In the Life: Ep. 1001, "Season Premiere"

on this edition of In The Life the debate over the Millennium March I think it's good for the community it's good to energize these people it was corporate it was hierarchical it was elitist protesting for gay rights in Puerto Rico and a gay writer's novel approach plus author Edmund White and how AIDS influences his art all this and more on this edition of In the life in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by Michael ale lepin Orlando Reese and Bill Becker Rick Wyland Peter Zimmer and Jim step the Arcus Foundation the Collingwood Foundation Foundation the Gil Foundation the Snowden Foundation the Mitchell Gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and Prejudice the gay network gay.com and the annual support of in the members like you welcome to the season premiere of in the Life hi I'm Katherine Linton walk into any major bookstore or visit one online these days and you're likely to find a section for Gay and Lesbian literature or if you happen to pick up the New York Times book review in in August you would have seen a novel with gay and bisexual characters written by elen Harris right at the top of the best seller list go on to the days when gay themed books were considered too risky for mainstream marketing gay literature has come out of the closet this mainstreaming has afforded new visibility and open doors for gay authors but it has also had an effect on smaller bookstores which used to be the primary outlets for alternative works on this episode correspondent Daniel cars report on how gay and lesbian bookstores are fairing against the competition from larger chains ands you'll meet one of the rising new novelists Whose books are proving popular with straight as well as gay readers and Jonathan Kar profiles celebrated author Edmund white as he reflects on Art and activism wherever my eye would go in scanning the past in trying to remember what happened to me whatever seemed to me most momentous or most magical that's what I would write about but first a different story about activism and a controversy that has polarized the gay political Community last April thousands of people turned out for the Millennium March on Washington the event was held despite criticism from some quarters that it lacked diversity and Grassroots support critics of the March staged counter demonstrations and just as troubling the finances of a related event the Millennium Festival are now the target of an FBI investigation in the Life correspondent Tim curan reports on the lessons to be learned from the Millennium March and Festival on April 30th 2000 tens of thousands of gay lesbian bisexual and transgender people converged on the nation's capital for the Millennium March on Washington for equality but just how many tens of thousands is still the subject of intense debate and a reflection of the deep fault lines that cut across the gay community in the months leading up to the March heated controversy dogged the march from the very beginning in early 1998 when Human Rights Campaign executive director Elizabeth Burch and Metropolitan Community Church founder Reverend Troy Perry announced with little input from gay activists that a national March would be held in the spring of 2000 M Carter from dur North Carolina also on the committee for an open process a group calling itself the ad hoc committee for an open process organized in opposition calling the March a betrayal of the traditional gay rights struggle for social justice it was undemocratic uh it was corporate it was hierarchical it was elitist it was um very white for two years the ad hoc committee demanded racial diversity and a decision-making process open to everyone they also demanded almost from the start that March organizers open their financial books meanwhile the March board wrestled with Logistics and fundraising and although the board rebuffed the demands for wideopen decision-making and open books they tried to address some of the issues raised by the ad hoc committee this board adopted some very strong statements um regarding racism in our community we really invited hundreds of people very diverse group of people to be a part of the stage we invited people to work with us uh in the March eventually though the ad hoc committee urged the gay community to boycott the event but there was no stopping the momentum and inevitably Millennium weekend arrived couples make kiss the early events focused on current mainstream gay issues like gay marriage and on celebration as gay and lesbian Superstars graced the stage at the human rights campaign's equality Rocks concert spectacular I think it's good for the community it's good to energize these people these people are going to go home with a real just a good sense about them and uh that's why I like being here on Sunday Sunday the unreliable Washington weather cooperated for once but estimates of the crowds varied wildly from a low of 125,000 from the ad hoc committee up to 3/4 million from March organizers for many people the success or failure of the Millennium March will be judged by the numbers but for those who made their way to the Capital Mall March finances or attendance are less important than celebrating and demonstrating with throngs of other gay people on a national stage what they want they say is a chance to make the March their own I think it's incredible it makes it means the whole world to me I just wanted to say that when I saw all these people I was so overwhelmed they started crying I was just like oh my God it's it's amazing few of those who marched knew about the controversy and many of those who did dismissed it I didn't hear about any different um gays or lesbians who weren't going to come and weren't going to support it I know of a lot who wish they could come um to this but they couldn't a financial afford it so I'm glad I could yeah I've been aware of it but didn't bother me I wanted to come here and make a statement and I'm not interested in the internal politics that much to me the feeling is come