Get Used to It: Ep. 174, "Voices of Our Lives: John Cleary"

(keyboard clicking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, and as always, I will take us through this fascinating hour. You may know if you watch the show that we do a series, occasionally, called "Voices of Our Lives," where we talk to a person who has made a difference in the world, and is one of our LGBT community and just listen to how they became activists or why, and what's going on in their lives. Today is one of those shows. My guest today is John Cleary. He is the immediate past president of our Stonewall Democratic Club. He also has a fascinating job at the University of Southern California in the med school, on genomic psychiatry as a special advisor or something. I'll get it. - Right. - Anyway, welcome John. - Thanks very much, thanks for having me. - Genomic psychiatry, I can hardly wait actually. It's not as interesting as LGBT stuff, of course, but as usual with these kinds of shows, I kind of like to lay a foundation of who a person is. So, tell me the beginning of the story of your life, where you were born and grew up and family and stuff like that. - Sure, I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and have two siblings, both younger, five and seven years younger. And my parents got divorced early in my life around when I was six years old going on seven. And so I grew up in a strong single parent, mother household. And she's an educator, so I think had a really good foundation for being aware of current events and being engaged and had a really good family life growing up. - So what was sort of the atmosphere in your house? She was a working person. And you guys were going to school. Did you have any sense about your sexuality when you were younger? I noticed this happened sooner with boys, but- - Yeah, I think I was confused for a little bit. I still came out young. I came out when I was 17 years old, I guess 16 for the first time, 17 is when I came out to my mother, but I also identify as bisexual. So there was some time where knowing that I was attracted to both sexes, it's easy to kind of write off the half that you're not used to hearing about in society. - Or that society might punish you for it, even though it wasn't that long ago still. - Yeah and you know, I didn't see a lot of homophobia that was real blatant, just because not many people are out, so there weren't really targets, but even just in casual life, people make jokes about fags or gays. And growing up, you don't think anything of it, and also a lot of times when you're a kid, you don't even know what the words mean. I mean, you just know that somehow that's this negative word. So I don't know that I was too influenced by that. I guess looking back, I did have a couple people that I was aware of in my early high school years. My aunt had friends who were a gay couple and would come over for like Christmas Eve dinner when the family's all together and so there was definitely an awareness, but it was not uncomfortable for me. I was really fortunate, there are a lot of people, certainly back then and still who struggle mightily or not accepted by their family, et cetera. And I did something horrible to my mother. I came out to her the day before I went to college. - You mean like left the house and traveled across the country? - Right, I came out to Los Angeles at USC for school, and had promised myself I was going to come out to my mother- - Tomorrow- - Sometime before. - Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. - Of course you just push it back. And then, I'm upstairs in my room crying the day before I'm gonna go, thinking, "I promised I was gonna tell her," but of course, it was a little selfish of me in a sense that it was important for both of us in our lives. But for me to do that on the day before I left to college, was I think a little tough on my mom. - And did she have a hunch anyway, or was it just stunning to her? - No, she had certainly thought about it, but also at times when I expressed interest in women, she would go, "Oh, I guess not." - Right that's confusing for our family. - For sure, and most people even still don't think about people as identifying as bisexual or think about it, but think that it's some type of transitory state for people, it's while they're figuring it out. - Or that people who are gay, just don't wanna absolutely be gay because it's such a stigma, and so they're hanging onto what we used to call beards or something, But yeah, t's really interesting to authentically be bisexual. I mean, a lot of people in my generation were sort of serially bisexual. Some of them because of the sort of force, "You better get married "and you better date guys," and that kind of thing. And some of us because we were sort of bi curious for a long time. And then just for me, for instance, figured out sort of who I was mostly by falling in love, which is very different from being promiscuous as some people in my generation found out. So you came out for college to California. But it was kind of a special program, wasn't it? - Yeah, it was. I guess in large part, because I grew up with a teacher and my aunt's a teacher as well, and it was just kind of education, was a real focus in our family and our extended family. And I did really well. And fortunately, I tested very well in high school, on some of the standardized national tests and I actually was invited by a number of universities to skip my senior year of high school and entered college early, which I did. Picked USC because I fell in love with the school as soon as I came out, it's a beautiful campus and great programs, and comparing Los Angeles to Cincinnati, the scales weigh a little. But also because their program worked with your high school to help ensure that you still graduated from high school and walked with your class, whereas other universities say, "Hey, you're moving on, just forget about it. "By the time you have a college degree, "you won't care anymore." So, especially for a mom who is a high school teacher is very comforting to know that I'm actually gonna graduate from high school. - Right, and have that certificate. - Right, and that was fun too, to actually come back and walk with my class. But I started out at USC when I was 17. - So was there a draw in California too? I mean a lot of people who come to California, not just because they fell in love with a particular campus, but it just feels like a place where you could reinvent yourself, or be who you really are if you're not reinventing. Did any of that figure into your decision, do you think. - I should remember better? Because I was already out by then. At least I wasn't out to anyone in my high school. So that's I think an important distinction because obviously if you