Get Used to It: Ep. 36, "Gay & Lesbian Values"

(typewriter clicking) (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Sheila James Kuehl, your host. Welcome to "Get Used To It" a little award-winning cable show dealing with issues that are of interest to the lesbian, gay, bisexual community, and probably all the rest of you out there as well. Today, we have a somewhat unusual show. There's been a lot of talk over the past several years about values and ethics and morals, a lot of talk in political races, but really I think a lot of talk in living rooms around the country as well, as we reassess and discuss. And in our community, we have noticed there's been a lot of talk about values, and ethics and morals about our community, but we haven't seen very much on the air where real live members of our community get to talk about our own ethics and values and morals. So, today, "Get Used To It" is going to step right into the middle of that with three wonderful guests. My first guest, Phill Wilson, co-founder of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, and former director of public policy at AIDS Project Los Angeles. Welcome Phill. My next guest, Rabbi Denise Eger, who is the spiritual leader of Congregation Kol Ami, which is West Hollywood's Reform Synagogue that does outreach to gay and lesbian and bisexual people, as well as their straight friends and family. Does a good job of it, welcome, Denise. - [Denise] Thank you. - And, finally, delighted to introduce my third guest, Professor Robert Dawidoff, who is a professor and program chair of the history department at the Claremont Graduate School, and is also co-author with Michael Nava of "Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America." Welcome Robert. - Thank you. - Let me start with you, Robert. This is an issue we haven't set a whole sort of structured way of talking about values and ethics and morals. Even in our community we'll probably notice that we don't always agree on what those are, but my premise for the show really is that through the course of our own individual history as a community sort of in the shadows, coming out of the shadows into the light, whatever you want to say, we've learned some collective lessons and we have, or do express some collective, at times, values, maybe different from the so-called mainstream. I want to test with you whether you think that's the case. If so, what might some of them be? Do we now have something we can share now that we're kind of in the middle of the griddle, as we say, share with the country something to teach them? - I think we do. I love the way you put that. I think the first thing that we all notice is that the values question as it's raised in our society seems to be between people who have notions of what values should be, and they're worried about how to impose them. And then I think there are actually the majority of people whose struggle is to transform the values that come from their own experience into ways of conducting themselves. And I think the lesbian and gay communities are exceptionally important in this because in order, as you say to come out, the first thing you have to do is consult your inner truth. I'm a history professor, so I also have to say Ralph Waldo Emerson here, but it's true that what we bring to the table of discussion is the experience that democracy requires, which is an authentic experience of self that then becomes a road to issues of value. It seems to me there are a couple that we have the choice to adopt, and I think the word choice is important because choice is always used against us, but, in fact, I think our experience as lesbians and gays gives us a choice to learn from our own histories in ways that perhaps is more pressing than for other people. After all, we're unique in that we don't have parents, well, now more and more we do, but, certainly, for most of us, we didn't have parents sitting us down and saying, these are the moral precepts. This is how you should live your life. Instead, we had to take seriously what the society said, and learn to choose between the part of the society that said, be real, be true to yourself. Start with yourself and try and treat others that way, or those placards that said, don't you dare be you. I guess two values in particular strike me. And one of them is this learning to live from experience, and to think about values in terms of your own experience. And the second one, I think, comes from the whole AIDS experience that we've had. And that is that we have to take the categories of friendship and love to the end more seriously. We've had to become activists. And, also, I think, on both spheres, gays and lesbians have had to become very suspicious, and critical about experts. And the society is run by people who say they're experts, but anyone who has been involved, for example, with someone with AIDS knows just how limited the expert advice of a doctor is. And so I guess I would say that the supreme value that I think we have to offer up to a society like our own now is the tough, but rewarding value of taking your own experience seriously, and trying to reason from that. - But, you know, the right-wing has called that secular humanism in a way, that is if I learn from my own experience, what my core values should be, then am I not deviating enormously from the history of man and womankind where values, and ethics and morals, especially, morals, have been sort of handed down from the mountain as it were. And we are not to question them, and we are not to learn from our own experience. Our own experience can oftentimes lead us to sin, or astray, or whatever, though, I agree with you. The authenticity of that experience is exactly what we've learned to share. - If I may, I have two responses to that. The first is that I rather like being called a secular humanist. It's one of the nicer things I've ever been called. I think there is a division about that. And I