out here be seen have a good time not worry about the politics I the community is getting so large now that there it's starting to be the separate factions and it's unfortunate that's that's going to happen but others saw the scene on March day as proof that the ad hoc committee had been right including one critic who spoke from the main stage I speak because we must broaden the movement to see the intersection of race gender class religion and ethnicity I saw a sea of white faces I mean I could probably have counted on both my hands the number of black people I saw in the in the audience there and this is in Washington DC predominantly black City Keith boyin says now that however good the March board's intentions they simply didn't know how to reach out to minority communities the the efforts of the March organizers to achieve diversity were woefully inadequate and that was primarily because they didn't go beyond The Usual Suspects I mean to take the two board members you have and um hire one black staff person and say you're achieving diversity is laughable it's outrageous I don't think it's a fair criticism at all half of our board members were people of color we had three transgender people on our board we had tremendous Geographic diversity that I don't think has ever happened if you the people you add have politics that are pretty similar to the ones that are already in the room then you haven't really changed that much but the problems and the controversy didn't end on the day of the march in fact as it turned out they were just beginning and this time they centered on a related Street Fair event called the Millennium Festival the festival had been organized by a member of the March board Jose ukas who quit the board to form his own for-profit company Millennium Productions which got the contract to produce the festival without open bidding in return uas agreed to give up to 65% of the festival's profit to the Millennium March at the time the ad hoc committee questioned whether this amounted to a sweetheart deal but uas says with only five months to go until the March there simply wasn't time to put the festival out to bid some people might look at that as a sweet deal or a conflict of interest I don't I don't think it was a conflict of interest because if anything I had the best interest and the reason I wanted to do it is because I wanted to be able to provide the march with some funding but after the March news emerged that left critics feeling Vindicated when the festival reported that it had been robbed early reports in the Press speculated that as much as $750,000 might be missing based on rough attendance estimates but uas says now that a careful count of admission wristbands and food tickets shows about $160,000 was taken uas says his company has cooperated with an FBI investigation which is focusing on Festival employees who transported cash to the counting trailer but in the meantime Millennium Productions is facing bankruptcy unable to pay its creditors and food vendors and the Millennium March board is also high and dry trying to pay back huge loans without the $750,000 they had budgeted as income from the festival but journalist Michaelangelo sorelli believes the alleged robbery could have been prevented it is the product of a series of lapses um sloppiness incompetence missed opportunities if people were more on the ball uh were more open had opened their books had let other talented people into the process had had asked people for help um we may not have had a situation where the festival was the um event that was going to pay back all of these loans that were taken out besides the festival the only other significant Revenue source for the March was corporate donations but ad hoc Committee Member Barbara Smith claims that the March's dependence on corporate dollars proves that it was less a Grassroots political action than it was a marketing opportunity we're at a point where having Nike swishes and uh United Airlines or American Airlines or whoever whoever it is who fo a bill that that's just as good as having uh sat down somewhere in a room and figured out okay what is it we want and how can we go about getting it you know these things are not cheap and so to pay for it um we went to to corporations to find a way to help us do that and I have to tell you I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing in the aftermath of the event critics and supporters alike have tried to figure out what lessons can be learned from the troubled Millennium March some reach all the way back to the Genesis of the march called they say with far too little Grassroots input one is that when you decide for a community that something is important you really have to make sure you understand where all the community stands on these issues and not to make these decisions in a vacuum um and then secondly I have this old idea that if you want want me to be with you when the plane lands you have to invite me on board when the plane takes off others worry about what they see as the lack of gay Unity which the conflict reflects we don't have certain rights and you know the only way we're going to get them is we are united we work together and we help each other no matter what happens and just come to the table and work together that's where our future lies not in backstabbing each other and criticizing it really really got to me that we would be characterized as people who were being uh really Petty mean-spirited and uh undermining for uh very very minor reasons uh we wanted to alert the movement as a whole that there were choices and decisions to be made and everyone involved agrees that the debate over the Millennium March did raise questions about the scope of the gay rights agenda and the inclusion of Highly diverse communities and viewpoints which will be debated at least until the next march in Washington I'm Tim Curran for in the life in our next segment we move from Washington to the island of Puerto Rico another place that has seen demonstrations by civil rights activists this