Get Used to It: Ep. 143, "Pride Today"

(typewriter clacks) (upbeat music playing) - Hi, welcome to 'Get Used To It'. I'm Sheila Kuehl, and I generally walk you through our hour show every month, or every week, or every night, if you watch it really often. And today we've got a great show for you. As you know, June is pride month. And if you didn't know that, now you do, gay pride, mostly, or LGBT pride. And so I thought we should do a show about pride, but maybe not the show that everyone expects, because the question I wanna ask our guests today really has to do with what did we mean when we invented this concept? Did we invent it? Did we just adopt it? Did it help us? Was it a strange things? Did we still need it? You know, just things to talk about in terms of pride and maybe something to think about as well. I have three wonderful guests today. Torie Osborn, who's been on the show many times before. We're really happy that you're here. Torie is an author. She is a senior strategic advisor to the Mayor of Los Angeles, his office, Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as several foundations, national and here in California on issues of poverty and other important things to our communities, Torie welcome. Phill Wilson, who is the CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, which is a think tank on issues affecting AIDS in the black community. But of course, far beyond that, and one of our great thinkers, welcome back, Phill. - Thank you. - And our third guest is Herb Hamsher, who has been a psychologist who was a professor for the past 25 years, has been a manager and producer in the entertainment industry, is coming out with a new movie in September, which we must all see called, tell me again? - 'Save Me'. - [Sheila Kuehl] 'Save Me', who can forget that title? (group chuckles) And perhaps most importantly, these days, is a board member on the board of the Point Foundation, which gives educational grants to young LGBT kids at risk who just need help and hope, so welcome, Herb. - [Herb Hamsher] Thank you. - Phill, let's start with you. - Okay. - Maybe the first time I ever heard the word pride used in a context was black pride. So what do you think this is all about? Did we need it, do we need it? Is it important to the gay community? Anything you wanna say about it? I'm just curious at your take. - [Phill Wilson] Well, you know, I think to your original questions, the answers could be yes. You know, but you talk about the first time you heard, you say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. And what's interesting is as a community matures, what it means to be prideful changes. And, in fact, in the beginning, of the LGBT movement, quite frankly, then it was really the gay movement. What it was, what it was really about, is not being ashamed, but that's not a really good slogan, (group laughs) the not ashamed march or parade. It is not a good mobilizing tool. And so... But that's where we were really. And by and large, when people need to kind of claim, I'm proud, usually that's an indication that they're not, it's kind of, me thinks she protested too much, but I think that over time what's happened, and often it happens, is that we said it and we said it and we said it and it became true. Now, and it became much more than the fact that we're not ashamed. And I think that's true in black communities, and that's true in the LGBT community as well. I think the question for us today, that for our community today, is quite frankly more complicated. Now, I think the bar has gone up, now that it's not enough to just not be ashamed. I think that, as we look at where we are, into this new century and we should be really talking about and looking at our role as a part of the human race, as a part of global citizens and what have you. And so when we think about what do we have to be proud of, it has to be much broader than our limited interests. And I think we're starting to see that, I think more and more and more, not only are we beginning to accept our responsibility for the planet as a whole, whether we're talking about race relations, or urban planning, or the environment, or poverty, or any of those, or HIV and AIDS for that matter, then we are beginning to play more critical roles in those areas and appropriately so. So, at the end of the day, I think that, certainly as I think about myself, and the different person I am at 52, for example, than the person I was at 24, the first time I went to a gay pride parade, I find that it is much less about know how I react to the world from the narrow perspective of sexual orientation, and much more of how I integrate the lessons learned as a black gay and in my case, HIV positive person, and how I use that as I interact, and hopefully have an impact on the larger world. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, we still do things as a separate community, in a way. We have a month, we have black history month, and it should be so what the other 11, are, you know, white history month, I don't, you know, what's that about? - [Phill Wilson] Yes. - And we have heroes on postage stamps, a series. We haven't had ours yet, but maybe in the gay community, we will. And we have, of course, celebrations, we have Juneteenth, we have gay pride. There must still be a reason or a positive aspect to getting together. I know when people march, you know, when PFLAG marches in the gay pride parades, it means something to those parents and to their children. So do you still see something in that that's not just about separatism, but a value in and of itself? - Absolutely. I think that celebrating the human spirit, and that's the way I see the pride celebrations, it's more about celebrating the human spirit and it manifests itself in different ways. I mean, at the end of the day, we are human beings, are tribal in nature, and there's kind of this need to find my tribe, and my tribe can be sexual orientation, or race, or gender, or age, or health status for that matter. And we have this desperate need to find our tribe and to celebrate that. And I think that in America where so much of our history, even though we don't want to admit it, or to talk about it now, is one of other and marginalization. Now, since as a country, we are a country of immigrants, who were escaping from a place where they were not welcome. You look at the pilgrims and what have you, that's about people escaping from a place and trying to find