don't think one should pretend to be on, you know, if you are a secular humanist that's fine, but I think the key point you raised is exactly right. There is a vision of certain people that morality is about claiming the same things that everybody has always had handed down to them. Now my own experience, limited experience in religion, and fairly wide reading suggest to me that most religious figures, their entire lives are about making the values that they are given authentic in their lives. And I think that's true of every religious tradition I've ever encountered. - So kind of an overlay doesn't feel right to me, it doesn't comport with what I know from my experience, but it must be right because I've been told it, and I try to make it work, kind of like a gay person trying to live in a straight world. - [Robert] Exactly. - And thinking that there's something wrong with how we are. - That's why I really do believe that the general shared experience of the lesbian and gay person struggling with an identity having to come out is the model for moral struggle. - Well, there's some aspect of truth then in what you're saying. I mean, sort of truth as a value. I know that there have been some families that have said to me that when their son or daughter came out, that was not the end of, fortunately, or, unfortunately, family secrets that begin to be told, and frankly just brought to light and talked about. And that though it's painful, just like coming out is painful, that there's something that's better at the end, having said that, which was a great secret, hiding yourself from someone else, or hiding something that happened. - That's exactly. I know in my own family, mine was the first secret to come out, or I was the first one to come out with a secret, but the structure of family secrets has crumbled. I had an experience, I'm sure many people watching, also, saw the hearings on Justice Thomas and Anita Hill's testimony, when she said in answer to a senator's question, essentially that, yes, she followed the person who had abused her to a new position. I was sitting at home saying, yeah, of course, that's what it means for me or for various other people to be in abusive situations. And I really believe sometimes that the country is divided between the majority of its citizens who know what it is to experience frustration, and to feel compelled to follow that which is not for them. And I think very often the people with some exceptions, who run our public life are people who have a stake in not admitting it. So I agree with you about honesty, but I also think it's why the gay and lesbian secular humanist, or not secular humanist values cause us to have a critical perspective on how the society works. And I have yet to read a religious figure, a morally serious philosopher who did not say that the core of human experience is not professing values, but struggling to activate and realize them. - Do you agree, Denise? - Oh, I absolutely agree. I think that it's nice to have values and morals and ethics that hang out in the intellectual realm, but unless those values are translated, and lived in everyday life, and the ethics that call out to us to lead our lives, and create sometimes barriers, protective barriers to keep out the pain, and sometimes the barriers to keep ourselves safe. We all have those, but those ethical boundaries in our lives, if you don't live them then what good are they? Then it's just a nice, interesting head game that we play with one another. - So having a congregation within an ancient religious tradition, somewhat rigid, although, I think various aspects and shades now within the various congregations, is there something different in our community, and the lessons that we learn, and the ways we interact with traditional religious values? - I think so. I want to say first that many people within our gay and lesbian community have been greatly wounded by religion because so much of it is hierarchical, and patriarchal in its formation that, again, says you must follow X, and if you do not do X, then you are a sinner and you're out of the fold. And many people have been wounded by that. And so they kind of sometimes throw out everything in our gay and lesbian community, rather than taking a serious intellectual, emotional look at what values and ethics, what progressive traditions. And I'm not just talking about Western traditions. I'm talking about all kinds of religious structured belief systems and disciplines have to say that are authentic and that we do live. For me, personally, Judaism is one of the older religions, and certainly was patriarchal and hierarchical, and still is in some of its forms. On the other hand, I find a home in a very progressive and liberal tradition, which fully embraces lesbian and gay personhood from the equality of ordination, to endorsing our civil rights to be married if we so choose. There's room for my experience as a lesbian within the realm of full experiences. And I think it's very Jewish because I was hearing the two of you talk earlier. There's a Jewish story about being at Mount Sinai. It wasn't just Moses coming down, and handing the so-called law to the people, but before that happened, the holy one of blessings voice rang out with the words, and everybody who was present at Mount Sinai experienced for herself or for himself that voice, and our tradition, my tradition teaches that some hear it with a loud, booming thunder, and others feel it. And others hear it as music, and others sense it as the small quiet voice within, to quote Isaiah. So that allows within my tradition for a variety of experience to be authenticated including our lesbian and gay experience as valid, as moral, as you say, Robert, our inner true selves speaking forth. And I think I'm very lucky because I have a tradition, and a history that also includes a moral system and values, and ethics that has a home and a place for my voice to stand in