In the Life: Ep. 1207, "Stealing Home"

on this month's in the Life The Forbidden Thrills of lesbian pulp you sort of try to sneak them past the guy at the cash register an unlikely four abandoned Society for the jungles of Fiji we can do Sports where you don't have to point your toes and Harvey dishes about his date well maybe after dinner or e Lin Harris hosts in the Life America's Gay and Lesbian News Magazine come on Papa what do you say oh that's marvelous in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation the Gil Foundation the Arcus Foundation The Lily Oren Claus Foundation the UT house charitable Trust the Johnson family Foundation the Overbrook Foundation The Pride Foundation the Jeff Sora fund of Stonewall Community Foundation the Ted Snowden Foundation the Reed Williams foundation Paul Deo Daniel H renberg and Eugene kosi Jonathan Sheffer and Christopher barley MD and the annual support of in the Life members like you welcome to end the life I'm elen Harris with underground institutions like the Harlem coming out balls and Boston marriages gays and lesbian Ians have long created spaces for ourselves in societies that don't automatically make space for us we have now claimed rooms of Our Own in neighborhoods and novels in sports and politics in these places what is personal becomes political the very Act of gays and lesbians claiming personal space makes that space a political territory but we have built our homes and over the course of the 20th century we began to insist on being at home in the world tonight on in the live stealing home as activism gets personal in Maine my belief system does not accommodate that lifestyle special guest Leslie Gore reads between the lines of lesbian pul Twilight lust and the Dark World of the lesbian some gay on gay action in the boy toown gentrification Wars even though that we were here first it didn't matter it was really getting nasty and green Thon lesbians put down roots in the traditional South so I said mother I've been to these Garden clubs I don't think they would want me she said then you should start one for your own kind the gay rights movement depends upon spaces in which we can find communities and organize despite the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of assembly it was not until after World War II that gay men and women were able to carve out a place to assemble in New York City vibrant scenes had flourished in the drag balls and salons of Harlem and the Social Clubs of Gren Village but the postwar world saw the first few exclusively gay organizations forming the veterans benevolent Association the manin society and the daughters of biders groups that sought to mobilize homosexuals in an era when the fundamental meeting space was the bar however only 50 of these organizations existed around the country before the night of June 28th 1969 but after that thousands Gay Liberation Front was sort of um I guess to be cor it was the answer to a lot of people's prayers I me it came out of nowhere and it was gone before you really could say G Liberation Front but what happened in that year year year and a half changed so many lives glf was born at or literally uh the first meeting a group of people said let's meet and see what we can do with the energy we have here from the riots alternate University a radical new school in Greenwich Village offered unorthodox classes on everything from Marxism to karate and on July 24th less than a month after Stonewall alternate U became the birthplace of the glf it became the place for their first dances uh which was just unheard of that you would publicize a homosexual dance but disagreements began on the very first night in the overcrowded room in alternate you some women fa alienated and left to form radical lesbians the trans Community split off to found Street transvesite action revolutionaries and still others broke away and started the gay activist Alliance the founders of the gay activist Alliance uh from their point of view uh glf was not sufficiently structured to get things done and so they broke off and founded their own organization in December of 1969 they started talking really from the very beginning about needing to find some kind of alternative to the bars which were seen as being Syndicate run uh places that would encourage uh self-hate rather than than an affirmation so they managed to acquire an Old Firehouse on wer Street in SoHo and among other things they started to dance every Saturday night you would have maybe a thousand almost all men a few women coming to dance at what was clearly a political organization and indeed there were times when they would hold demonstrations at 1:00 a.m. in the morning and literally take the entire uh dance to go harass the uh city council Committee Member who's giving us trouble lesbian feminist Liberation lfl is what we called it grew out of glf Gay Liberation Front and GAA gay activist Alliance when the women felt that they needed to separate from the men lesbian women at that point really needed their own space we met first at the firehouse and then moved from there to around Union Square and then eventually purchased one of the city buildings on 20th Street and there were just social gathering places for women and they were