home. And what's so bizarre about that, is that it seems like every time a group finds home, they become committed to making sure that the following group is not welcomed. You know, it's kind of an interesting paradigm. - Well John Steinbeck's last book was called 'America and the Americans', And it's not one that everybody knows very much about, but I actually think it was one of his great books. And in it, he said, I'll just bet you that when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the first guy that jumped off, to tie off the rope, or whatever they do, turned around and said, "okay, now this is my country, the rest of you foreigners go home." - [Phill Wilson] That's right. Exactly. Exactly. - [Herb Hamsher] I'm on board, pull up the rope. - Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like, sort of a balance in there. We need to be with our tribe, and there's a sort of contrarianess, I'm not sure that's a word, about the stuff that we do when we celebrate. I mean, gay pride is still a very racy event, the parades, et cetera. And we had a role in saying, we're not thinking about not only sexual orientation, but frankly, sex. - [Phill Wilson] That's right. That's right. - The same as everybody else. - [Phill Wilson] Well, you know, it's funny, because over the last few years, there appears to be an annual debate on whether or not the LGBT pride are marches, or should be marches or parades, and it seems that there's always this debate, where folks who are saying, well, don't mess up the parade by all of these issues, you know? AIDS is a downer, politics is a downer, let's not do that. And then there are other folks who are angry because there are these folks that don't understand the efforts and the struggles, and that went on to create this space. And in many ways, it's kind of both are true. You know, one of the reasons why we went through the marches, quote unquote, and the struggles and what have you, is so that there are now young LGBT people who don't experience that, that was the point, (group chuckles) and yet we get angry because they don't appreciate the struggle, but the flip side of that is that while there certainly are lots of folks who don't experience that now, and again, whether we're talking about race, or sexual orientation or gender, the truth of the matter is that a lot of us still haven't arrived. We're still having... We should not forget no matter how comfortable we get in West Hollywood or Newtown or the Village, or DuPont Circle, we should not forget that there are kids, who are in fact being thrown out of their houses every day. There are people who are being not only beat up and killed, that people are losing their jobs every single day, people are losing their families, every single day. And so I think that in many ways, although it's uncomfortable to have that tension, probably that tension is absolutely appropriate because it is the way that we celebrate that we are not where we used to be, while acknowledging we are not where we need to be, and understanding that it is better for all of America in this case, if we move forward to getting to the place where we need to be, not just LGBT people. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, Torie, we were actually talking about that. You called it a doorway in terms of whether there was a population that needed to think of it in sort of the old way of pride. And then where are the rest of us? So, what do you think about this issue? Or start anywhere you want, if you were thinking of somewhere else to start, about this issue of pride, whether we still need it, whether we ever, how did we express it, et cetera. - [Torie Osborn] I'm still trying to reconcile the seven deadly sins, and pride being one of the seven deadly sins. It's my spiritual conundrum of the month. - [Sheila Kuehl] And what about going before a fall? - Right, and then pride goes before a fall. - Exactly. - Well, what, actually, what I said was about a gateway and I was thinking of a G-A-Y, there's always people coming up, just what Phil said. There's always people coming out. There's always people that need to have that, to have that experience of walking from the isolation of the closet or the rural area, or the uncaring family through, into that glorious communal space where you feel... It's a healing experience. I mean, because so much of our oppression, traditionally, has been experienced first within the family, our families of origin. So we've needed these healing rituals, these communal healing rituals of being together. We're such social creatures because of that, more than any other kind of oppressed minority, it's the isolation of being gay, of growing up alone in a crowded family. That often was our first banishment from the tribe, was often whether literally or psychically, was often our first experience of our own otherness, both, within, so we've had to create alternative families. We've had to create. It's why community building has been the infrastructural... The groundwork of our political movement has been those 10,000 organizations that we've built, whether they're centers or social clubs, or, my... Oh, my favorite example, from Salt Lake City, the Gay Recovering Mormon Stitch and Bitch Club, (group laughs) We've sought each other to heal the pain of that isolation of being grown up. So, gay pride events were the most visible and largest and first institutionalized annual. And there's always new people coming out. And, I think what I'm struck by, when I go now, is how many non-gay people there are on the sidelines, how many people are coming, having a picnic and bringing their kids down. And I guess there's a little bit of a voyeuristic, it may be a little odd, but I also think this is how a lot of people learn about us and make their first outreach. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, especially when there's always festivals at the same time and booths you can go to, and I don't know what the kids learn, but... - [Torie Osborn] Well, I don't know, it does in Los Angeles anyway, I don't know if this is true in other cities, but in Los Angeles, this is a very big... There are many people from around LA, from different cultures who are coming to celebrate gay culture that day. It's become really much more than just for us, but still it is the first, it's often the first passage way into gay-dom, into identity, and pride has been, and I think for minority, for anybody, I mean, I regret that International Women's Day is not celebrated anymore. I remember many, many, many, many International Women's Day marches on March 8th. And so, I think that one's kind of gotten lost to history. We had May Day recently, and that started out as a labor holiday. And it's been now... It's been recast in this kind of immigrant labor holiday, so we need those collective rituals of self affirmation. First, you accept yourself and then you can show up, and be yourself and other people can accept you. So, and constantly kids coming up and coming out. And actually, I sat next to a guy at event the other night who came out at, they're still coming out in their forties and fifties. We tend to think that just because things happen in generational or cohorts, or there's a developmental arc that everybody's with the big cohort. And it isn't true at all. People are always constantly coming out. And so I think it serves a very important purpose. I was thinking, what would the world be like if we didn't have these gay pride parades? I mean, I take them for granted. I don't always go anymore. I don't show up every single year. I don't mark it on my calendar nine months ahead of time. Make sure I don't take a trip and show up. It used to be a must show up thing. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And now sometimes I do, and I don't even feel guilty about it. (group laughs) There's lots of other young Irish lesbians. They don't need me anymore. And that feels just fine. But I do think... I was thinking, what would the world be? What would it be like if we didn't have it? And even the... And I think it would be really sad. - [Sheila Kuehl] And back into the silence, the invisibility, I mean... - [Torie Osborn] We'd still have a movement and we'd still have a center, the centers, I just mean that one kind of gay pride, that one sort of annual collective rite of passage and celebration. And you know, I just... I think it's... I think it's important. I do wanna say, that I do think we're in, as Phil does, I think we're in a different era. I think that identity politics that we're in, a sort of, I don't know, post identity. I dunno what the right language is, but it's really not that people don't... Not that coming out and identity aren't important, and experiencing it, and exploring it, and owning it and claiming it. And I'm still proud of all my little freckled in other identities. But I do think that there are, that there are life cycles to social movements and there are life cycles to messages, and to the political, there's an arc to everything. And I do think that we're in a different time in this millennium and in this... I think we're at a time when what is called on us is that we show up for the world and figure out what we're gonna do about these out of control corporations that are ravaging the world and this global warming and this poverty. And we now have food shortage. Hello. We have middle class people in America, who are experiencing... Middle class people who are not eating so their kids can have full plates, let alone what's happened for the bottom 40%. - [Sheila Kuehl] I think that raises a very good issue, that you had also been talking to me about, which is the question of whether we're in many ways, so normalized, this is gonna sound funny to people who are still being discriminated against, at work or in Kansas or by their families or whatever, but that we're so normalized that we don't need to be proud of being gay anymore. That we're just... that's part of what I am. You know how people used to say, and I just happened to be gay. I'm the CEO of the Bank of America, and I happened to be gay. And you were telling me about the New York Times, not your own article, which was absolutely fabulous, but the... - [Torie Osborn] Cover of the magazine. - Yeah. - [Torie Osborn] With these two young, 20 somethings white gay men, in their suburban kitchen, looking just for everything, like something out of Betty Crocker Cookbook in the 1950s. And, that little devil inside me wanted to say we'll see how long this lasts. I mean, the women's movement came out of this revolution happened from this kind of normal. That looks like a completely unreal, but it, yeah, I mean, that article was exploring the new normal, which sort of monogamous marriage in the twenties for young gay men. I mean, this is unthinkable five years ago, let alone 20 years ago. I don't know how normal it is, frankly, but it's... - For anybody. - For anyone. - Let's be clear. - Anybody in their twenties getting married, it's like a bad idea, but at any rate, but I do think that things have moved so far so fast for our community. That it's even possible to posit that as one reality, that thousands, or I dunno, hundreds of people are experiencing. And that does, it does change things, when you change society, it changes and the terrain changes and suddenly you look around and it ain't what it was when you first were fighting and protesting. And it's out of the... Out of the suites and into the streets, and then outta the streets and then into the, I dunno, kitchens, but it was, I... I actually think that we will never not need gay pride events and weeks and celebrations. And we've expanded these rituals to other things to these days of silence now that they do, about gay and school safety issues. And, we've created some more, perhaps even more compelling, more at the edge of changing things, rituals. But I think we're in, you know... I do think we're in a new world with new... That we have to borrow some of the spirit, some of the lessons, some of the tools. And I actually think that the next great coming out, the next great awakening, the next great coming out, is gonna be all the people who want real change in this country and the world. And I keep thinking, it reminds me, I think about when we were so scared when we were inside of the closet, we would sort of find each other, or we would go to those bars. And we were just scared, cause we were... We had no idea what the consequences, or we did know what the consequences were. We'd lose jobs, we'd lose family. I didn't go home for seven years. My family ostracized me for seven years. We've all suffered the consequences of homophobia. But when you're inside that fear, you can't imagine, you can't, we could no more have imagined those two young gay men on the cover of that New York Times magazine. It was unimaginable. I mean, we can laugh. We can laugh