aren't out in all of your environments, then you still have some comfort level issues. But I was starting to become out to friends and to family, even at the age of 17. And it had all been really positive. And my mom struggled with it early on, but not in any way that negatively impacted me. I mean, certainly was always very expressive of her love for me as her son, et cetera. But I just knew internally, she struggled with it for a while. So I don't know that I felt like I was wanting to get away from an environment where I didn't feel safe or happy. I think it was mostly really just excitement about Los Angeles and the next stage of my life, and- - [Sheila] So what was college like for you? - It was great. I majored in extracurriculars. I was involved in student government and community service. And out in the community as I progressed, I started to become more familiar with Los Angeles, and so got involved with groups like Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, The Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice, some of the other real progressive groups and mostly the downtown Los Angeles area. I started off as a double major in aerospace engineering and international relations, and found out that I really wasn't a fan of the engineering, as much as I thought I might be, and continued on in international relations, but kind of plowed along through school, mostly spending my time outside of school. - So what was it that drew you to the organizations that you were working with? I mean, there must have been a huge panoply of things to choose from. And I'm sure people end up in a lot of different places. I mean, we probably don't find very many people in the immediate past president of the Tea Party club who are gonna be interested in economic justice and housing for poor people. What is it that sort of in your self or in your background kind of drew to those groups? - I think I've always been drawn to activism in general. I was very involved in high school in extracurriculars. I mean, I spent a lot of time with outside organizations and community service organizations. So it was partly habit. And in high school, there's much more structural encouragement of that. And once you get to college, it's more on your own. - But John, this is not the chess club or the Young Republicans, I mean. And I think a really big influence was my father. My parents divorced because he was an alcoholic who really struggled with how to manage his life, and to be honest was really dragging the family down. And my mother didn't think she could afford to raise three kids in that environment anymore. I remember he often, if he was working would go out after work and kind of never lost his partying days and would come home to the house very late, and then wanna hang out with me. And I'm four, five, six years old with a dad coming home at at 11, 12, 1, 2 in the morning, wanting to wake his son up and hang out, and occasionally wanting to take me places. And so, when you're young, you don't have a lot of real specific memories, but some of them I do are not of happy moments. And there was one where my father did one of these things coming home real late, and they got in a fight about him wanting to take me out to some pizza place, 'cause he wanted quality time with his son, and was very angry. And you're a little kid you're scared and so says go out to the car, lock yourself in the car. And I remember my mom coming out to the car, kind of beating on the window saying, "This isn't safe, come in, go to bed," and leaving my mom locked out of the car because I was afraid of my dad, and him getting off and us speeding off, and fortunately, nothing happened and we came home safe. But those kinds of memories as a kid, knowing that looking back, you weren't always in an entirely safe and certainly not a supportive environment. So part of it is seeing what my family went through, which was really managed well by my mother. It was a brief episode in my life that was negative. And what kind of structural things there are out there in the community that lead to that. And then beyond that, I think really influential was my dad's struggle. And he struggled with alcoholism, he struggled with homelessness. He was homeless for seven of the last nine years he was alive and eventually died from complications of cirrhosis of the liver. And would stay in and boarded up buildings or cabs of pickup trucks that are broken down. So I think a real awareness of economic justice issues about how people struggle to cross their own life barriers and advance themselves and get help. And both how you get people to be receptive to help, because that's a real barrier. You can throw programs at people, but if they aren't receptive, then it doesn't matter. But then also the programs themselves, what is available to help someone. So I think all of that together. - Well, it's interesting a lot of people who have been interviewed on the show, have been activists where there're two things are somewhat different. Their work has been in these nonprofits and that's been it. And they have not generally, at least not until very recently, thought about political activism as a way to achieve justice. So there's sort of a couple things going on there. The first, I think is less interesting than the second, because you've been very devoted to organizing in the LGBT community, for the Democratic Party, which must somehow be connected in your mind or in your heart, really, to these justice issues. So how did you sort of transition if you did, from this sort of neighborhood activism, when you were in college? What got you interested in also looking to see who should be elected and why? - Yeah, so the LGBT specific stuff I think started from kind of just the human outreach type stuff. So on campus, I joined LGBT mentoring program to help mentor people who were just coming out, and so started to get involved and in that kind of way, not necessarily political. And, there's some folks even who you know, who went to USC, and we kind of joked about passing on the status of being the Uber queer on campus. And Eric Sanioho is one of those. I don't know if he'd want me to say that, but we certainly proudly claimed it at the time and would write editorials in the campus paper, et cetera. And I think part of it is that even in college, there's still not a ton of people who are out. And so you get drawn into a bit of a leadership role and if you're out in public and you're already involved in the first place, people start to come to you with questions. And I remember when there was some issue of discrimination and something that could be construed as a potential hate crime on campus, and the university residential system being called into a meeting, and just as a student