wonderful and I miss that kind of space as black women we didn't think our needs were being met I'm not saying that they weren't doing the work but they weren't doing the work we needed something else so you know we went we get us a space and we named ourselves salao sisters we met at the Washington Square Methodist Church and and we met there for many years the lesbian herser archives is a mixture of a museum and a family album we have archival material and all the wonderful little things um that lesbian women have collected all their lives back in the 1970s we would bring people together to have a space to talk and get to know each other I mean this was back then when there really were very few spaces that women could go to to do anything in 1983 many of these Divergent political and social groups came together when Community leaders acquired an old schoolhouse like 300 organizations existed there was a lot of activity but it had no Locus everybody was spread out in whatever found places they could be it was such a powerful idea to say ah we now can have a piece of real estate that's gay and lesbian owned it's ours nobody can take it away from us and we have control over it one of the functions of the center is to create a common ground for lesbian gay bisexual transgender an AIDS activist many organizations have been born here there are some that people know better than others probably the most dramatic Stories the birth backed up which happened in 1987 when Larry Kramer came he described what he saw as the epidemic in our community and put forth a call to action and act up was founded on that Tuesday night the river i w turn there are still people who think that this is a white man's organization when they come in the building they must see us here this is a support for all people our history and our culture needs a place to be born and then a place to to grow so that we can find out who we are how it started how it began where we came from where we're going and that I think is it more than the buildings but you need the buildings to do it yeah yeah when I was in college I began both my life as a lesbian and my life in the theater and it was very quickly made clear to me that those two things did not go together the head of my theater Department actually sat me down to explain to me at one point why he couldn't cast me by telling me that um I just didn't convey any sexuality on stage and so I moved to New York to make my way someone told me that I should go down to town to the East Village which seemed very exotic to me at the time and I should go see a show called split riches which was completely sexy and funny laugh out loud funny and heartbreaking and it was so lesbian it didn't even have to explain to you that Les that it was lesbian that changed my life I'm Lisa cron and you're watching in the life special guest Leslie Gore revisits the lesbian literature of the Greenwich Village Community before it began to organize itself in the 1950s America was gripped in the vice of the Red Scare in a world shaped by mcarthism rock and roll and the suburb an underground movement swept the aisles of the drugstore novel bold laid covers titles like dormatory girls part-time Les Twilight lust and the Dark World of the lesbian these novels journeyed into secret subcultures and into desires that were forbidden and a lot of fun desires so dangerous that the writers had to take pen names to protect their identities one of these writers became known as the queen of lesbian pulp Anne bannon's stories were Urban Tales of love and lust in Greenwich Village her books like most of the genre were marketed initially to men looking for a naughty thrill but something quite different happened when girls discovered pulp oh well a bless my soul what's wrong with me I me you like a man on a fuzzy tree my friend say I'm wild as a I'm in love I'm All Shook Up ladies and gentlemen the queen of PP and Bon okay Odd Girl okay I'm going to read you a little bit of the uh first big love scene between two sorority sisters Beth and Laura um fresh from this experience myself these two young women share a room and they have discovered that they are really good friends Beth murmured as Laura's hands began to trace the curves of her back oh that's marvelous many of the pulps were written by men and driven by sex and sales in their stories lesbians were evil or alien and their lives were riddled with tragedy but women were writing romantic stories about women brave enough to Buck the odds to find each other to make a life together in a period that was very hostile to that I think that's why the women all around the country who had no other Outlet loved them I don't know why but I'm feeling so sad I long to try something I've never I got an awful lot of letters from women who hard as it is to believe in the 21st century really did not know that they were not isolated freaky people and it was very painful very tough for them and when these books came out they were usually available on drugstore kiosks at Bus St stations at airports at the train station that was an adventure in itself to have the courage to go up to a clerk in a drugstore with a couple of gay novels and you'd slide them under the box of Kleenex and on top of the toothpaste