about it now, but that's because it's real. And I really think we're at this... In this other, we're in this other place where we know that we have no choice, but to come out, I don't know what we are. What are we progressives who want, wanna change the world? I dunno. there's gonna be some discourse, but we cannot any longer tolerate the madness that is going on. The systems are broken. The world is crazy. And I think we're gonna have... You know me, I'm ever the optimist, but I think we're gonna have the next revolution of pride. And it's really gonna be what Phil was talking about. It's gonna be about our shared humanity. It's gonna be beyond identity, while not forgetting who we are, bringing all of that, to this next great revolution or whatever. - [Sheila Kuehl] You know, it's interesting. My colleague in the state senate, Darryl Steinberg, who's gonna be the president pro tempore next year, is a activist in communities related to autism children's issues, but primarily autism, and they have a ribbon and it's a rainbow ribbon, but it doesn't look exactly like our rainbow ribbon. It's a little bit more pastel, a little bit different. But I think the notion is really the same. And that is, I'm not sure, because they don't think of it as pride. And yet I think that these are also lessons people get from our community, from other communities it's awareness first. It's kind of like here's who I am. Herb, for many years, you were a psychologist and a professor. And now working with the... with gay kids at risk, who just have been kicked out of their houses. And now just want to go to school. What do you think about this issue that we've been talking about? Need it, don't need it? - Well, we need pride. Human beings need pride, but I have to give you a little bit of a context in terms of where I come from, in relating to being gay, because, no surprise to you who know me, I don't think of things the way everybody does. I have always been convinced, I've always said that it's a blessing to be gay. I've thought that since I was very, very young, and one of the reasons, is because I think that the universe created us for a reason. And the reason is to be in the world in a way that shows the rest of the world, another way to be. And so it is no... It's no accident. It's a challenge that we are born into families that don't share our identity. And therefore we are marginalized from the beginning. We, it it's like every other minority as you grow up, you come home from the outside world, and talk about your experiences, and your family says, don't worry about it. We've all been there, but you are one of us, and we love you and you're terrific, and don't ever let them take that away from you. We don't have that. We have the opposite, we have... What the kids that apply for Point scholarships have, which is when they tell their families that they are gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgender, they say, you're not a part of this family. You know, I always often say that we're born behind enemy lines, you know? (group chuckles) But to me, the experience of pride is recognizing your own value. Now, as a... I think that also you have to be clear with language, whether we're talking about pride personally, psychologically, spiritually, which is the way I think of it, or socially or politically. And I think that all of those are different... Each of those is different, but, in terms of the community sense of pride and the festivals, I think that where that came from was not so much pride, but protest. And, I think it's just like black is beautiful and black pride. It was standing up to people and saying, wait a minute, you're not gonna tell me what I think of myself. Well, I think real pride comes from recognizing that you're here to show them something, not from reacting to what they're trying to show you. See, I mean, the focus is on homophobia because we put the locus of power out there. We are a politically organized community because we focus on what they have that they won't give us. I have always believed that what we should be doing is, I've always said to people, you have to notice that God made us without eyes in the back of our head. And what that means is to have total vision, it requires people embracing each other so that you can tell each other what you can't see and what we are here for, as far as I'm concerned, all of us as human beings is to mirror back to each other. And we as a community are here not only to mirror back to our families. As I said to my mother, when she got upset, when I came out, you know what? I'm never gonna buy into your nonsense. I don't think I'm your failure. I think I'm your success. And I think it behooves you to get that, but we should be in my eyes mirroring back to this country that this country has lost any sense of what this country is about. And I've always said when AIDS hit our community, and the country and the government turned its back on us, viciously and intentionally, not passively, we stood up and said, you know what? Nevermind, we will create an alternative world. We will provide medical services. And that's when gays and lesbians finally became a community because people like Torie Osborn came in and said, you guys don't know what you're doing. (group laughs) Move over, Let us help you here. But because of that, I have always said that we saw the underbelly of this country, this country pretends to be loving and compassionate and accepting. It's not, it is that, and it is the opposite of that. But what happened when protease inhibitors came in, is that we lost that sense of community because we were built around the structures of an alternative culture that I think recreated America, it's like back then, we were like the origins of this country, I think. And we were showing that to the rest of this country, to the rest of the world, which is why a lot of straight people, I think, came and said, wait, wait, wait, I wanna be a part of that. I mean, this isn't your issue. This is the way I want to be in this country. That's the way I wanna be in the world. So all of that leads to, it depends on which window you're looking out when you're talking about - [Sheila Kuehl] But part of what you said though, in terms of reflecting and you know, seeing the thing that the other person can't see and saying, this is what I want to show you, take it or leave it. There's also an aspect in us, I think, in our families, in our friendship