community but there are a great many americans who who view morality that way things like wars and killing is true true immorality uh private sexual relationships your your most intimate domestic relationships has nothing to do with morality but there is a significant segment of america that does indeed believe that in fact they believe that over and above almost everything else and i think that the the war that's going on the so-called cultural war that that as pat buchanan described it is really between those folks who are trying to impose their vision of morality on literally the rest of the country uh and the the rest of the country who's resisting that and some folks like folks in our community resisting it very very uh fiercely i think there is a real specific it goes back to something that sue was talking about in terms of the political races there's a real specific partisan fight going on in the republican party now and not so much in the democratic party for for control of the agenda between the social conservatives the folks who want to impose this morality and the more traditional republicans who believe that the government should be out of both the economic sector but also the private sector of of their lives and i think the next two years are going to be a critical period uh within that party particularly and i think that's where another dimension of these ads comes in i think part of the the the 500 000 ad campaign was a laying down of the gauntlet by the social conservatives to the rest of the republicans the george bush the george bush the governor texas county republicans telling them that unless you adopt our agenda we are going to sabotage the chances of the republicans uh to win the election in the year 2000. i mean they've been almost explicit on that people like gary bauer is saying that he will run for president himself to push this agenda and that he would rather lose in a good cause than support well they've they got this phrase now we won't be doled again they feel like they supported dole dole didn't do enough for their agenda so this is where the the real critical battle is going to be fought in the next two years i don't think i disagree a little bit with sue i don't know that vice president gore or any of the democratic candidates will necessarily be heard at least at the primary level on these kind of questions but there will be i think potentially a tremendous battle in the republican party well i think what sue was talking about though is the hot button issue of gay marriage with the initiative on the ballot during the presidential primary everyone is always asked wherever you're whatever you're running for all the way down ballot in in our races uh what do you think about prop you know right and that's going to be the one that's going to bring out people on the but those folks who feel most strongly about that are going to vote in the republican primary because that's almost certain to be contested among those with a wider agenda so that won't hurt gore as much as what the residual be in the general election but they finally figured out that when you attach a partisan candidate to an initiative that the partisanship of that candidate creates this huge turnout effect that unless you tie them together or marry them together then good good marry them together then then your turnout isn't motivated people don't go what they say down ballot they stop at the presidential nominee and they don't go all the way down the ticket to school board dog catcher water board whatever so the partisanship is tied in there in order to keep people's eye on the prize which in their opinion is the last thing on the ballot which is the initiative but i completely agree with you everything that we're talking about comes back to what am i going to lose how am i going to keep my power and the debate is always defined around that fear motive and i think that's how we differ as people you know there's a bright future out there and their perspective is bringing everyone back yeah but look at how scary this is just even in your own neighborhood and i think you know part of this thing this whole media and you know it's just so so much nicer to you know watch jerry springer than leave it to beaver you know what i'm saying it's just so much more interesting and we just have this level where we need some sensationalize something in our life so when we start talking about morality we've gone so far off the path from where you know everybody was reared you know whatever generation it was it's so far off the beaten path that these things defining things in moral terms is what we expect we don't define things as in moral terms like when we were growing up are you treating your neighbor like you'd like to be treated you know there aren't neighborhoods there's 10 million people in la county there's too many people i don't talk to my neighbor how can i define morality so we're having someone else trying to preach this morality to us but do you agree with sky that there is a a greater sophistication i mean i one of the things that happened in the gubernatorial primary in california is that i think a lot of people were stunned that the candidate that spent those 40 million dollars didn't win and yet the letters that came to the editor and people who talked to me when i was out you know just sort of not on the stump but just talking to groups in my regular job would say oh i'm so glad that everybody wasn't fooled by all that money now that to me was a kind of sophisticated but do you agree that they're i mean what are we looking at in terms of the voters if this sky thinks it's not going to work well voters