you sort of try to sneak him past the guy at the cash register the character that I think probably is the most autobiographical is Beth Cullison she is the beautiful senior in the sor house in the original book Odd Girl Out with whom Laura falls in love and many books later having been married and had children Beth finds the courage to break away from a handsome successful young husband and come to New York where she knows Laura is what doesn't occur to her until she gets here is that Laura wasn't in the Deep Freeze while Beth was busy having kids and being married out in Pasadena so it doesn't turn out as she thinks it will but it turns out even better because she connects with bio Brinker I didn't literally see bio Brinker walking around the streets of the village but I wanted to see her Greenwich Village had the same magnetic pole that the Castro came to have or that Paris in the 20s had you had to get here it excited bio intensely all that femininity there was no shame no shock no self-consciousness about it all they were enjoying themselves they were having fun in the most natural way imaginable they were all in love or so it seemed they were what did Jack call it gay we lived in Philadelphia I was newly married and I would come up on the train and uh stay with friends up here we were very frightened of the bars being raided and we knew it would happen and the last thing you wanted was to get hauled off in the Patty wagon and find your name the next morning in the paper I mean that would have been a disaster I had children a lot of women did what a tremendous relief it was for me who could not get out there and live a life to live it through my own imagination and to know this place well enough I could capture a little bit of it and make it real for the women who were hungry for uh connection a populace of now out in proud lesbians have rescued their pulps from the realm of the Disposable dim store novel and transformed them into the treasured artifacts of a pivotal era I would have been very surprised if I had had any idea that I was in a sense writing a social history but I think that's what the Pulp Fiction gave us it was a perspective on a life that was just beginning to be a little more aware of itself as a community and that's why it's it's kind of fun it's a snapshot of what we were and where we got started after the great second World War this December I went to hendrik Martin Institute for a tour I've been wanting to get involved with them for a long time and it's become more and more important to me to reach out to kids and when I went there I was waiting for the tour guide to show me around and I was sitting and watching all the kids and I was so blown away because here were all these very young kids 14 13 14 15 and they were so themselves growing up in Ohio I went to a Catholic school and I was so closeted and so afraid of expressing myself in any way as far as like the clothes that I wore anything and here are all these kids like completely themselves and very free and feeling very safe and it made me feel so good I actually um started crying because I just I sat there and I watched and thought God if only all the kids in America all the kids in the world world could see this and then they they would know that they're not alone I'm John Bartlett and you're watching in the life the entire state population of Maine is less than that of New York's annual gay pride Marge but in this rural landscape activists now battle the Christian Coalition in their search for a new home one bolstered by governmental protection Maine has the dubious distinction of being the only state in the Union where anti-discrimination ation ordinances that have been put in place at the state level have been overturned by referendum not once but twice main speak out formed in 1995 in response to the first Statewide referendum that year and again in the year 2000 Main's politicians passed laws protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing public accommodation and the workplace the mission of Maine speakout is to go out into the community and get conversations going about discrimination about equal rights volunteer speakers for main speakout now number close to 300 we were afraid to walk hand inand around this Cove the way heterosexual couples do it felt like we were back in the closet again we go to colleges we go to Civic groups we will go anywhere the theory is that Shar and personal stories will lead to a change in Maine and influence the next vote while Maine's gay and lesbian activists have lost two Statewide referendum battles on the local level they have seen some recent victories in the small town of Westbrook for example voters recently kept in place laws protecting gays and lesbians and it was a volatile issue Westbrook was an old miltown Westbrook was important in Maine because Westbrook is the home of the Christian coalition here in Maine so basically we defeated the Christian Coalition in their own backyard I founded the co Christian Coalition of Maine in uh 1992 as the head of Maine's Christian Coalition Paul volley spearheaded the two referendums that overturn the non-discrimination laws he succeeded by rallying voters from hundreds of conservative churches across the Central and