us Commonwealth is promoted as one of the most gay friendly Des Nations one can go in the Caribbean but ironically Puerto Rico still has a law in the books that declares sodomy a crime in the Forefront of a movement to abolish this law is a woman who is a leader in the church and in the struggle for gay rights I am Margarita Sanchez Deon I belong to the universal fraternity of the Metropolitan Community Church this church was founded 30 years ago in the United States and it's the first American Church to be open to the gay and lesbian Community I've had a companion for the past 10 years we have a great relationship we support each other we compliment each other in many ways I've been blessed to have magarita has been a leader in the Civil Rights community and human rights community in Puerto Rico for many years working not just on lesbian and gay rights issues but on all kinds of social justice issues on on peace issues economic equality in 1997 the House of Representatives was presented with a project that became known as the project against gay marriage magita was testifying before the um the legislature in Puerto Rico she was testifying an opposition to a bill that would prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying when it was time for me to testify along with other religious leaders against the project I was the only person who was asked about her sexual orientation she was basically you know verbally attacked by a legis Lor who accused her of being a lesbian and said that um she was in violation of Puerto Rico's sodomy statute and as a result she could be arrested I think many people would have been scared and intimidated and silenced by that and her reaction was exactly the opposite which was to decide to take on that law and to do everything she could to remove that law so the people could no longer use it against uh her and other gays and lesbians in November 1997 we went to the Department of Justice to openly confess that we were in violation of article 103 to see what the state would do we were ready to go to jail for those violations because even though we understood it was a law it was an unfair law article 103 which is Puerto Rico sodomy statute uses very Antiquated language it makes it a crime for anybody in Puerto Rico to engage in what the law calls the crime against nature which legally we understand to mean anal sex in addition it prohibits gazing lesbians from engaging in any kind of sexual intimacy whatsoever it's a felony and the punishment is up to 10 years in prison this lawsuit hasn't upset me very much personally it has however affected my partner particularly because of the public exposure associated with the lawsuit even though her name doesn't appear on the lawsuit obviously she's been exposed she's been put in a difficult position because her family contrary to mine has not been open to her sexual orientation nor to our relationship last year we started a demonstration called expression at five we started it on the 29th of January 1999 which is the international day of nonviolence and peace that day is also the anniversary of the death of mhat Gandhi gandh in this context of nonviolence and peace we have this activity every Friday in front of the Capitol building in these demonstrations we condemn homophobia in PTO Rico and our society and within its structures whether social or cultural even though we concentrate on homophobia we understand that all social exclusions have the same Roots we are a group that has suffered a lot of invisibility this is a way to tell Society especially to those who rule our country that we exist that we are citizens that we have rights and that we should be heard as a woman as a black woman and as a lesbian I have been discriminated against quite a bit in our society once for instance I was denied the rental of an apartment because of the color of my skin my faith has led me to believe that it's very important to get involved and to work on social issues but my faith did come first as a strong follower of Jesus I believe that Jesus stood for and fought for the welfare of people Jesus didn't only preach for people to repent he would feed people he would heal people and he would denounce situations in their social context in 1960 every state in this country had a sodomy statute on the books today of course only uh 17 states have sodomy statutes on the books and those laws the the laws that have been eliminated have been eliminated by legislators which have repealed them and some of them have been eliminated by lawsuits like this one basically article 103 impacts the gay community in the following manner it makes our conduct and our lives a crime and making the gay and lesbian segment of the population illegal has very serious consequences there was a case that was decided uh last year by the court of appeals in Puerto Rico the case involved two gay men who were a couple one of the men assaulted the other man um and the um the District Attorney's office went to prosecute the man who was um guilty of engaging in domestic violence and the Court ruled that the laws that prohibit domestic violence in Puerto Rico can't be used to protect gay people in relationships those relationships aren't entitled to protection because under Puerto Rico sodomy statute the the sexual intimacy that those relationships involve is illegal as gays and lesbians we have felt the impact of these views on our personal lives this is perhaps what informs our decision to take on these social issues and these political actions it's that we can personally identify with oppression I guess we can say that it's in light of the discrimination against us that we Forge our ideals magarita is a very energetic inspired and inspiring person uh she just has has tremendous vision is very warm very personal I always believe that personal contact whether it's a smile a shake of hands or a simple conversation will breach any Gap that may be between us there is space for all of us in our society this fall the sodomy challenge will make history as the ACLU brings