are voters deserve a lot more um much more credit than they're given and i think that when you look at these things what it does is polarize people so given our current investigation ken starr situation what you find in national polls is that people are more polarized it's not so much that they're going to not go vote what you find is like hardcore democrats going i'm gonna go vote for every democrat down the ticket right you find this like energetic kind of thing and what you're talking about is a very small percentage like in california this governor's year you're gonna find a very small percentage of people deciding if it's dan lundgren or gray davis and you know today i'll put online 150 000 votes going to determine our governor and it's up to each people each party to go out there and motivate these people to vote so these issues for the republicans are definitely wedge issues so they can define our issue before we define them just like you said we're not going to go talk about marriage we're talking about marriage because it was thrown at us and so we're coming from a defensive point of view not an assertive point of view so does that help us turn out to vote or do we lose heart and say see that's the key you know and one of the keys is we have to turn out our vote too and if we are the first ones to step up and say to a candidate surrender our rights to make yourself comfortable then our community is going to stay home we had the largest drop-off of any group in the country between 92 and 94 because of gays and lesbians in the military you know and so we have to turn out our vote too and we have to be sure that we don't become so afraid of the fear directed towards us that we forget what we're about and what our goals are and what our dreams are and what our agenda is yes we have an agenda and that is equal opportunity for everybody in equality and liberty and that we never should be the first to step up to any candidate anywhere and say oh by the way it's okay come out against all these issues because i'm afraid too i'm afraid to and so i'm going to take my fear and withdrawal from my struggle from freedom you know you think to some degree it's like the luxury our community has had i mean i'm i'm still pretty young and chipper these days and i've seen most of the first in california versus the way i'm feeling i mean sheila jackie go i mean i can name him you guys were the first i mean these things are so recent and so new we're almost spoiled you know we've as a you know compared to a child we got too many toys at toys r us and now damn it i don't want my truck being taken away from me and oh forget it you know we're kind of like darn what's going on so i think in our community it's a little bit different at times because i think we've just had these luxuries and it's all so recent and also fresh i think that any setback that we're we're challenged a little bit more i don't know if i agree with that so i mean i i have to i don't really find when i look back upon my past that i've been spoiled i mean given the aids epidemic and given the contracts i've lost and given the jobs that i was afraid and the fear that i lived with or the times i contemplated suicide i've never really looked at that as being spoiled or having a lot of toys i've looked through those elections as breakthroughs but i've also known and lived through the anita bryants and the john briggs and and and the gary barrows and all of those people and the bob dornan and what i watch is our allies become nervous and scared right and then we become nervous and scared like we've done something wrong for wanting our rights and we become like apologetic well gee i'm really sorry mr ms candidate you know that i've put you in this situation we haven't put him in this situation hate has put him in that situation and what was required is for these people to stand up against hate to take a stand against hate to take a stand against the demagogues to to draw the line and say there is no room in american political discourse don't you think we're seeing that more and more i mean there's no question in my mind that we have made by any standard any historical standard enormous progress in a relatively short period of time the kinds of issues that you're just talking about i mean there i remember in 1975 and i was living in san francisco living in san francisco you couldn't get candidates for office to accept donations from the gay clubs now uh and especially in the democratic party they actively solicit the support of our communities the president spoke last year as the national gay donor the vice president has spoken many times at these kinds of events and in fact it is i don't even think it's uh much of a controversial issue uh in the democratic party outside of the south what i was trying to say is that you know from my perspective 1972 i was you know playing handball out in the valley you don't need to rub that in no i'm saying from my perspective i mean all these firsts have happened i mean i you know i mean i'll trade sheila for the 12 hours i was locked in the closet at boarding school because i was gay i know that those 12 hours on my psyche are not anything near what sheila is going to do for our community but i'm saying from my perspective all these things are so recent and they're so rich and they're so motivating and they're just they just really have really motivated our community and from my perspective it's not so much that's what i was trying to illustrate the point is that so much of this is so recent and the the volume is just so high that they're cutting us off at the past and i think you know hey we've been through a lot don't