leader being asked my thoughts about it. So I felt a little bit pulled into LGBT activism, and really wasn't seeking that out so much. More of kind of the economic justice, social justice things are what I sought out. The transition into politics. I think I was always looking at current events and interested and engaged, but I think partly was an awareness that sometimes problems can't get fixed unless government is involved, and feeling that it's really necessary to be engaged at some level. And then I just kind of went from there and you get pulled into things, and if you have fun doing it, you wanna do more of it. - Well, you said you were in student government at SC. Were you an elected person or working with the elected people. - In a variety of ways. So sometimes elected, sometimes appointed within student government, or you just raise your hand and you're the only one who's raised your hand. - Or you leave the room and you get- - Or everyone else leaves the room and you're the one still there. So in particular, in student Senate and the residential student government, those sorts of settings. - Well, it's interesting because people say to me, "Well, had you always thought about running for office?" And I say, "No, I never thought about it." But of course my old friends say, "Excuse me, you were in the student council in high school, "the student council at UCLA, "the student council at Harvard law, the student... "I mean, you were always in student government. "What was that about?" So the question is, what was that about? I mean, very few people are drawn to it, very few people. Like regular government is sort of excoriated a lot by the very people that you're trying to do something for. So say a little bit more about what drew you at that point, and then we'll talk about what keeps going. - Yeah, I don't know. I guess I haven't thought about it much. I think, glad you asked, I think I have to admit I was excited by the access you get, because I always wanted to know about what's the next big thing happening on campus or just in general. And so even if it wasn't that I was directly involved in the planning, I still wanted to be really well informed and kind of somewhere around the center of things. But I think also because as I mentioned about sometimes, developments can hit a wall without the involvement of in this case university administration or student government, because they control the purse strings of, and at least in our case at the time, hundreds of thousands of dollars in student programming money. And so if you really wanted to do bigger things that impacted more people and took resources, you had to choose to get involved. - Well, it's interesting because just the way the country's set up in a way, because we're a democracy. From the very beginning, you study representative democracy, that the notion is that there's the general welfare, promote the general welfare, and that we do it through people who are elected, they collect our money and they give it out in ways to promote the general welfare. And there's such conflict always about what people... We just saw it in Washington, and probably we could play this show again in a year and two years, and we would still be seeing it, what people mean by that. I always liked student government because of the policy. I mean, they were little, but you would be thinking, "Well, what do I wanna promote here?" And you could put on a program where people would have a debate about whether people should be gay or not, and it opened some space for people. So I know what you mean. It's not only being in the action, but it's actually being able to affect something. - Well, and by meeting some success with it. And especially when you're surprised. I remember one of the moments that kind of elevated me a little bit in terms of being some campus known LGBT person was just in residential student government. I put on a very simple program for a complex of university buildings, and it was... I forget what we called it, but the teaser was basically the idea that you would come and listen to a panel about LGBT people in life, but it was people who lived in your building. And so who did you not know was gay? So come and find out. And we had, I don't know, something like maybe a third of the entire, the complex of buildings show up for this meeting that spilled out of the room, and people were just packed in, it was this massive thing. And just had a great really enlightening discussion for a lot of people who spent a lot of time afterwards talking about how it totally changed their impression of their campus community, of their friends, of their openness to people who identify as LGBT. So some activism becomes self-fulfilling and kind of it draws you in. - Did you ever feel like it wasn't a good idea to be out or have moments of hesitation before you ran for office or any of that kind of stuff? - No. - It's a good world then, huh? - Yeah. - No, I mean seriously. - Well, and seriously, I've been really fortunate. I've talk, talked with friends about this And I never cease to be shocked by the horrors that some people live through. And I think in part, because I honestly have had a really easy go of it, I've really been in supportive environments, and when I've been in an environment that I thought was going to be challenging, it turned out to not be. I feel like I've really been blessed with kind of living a life where I feel that I'm able to really be honest in my expression, because I've been so fortunate in the past. And I think that helps you be effective, if you aren't hesitating, if you don't feel fear of what you're gonna say. But really it's also a lot of luck. - Well, but especially when you were just talking about being very small and that feeling frightened and empathizing with people who have fear, because I think a lot of times people think that it's their own doing that they're not afraid, rather than understanding in our history even a lot of people went through a lot of bad stuff, and the steps have taken us closer and closer to being fully a part of really American society in a really positive way. But back to you, of course, what happened after college? Or did you have a plan when you graduated from college? - No, and I still have no plan, I just- - I said that on purpose, actually. - I don't know where my life's gonna take me, and I kind of never do. I see opportunities that come along and sometimes they seem like good ideas and I pursue them, and I've been really fortunate professionally and socially, and as an activist. And it's like how I got started in kind of official politics, the official Democratic Party and it structures. I was just generally interested and engaged as a person and got excited by Howard Dean's presidential race, and