concert with many other voices that allows me to do that. For lesbian and gay folk who aren't as lucky as I am, I think that we have to really struggle with the issue of honesty. And as Robert says in a democracy, honesty is supposed to be a paramount value. We see that value violated constantly, wherever we go. And the message really becomes don't be honest, don't be truthful to protect yourself, or to save yourself, or to keep this so-called family safe. And yet when we are truthful about our experience as lesbian and gay bisexual people, when we are true to our inner core and honest, that birthing, that freedom demands a response in others who are hiding, whether they're hiding about their sexual orientation, or there's those family secrets, which can't be told because the family will fall apart. If papa, grandpapa knows what really went on with his son's gambling habit has nothing to do with sexual orientation. - And they say it will kill him. Don't tell him it will kill him. I mean, that was the heaviest thing. Don't tell your mother it will kill her, and you think it's like, don't step on a crack in the sidewalk because you could cause this. - And yet I think our lives whoever we are, beyond sexual orientation if that's possible, has to deal first with honesty because from my perspective as a rabbi, that's what the eternal called me to be was honest for whom I'm with, who I'm in partnership with. - But this would not be unique to our community. I mean, what you're saying it seems to me is a value to anyone called to a tradition where they need to, or want to sort of grapple with personal identity, and maybe sexual identity would be one portion of that, but is there a unique set of values? I know we won't say every single person in our community feels the same way about this, but do you sense something? I mean, your congregation is primarily lesbian and gay, and I know you've been in the tradition long enough. You've been in congregations that are not. Have we had either out of our own oppression, or I don't know what, have we had to learn something that we now express in a different way, or know in a different way? - Well, I think that because of our oppression, our self-oppression, our lessons that we have to continually learn, and self-esteem to value ourselves, to value our truth as true, as real, as lived, that we've had to learn that lesson so much that this is a gift we've been able to then bring to other communities where it hasn't been as articulated. It may be present, but I think the gay, lesbian experience has really given permission, if you will, for other traditions to explore this in a new way. I think the AIDS crisis in particular has forced us as a community to respond in ways when certainly in the beginning no one else would respond. And so I would think that within our gay, lesbian experience, and our brief modern history in these few decades as an organized community, per se, we've learned that compassion is a value that we must live, and we must live that value to help others die peacefully, as well as to keep our community alive. - Phill, that's a community you have spent a lot of time in, done a lot of work in APLA, and also for the city of L.A. I know that you've probably done a lot of thinking about this. I mean, you and I have had conversations about this. What do you think? - Well, one of the questions you asked that struck me was, are there values that are unique to our community? I don't know if there are values that are unique to our communities. I think that out of our experience, there have been manifestations. Now those manifestations of those values are unique. And if you will, I'm reminded of kind of pottery, and how some things are counterintuitive. And you make pottery out of clay, and you put it into a kiln and you fire it. Now intuitively you would think that if you put clay under this heat the clay would melt. It would burn up, but that's not what happens, what happens is it gets hard, and it actually passed the test of the fire. And I would say that's one of the things that's happened to our community, particularly in the face of AIDS, that we have learned ethics and values in the kiln. And the words that echo in my ear are the words of honesty and truth, and I would add to that the issues around compassion, and courage particularly in the HIV arena. The thing that I find really peculiar in this discussion, particularly the public discourse on value is this kind of notion of family values. And you and I have talked about family values a lot, and you know a little about, a lot actually about my background. And the thing about that for me, really goes back to this issue of choice. Now in that I really think that there are very few people who know as much about family values as gays and lesbians because we take those values seriously. When we bond we do it without the protection of tradition, and without the protection of religion, and without the protection of civil law. And so when we bond those of values for many of us are values that we take on in a very real way. And in our most recent past, you definitely take on those values as much for the sickness of it, or the death of it, or the sadness of it, an understanding of that, particularly for gay men and women when we make a commitment to each other that even if we know that both of the partners are HIV negative, there is this thing in there that understands that this commitment has to withstand the test of the fire. And so the values connected with family, I think, really speak to kind of the values that we've learned through this experience. On the notion of compassion, I think that for any people who has kind of weathered the type of oppression that gays and lesbians have weathered, you have to come out of that, understanding what compassion is really about. And when you add on top of that the layer of the overwhelming grief and bereavement that we've experienced connected with HIV