Transcripts

SPEAKER 1: It's fine to celebrate, but we live in very dangerous times. And either to pretend that Stonewall was some kind of watershed, which we never have to face again, or to congratulate ourselves too easily and quickly on having made all the changes that are necessary, I just think is a very bad move. I'm all for celebration, but I'm basically a person who looks historically. And just as there was a before stonewall, there's an after Stonewall. And it seems to me that with the forces in the culture currently engaged in the organized and really frightening backlash against lesbians and gays, along with a lot of other people, that it's time to pay great attention to the seriousness of the matter.

SPEAKER 2: Police estimates were something like 100,000 at the march. Other people estimated more than a million. Doesn't that speak then to at least the potential for renewed energizing of the gay rights movement?

SPEAKER 1: Absolutely. And I think that's the value of any ritual for any culture. The ritual brings people together, reminds them of history, and then at best points us towards further action.

That's the point of a ritual. A ritual is not a self-congratulatory act only. A ritual always has to do with returning to the daily struggle.

SPEAKER 2: In your view, what does an event like such a mass demonstration do to energize the opposition?

SPEAKER 1: I don't think the opposition needs any events to energize itself quite frankly. It seems quite energized enough. I feel things are at a dangerous pass.

SPEAKER 2: What do you mean?

SPEAKER 1: Well, in Minneapolis, we had, two weeks ago, a judge overturned the city's having passed domestic partner benefits for their workers. And now we've had the city council have to vote again to do that. That will be appealed by the lawyers who are opposed to this. There are people everywhere who are very upset about whatever it is that we as sexually different people threaten in them because I'm quite sure it's about being threatened. Because the heterosexual people I know who are happy, and content, and clear in their own lives don't need to harass me.

SPEAKER 2: What kind of strategy do you think the gay rights movement might employ in the next few years?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I can only speak about me and the people that I think about. And it seems to me that the way to change people best is on a small scale. I'm not a global politician. I'm a small-scale politician.

So for me, the most important thing we can do is to be more and more out and to have more and more of us feel safe enough to come out. Because if a person has worked beside another person who's been closeted, which is true for virtually everybody in the country, if the person who doesn't know about the sexual orientation of their colleague has views about the theoretical practice called homosexuality or gayness and lesbianism, then when the person that they know says to them, wait a minute, I have to let you understand, you're talking about me, my friends, my family, my whatever, then that other individual, it seems to me, has two options. He or she can either write off the individual that they think until that moment is competent, friendly, pleasant, good, funny, clever, intelligent.

SPEAKER 2: Their friend.

SPEAKER 1: Their friend. Or they have to enlarge their ethical and moral picture to include people who are different from them. And I think that in as many cases as not, the persons that I certainly have come out to have made that latter decision. They've made a bigger picture. That's the way I think you overcome any prejudice.

Same thing is true with racism, anti-semitism, ableism, anything. It's based on a view I have that's never called into question by a live body who says, but here I am and I'm one of those. What do you do now? And so that's the level of change that I'm really interested in is more, and more, and more lesbian and gay people feeling that they can come out.