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SPEAKER 1: So when my father died, she was sitting there with five kids from 2 months to 10 years and thought, well, her skill was teaching. And so she went back to Mankato State College then, and now it's university, and got her degree. And she got a teaching job in Richland, our local town. She taught there until she retired.

And so I grew up in Richland and had the, I suppose, somewhat normal childhood in terms of-- although I was no saint by any stretch of the imagination. When I was in third and fourth grade, I had what's called Legg-Perthes disease, which is a disease that eats away the hip joint. And so I was bedridden for about a year, and then rode-- had wore a brace for another couple of years. Part of that was a touch of polio in there, too.

And that was kind of a learning experience and stuff. I mean, children, as we know now, as we get older, are not always the nicest people in the world and can be cruel. And walking around with a full leg brace with a shoe that was built up another 6 inches, my nickname was Stiffy-- a play on my last name, I suppose, but also on my leg.

Kids can be cruel. So you don't get to-- you're always the last one picked for everything, any sports team, and you can't run or do some of the things that kids do. So I learned some things from that. Otherwise, I mean, you're in everything.

It was a small high school. My graduating class was 56 people. My mother was a school teacher there. So there's another strike against you because you're a teacher's kid. And if you're not the most best behaved, which I wasn't, with checkered past and my rebellion years, I think it was, also gives a new insight into life and growing up.

SPEAKER 2: Well, you talked about some experiences that must have been very painful, particularly as a kid having physical disabilities. And I mean, how did that shape you-- and I mean, have you thought about how that might have shaped your character?

SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Right. I mean, in terms of dealing with my sexual orientation, too, in terms of being gay and knowing that I was basically gay pretty young in a small town, you look at a whole bunch of those things. I mean, you look at how you were treated as a kid.

I mean, when we first came back to my hometown, we lived above a grocery store in a two-bedroom house with four people. My mother basically collecting my dad's pension and Social Security, we were kind of considered on the other side of the tracks a little bit. Although in a small town you still have that, it is not as pointed as you would see in inner city.

And when my mother became a teacher, then you're considered a little bit more respectable. But a lot of the kids that I played with or grew up with were not considered some of the more finer people in the town. And I just didn't totally desert those people because they were my friends, those who I grew up and played with.

Another thing that shaped me was my mother, I think, in terms of growing up in that environment, in a single family. I think I said one time in a speech that some of my political philosophy comes from that. Here is a single woman with five children, wasn't divorced, but it was a single parent. Her husband had died. There were only certain jobs that she could really have avenue to that could support a family.

One of the things I remember in terms of the pay equity issue is that when she taught school there for many years. And one year, she was talking about how the male head of households that taught got $500 more a year, but she didn't get that. Well, finally, she asked for it and demanded it. But it showed you some of the-- you could see certain discriminations that happened to single parents, especially women, in terms of opportunities. So I think that kind of gave me a different perspective on life.

And then being gay in a small town, I mean, you grow up and you hear all the things, and all the things that are said, and how you react to that. And there's no avenue to talk to anyone about that. So that has an experience. I mean, when I got to college at Mankato, I mean, I thought it was like New York City. I mean, in a sense, you had much more in terms of looking at-- in terms of the horizon. There was more things around you that you hadn't experienced.

It was also during the time of the Vietnam war. Protests were really strong. It was also, if you remember, the time where students were pushing for more control over their academic as well as their own personal lives.

SPEAKER 2: You've also been described as a left of left. Would you reject that? Would you just say that being tolerant doesn't translate into left of left? I mean, how do you balance that?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I mean, it's kind of funny because I think that there's enough wealth in this country and resources. There are social programs that we have that-- we can provide it. Maybe some of that's my Christian nature too. I mean, that's the way I was growing up in church, that you help your people out, to help those less fortunate for whatever reason. And--

SPEAKER 2: Well, short of attaching more labels to party movement or particular candidates and politicians, what are your thoughts about the past election and what many said was a rush to the political center? Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I think-- I mean, in politics, a lot of it is perception and the PR game that-- the message and ad message, the perception they give. And so it's a lot of that. It's like within the gay community in terms of when the race looked like it might be a tighter race than what it was.

And in four years before that, Clinton had gotten a large support from the gay community in terms of numbers and finances. And they were mad because of the gays in the military issue and the DOMA in terms of the Marriage Act.

And maybe this is where I say where I'm moderate because I'm-- instead of a lot of-- in terms of the gay and lesbian activists, or I call them the coastal activists in some sense, that really matter said that Clinton had betrayed us. Well, number one, Clinton had always been very firm, very specific about the marriage issue. He was never with us on that.

On the issue of gays in the military, I don't blame President Clinton. I blame ourselves because we pushed too hard. I sat in a meeting in Washington at the White House executive building, discussing this before the inauguration with their staff and with the president.

In terms of talking about that, I agreed 100% with them that the politics wasn't there. We were going to get killed. The support wasn't in the Congress. And so whatever he tried to do, not only with Congress, but the military, he had nothing-- he didn't have the politics lined up. And we were too greedy because we finally got a president who supported us on our issues and willing to talk about. It was there, and we wanted it now.

And after he did the abortion issue, and then this was the second issue, when the president ran on "it's the economy, stupid," we weren't going to win. So I didn't blame the president. And then I'm accused of being a moderate or conservative. And where I live, I'm considered a moderate to conservative politically. And some of that's because of the economics, I think.

But also, I think as you do get older, you get a little bit more in terms of that label conservative because, either through experiences or you figure it's a compromise, sometimes you need to compromise. I mean, I'm sure that people that looked at me 20 years ago in terms of how I dealt with party things and how I dealt with party things as a chair, it was different or it might have been more conservative.

But part of it is, as you learn-- I mean, I try to learn from what I saw from other previous chairs or previous political history of things that happen. Plus, you've got different information. So many spokes coming to you. You have to react to it different. You can't look at it as narrowly.