decided to go to those online organized meetups that became so famous during his election. And so met a bunch of people, had a lot of fun. And again, because I happened to be the only openly LGBT person among these really active people at the beginning of the stage, I was invited to not only join the LA steering committee for grassroots organizers, but to be the LGBT community liaison, knowing no one in LGBT politics. So that was kind of my beginning of being drawn into official politics, is just by getting involved and people kind of grabbing and saying, "Hey, can, can you do this?" And being willing to say, "Absolutely, it'll be fun." - I think there was a whole new wave of people that Howard Dean brought in. Because, it seems to me that people in their twenties especially, through the generations kind of go up and down about being a pox on both their houses, drown all of them, let 'em go, I don't believe them and struggling because they have hope. I mean, it's kind of like you wanna go, "Please don't make me hope again." I felt this way when Clinton was running, and it was a man from hope, and I thought, "Please don't make me believe in anything again," because you just get your hopes dashed. But I think without that kind of hope, there's just never a light at the end of the tunnel. It's just all tunnel. But it was interesting in the Dean campaign, how many young people, and what you said, the online issue of it, which so many people said, I don't get this new media stuff. So what was it like, you went to meetups and- - I did, yeah. And I started the first LGBT specific meetup, and we had it at a bar that's now closed, but here in West Hollywood. And it's because of that, that Stonewall Democratic Club fortunately found me because I was new to everything, and so then got involved in more. But we ended up doing two... So I was personally in charge of a not LGBT specific one in downtown LA, because I lived and worked near and on USC's campus. But also helped start LGBT specific ones here and in South Bay, Los Angeles area, along the coast, and kind of went from there. And as you know, the Dean campaign flamed out very quickly with the famous scream, and I had actually left employment at USC for the Dean campaign, just a month before that, and decided that, you know what? I'm just gonna have fun with this. And I was financially in a position that I had been smart and saved some, but also was a little idealistic and a little bit willing to take risk, and so cashed out all of my small retirement I earned at the time. (both laughing) I figured, I'm in my twenties, what do I care? It'll be fun. - Early retirement? - Right. So, I just volunteered in politics for the year of 2004, and really found a passion. And then after the election went back to USC, and decided to do this just on a continuing basis as a volunteer. I never really considered too much going into professional politics, being a staff person. - So it's a separation in a way in your life. I mean, the work that you're doing it sounds fascinating. I don't even know what genomic psychiatry is. I know what the words mean separately. Say a little about your work and the area that that's in. - Sure, so I'm the research administrator in general for the department of psychiatry, and that's all the operations side and none of the research. So my goal is to kind of make sure everything runs and that the scientists get to do their thing. And so it's contracts, it's grants, it's personnel, it's finance operations. But a big chunk of our money, certainly a majority is within what is organized as the Center for Genomic Psychiatry. So it's scientists who are looking at DNA and RNA, and in general, looking at in particular genetic markers for psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and others, to see if we can determine whether there's an ability to screen people for these disorders before they even start to exhibit symptoms. And of course, once you're able to find targets, you can start to look at treatment. But these psychiatric disorders are really a frontier of medicine, neurology, psychiatry in general. We don't know almost anything about the human brain still, and psychiatric disorders are really tough to diagnose, tough to figure out where they come from and how they progress and how you treat them. And we've got a lot of great people at USC doing some really neat science. - Well, there's been some separation, but it's been fairly recent, as I say, kind of decades about the sort of medical based psychiatric disorders and the other side of the spectrum, which is more psychologically based. I was thinking while you were talking about the fact that you and I would both have been ranked as having a mental disorder, simply by virtue of being either bisexual or lesbian. But that was really a more of a political pronouncement. And yet there's been research in the past about trying to find that place in your brain that makes you gay, et cetera. But the issues of actual chemical imbalance, I think have been more limited in terms of what you've been talking about. And often when we create insurance programs related to medical insurance, where there's not great parody between mental health and physical health, those disorders will be included because there's a chemical basis for it. I don't think any chemical basis has been found for gayness. - No, and there are definitely researchers who are spending time looking for this, whether it's chemical or genetic or what have you. And it's a bit scary. Looking for true psychiatric disorders is a really important scientific endeavor, to see if we can really help rescue a lot of troubled people or even prevent it. But there are also lots of aspects of people's lives that are certainly somewhere, based in our brain that are part of what make up our character and identity and who we are, and the idea that someone can pinpoint that, and that potentially people could then make life choices or parents of children who don't have an opportunity to make any choices yet, or even discover their identity can make choices for them. That's a little scary. - It's more than a little scary. And that's sort of where the melding of politics and the thing you're talking about, which I generally describe as who sits in the chairs, who makes the decisions about what research there will be? I'm assuming there's some federal money in some of those grants, if not most of them. Who makes those decisions, how they're made, what... I remember some of the much more conservative members than I would refer to our approach in the legislature as reality based, like it was a bad thing. I mean, I never quite understood what the negative aspect of that was, but they wanted to manipulate the science so that it would show something they wanted it