Northern parts of the state volley charges that laws specifically protecting G days and lesbians unfairly override his right to not associate with them people of Christian faith can have a Christian business or or be Renning property and and suddenly the law says well your faith doesn't count as much anymore now you have to hire somebody or now you have to to rent to somebody and saying well wait a minute why uh why why do I have to give a special consideration to someone who's exercising a lifestyle if I had a rental property I would knly rent to an unmarried couple you know heterosexual couple because my my belief system does not accommodate that lifestyle everyone has refuted that argument of special rights um that the Christian right puts out there Karen G was president of the main lesbian and gay political Alliance before becoming the mayor of Portland our attorney general has written an opinion about the inequalities under main law for gay people our governor has spoken out on it all of our mainstream religious leaders our Business Leaders we are the only state in New England not to have uh Statewide protections it's a spiritual battle with me I'm a born again Christian I take uh the word of God as as as a literal uh when he says it's an Abomination it's a sin a man should not lie with a man or a woman with a woman so forth I take that uh to be to be truthful Reverend Eric Kelly of Portland's Willison West Church takes issue with Paul volle's application of Christian values judeo-christian scripture bottom line deals with accepting people and none of us should stand in judgment over anybody else this church plays a vital role in helping people to to see a normal church family coming together that is comprised of gay couples lesbian couples heterosexual couples we need to all walk towards the day particularly in in religious organizations when we say that everybody is welcome we mean that everybody is welcome whether or not it becomes the reality you know gay rights laws uh I'm true to my belief but perhaps surprisingly volley predicts that the Christian Coalition will eventually lose in Maine on the question of protection for gay men and lesbians in the coastal areas all at the coast interior of the state the people don't want it and what's happened over the years is the coastal areas are growing faster because a lot of people from out of state with more liberal views coming from New York and Connecticut and Rhode Island and Massachusetts and that seems to be the Tipping the balance that's why in all probability the gay rights laws will pass in M wouldn't like it but there there are all sorts of things all sorts of laws that are in no matter what state you go to you may not like but you still live with them we've worked hard in our land to write injustices as we have struggled together Reverend Kelly may have found something that he and Paul Vol agree on we're going to win I mean it's it's going to happen it's going to be at least for for the near future it's going to be a town by town uh uh kind of a process uh but but it will happen and I suspect there will also be further attempts to pass a a Statewide law and I think that there's um you know real energy and effort behind that even though there have been two losses I think people's perception is you just keep doing it until until you get there the main thing that you have to remember if you're in any kind of civil rights work is to keep a big picture mentality the change is not going to occur in a year two years or three years it's going to occur in 10 years the real change that you want hi I'm Kelly Rippa and you're very smart because you're watching in the Life still to come on in the Life A Tale of Two Cities residents don't want to be necessarily involved in the hubub of vibrant commercial strip we call ourselves Mayberry with an attitude the dangerous lies of gay athletes in Fiji the waterfall was 400 ft high and there were three sections of ropes and Harvey firestein meets the perfect match cute butt too next A Clash within a community Chicago's Lake View thrived when gay men moved in and gentrified the area into boy toown but now the neighborhood's very Prosperity is pushing its gay businesses out this is Chicago's North Hall State Street some say it has the country's highest concentration of gay owned and operated businesses affectionately known as boy toown gay men and lesbians from the world over visit the strip for experiences they can write home about and they spend money some $350 million a year is pumped into the city's economy by this neighborhood alone mayor Daly has praised the streets diversity and marked it with these rainbow pillars but the businesses are worried the neighborhood is changing and they feel threatened welcome welcome Sean Smith runs a bed and breakfast on Hallstead Street in the heart of boy toown he says despite how 9911 affected tourism in the rest of the city business along the street has been good holstead is uh a trophy Street um Nationwide I mean and and I get a lot of people here from Europe to London uh they love Chicago we we've been doing well KN on wood and uh uh hope to continue to LGBT Travelers stay longer and spend more money than the typical visitor the draw a concentration of more than 20 clubs