its case to the Puerto Rican Supreme Court where for the first time ever lesbian gay civil rights take Center Stage Puerto Rico is not the only place in the US to have a sodomy law at one time all 50 states had them today they remain on the books in 18 states while the majority of these laws applied to both heterosexual and homosexual Behavior gay men and lesbians have been unfairly targeted for enforcement penalties range from a $200 fine to 20 years in prison sodomy laws have been used to take children away from parents to arrest people for even discussing sex and as a threat to silence the political voices of gay and lesbian people all over the country through its gay and lesbian civil rights project the American civil liberties Union fights sodomy laws throughout the country and works as an effective advocate for equal rights for gays and lesbians in all areas of the law to learn more visit the inthelife website at inthe tv. org I'm maret Gomez and you're watching in the life for this episode's in the Arts a new play called a vow tackles sex and religion a vow is basically about two young men who've been together for 3 years and they want to be married in the Catholic Church which they are are part of and they go to a priest who they feel will be responsive to their request and it turns out he is not we want to make a vow before God to God and to each other and to Christ through you well I just think sexuality and religion is just very interesting that it's it's interesting how um religion views the body and the expression of the body Davis is most known for his play and film Mass Appeal I just for some reason I just was talking to people people in their late 20s early 30s who were having serious religious crisis about being gay I'm afraid to hear it what are you afraid to hear uh something like as much as I understand your desire I can't in good conscience go against the official what makes you think I won't say that because we think you're radical the recent New York Premiere boasted veteran film actor Jane Powell so here I am with my gay son and my unmarried pregnant daughter watching the audiences I find them transfixed with the play It's fast-paced the energy of the actors and the energy of the characters are is quick and they engage each other in a passionate way what's happened Rose nothing except I'm going to be in heaven all alone go engagement and energy are also Staples of another group The Elizabeth stb Dance Company we caught them at a public rehearsal in New York's Grand Central Terminal I am now recently calling myself an action architect rather than a choreographer because I feel that the type of action that I produce and invent has really nothing to do with the tradition of dance it's the first time that I've been able to do what I'm calling an action occupation in Grand Central Station which is the preeminent train station in the world essentially streb's latest work is called action heroes and she told us where you might look for her own Heroes less formally the circus the rodeo boxing and everyone that sort of goes out there and accomplishes life life endangering actions go go coming out of the closet is one of the most dangerous acts you can do because as many crazy movies as we can do here like jumping off cliffs and and dealing with a huge amount of impact there's no Huger impact than telling the truth about your sexuality and I think that um until I was able to do that which was actually you know about 10 to 12 years ago I wasn't really able to come into my own as an artist or a person I think that it's very clear that I've had a large a large gay and lesbian follen for the last 25 years they they come devotedly to the shows it is absolutely gerine to the work that I do that I'm a lesbian and I don't think if I were not I would be making the work that I'm making after Grand Central look for streb's action heroes in public spaces across the country I'm Wilson Cruz for in the Life still to come on in the Life author and AIDS activist Edmund white and best-selling novelist elen Harris well I think uh my characters are like individuals within our community but first Dan Carlick reports on gay bookstores and the struggle to survive in the era of the internet with the proliferation of large chains like Barnes & Noble and borders and the growing popularity of of book selling sites on the internet the last few years have been particularly difficult for small locally owned Gan lesbian bookstores across the country many of these Independents have struggled to redefine themselves just to keep their doors open still others have gone out of business all together we checked in with three of the survivors to see what they are doing to remain competitive Amazon bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis Minnesota started doing business over 30 years ago Barb Weezer is general manager of the store it started on the front porch of uh living Collective by these two women who in involved in the years into a business with a storefront and we've moved several times and we just moved to this location two days ago we consider ourselves a feminist bookstore and we carry books for women and their children and their friends we carry large section of lesbian books we have a very large lesbian clientele but that's not that's not our only identity but certainly part of our identity the main change es of course has been what has happened in the last 5 to 10 years which is first the rise of the chain stores of which there's over 20 now in the Twin Cities area and then of course 5 years ago the rise of the internet and all of those are tremendous competition for independent bookstores in order to remain competitive the owners of the Amazon bookstore have changed the location of the store added a coffee shop and created a website The Cooperative has had to emphasize the more subtle strength of the small independent as well I think the big key really is customer service you know and that we're a small enough store and a small enough staff that we everybody's very knowledgeable