to show, when we were always talking about evidence, evidence, evidence, but that was too reality based. But I think our community and other communities... I mean, we've seen it with race and certainly with gender, have always been a little vulnerable to these kinds of approaches. And I think one of the great leaps forward for us was really the declaration that we weren't crazy when we were taken out of the description of mental disorders. - Right, and I was just gonna reference that because- - [Sheila] Yeah, please. - I think the medical professional world has been pretty supportive of our community. I mean, has often been a bit on the leading edge of how we identify identity and what its role is, and how that connects to science or medicine. And so, as a side note, I actually just saw the headline, and didn't even get a chance to click on it and see what the acronym stood for, but the APA, which is either the American psychiatric association or psychological. So I don't know which yet. But just actually passed a resolution in support of same gender marriage. - It would probably be psychological, but that's only my guess. (both laughing) - And that was just today or yesterday, I saw that headline. So I haven't looked at it yet. So, not exactly on the leading edge, but still certainly keeping up with society and- - Well, a national organization though, it is sort of on the leading edge. Considering how many states have it in their constitution that you can't have same sex Marriage. - Well, and as you reference, certainly in the past, having been a body that enabled discrimination or supported discrimination, by identifying sexuality or gender identity as a disorder, and we still see that in many countries around the world, there absolutely is the capacity for harm. So it's really important that our scientific leadership bodies and at least in the US, are where they are. - Now, John, back to the sort of Democratic Party stuff. I was under the impression generally that the sections of the Democratic Party were organized more geographically. And there are only a few exceptions and Stonewall is one of them. Why was there a need seen to do that? - Yeah, good question. (both laughing) - You probably weren't in on the decision, but hat do you think? - Right, Stonewall Democratic Club, I should proudly say, in Los Angeles was the very first Stonewall Democratic Club in the country, established in 1975. And I think that it organized... So Democratic clubs, charter at the county level with the official Party. And Democratic clubs are the chief mechanism, by which average people get involved in the Democratic Party. It's hard to get involved with the county central committee or the state central committee, because you have to be elected. And so you have to have done enough that- - [Sheila] You have to get it. - Right, that people will show up and vote for you. So if you wanna be a volunteer, you get involved in the clubs. They're chartered at the county level. And I couldn't say for certain, that may be something as simple as Stonewall Democratic Club, since it was being organized as an affinity organization for the LGBT community, much like New Frontiers is for the African American community, and there are some others identified as a LA county club, because they couldn't think of any other way to identify. And certainly there are significant population centers for our community in West Hollywood, Long Beach and elsewhere. And they're disparate enough that maybe identifying as a county organization was the only thing that made sense. - There's been a lot of leadership come out of the club. - Yeah, there has. - It's been interesting for the county, and I saw the same thing in San Diego, and probably San Francisco, at least one if not two clubs. And it almost seemed to me like if you hold back people from being able to fully participate, you're really costing yourself a lot of talent in the world. And it seem, we're really sort of proving that I think, because people from Stonewall have gone on. Gone on, but to the county committee, to the state committee, and really been engaged. Do you think that our community has seen the value in political activism? - I don't know if a lot of people have seen it, but they certainly have felt the benefits of it. Because as you say, we have leaders at the county, the state, and also the federal level. One of the members of our board is on the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee, Garry Shay. And we like to joke that Stonewall Democratic Club here in Los Angeles has more members in the DNC than all, but something like 38 states in the country. So it really is a powerful, passionate group of people. And also because... And it's important to note that there are a lot of straight allies who care a lot about issues of equality and justice, and the club has about half of its membership as straight allies. And so I think between being countywide and also being very open in its membership, and being on a really leading edge civil rights issue, there's a lot of passion that goes into the organization and a lot of strong leadership that have come out of it, both within the Party structure, but also in elective office. And whether people were just members of the club or whether the club was really a central place for their activism. We've had people like you and Jackie Goldberg, and city council members, and presently even the speaker of the state assembly, who's a great example, John Perez, of someone whose real activism was in the club. I mean, his day job was in organized labor, but his political Democratic Party heart was in Stonewall. And to come from that, it's a great testament to the community, and also shows that Stonewall Democratic Club has been a great place for people to come together and try and accomplish some important things. - Now, there's also in the Democratic clubs, there's been a bit of a, well, it's not really a division, but somebody saw the need to have Young Democrats and Stonewall Young Democrats. Why was that? - So the Democratic Party in general defines young Democrats as 35 and under. And by the way, the Republicans define it as 40 and under. So I've been threatening to change parties for a span of about five years. When I turn 36 I'm leaving, and then I'll come back when I hit 40. 