along with a variety of retail stores and novelty shops the travel that comes to Chicago is somewhat spoiled because you don't need a car and you can literally visit you know 8 to 10 of These Bars uh in one evening which is nice and just like they like to say stumble home from the bars and not to worry about taking a cab or anything and it's very safe and Hallstead years ago was not a nice place was not uh not a place you want to walk down at night resident Rick Ingram has been involved in the neighborhood for 20 years he says that the $3.5 million the city spent on the look of the street was just the finishing touches on what LGBT businesses spent years creating you know it's concrete and it's pylons and it's streetscaping but it's much more than that it's it it really is the recognition that the city gave to all the work that's been done but the community may be the victim of its own success developers now see profits in selling high-end Condominiums along the entertainment strip residents move in they like it quiet they don't want to be necessarily involved in the hubub of a vibrant commercial strip and uh those conflicts um threaten the commercial District uh quite significantly businessmen and residents worked together when this condo was built next to a gay bath house but when another condo was built next to this late night dance club the new residents complained even though that we were here first it didn't matter Mike machell owns circuit nightclub he spends a lot of his time now monitoring sound levels ever since his new neighbors protested to the city we were taken to the liquor commissioner and we had to uh sit in front of the liquor commissioner and listen from him he told machell to make his neighbors happy turned down the music matello knowing his liquor license was in Jeopardy complied but not without consequences yes it it did affect our business and and I believe that if we can't make it then it's somewhat of a domino effect uh with a with a larger club and then you know it could it could really happen to anyone and it was really polarizing but it was really getting nasty circuit is in Alderman Helen Schiller Ward after after inheriting the problem from another Alderman she's been leading discussions between circuit and the condo owners I learned a lot about planning and I learned a lot about building Community because we had to get we had to get to some kind a point we had to start at a point of building trust we couldn't go anywhere if the trust wasn't there one solution is letting ciruit move its dance floor to another part of their building away from the condo another is a city ordinance is restricting further development but it's too late for this project with its balconies overlooking another one of halstead's popular late night clubs the concern is that those residents that buy in are going to have the same problem that the people up the street had on that club and that they'll be the same types of conflicts and that's a real problem not so says the first one to buy into the new structure B&B owner Smith likes the local and thinks investing on Hallstead is smart he Advocates educating perspective Neighbors on the character of the street I'll be living in there and I want to tell them you know what's going to be happening and and obviously we'll have a a board and um I'd like to be on that and and bring a little common sense to the table that's not to say that he doesn't think the bars have responsibilities you don't want lering in front of a bar at 4:00 in the morning it's it's it's time to go home you know so that's up to the bar owner to take care of that there is one development along Hallstead that everyone seems to welcome the creation of an LGBT community center we think of it as really being a draw a draw for people something that brings people to a particular area and something that keeps people in the area over the long term and we think Center on Hallstead is going to be a true anchor for the street of Hallstead itself with approximately 95,000 Square ft for cultural sporting and community events it will be the largest Center of its kind in the country circuit's owner is eager to welcome it to the neighborhood the center on Hallstead street is an incredible thing uh for Hallstead Street and for the community I was very very excited to see that the city of Chicago paid attention to the community enough to invest into our future and while that future unfolds Chicago's LGBT community will be staying to help shape it some of those folks worked for 20 years or more to make that street what it is they took that street back from street gangs and boarded up buildings to make it a vibrant business community and I don't think they're about to sit sit down and sit aside and let that thing go down uh and be overrun by residences 700 miles from Chicago and deep in the Heart of Dixie is Decor Georgia generally considered a suburb of Atlanta residents say the city has cultivated its own unique hisory history culture and identity and while it may look like many small Southern towns decer or Dyke Acres as it's sometimes called has one of the highest concentrations of same-sex couples in the country meet Sherry Sinclair she moved to Decor in 1987 like daily in Chicago decor's mayor