circles, and frankly in our country, where we feel that we need regard, however, that we need other people's validation for better or for worse, whether it's a friend or a family, or you know, your political group. So, in a way we could say, here's what we have to give you. But I do think you have to admit there's a need as well. And I'm not sure whether pride in some of its early moments or maybe all the way through, was also about, see me, love me, get me. Okay, I wanna tell you who I am, but I need you to get me. And I'm gonna put up my rainbow flag on my doorstep and see if the rest of my neighbors will get me, but you don't do it cause you hope they'll all stay away from your picnic. You do it in a way so that you hope they'll say, okay, I see who you really are and I'm coming to your house anyway. - [Herb Hamsher] Right, but, again, you have to remember that I have always said that childhood is the same as a POW camp. - [Sheila Kuehl] I do remember when you've said that. - So you you're brainwashed as a child, your brainwashed as a child to need their approval. You don't need their approval. I've always said that one of the best kept secrets in the world is if they're not treating you well in your house, you can crawl down to the next door neighbor and they will love to have you, cause everybody likes little babies, but people don't want us to know that we don't need other people in the way that we think we do. We are brainwashed, now it's wonderful to have it. But the point is when I think we stood up at Stonewall, it wasn't because we needed their approval. It was because we were saying, you know what? We don't need your approval. And what's great about the pride celebrations. And you know, that's why it's always so frustrating within this community because people are saying, oh, if only the drag queens weren't there. And if only the leather guys weren't there, because that's all the media focuses on. It's like, I love the diversity. And the point is we are... We are sticking it in their face. That's the point. We are telling them, you people don't understand what it's like to accept yourself. You don't even understand about gender. You don't understand about roles. So, of course we're poking fun at it. - [Phill Wilson] So some of it, some of it is more than just acceptance. I mean, because if you really look at it, now the Stonewall riots were really about survival. We finally reached a point that we finally got it, that they're gonna kill us. I mean just, wow. they're going to kill us. And again, if you look at other kind of experiences, the one that we most often relate to, is in the black community movement and civil right movement, it was about people saying, I have to stand up because if I don't stand up, they're gonna kill me. And so it is a part of that, but is a part of the other part of it as well. You know, my family is from a small town in the south. And I remember as a little boy, walking through Macomb, Mississippi, and everywhere you would go, people would use this phrase and I've never forgotten. And I think that it's really significant when we talk about pride, and that need, people will say, who do you belong to? Who do you belong to? And basically what they're saying in our case is... in my case, who's your grandmother, and my cousins and I would say, that we're Ula's grand baby, that's who we... That's who we belong to, because that was my grandmother's name. And I think that a lot of this is about affirmation, which is actually separate from acceptance, you know? And I think that, that's why, a lot of, what Torie said, is that we recreate these families because as human beings, we do have to have an affirmation, because when you're born behind enemy lines, there's no one to tell you, to affirm you, no one to tell you, who do you belong to. And so what happens is that we reach a point in our lives where in fact, we can find that out for ourselves, and we go to each other and we get that affirmation. And we discover that I belong to Herb, and I belong to Torie And that's who we belong to. And I think, to that degree and every single day, there's someone who's asking themselves, well, who do I belong to? And when you look at the tragedies that happen in our communities, the teen suicides, or what's happening when people are falling into the addictions around meth, more often than not, it's about the isolation, that being overwhelmed by the isolation, because they've not figured out who they belong to. - [Herb Hamsher] But I see, I think that it... I have always believed that actually everybody should create their own family. I've always said that you aren't really a grownup and you're not really autonomous unless you have left your family, your biological family and created your own. Now that can include your biological relatives, but you, I mean, I often noticed that one of the verses in the Bible that Christians very seldom quote is Jesus said, if you will follow me, you must leave your mother and father. That's not quoted very often within Christianity, but I think that it was a profound piece of wisdom, that if you are going to find yourself, if you are going to have pride, you have to divorce yourself from all of the influences, all of the brainwashing that you have been subjected to. Cause I've always said that coming out really doesn't have anything to do with saying you're you're gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgender. It has to do with an existential moment when you realize that all of the forces of the universe, and that's all of the forces, the family, religion, law, education, fear, instructor, everything pushing you in one way. And you say, actually, no, that's not my experience. That's not my truth. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, I think it's the oppositional... I was thinking what you were all talking about. The question of the value of the oppositional nature of pride that is, you can say it's about difference and other people have made us feel different, but in a way it feels some like we're pushing back and saying, as you've indicated, I am different from you. And I'm going to value that in the light of nobody else doing it in the whole world that I know of, but you were talking Torie, about the fear. And I think that's where... - [Torie Osborn] Well, I think there's this, I don't know if it's an existential, I mean, I agree with what you're saying, and more over, I actually think I'm reaching for something here. So it's not completely, I think we're all, I think we're actually in the... Maybe in the world, it's certainly in this country, we're kind of reaching for these moments of truth telling, of just like slicing through to what you really know inside and which is a... Which reaching for... Which is a kind of a courage. I mean, it takes courage to come out. It took courage to me, for me to buck my family and to kind of just... I mean... I was lucky because it was the seventies and there were... Lesbian feminism was sprouting. And I was part of... I was not alone in my creating this counter cultural feminist pro-lesbian world. And so I wasn't coming out all alone, but there is an aloneness in it. It's kind of, and I think that this coming out, about this owning of our core essential truth, and then connecting with others. I mean, I think that for me, as this could be like a middle aged thing, but I have become increasingly aware of what I share with people. I have become increasingly aware of empathy for the most extraordinary set of people that I never thought I would feel empathy for. And I'm convinced, whether it's like the homeless crazy guy or whether it's the cop that I never... I always have hated cops and working at city hall, I learned to just like, I worked with a lot of cops, and I really got over my, you know, I really got to bond. And so what's happened to me, and I'm convinced it comes from my lesbian part, from my truth telling part, from my having gone through the AIDS epidemic and having to face so much grief and loss from my gay divorce, all the things that over time, give us some wisdom and help us find ourself or find deeper parts of ourself or something like that. I am absolutely convinced that this core thing of speaking who you are and standing on that ground and reaching for others to create something new is what... It's revolutionary, and we need to.. more of us need to do more of it. And, whether you call it... I mean, I know this is weird, it feels a little retro. This is where the pride feels a little retro, because there's gotta be some new discourse at some point, we have to say the next iteration is different, and the next iteration's gonna look and feel different because we've been on this territory. So this is where I don't... Where I don't have the answers. But for new people coming in, I know that we always are gonna need gay pride for the next revolution. I don't know what we're gonna call it, but I have a feeling those ribbons or those badges, or those totems are gonna be a little different. - [Herb Hamsher] But you are talking about exactly what I am referring to, because the reality is that growing up as a child is a lonely experience. Every child feels alone. Every child feels not understood. And I've always said, I have yet to meet any human being that thinks they are the right stuff. Everybody thinks that they are a disappointment to their parents. And what you're talking about is what I'm talking about, because what I'm saying is because we're gay, we have to confront it, and then we own it. And, what we haven't discovered yet is that we ought to be going out into the world and saying, oh, just so you know, you guys, we can help you because I... - [Torie Osborn] But are we doing that Herb? Isn't that in fact... - No, we're protesting against their power - No, no, no. But that's not true. - I don't think that's happening anymore. I think that's where it started. But, I think that in fact, you're absolutely right that we all have a sense of other. And that's what people miss about who is harmed by homophobia or racism for that matter. Because when we say it's okay to marginalize anyone's other, and we know that we all have a other, some of us have a better way of hiding our other than others, that what happens, that the planet becomes a more hostile place for all of us, and one of the gifts that we give to the world is we give to the world the fact that, okay, you see that we're an other, but we can survive and we can thrive and we can love, and we can give, and I think that, relative to HIV and AIDS, that the example that we gave to the world was a remarkable gift that we gave to the world. I don't know that there are other communities that would've responded in as magnanimous a way as we responded to this epidemic. I mean, the things and the institution that we created, and that's a tremendous gift. - [Herb Hamsher] But I don't think that we have really, truly anchored our biggest gift, which is why I say, that we were created by the universe for a purpose. We are defined by the fact that we are sexual beings. We are homosexuals. - [Sheila Kuehl] I mean, they define us - but that is our definition, now it escapes attention... - [Phill Wilson] I wish it was still my reality, but... (group laughs) - [Sheila Kuehl] There's a lot of that going around. - We'll introduce you. But the point is that it escapes notice both from us and from them that they are sexual too. And they are in absolute and utter denial. I have always said that this would be a totally different world if straight kids had to go to their parents and say, I know this is gonna be upsetting to you, and I know you don't wanna hear this, and I know I'm gonna be a disappointment to you, but I am really sexual. And you know, I'm gonna have sex. And if it's a problem for you, then you're gonna have to deal with it. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, of course, that's the other interesting thing about pride, is that as a Martian anthropologist, I have to say, we don't care at all about these differences that all of you humans seem to take about each other. You know, I mean, it makes a lot of difference seems to be what color you are, but not what color your eyes are. Seems to make a lot of difference what sex you sleep with, but not who you work with. - [Herb Hamsher] Yeah. - You know, what are these distinctions about? We don't get it on Mars. And the interesting thing about our community, of course, is that in order to render yet another group of people lesser, like people, we can fire, people we don't have to give as much money to, people we can put in jail, people we can kill, another lesser group. Let's see what can we think, ah, who they sleep with. That's just about it and everything else, which of course is the reason for the rainbow, is the same as everybody else across the board. Good, bad, tall, short, whatever, it's all the same. But because