get me wrong we've all been through way more than many communities you know that that have been challenged by these things but i'm just saying that we need to to dig in and that there's a civil rights line to be drawn here you know there's something else too and that is that everyone in our community who stays home is forgetting that there are probably 98 other out of 100 issues that touch their lives that they ought to vote for somebody that represents that right i mean it depending on how they a lot of us have kids and this we're doing a lot about education or not higher education or not health care is a big issue for our community and there's going to be broader issues i voted on 4 000 bills in the past two years just in the last session 96 98 and and a budget of 78 billion dollars and that is not about gay and lesbian stuff really mostly it's about real life stuff that all gay and lesbians participate in as well as straight people so i think people have to be motivated to understand that their vote impacts something because when you know we come and we use this stage but other people use this stage yesterday and tomorrow it just depends on who's sitting in the chairs as to what character this place is going to have it's exactly the same with the government just depends on who's in the chairs and that will make the big difference and i hope that our community understands that because when they try to alienate us as they have they're almost saying to us your family issues will not be heard your education issues will not be heard we're not going to protect your students or your kids or your relationships or anything stable well that is the biggest challenge for all of us is to make sure that folks recognize that real issues are at stake and and to get voters to come out the the social conservatives do vote in disproportionate numbers and they count on the fact as david alluded to earlier that their folks will turn out and they and that other folks are might be less likely to through their complacency or the sense that it doesn't make much difference one way or the other there's no reason in the world why anybody in our community should feel that way but there are a lot of americans who have the sense that well in the politics they're all the same and that sort of thing so it doesn't make any difference if i vote or not and in fact the other side counts on that dynamic so that their hard core 15 or 20 percent can be decisive they don't have a majority uh anywhere but if only 20 of the people show up at the polls and half of them are their people why out there they're going to win and they count on that they're counting on that this time and that's our challenge is to make sure that the message gets out uh that who these people are what their agenda is uh and if if we can do that then we'll be successful how do you see the future going for us well actually sue just happened to open my eyes to the future a little bit and i realized the difference there is all joking aside in generation there's people sue's age and younger who have never known a world where gays and lesbians weren't in office or a lot of people i know who her age don't know anyone who's died of aids you know and that's a victory i mean that's what we've been working for is for them to have lived in that world not knowing the kind of things that many of us older have grown up with and and as you as you talked to me back then i great side of our project it really enlightened me huge yeah and when i think of that that's that there is a young gay man or woman who's 28 who's never known anyone with aids who's never known a world where there wasn't gay uh and a lesbian elected officials i think my god we've come so far away the future has to be great i'm very optimistic i'm very very optimistic uh i think that there's they're going to be some pitched battles over the next two or three years but uh it reminds me of the period in the 60s when the when the black civil rights movement was at the center of the national debate i mean there was a lot of fury and in fact the opponents of civil rights had the highest profiles probably in that period they ever did george wallace the late george wallace john stennis and others were in their ascendancy during that period of time but it was because of the fact that finally this issue was at the center of the griddle as you said before in the middle of the griddle as you said before and america was forced to deal with it and how many streets are named after orville fathers exactly as opposed to exactly exactly so i think we can look forward to some i mean this this these these days the 90s are our 60s for our civil rights movement civil rights movements all have their own peculiar characteristics but they're all have some commonalities as well and i think we are at right uh in the critical moment but i i don't see how we can lose i'm going to leave it at that that is such a beautiful closing and here we are with something like 45 seconds remaining so i want to thank you all very much i never can believe how quickly these hours go by i hope it was the same for you i want to ask you whatever election we might be facing if this momentary one in 98 or whenever you're watching this show just do me one favor just make sure that 10 people you know actually go to the polls and vote better if there are 10 people who might have been ambivalent maybe didn't care that much better if they're on our side of course and that way there'll be so many of us out there'll be so many of us active that america is just going to have to get used to it see you next time [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you