valued the gay community sewing the seeds of diversity in an otherwise hostile Southern soil and it was cheaper than Atlanta this became an enclave for lesbians because housing was affordable we could move here do the garden and um you know and manage to live here while her garden was always a comfort in the early '90s Sinclair was worn out from fighting for LGBT rights in a reluctant State as a diversion her mother suggested she join a Garden Club so I said mother I've been to these Garden clubs I don't think they would want me and so after a a long pause she said then you should start one for your own kind where's the one and that's how the digging dkes of decer was born the Garden Club is an anti-g Club it's the antithesis of a Garden Club it's the opposite of what a traditional Garden Club would be nothing is impossible to the woman who wants to lead a full life and courageously proceeds to do so while the members of the club spoof Southern gentility they are also keenly aware of the importance of their rural Roots deada is such a unique City because it's a small town in a big city I grew up in a small town and I love being able to call my City Commissioner or walk by her house or talk to the mayor we call ourselves a cross between Mayberry and Berkeley or Berkeley or Mayberry with an attitude Kesha Cunningham is in fact St Clair's City Commissioner my official handle is the first openly gay African-American to be elected in the Southeast drawing a compar comparison to boy Town's concentration of businesses Cunningham points out that decar has the highest concentration of residents in Georgia some 18,4 square miles its population is 55% white 45% black and 3% of all couples are in same-sex relationships the fifth highest concentration of samesex couples in the country I'd be very gay here I think I can be as gay as I want to here um the lbgt community is part of the fabric and fiber of who decar is that may seem unusual for a city surrounded by Churches but members of the LGBT community say that's because they're more into nesting than the clubbing found in boy toown we're just more of a family oriented community in general Lynn pascetti moved here 20 years ago and opened her own business she liked the reception she and her family received every Saturday night during the Spring and the fall it's families all over the place and it's gay straight black white young old male female all kind of comingling together which is really nice now she and her partner are raising their third child Daniel and have recently built their dream home it looks more like a house in the country than a city even though you're in a big city you really don't get that big city feel so quality of life here to me is just incredible although limited there is nightlife indicator Eddie's Attic is popular for showing off homegrown musical Talent you guys have any questions right now about anything or did you sign on a wine and for fine dining there is watered actually part owned by homegrown artist Emily sers of Indigo Girls and unlike Chicago decer officials and businesses have been encouraging downtown residential housing seeing foot traffic as essential to further development that it means for us a mix of commercial and residential nice night life good restaurants and a very strong piece of that is going to be the LGBT community others worry about traffic jams parking problems and affordability if you're a lesbian and you're make in your working class or you're making a modest income no it's not better you can't afford to live here you can't afford to pay the taxes yes we are but the digging dyes of decar are proud of their Gardens and their homes even if they're not in maybery anymore one of the moments I will never forget was the Ellen Coming Out episode which I watched with a group of friends when I was in college and I remember about three or four of us gathering in one dorm room and by the Time the show started we had about 10 or 11 people in there of all Persuasions and ethnicities I remember when she finally got to the big line which was I'm gay period nothing else um we were all silent we didn't all burst into Applause but I watched the faces of you know the people who are not gay in the room and it was a silence not of shock or fear or disgust but recognition and it was a very important moment I'm Christopher Rice and you're watching in the life what's left once we have claimed spaces in neighborhoods in fiction and activism Fiji in October 2002 this remote South Pacific island became the site for Eco challenge a grueling Adventure Expedition race four-person teams journey through 500 kilometers of rugged terrain so rugged in fact that only 10 of the 82 teams that entered Eco challenge in 2002 crossed the Finish Line one of the 82 was team ego Subaru this allgate team of middle-aged athletes raced through the jungles of Fiji and onto televisions Across America 4 3 2 1 go well we started off uh with 300 and something other folks and we were just in a big crowd at the starting line we had no Maps we didn't know what we were going to have to do it's like you're thrown in Hell the wonderful thing about Eco challenge is that you see you're stripped naked emotionally whatever happens good or bad that there's no fake in it