and AIDS. And quite frankly, and although it's not talked about enough the issues around breast cancer, and cervical cancer among lesbian women that we understand compassion. We understand what it means to take care of someone, to say to someone who's a family member, whether or not it's a chosen family, or a birth family, I'm gonna be there. And to know that you better mean it because it's not just words, because there's a very high likelihood that you'll be tested in that regard. - I think that's what Robert was referring to when he said, you said activist, but I think you didn't mean politic activist, so much as you must be an active friend. I mean, in our community, God forbid you should say to someone I'm your friend, because you have made a commitment kind of in the community. We show up at each other's hospital beds. We show up at each others, you know, we have our own rituals because we've been so closed away from sort of the traditional rituals. We aren't allowed to get married. We're not welcome in the church for our children to be baptized, or whatever. And so we create ritual, we create sort of community. You also said to me that our own personal stuff becomes our cultural stuff, the compassion that we exchange it's become sort of the value in the larger community, in our community, like, we have to be there for each other. Is that what you meant? - Oh, I think it's what I meant, but it's more elaborated than what I said at the time. So I'd like to claim credit for it and extend it even more. One of the things that I think is an example, you come out whether young or old, and you need a wise old queen, you need someone. Well, I was lucky, although, I was the age of a wise old queen, I had other queens all younger than I, just for the record, who taught me things. And one of the things that they really taught me was how to be a friend. It wasn't that I hadn't been a friend before, but so much of my friendship was in a professional, or a heterosexual context, and involved stopping short of what I really needed, which was full contact, not so much sexual as human. I think Phill what you said was inspiring to me, because I think one of the challenges of being there is to touch, to be touched. And I think that the reason that's activism is that activism to me means a commitment to changing things within the scope of your own action. And I know that it's a bit of a stretch to say that dishing is activism, but frankly, I think it is. When we sit around and watch the old homo classics, or read the extraordinary new lesbian and gay literature, it seems to me that our conversation is not merely highfalutin book chat, although, I love to do that, but it's really a ritual of communication. Is this true? Is it wrong? I can't believe she wrote that. - It's about the labor of creating community, and I think that that is something that very few people experience today. Many of us in our other cultural experiences are about established communities, that we understand what it is to be about that. And one of the things that's unique about the gay and lesbian experience, and I think I've even said this on this show is that we're the only people, actually, I don't feel this so much anymore, but I'll use the quote anyway because it will make a point that we're the only people born in the enemy- - [Robert] See, honesty. - Right, that we're the only people born in the enemy's camp. I learned to be black because I had parents who were black. Men learn to be men because there are men in their lives. Women learn to be women because there are women in their lives. The notion of a gay and lesbian community, a cultural community, is an experience that we all participate in. And to that degree you invest a certain amount of passion in that, and a certain amount of attentiveness to that experience. - Sheila, I like to think of it as having gay spiritual parents, not just mentors who really teach us about who we are as lesbian and gay people. And whether the relationships to the outside world, to our biological birth families are good or bad, at least we have the shared handed-down tradition, and handed-down wisdoms of those people for whom when we came out, or as we are coming out, helped to introduce us to the way that communities organized. And it doesn't matter whether it was in the late '60s, and how it was organized or now, or how it might be in future years, but to find yourselves almost, to acquire for yourselves spiritual teachers that can introduce you to kind of that larger gay and lesbian moral system. - Kind of like having a home to go home to. - [Denise] Yes. - And we've been homesick for places we've never been. - [Robert] Oh, yes. - Not my line, but I don't remember whose it was. - [Denise] Yes. - But, you know, Robert brought up something that I think we really need to talk about. This community is defined by people who hate us as being totally about sex, and that means immoral because the whole, it seems to me in the religious tradition, one of the most powerful ways to control people throughout the centuries has been to control what they do about procreation and sex. Not necessarily in that order. And so we are scapegoated enormously because not only is that what they see us doing differently, but it's about something that is really icky, and that this sex phobic culture in America, this puritanical culture hasn't wanted to deal with. We have dealt with it. And it has been a real point of contention, actually, between the men's and women's communities in the old days, and maybe still a little bit. The question of a sexual ethic, is there such a thing as a sexual ethic in our community? Because when you talk about welcome spiritual parents, come into the community, the people who hate us out there say, yeah, that's recruiting, you know, they're recruiting. And what they mean by recruiting is not somebody to go down to the center and stuff envelopes. They mean recruiting sexually, so