they segregated us into a POW camp in a way, we all got to know each other and found that we identified... it seems to me things that we shared, in addition to that, now, maybe everybody else shares it too. But that became kind of the lessons that we had to teach because of the communal aspect, because of how we had to deal with AIDS and then HIV because of rescuing each other in order to rescue ourselves. So, I never have quite figured out how we made lemonade out of lemons, which is essentially kind of what we were called upon to do. I mean, what lesbians learned from gay men was how they were just so funny and campy and made light of a really terrible situation. - [Herb Hamsher] Exactly. - And what they learned from us was political, political, political, go handcuff yourself to something. (group laughs) And that all became pride. You know, the campiness was pride, the way... The way... What was the group of queer activists? - [Torie Osborn] Queer Nation? - Queer Nation... Not Queer Nation, but... - [Torie & Herb] Act Up? - No, with... That wore tutus. - [Phill Wilson] Oh, the Radical Faeries? - The Radical Faeries. - The Radical Faeries. - You know, what did we learn? So much. - Harry Hay for heaven's sake, our roots. - Right. Absolutely. I mean, it just, it's funny, because that's what I mean about pride. - [Torie Osborn] Well, it's still what we bring. I mean, none of that has gone away just because the coherence of the community, the height of the AIDS epidemic within the gay community has dissipated a little bit. None of that has gone away. And I still see when I... Now that I'm working more in non-gay worlds, the last 10 years or whatever it's been, I still see that when you get an out lesbian, and an out or an out gay man, or let alone a critical mass of several in a workplace, or in a meeting or in a company, it changes. And the culture changes, things lighten up, the humor shifts, the references shift, that we do still bring sensibilities. And I don't think there's just one. I think we are healers. And I think we're artists. And I think we think out of the box, and I think we're funny as hell, or gay men are funnier, okay, it's true. They're funnier than lesbians. But lesbians are... - [Herb Hamsher] Lesbians are more powerful. - Lesbians move the ball down the road, lesbians the best organizers on the planet, I'm sorry, but we are... We make things happen, but we bring all of that still into the world. Now it comes, it meets up with other cultural pieces and people who have multiple parts, multiple cultures coming together, bring both of them. But I do think this is still what's going on. We are recreating in the ashes, in the sort of crumbling structures of a dying order of a horrible militaristic, violent, insane world that has, is just, I mean, think of it. It's just... What's going on in the planet, it's insane. We're destroying the polar bears are dying. And the poverty is unbelievably increasing and such a rapid rate. In the middle of that, we're creating a new world. I mean, that's what I think is really happening. And if we can keep bringing pride and in its multiple meanings, and if we can bring that truth telling, that absolute refusal to be told by other people who you are. I mean, that's the core of it, I think, that's the core of the nub of it. It's like we walked through our shadow side, we walked out of the closet into the sunlight, and it changes, it gets a little diffused and you forget a little. You don't... And it's not as pure when I worked at the gay and lesbian center was surrounded by gay LGBT people all the time. It's like, my life was pure queer. I never was around straight people and I kind of forgot what it was like, and now I don't live in that world anymore, but I bring my little dikely jokes and we each do that. And we are part of creating a new world as the old one dies. - [Herb Hamsher] But part of the complexity of the community also, I think, is that we are finally a very multi generational community. It's like... So, it's like... I don't... I did literally used to schedule the gay pride. It was always on my calendar year in advance. I don't do that anymore, but, I don't go to the disco either. (group laughs) - [Phill Wilson] That's true. Yeah, well, and... - [Torie Osborn] do you still go to the disco? - I definitely don't go to the disco. And what's horrible is that there have been years with my travel that I have been in, in some years, as many as four or five different cities on pride day and not have made a pride that year, because again, I don't schedule it, but I think that is important because I think that the pride that was, was a pride about saving ourselves. And I think that the pride as it will be, will have to be either about expanding how we define ourselves or saving the planet, but at the end of the day, it is about a celebration about saving, and I think that's the transition going back to your... - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, I think it's also a threshold to politics, I mean, it has been the doorway that you were talking about for young people to come into this community and find themselves, has always been a doorway for so many people into other stuff. - [Herb Hamsher] Yeah. - I was thinking when you were talking about your international trips, I mean, you're called upon to go to a lot of places and just being in other countries, and Torie, you connected with the woman from Ireland who was rewriting the entire, the lesbian, who was rewriting the constitution of New Ireland and how those little parades are so frightening at first in places to stand up in Moscow and have a parade or not frightening, to be in Sydney, Australia and the entire city turns out for gay pride. It's like my pride, your pride, I don't care, it's a party, you know, and how those vary in various nations, but how important that still is as a kind of a conduit to understanding oppression or understanding discrimination or understanding liberation. - [Herb Hamsher] Yeah, and the pride celebration is, as I was saying before, also partly protest, and protest is a component of pride. It's often a pathway to pride, but it's also dynamically, just like a child has to rebel against their parents. If their parents are trying to turn them into something I've always said to parents, it is, I don't care if they're doing drugs, or whatever they're doing that's negative for them, that is healthier for their soul and their psyche, then for them to allow themselves to be taken over by you. - [Sheila Kuehl] You're such a radical, totally a radical, not very many people value the experience of children. I was thinking about that. They're the truly oppressed class, and they're still treated so they don't know anything, they need to be controlled, they need... I mean, how many people do we know who've institutionalized? - [Herb Hamsher] I mean, what we call... - They're teenagers, still... - [Herb Hamsher] What we call homophobia and what we deal with in the Point Foundation is families literally think their children are theirs. They think, no, no, no, no, you don't get to be that you're mine. It's like, you wanna talk about oppression, but that's why gay kids have a secret, because they start out from rebellion. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, and it's even more pronounced now when you talk to transgender kids, because we're having a whole new experience with kids and we don't even draw the lines the same way they do. They are not gay. It's not that it's not about who you relate to, the other person, it's about who you relate to, you person being a female or a male. That's a very interesting difference. The last show that we did was about this and listening to people's experience, talk about that. It's like the whole society isn't viewing you in the right way. - [Herb Hamsher] Yeah, the GLB community started out teaching the culture about sexuality. The trans community is teaching us about sex, about gender. I mean, and you know, as I've said this, so many of the trans people, the friends, you're actually having the conversation that Kinsey was having in 1948, that the people don't understand sexuality, and we don't understand gender. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, and how brave that is. I mean, haven't even got a flag yet, really, or a parade. Although I think it was very... - [Torie Osborn] Oh, I think they're part of the parade. - They are part of the parade, but I mean, that was a very, very conscious and sometimes in the early days, difficult choice, I think for... - Well, no kidding. I mean, I was part of lesbian feminism, where no "Ts" were allowed anywhere. - [Herb Hamsher] Exactly. - There were many fights at women's music festivals over that. - [Herb Hamsher] Exactly. - [Phill Wilson] I remember the Women's Conference in Atlanta. - Oh, my Lord. Oh, I chosen to black that out, (Phill laugh) - [Torie Osborn] The National Lesbian Conference was 4,000 lesbians. - And I have to tell you, we are moving into the next era. In the Point Foundation, we have some of our trans students that have problems with the fact that we sometimes call ourselves a gay and lesbian organization because they're trans people that aren't gay or lesbian. - [Sheila Kuehl] Right. Exactly. Because that's about who trans is about who you are. Not about who you relate to, which I think is very useful because I'm a lesbian, but I haven't had a partner for 137 years, and I don't know what that's just like, if I didn't label myself, no one would know. (group laughs) - [Herb Hamsher] Right. But be clear if you were a lesbian who became a man who was relating to women, then you would be a straight trans. - [Sheila Kuehl] Right, well, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center is a female to male transgender. - [Herb Hamsher] Yeah. And he said he has no trouble at all now, cause he has mustache and a beard and he's a guy, right? Not a problem. No. Everybody relates to him as a guy, it's not a problem. And I just thought that was so interesting because as gay people, we keep sort of going on and on and on and on. - [Herb Hamsher] Right, but again, that takes you back to the issue of pride because the challenge for him is to be in the presence of people like straight people and say, now I could hide, I don't have to let you know about my identity. But the point is that if you are, if you have pride, I think you say, oh, you just mistook me for a regular biological male. I'm not actually. And that's what I think we have to offer to the rest of the world. - [Sheila Kuehl] Well, but it takes us back to what you said at the very beginning, about, is it really more, how do we manifest that? It's more than just, I am not ashamed, which you said was not a great slogan. So where do you think we go forward with this? I guess you've everybody has sort of said, I don't know, there's a spectrum, some people still need it, some people don't, I'm interested, in the last minutes though, we're not yet in the last minutes, but about this sort of larger issues, that you've all been talking about and how there's an aspect of pride in our community, in our connection with the larger issues. - Well, I was thinking about when I first became politically active in the early seventies, I mean in the sixties, some, but found myself my life's passion, helping to build and be part of the movement. And it was called the movement in the seventies, no matter where you were in it. And we used to always say that we would always need our women's chapters or organizations. This was sort of before my lesbian feminism, I was a lesbian, but I was identifying first as a feminist, but we saw ourselves as a piece, a brick on the road or a piece of the larger mosaic. And we connected with that mosaic and the purpose was to build the mosaic, but we would have our tribe within that. We would have our home, I call it, my home home room in the school of life or whatever. And I think that's really what it's about, that whatever year, the spirit moves us to go to gay pride, whatever our tribe is, if it's our friendship circle of lesbians, as I think in my case, it is, or that to me, I'm with Phill, that this next piece is the responsibility of building that broader mosaic, that broader movement. Because I think it's really life or death for the planet. - [Sheila Kuehl] You know, I just got the signal that we're down to our last minute. And I think I missed a 5, 4, 3, 2 minute... - [Herb Hamsher] Intuitively, you knew it. - Intuitively, but not enough. So I wanna thank you all very, very much for being here. These are my favorite shows where I have no idea what's going to happen when we all get together and talk. And I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you are proud of us for doing it. I hope that you will participate in any way that moves you in any kind of pride and that you will get used to it. (funky music playing)