I'm Roger McFarland I'm captain of Team EO Subaru it's uh two Californians Susan myself and two people from New York Roger and Alana pamel and Susan their role was to be the more experienced ordering gear scheduling collecting intelligence training advice on in various disciplines Roger's tall he's 8 n ft tall and uh he is special Alana is a freak of nature she's 51 but she's she really has better endurance and better strengths Sports specific strengths than I do I think our team strength is uh that we are all very mature on this team that we have all gone through a lot of things in in life well I never in a million years thought at 47 I'd be on this course but God does it feel wonderful to have this chance Subaru laid out the $70,000 cost for the team to compete I guess the the interest with our team is that we're all gay and um honestly that's it's just a Common Thread that brings us together I think that makes it different we can do Sports where you don't have to point your toes we know gay kids have suffered from organized Sports over the years uh both women being forced into the closet and denying it and guys you know being brutalized by it frankly Pamela's been my uh partner uh we've been partners for uh I think 19 years I think we race really well together we you know we take care of each other we watch out for each other on the course and uh it's very it's very special did I say that right I can't imagine racing without her on the team cuz it's just such a natural thing for us to do women and three women particularly a female majority solves problems differently uh we approach conflict differently uh there's a lot more Mutual support and it's a lot easier to ask for help those Team Dynamics are critical in a physical race with intense psychological demands it's physically hard it's scary it's designed to throw curves at you psychologically in this kind of race and this kind of difficulty that anything could happen and you know you you you might lose lose a teammate it's so difficult working between teams and within teams it's an epic challenge here we are checkpoint one we made it just a few more to go at checkpoint one team EOS Subaru and a group of fijians worked together to build a Billy Billy these are the friendliest people in the entire world they offered and we gratefully accepted this Billy Billy sing started in the what was it 3: 4 in the afternoon and and we went straight till 1 or 2 in the morning and and you you you have to stand you can't sit on this thing the team's opportunity came after a grueling year of training and the loss of Roger's Brother David to a when I see what he did uh the way he cared for his brother um the respect he had for him till the end this is really minor compared to that that was a really daunting year for me a heartbreaking back breaking year for me that I was right off to Fiji I had obligations but an injury pulled Roger out of the race and disqualified team EOS Subaru we were walking down a perfectly flat dirt road when uh I lost feeling and motor control in one leg that was accompanied by a lot of pain and I it became more and more difficult to walk over several miles um to the point eventually where I could not walk at all I frankly thought i' had a stroke it wasn't a stroke but the delayed fall out from earlier injury he fell through one of the billies his get and get him get him off the course as soon as possible and the three women journeyed on sleeping 3 hours a night until the seventh day when 150 mi into the race they reach vuwa fall we get finally to the waterfall and we make the cut off and the waterfall was 400 ft High high and there were three sections of ropes but torrential rains made the Falls too dangerous to climb EOS Subaru and 29 other teams were pulled out of the race it's like everything that happens in life every day but compressed in 7 days but really to the extreme of everything now I look back on it and um Dave's death certainly put it in perspective this is not AIDS this is not cancer this is not poverty this is not oppression this is not war this is a race you choose to go to all of that energy examining yourself most middle-aged people don't get a chance to act that out it was like a whole renewal somehow I felt I was stripped of everything and it was down to the essence of who I was and I came back with that and now there's a whole new life to build Eco challenge airs on USA Network in 1977 ABC announced the debut of its prime time satire soap but before soap had even begun to air its gay character Jody Dallas played by Billy Crystal sparked a massive controversy provoking boycotts by groups as disperate as the national gay task force and the national Federation for decency jod for the record is a gay transvestite who looks just marvelous in his mother's gowns and who tries to undergo a sex change operation so that he can stay with his pro football boyfriend but instead the boys break up he slips into a one night stand with the woman fathers a child and after undergoing a legal battle wins custody rights making jod Dallas in 1980 the first openly gay parent on Prime Time television I'm Pamela Sneed and you're watching in the Life next month on in the life the fundamental fight the ex-gay movement wants you and I believe