we're supposed to be immoral. - Well, I think that for our community, there are two parts to that question. One is that the truth of the matter is all human beings are sexual. There's a sexual component to our lives, and what we represent to many people who attack this community is we represent a place where people talk about it, where there's an honesty about it. And I think that's intimidating for people because as long as your sexuality is defined, and controlled by someone else, whoever that someone else is has a power over you. And once you break that kind of bond, there's kind of a freedom, a liberation that happens that makes some folks uncomfortable. The second part of it is quite frankly, it's very cynical because if you can define any people by a thing rather than accept their total humanity, then you have the ability to do wedge politics, and divide folks one among another. - And also do better and worse. - [Phill] Absolutely. - [Denise] And also to dehumanize. - [Phill] Absolutely, absolutely. - [Denise] Because you objectify them. - [Phill] Absolutely. - Yes, it may be worth reminding everyone that the sexual libel has been characteristic of racism, antisemitism, and it's so specific that the very horror of it is almost funny because you can take the texts that were used to defame African Americans, to defame Jews. - All black men are rapists. - And it just fits right into it. I think one of the differences, though, for us is it is true that we are a community whose sexual minority status defines a great deal of our experience. And so I think that our process of having in a sense to embrace without being distracted by attack, having to embrace the search for love, pardon me, and for sex, and a good life, maybe even both, but that, in fact, the tough thing is that we are being attacked for something that we dare not let go of because, in fact, the sex phobics half the time what they're talking about is against talking about having sex, about accepting your desires. And one specific thing I'd like to suggest it is characteristic of marriage, at least in American history, that the facade of a happy husband and wife bond that then is a parental bond, et cetera, it is commonplace that the man characteristically strays, and that society is organized for that. And it seems to me, we are in the position of taking the practice of most human societies, and refusing to claim that what's happening isn't happening to say that it is much greater moral risk to lie about what people do than to face it and cope with it. And I think that's, I think it's why even when we're attacked, we really dare not give up our attachment to sexuality. - But the women's community was at least in the past very critical of the kind of freewheeling sexual practices that they were told about at least in the men's community, mostly pre AIDS. And that I have also heard men say that they were glad that there was a movement toward more commitment at the same time as the women's community was beginning to emulate the men's community, and try to lighten up a little bit. You know, the joke about what does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul. Let's move in. So a friend of mine said, God forbid we should get marriage in this country for gays and lesbians because lesbians would get married on the second date, no matter what and move in, but so there began to be a little bit of sort of embracing toward the middle ground, but there was some criticism of the behavior of the men's community. And I don't know whether there's an ethical value in there as well. - Well, you know, when I came out, and, actually, it's funny you talk about the second date. I ended up being in a 10 year relationship with the very first person I met. So maybe that's not a gender issue or not, but one of the things about that that I think worked was a commitment to be present. And one of the things that can happen, not always, but can happen, or could happen, and did happen sometime in the male community was really kind of an understanding of the different, or the diversity of expression that there are times when people would connect with each other for reasons of permanency, and there are times when people would connect to each other in temporary fashion, and finding ways to negotiate that, and to understand that, and to tell the truth about that was a challenge, and people didn't always succeed in that regard. And I think that that is a part of the difference between the way men and women are socialized. I think that what has evolved over the last 10 years in particular, is that gay men are beginning to say, I need to find out who I am, and work out with who my partner is what works for us. Forget all of the rules, that we have to create a unit here that works for us. Now it has to be, the foundation of that unit has to be these two individuals. And I think women, lesbians came to that same place, and that model really didn't work. I used to say that lesbians did serial monogamy, and I don't know what gay men did, but that lesbians did serial monogamy. And I find that the women that are in my life are, in fact, having those same kinds of negotiations where they're saying, well, who are you? And who am I? And what are we gonna do with this attraction that we have for each other? - And what values do we share in common? - [Phill] Absolutely. - I think one of the things that's missing in this conversation, and I think is totally missed by the sex phobic, by those that still hang onto Victorian era ideals about sex and sexuality and gender role stereotyping is that this isn't about sex really. Sex may be the expression it takes. It's about seeking intimacy, and sex is one way we build intimacy, but not the only way. Couples, families, you extend the unit. Friendship circles build intimacy. And so in our search as a people, gay and lesbian people to find out the truth of ourselves, we may have experienced different models