'Cause you get so involved in the structure that you start to actually think I'm young until 36 and then it's over, I don't know. So I think that a lot of young people get very frustrated with politics. You can have a lot of hope, whether it was from Clinton campaign or Obama or other things that come up and feel a great sense of momentum and excitement about the things that we're going to accomplish to better our society, and then the reality of partisan politics, which is a contact sport, comes into play. And I think so... What I've seen Democratic groups say is that they've had some real success engaging young people and young professionals for specific moments in politics, big elections, like the Obama election, or specific programs or events, but a real hard time holding onto them beyond that. And I don't know if it's also that, you have teenagers and 20 something, and who think, "I don't wanna go to "a really structured meeting "with people who are mostly in their forties, "fifties, sixties, et cetera," that is just not kind of their environment, whatever that means. So I think it's been really valuable to create a structure that was specifically embracing of young people and empowered them to do a lot of these activist avenues on their own, whether it be endorsements, and then following those up with going out and spending time in the field, knocking on doors for people, making phone calls, raising money, participating in the Party. And when people kind of met success with that, it becomes a little bit self perpetuating. And the same was true of Stonewall Young Democrats. I started with the Dean campaign. I was doing these LGBT meetups, and the youth outreach chair of the club at the time, Andrew Lackman and the president, Michael Andrechak, came to me and said, just what I said, "We've had some success before "with youth and young professionals, but it hasn't stuck. "We have this idea, let's form a Stonewall Young Democrats, "but we have a twist on the idea "versus other young Democrats. "We want to really make us a purpose "and a point of our organization, mentoring, "building the community. "So let's do cross membership, "let's create a structure "where the leadership positions are largely parallel." The Stonewall Democratic Club, helps Stonewall Young Democrats in paying for certain things, paying for insurance, paying for a variety of kind of those structural things and to do joint endorsements, to have one voice for the LGBT partisan Democratic community in Los Angeles. And I think that's been really important to the identity of Stonewall Young Democrats in particular. And I think it's been really important, and I'm starting to go on and on, but I wanna sure that... So I think a really key point, and something that was really important for me when I founded Stonewall Young Democrats... And I don't know where the phrase came from. I don't think it was me, it might have been John Duran, other great people who I talked to as we were forming the group, talked about how in the LGBT community we're perpetually first generation. We don't grow up at the dinner table talking to our family about what it means to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, and who our community leaders are, who our inspiration is, and how we've progressed through a struggle of at times... And young gay people don't know this. At times where it was literally illegal to be gay. That there were laws that prevented more than three LGBT people gathering together in a space. That there was real oppression in our community and how we overcame that, and who the heroes and leaders in our community are. And so this dynamic Stonewall Young Democrats, and Stonewall Democratic Club was one mechanism for an aspect of our community. The folks interested in politics to really try and help bridge that, I think in a really important and significant way. - Well, it's also become easier to engage sort of a younger generation, each younger generation, in understanding what's the point of all of this. I mean, there is a point, and there's been so much effort really to... Especially I think in education, by the other side of the spectrum to really tear down government, to make people think it's corrupt, to make people think that it's useless, to make people think that it's not on their side, anything to justify, not taxing rich people, to pay for something, because the claim is if you tax rich people, the government doesn't use their money correctly anyway, so let's not do it. And I think this is sort of an antidote in a way, where people say, "No, I'm actually seeing something here," yet there is disappointment. And I think young people, even more than people in my generation, it's like hope takes you very high. And as Robert Frost wrote a poem, and I think the whole title was the whole poem, which was, "Happiness Makes Up In Height For What It Lacks In Length." (Sheila laughing) And I think hope is like that too. Because it will always come crashing down, since it can't generally always be fulfilled. But have you found that young people who get engaged in Stonewall Young Democrats keep the faith somehow or see more of the inside in happenings and it kind of help them to think that government's an important thing? - Yeah, I think so. And I think partly because we're in California, so, I actually, when I started Stonewall Young Democrats here in Los Angeles, it took off very quickly, and I made a lot of valuable connections around the country, and I actually helped start Stonewall Young Democrats in San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and some other places, and had a lot of fun doing that. I think it's easier in California because we have met with so much success. And so of course, meeting with success, as you were saying, the hope spike, it doesn't come crashing quite so far. And a lot of that success has been an issues that have to do with youth, whether it's anti-bullying legislation, whether it's the Fair Education Act that just passed, that now requires the California education systems in K-12... And actually, I have to apologize. I don't know exactly if it was K-12- - We just did our last show. - Or all the grades. - About that and just been running for a month before this. So maybe people are actually familiar with it, but it is, really there was already a law in California that said that you need to include positive information and images of people on the basis of race and gender and national origin. And simply all we did was add sexual orientation. It wasn't like a whole new law. - And people with disabilities, and other significant communities. - Right, we added that too, because they had never been represented in our history test. - And so when I think young Democrats see that happening, it helps to sustain the hope. You see that you're able to make some progress and accomplish things. But I think like with any organization and young people and young professionals, there's so much change in your lives, that it's a roller coaster anyway. And people are going to graduate school, they're just beginning a career. So people come in and out a lot more, I would say, than more established, not so young Democratic clubs. But I think that's partly just the nature of people's