Christ has the power to change people a Jihad within the Nation of Islam religion has been hijacked and children's book books get caught in an adult battle they are now in my possession and librarian you're not getting them back all this and more on in the Life America's Gay and Lesbian News Magazine and finally in the life's Harvey firin walks out of the stage door and into the dating game so what happened was these words are making me nervous this is not funny what happened was you're in my key light well so far that's not offensive come on Papa what do you say I met a guy out of nowhere how do you like that I haven't been dating lately sort of been busy with stuff out of the loop and truthfully Valentine may have been a saint but the last guy I dated was not I needed a breather then from nowhere came this guy he was standing out in front of my theater a few feet from a crowd of people waiting for autographs I don't know why anyone waits in the cold for autographs you can't give him away on eBay anyway our eyes met and I said to him so what are you standing all the way back there for don't you want one to which he replied well maybe after dinner perhaps it was the twinkle in his eyes or his smile that could charm am made but it was a done deal for me cute butt too he followed that brief encounter with a letter and then we shared a few phone calls and before you could say domestic partnership we'd settled on on a date for dinner the day of our big date I got a call from a friend he was a mess his lover of 18 years had announced he was leaving he'd grown tired of their life together and wanted to explore alternate Lifestyles didn't we used to be a alternate lifestyle well this guy wanted to find fulfillment via tattoos multiple piercings and showers in a rainbow of colors my friend was inconsolable I I was disgusted not an hour later I heard from another friend who that very night was to celebrate his oneyear anniversary but his boyfriend decided he needed some space and signed up for a 2year stint tap dancing on a cruise ship it got me thinking about other couples in my realm like the lesbian who' recently borrowed my car to take her partner to an Upstate rehab and another pal who was no longer available for movie Nights because she had personal therapy once a week couples therapy once a we a week group therapy once a week and her mother-in-law once a week which pretty much cut enjoyment down to once a month if she was lucky then I know this gent who recently discovered his lover was having an office Affair not one of those online jobbies either but one involving real live into office memorandum another guy I know has a partner who ran their phone bill to $800 thanks to a newly developed fondness for phone sex and I could go on on and on with infidelities pending divorces and looming rejections still I do know one couple who are exceedingly happy but that's only because they have no idea what the other one is up to if they knew what I knew there'd be no Domesticity in that partnership unless you think I am only bashing gay pairings let me say that my Straight friends put forth an endless font of complaints about lack of sex lack of income lack of housebreaking and lack of Sanity my own personal permanent dating record is filled to overflowing with survived disaster oh how fondly I recall one particularly unpleasant breakup I was so completely miserable that a friend took me by the shoulders look out the window there's a fabulous world out there a world of places to travel and jobs to try and friends to make and strangers to meet and museums to visit and shows to see and parks to wander and lakes to swim there's an entire world of possibilities right outside of your window but you are acting as if the entire world is a big pile of dog do just because one person isn't behaving the way you want them to well I replied isn't that proof that I'm really in love or as Marilyn Monroe and Miss Jane I don't need no stinking silicon Russell Sayang when love goes wrong nothing goes right I took a look at myself in the mirror what was I doing I'm healthy my family is healthy I have a great job all in all I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life and I Was preparing to go out and do what I put away my dress clothes I called up Mr blue eyes and made some lame excuse and instead settled in for an evening at home with my tried and true never let me down partner comforted in the knowledge that should anything ever go bad between us a new VCR is just a short shopping trip away next time I might even upgrade to a DVD a man and have to handle it now if only video rentals came with flowers I'm elen Harris for all of us at end the life here at the national Arts Club in New York thank you for watching we'll see you next month when you're you sh in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation the Gill Foundation the Arcus Foundation The Lily Oren Claus Foundation the OS charitable trust the Johnson family Foundation the Overbrook Foundation The Pride Foundation the Jeff Sora fund of Stonewall Community Foundation the Ted Snowden Foundation the Reed Williams foundation Paul Deo Daniel H renberg and Eugene kosi J shefer and Christopher barley MD and the annual support of in the Life members like you