in that search for intimacy and friendships and family, and partnership as lesbians and gay men differently because we were raised with gender role stereotypes. And from my sense of at least history, professor, you'll forgive me. - [Robert] You know I won't. - Is that it wasn't just about the sexual revolution, and open sexual behaviors for gay men. It's also about rejecting the stereotype of masculinity that demanded to be responsible only to X, Y, and Z, and that your life was played out in a certain way. And now as gay men come back to examine their life, and say who am I? How will my life unfold in a new openness at younger ages than certainly many of us here were able to do that so openly that is changing. That value discussion is changing about how do we form intimate, bonded relationships, both sexual relationships and partnerships and friendships in a very different way? And I think the same is true for lesbians. We were taught as women that we are nesters and homemakers. That's the image. And that's what we tried first, how natural. And then we have an awakening that says, well, that was what I was taught to be as a heterosexual woman, but I'm not a heterosexual woman. I'm a lesbian, a woman who identifies and love other women. What is our authentic call, and authentic desire for intimacy? Is it only sexuality and sex? Of course, not. No human being is only about sex and sexuality, which is what the sex phobics by focusing on sex deny themselves. - Well, it goes back then to our notion of how we build our families as well, because we've almost had to create our families the way people create Mardi Gras masks. I mean, there's a bead here and a feather here, and a gathering of whoever was there, and whoever is the closest. They may have been a sexual partner, they may not have. They may have been, and now they're no longer. And we do have the most extraordinary extended family. I think we're a great threat, and that's why I think so criticized, or feared. - Because we do what they wish they could do, which is make their friends their family, or that they say that they do in so many churches across we're the church family. Well, it's not always a family 'cause most families are dysfunctional in some way. And so then that gets played and acted out theologically, and emotionally within all kinds of organizational life. And that we as lesbian and gay people in our struggle to create community does that same thing. We reach out to our families and we create our families. - I wonder if the word for a value that comes out of here is not the value process because what I hear everyone saying is that we live lives in which, I mean, for example, we all know that sex can be a road to intimacy, or a road around it. And I think that there are some people for whom intimacy is a goal and some not, but what's so interesting to me is I can't think of an issue that's been raised here, or relationships that I know that we have in which there isn't some talk. And I think one of the changes among gay men has been the understanding that therapy is not just a cure you. It suggests means of communication. And so that's the first thing. The other thing that really struck me when you all were talking was a value that I would assert is a real value that certainly gay men can choose. And that puts gay men way ahead of non gay men. And that is, I think that gay men now, a gay men who is sexist, or misogynist, which has often been true in the past is choosing to ignore the lesson, not only of our community experience, but of the things that are done to us since the major reason that gay men have such a particularly low role in our society is our identification with women. Similarly, I think that at this point, gay men who choose and lesbians who choose to be racist, have a different relation to that than the rest of the population, because we all know that the grounds of our community here cuts across all the other stuff. And it seems to me that there is, I don't know if it's progressive or conservative because I think you can employ these values in various ways, but I think there is a level at which gay, or lesbian self-consciousness creates an immediacy to certain kinds of values, process, anti-racism, a refusal of sexism in which the political choice is deeply connected to this inner feeling. - I think that certainly there's historical foundation for that to happen. I also think that we've not gotten there. I think that certainly the potential to figure out ways as many oppressed people do, and certainly in this community, but to figure out ways to escape your own oppression as if it were personal and not political. I think when you understand that it's political, then you understand that the connection between homophobia, heterosexism and racism and sexism and antisemitism, and all of those things you understand them. I think that for many of us we haven't gotten to that point yet, and that we experience our own oppression so severely that we are preoccupied with that personal escape. And that leaves us vulnerable to perpetuate issues around racism and sexism, and all those other things. - I remember when we did a celebration of the Bill of Rights. It was the anniversary of the Bill of Rights. And there was a panel of lawyers from the community talking about. - [Robert] You read Toni Morrison. - Yes, I quoted Toni Morrison's book, but the most strange thing, I think, that happened at that gathering was that after all of our panel presentations were over, we had questions from the audience and a young man, white man stood up in the audience, and he had the mic. Yes? And he said, "Well, I understand why people would not like people of color or women, but why us?" And this panel of very verbal, very vocal lawyers looked at this guy like, and I was the moderator, so I said, of course, anybody want to take that question? We were just flabbergasted, but it's just what you're talking about, Phill, that we