lives at that time. - Well, John, let me ask you sort of a set of maybe difficult questions. And I don't have an answer in mind because we're all going through it at the same time. It's really a time I think in our state and probably other states where people are watching this that aren't California, and the nation, where people are disappointed again in the government. Didn't solve the problems that it was supposed to solve. It looks like gridlock. And I think sometimes people get engagement fatigue. They're just, "I tried this, I worked so hard for Obama." And of course, people who are believers like you and me are saying, "No, no, no, 2012, really important. "You should have seen what would've happened "if he wasn't there." That kind of thing. Just generally looking around at your colleagues and friends and coworkers, what's the mood that you see about politics and the sort of the near future for the country? - I mean, if we're speaking just totally politics in general and not talking about specific people who hold office, just a lot of disgust, and I think also confusion. It's hard for people to sift through the information they're hearing. And I think part of it is the hyper partisanship. I think part of it is media, that there's actually more and more media outlets all the time. And so there's more and more niche media, that is able to talk about a story in the context of their audience. And so you have, personally, I think sometimes less kind of objective, unbiased reporting than you might otherwise. And my partner was talking about this, and he's not particularly engaged in politics. He just kind of follows current events. He hears me talk a lot, certainly. But he was talking about the debt deal, and said, "Literally, I can't figure it out. "Because you listen to people on TV "and they say exact opposite things of each other. "How do I know who's saying who's telling the truth, "who's lying, who's doing..." And we had a funny moment when the Speaker Boehner was trying to pass his own Republican centered bill through the US House, and it took him three days to do it, and Ty called me up and said, "Now I know who's lying." - (laughing) There's a new element that people have not taken seriously, because it's something very difficult for people to sort of believe. If you tell them, no, this is happening, they think not. Because the assumption is when they elect people to office, those people are going to want to work together and come up with a common solution. They love the notion of bipartisanship. They love the notion of working together. So they just vote for people out of the belief that people go to Washington, or people go to Sacramento or any state capital, and what they want is to solve the problem. Yes, they have their own political beliefs, but they're going to come together because the most important thing is to solve the problem. And the interesting thing to me this year has been what happened to both Governor Brown in California and to our president. I really think they were surprised. I think that our governor was surprised, because we don't have a lot of Tea Party members in the state legislature. However, all the new Republicans that were elected last year are. If not Tea Party, very close to and very libertarian. And they simply said, "What is it about, no, you don't understand." And it even kept that party from having even four people vote to put something on the ballot for people to vote on, not even vote for it themselves. And Karl Rove was sent to California to make sure that they did not allow it. And I think this surprised the governor, and from afar, looks to me like the same thing kind of happened with the president. I'm not saying he's naive. It's just like, these are not your dad's Republicans, they're just not. - Well, and I think that actually, I don't know as much about the state, but federally, I think it was predictable. And I haven't been around politics for a long time, but it struck me as being different, in the 2010 election. That there were a lot of people who ran specifically saying, "I'm going to be obstructionist. "I'm not going to let a single thing pass." And they didn't even pretend to be interested in bipartisanship. And I think average people do want to elect officials who are going to act that way. But I think there was some more explicit messaging around just my way or the highway, in the Republican Party in the last election. And I think American people have honestly, they've gotten what they voted for. And I hope that a lot of independents, even if they're not tremendously enamored of the president right now, and feel like maybe they haven't seen as much happen as they thought might, at the time that they voted for him two, three years ago, are gonna feel some buyers remorse about the congressional races, and feel that things are not better voting for people who are hyper partisan, and kind of hyper obstructionist, and happy and thrilled about it, excited about being obstructionist, aren't gonna get anybody anywhere. So I hope we see a... I hate to see big swings, like it's just some massive pendulum, but I guess I am hoping we see it again in the next election. - Well certainly, I mean, from each party's point of view, they like to be in charge, but what happened to Speaker Boehner I think was also very instructive. He seemed surprised, by the elements of his own new members. Because there's not really ever been a debate about raising the debt ceiling. Whether you thought it was a great idea or not tying it to the war expenditures, et cetera, how could we not have had to borrow that much money? I mean, China holds so much paper on us right now that we should move there if we wanna make some money. But I think he was surprised. And I think also there is this angry tone, as you were talking about the press, where now, if you read something and it is balanced, truly balanced, I find myself being upset at it that it doesn't have a point of view. It's like things have changed so much that I feel like so much is at stake, I don't want people to be neutral anymore. You know, that kind of thing. And I think that anger has permeated the country in so many different ways that sometimes people just say, "The government is just the worst thing ever. "Why don't we just dismantle it?" Because in California, people are saying, "You know what we need as a part-time legislature." Well, that's just gonna allow the people to steal more of what they've stolen. - Well, not only that, but also a as we've learned with term limits, you end up with elected officials who just honestly don't have the expertise of the class of elected officials that we used to have. People who are able to spend some real length of time in office, on particular committees, where they develop