don't recognize. A lot of abused people don't. I mean, the work that I've done with battered women often they think that they can stop the battering if they just are better. If they just are just good and it doesn't happen. And they don't understand that kind of violence. As a tool it's political, it's not about them personally. It's a whole epidemic really in society. - But I also think that some of the things that Phill has articulated for us in terms of how we're not there yet, calls out to those of us, the four of us sitting here, and to your viewers to talk about thinking about, and living our values that when we are conscious of that, that issues and the connections between racism, and homophobia and sexism and ageism and antisemitism, is that we have to be called in some way by ourselves, by our responsibility, which is where we haven't talked much about, but which also goes, I think, with values, ethics and morality is the issues of responsibility and personal responsibility is that we also have to then live it. And one of the things that I think that our community needs to maybe shift, it's begin to shift its thinking, is not only to start this intellectual discussion, but that we have to help each other live it just as you can't learn to move away from an abusive family by yourself. You might have the gut, the instinct is that I've gotta get away, but you need help there. You need compassion. You need friends. You need other people. You need a therapist to help you move yourself to have a safe place to do that. And I think that we as a community have to also help one another, whether it's through workshops, or more discussions, or among our friendship and family circles to really start to live those ethics, and to speak out about them. - Well, each community probably has an ethic, and maybe many of the communities have an ethic of care. I know the African American community does. I know the Jewish community does. I know that in many ways, all ethnic communities do or strive to. The unique thing to me about our community is that we're so atomized that we can't start from that place where we grow up, or we don't as you said, Phill. We have to somehow collect sort of the diaspora of our community. We have to collect each other and ourselves back in to even see that there's such a thing. And then out of that we do this. And sometimes the doorway it's sort of backwards. The doorway is the ethic of care. I am so moved because my neighbor has AIDS. I will just go be with him. Now I meet his partner, or I meet his ex-partner who's now back in his life caring for him, or I meet other people in his community, or I meet the rabbi when she comes over to visit him. And I'm little by little, I learn out of my own reaching out to one person that there's a whole community there to join, but it feels like sort of an inversion instead of being born into a community, you have to find it and sort of join it. - But isn't that part of the great joy of being part of a group. I mean, that really we are the movement. This kind of discussion is historically unprecedented. I mean, there are other examples of the accommodation of sexual minority or diversity, but this particular one is new. And so it seems to me that we are doing, every one of us in our different ways through living, or through talking that work, and that the work we're talking about today is exactly what you say moving from the individual with whom it happens to the needs of that individual as she grows. And that, in fact, for many of us, and I think this does come with maturity, the need for a community that is not merely affirming, that is not merely broadly caretaking, and not merely sexual marketplace, but a community that respects, and kind of builds the things that you sort of know as you go on in life are really important. Responsibility, for example, is something I don't mean to ask the questions, but I would profit greatly from hearing people talk a little bit about that because it's a word that is so meaningful. And yet I'm a little confused sometimes about how it does operate as a value, particularly in our lives. If it's okay to ask? - It's always okay to ask. We've got 60 minutes let's talk. - When I think about, again, our gay and lesbian history, the little work that's been done is that so much of who we were in the late '60s was a rejection of that model of responsibility. I also think we've learned out of the AIDS crisis, out of dealing with the economic deprivation in the lesbian community very often because the dollar doesn't go as far in a woman's paycheck as it does in a man's paycheck, of learning to be responsible for one another. And it goes back to this ethic of caring that we've had to say, I'm gonna go and help my ex-lover die peacefully. And that there's been a sense of bonding and responsibility that's gone beyond my perhaps traditional family structures, but I also think that as society at large takes less and less responsibility for their children, for their parents, for their family, for their friends, we don't escape that either 'cause we're still part of the super culture. And so I think we have a responsibility to begin to think about what does responsibility mean in our lives as lesbian and gay people? And what does it mean to say as part of this larger culture, I'm gonna be responsible for my own ethics, actions, and values lived because overriding super culture wants to say that, well, you're not really responsible. It's because you have this gene, or you're a child of an alcoholic, or you're this, or you're that, that's the reason that you are the way you are. - Well, but there's a difference between victim status, which I've heard a lot about, like, we're just whining. And a recognition of what oppression really does do to not only a person, but to a collection of people who are oppressed on the same basis or bases. When you founded the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum there was such an outpouring of joy of people sort of finding each other and being there. And it was a shared experience of a double victimness, but it wasn't about whining. It was about power or empowerment. - And, in fact, it was about responsibility. It was very much about responsibility. The truth of the matter is that whether we know it or not, that when anyone is unable to maximize their potential, then we're all diminished by that. We lose something by that. The fact that Denise can be all that she can be, I benefit by that. And so when we founded, for example, the Black and Lesbian Leadership Forum, we understood that the gay community was not able to live up its potential because those of us who were African American were not able to live up to our potential in that community, and that the African American community was being diminished because those of us who were gays and lesbians were distracted from the contributions that we could make, and had a responsibility to make, to deal with the issues impacting that community. And I think that when you talk about responsibility, that is something that we all need to pay attention to. And that is the connectedness that we have to each other. And that we share a rather small planet, and that we have to all participate in the survival of that planet. And quite frankly, that means an investment in each of the individuals that do that. And if I can take a second, I would submit to you that, if you look at the way you do your job in the assembly with understanding the legacy of being a woman, and being a lesbian compared to some of your colleagues who don't understand the issues around sexism, or racism or homophobia, that the outcome of the work is very different. And the process that you go through is very, very different. And I think that manifests itself in that you take on issues that are much broader than gay or lesbian issues. You take on issues that are much broader than just the geographic region of your district because you understand the connectedness. And I believe that understanding has grown out of the experience that you've had. - Well, it's interesting. When I first started teaching, I think was the first time I really began to feel that I was a really effective teacher, and the reason stunned me. It was because I actually loved my students. I mean, I felt so fond of that group of very, I mean, they're law students. We're not talking the most lovable people in the universe. And I just felt so fond of them. They wanted to learn the vast majesty of the law, or maybe they didn't. Maybe they wanted to make a lot of money. Maybe I made it all up, but I feel in many ways the same way about groups of people that I see in the state for whom we're now responsible, so all the school children of the state who are suffering in so many different ways. Talk about oppressed classes. Children, I mean, they don't even speak. Have I had a child on my show to speak? No, and yet they die in greater numbers percentage wise than any other community. And so I feel this vast fondness, but the place that it really came from was coming out, and allowing, as you said, Robert, and each of you has said in your own way, allowing fully the feelings that I had that were very deep human feelings of love that could never be expressed. They just could not be expressed. And it's not about one person. It feels like you can't really love yourself, or another person fully until you let it out, sort of open up. And that's been an experience that I've seen people in our community have over and over. They're so surprised. They think coming out is gonna be horrible. They think everyone will hate them. They think their parents will hate them. And they're always stunned by what they didn't expect to find, which is a very loving, warm and embracing community. Yeah, political and fighting. Yeah, all the stuff that you could say, but somehow there's something in it where the opposition defines themselves by who they hate. And we are defined by who we love. I mean, think about it, even by them. It's a wonderful sort of pedestal, I think, for us. I don't know if that feels sort of authentic, like what you were saying. - I think that it's for me, anyway, it's exactly right. I think the odd, typically, pedantic moment was when I realized that Thomas Jefferson, one of my great academic subjects also loved to decorate. And somehow I know it sounds silly, but somehow it was a moment of power because I was able to be who I was as well as this structured scholar in my encounters. And when you say that about coming out, I began to live when I came out, and I owe my life, you know, there's a temptation, particularly if you're writing and all of this to say, oh, well, the people who founded it they weren't, they were sort of eccentric. I glory in their weirdness and eccentricity because they and the people who are activists today gave me more than anybody else. And I think it's the gift that you get almost when you come out that is, I wonder if there's a name for that value? I somehow think it is the value of feeling blessed. And I know that sort of sounds fancy, but I think what it means is to feel at last good fortune, and pleasure in what you're given when you start out. - Well, of course, with one minute left in our show, I can't imagine how fast this has gone. We haven't talked about activism, and sort of the ethics and values of giving back, of organizing, of trying to leave a legacy for others. I mean, there's so many, of course, different aspects of this we could have talked about, but I'm really delighted that the three of you were here, Phill Wilson, Rabbi Denise Eger, Robert Dawidoff. I hope that this will just trigger a beginning of a discussion in your own homes, in your own offices, and on the beach for those of you who live in California about these issues, because this is what we say back to them, "Get Used To It." Thanks for being with us. (upbeat music)