some expertise on, whether it's healthcare or education or what have you. And so you end up with a legislature that's far more influenced by lobbyists and kind of institutional Sacramento. And if you were to go to a part-time legislature, you'd certainly just see an acceleration of that. - Well, the interesting thing too, is that we are a wedge issue. That is the LGBT community has been used as a wedge issue, but apparently that's not really what it's about. It's really about the money, and where the money goes and who gets to keep the money and who doesn't get any money. It's kind of like, well, if we could just find a wedge issue, we'll just point to that for a while. Because in California, we've done wonderfully. The movement has done extraordinarily. Although, with term limits, we have to keep wondering- - And thanks, by the way in part, to a lot of your leadership. - Well, but I mean, I was the first gay person in there, and it was a little lonely at the beginning, but I mean, my caucus, the Democratic Caucus was just incredibly welcoming and formed an honorary gay lesbian caucus right away. Several members of whom said, "It's honorary, remember it's just honorary." But it was great. But we have not made that same kind of progress, where we're talking about the ability to fund our schools, or who cares about whether poor people get healthcare or anything. So economic justice, as opposed to our communities issues. We're doing great, not without hard work. It's been hard work. And we got shot down a lot at the beginning, but it's just not what it's about. It's really when you get right down to it, it's really about the money. - Well, I think it's also partly just that there are very different issues. We talk about the... And I'm gonna of course mess up the exact quote. But about the arc of history bending towards justice, - [Sheila] Dr. King. - Right, of course. And that we all as a greater society, progressively learn about identity and acceptance, and a lot of these social justice issues, and I think collectively progress on them at varying paces, but always progress. And I think that education and economics and those other kind of more traditional public policy type arenas just aren't the same. And I don't know if we'll ever get to the point that those can see that same type of progression. So I think that it's partly just very different natures of the subjects. - Well, but also the guarantee of equal protection in the constitution was never applied to money. It couldn't be. I mean, no one would interpret it over the 200 year period, to relate to money. It might be found that they shouldn't be... I mean, it takes a while before society catches up with each group. But it might be that no one thought women should be treated equally to men. And then things started to change, and the court decided, "Yes, they should." There was not a good enough reason not to treat them equally. It hasn't come to that conclusion yet with us, although it has in California, and a few other states. A very high standard of scrutiny when we're not treated equally. But in economics, that was never the case. There is no equality guaranteed in the constitution in economics, or even in education. I mean, the thought was everybody ought to have free access to schools. But you ask people now, "Is there really free access to schools?" Well, you can go without paying, but you might not be able to have a book, your teacher's buying your pens and pencils. I mean- - Might not even have a chair. - Exactly, many kids on the floor, especially now after the last round of cuts. - Yeah, and I think that... It's always surprised me. I feel like there's gotta be some good economic justice commingled argument out there, that is a generally winning argument that if we were just disciplined enough to stick with, we'd be making a lot more progress. I don't know, I mean, I guess there's not. But it's just this general sense that a rising tide lifts all ship. That if we are able to construct our arguments and messaging in such a way that people recognize that will make a lot more progress. And I think that's certainly true of national economics. Rich people make a lot more more when the country's doing well. The country's doing well when you have a successful middle class and you have a working class that has opportunity in front of it. And how we have not been able to maintain that messaging, I don't know. And if we have a moment just about the debt debate, I have despaired about our really poor messaging, I think on the Democratic side. Why we're not talking about, for example, the fact that all of these budget cuts are taxing the lives of the vast majority of Americans. They may not be literal taxes in the tax code, but they have an even greater impact. And so how we have been unable to equate taxes and tax cuts, that the Republicans talk so much about life taxes on the part of- - Well, not only that, you can't afford a college anymore here. I mean, expenses go up. We don't see it as a tax, but it is more money out. Well, only a few minutes remaining, so let me ask you one last question. If you had your druthers, what would be next for you? - You know, and I said, I don't plan. So I don't know. In the immediate future, the reason why I was president of Stonewall Democratic club for four years, and I chose not to run for reelection, despite the fact that I was having a lot of fun doing it, and I think we were doing some good things as an organization and accelerating, was principally because I wanna start a family. So I think my immediate future is that I want to relax a little. And my partner and I... We've been together for five years as of last Friday. Are taking multiple tracks. We're looking at surrogacy, private adoption and public adoption. And we have our very first mandatory class for public adoption. We have to go for six weeks, seven hours a day on Saturdays, tomorrow. So at least in the short term, that's what's next. So I wanna start a family. - That's lovely. My sister's a judge in Sacramento and she presides over all the adoptions there. And she of course always calls me when there's a gay couple or a lesbian couple or a gay teenager, who's being adopted by somebody, to let me know. Well, she tells me actually about all of them, but just with joy in her life. Well, I wish you the greatest. I want you to always let me know what you're doing, of course. - Absolutely. - We'll, maybe in five years, if I'm still doing this, we'll catch up with you and see what the last five years held for you, John. - [John] Well, thank you. - Thank you so much for being with us. And thank you very much for being with us. It's a notion that no matter where you are in your life path, that you can make a big difference. So get used to it. (upbeat music)