and that they can really help people figure out what they want and that people want that Personal Touch in the spring of last year Amazon bookstore Cooperative took their fight against their corporate competitors to a new venue the courtroom when they filed a trademark infringement suit against internet giant amazon.com when they they first started they were small too and we didn't know about them nobody knew about them I know that uh The Cooperative dealt with things like people coming into their store trying to pick up things that they had ordered from amazon.com Scott mckinstry is with the American book sellers Association it was a difficulty for them uh and they went to court to protect their name we settled last fall November and I can't really speak about the settlement but you know we were happy with it and it and the publicity around the lawsuit really did help a lot we really don't have that kind of confusion now it was just important for a relatively small independent store to stand up and be heard to let themselves be known and and to avoid the kind of confusion that the name coincidence was causing across town at a Brother's touchbook store owner Harvey Herz has also felt the pressure of the large chains and the web when managing to stay open little scarier than it used to be but I suppose the fact that we've been here 17 years and we're still open Prov something I start to think eventually people get tired of the chains and tired of amazon.com and I rather go someplace and put something in my hands to see what it looks like instead of ordering something sight unseen and uh who knows what I'm getting I've also noticed that um most of my customers are people that know that what like to open up a gay bookstore years ago when nobody else would do it and most of the kids that I see don't know anything about gay history they just sort of sto wherever they want along the way you what really annoys me is the fact that borders and bars and noal and all these huge corporations for years would never sell anything gay because they didn't want to offend all the straight people that came in the store so you never see a gay book and then all a sudden they discovered the market so why do all the gay people flock to there why not Deport your local neighborhood bookstore maybe we did too good a job we created all this and everybody else T the advantage of it now they're doing well and uh we're the ones that disappearing after 17 years Harvey has decided to sell the bookstore Michael Norman an employee of Harvey's plans to buy it I think the store has enormous potential one of the things that needs to change is to be much more aggressive in promotion of the store and in the marketing the Outreach to the community and doing whatever we can to draw the community in well by expanding the hours um putting in some easy chairs on a sofa um letting people stay longer um making it a much more friendly comfortable Ambiance in a sense fight the chains on their own turf with stores in San Francisco Los Angeles and this one here in New York A different light is perhaps the best known Gan lesbian bookstore in the country but with three large chained bookstores within a half mile radius of here they too have had their work cut out for them for the first 15 years or so we kind of were immune to any changes in the market but just like everything else the internet really really did start to change things and it changed things so quickly that I don't think any of us were really prepared for it and after 20 21 plus years is we certainly have no plans of going under so we're in the process of revamping who we are and how we do business what we hopefully can offer is access to titles that that customers aren't going to find anywhere else either because you know we're the only ones that know about them or it's it's a title that's the chain stores just aren't comfortable carrying and it you know that's what we do I mean our our whole policy is is one of non censorship so our liking of book does not does do not determine whether we carry it or not um we like to let our customers decide what they're going to read we also have kind of functioned as a community center of sorts for for 20 plus years um we still think of ourselves as integrated in the community that way and so the the rumors that A different light is closing couldn't be further from the truth in fact people should start to see serious changes over the next couple of months for most of the last decade the drop in the number of independent bookstores across the country was sharp in the last 2 to 3 years however that decline has leveled off one thing I've learned from from doing this is uh whenever I go shopping I try to shop in a independent place now instead of uh somebody going to try to put them out of business I mean so many women have come in here and this is like the first place they've come like when they're coming out you know and like they've come back and said you know this is what made all the difference in the world to them and I I think that's such an important thing when you walk into your independent bookstore you will be met by people who are there because they passionately care about books and when they recommend a book to you that's why they recommend it because they've read it they know it and they love it that's awfully important in 1989 a young African-American computer salesman kept a promise he made at his best friend's deathbed elen Harris quit his high-paying job cashed in his savings and spent the next few months writing invisible life a story about race Redemption sexuality and betrayal the book was roundly rejected by Publishers so Harris had to resort to his own Ingenuity to get the book to readers now 10 years later all of Harris's novels have been optioned by Hollywood he's busy developing a script for Whitney Houston and finishing his own autobiography which will be published next year we talked to Harris about risk dedication and following one's own dream despite overwhelming odds could you take our picture I had spent about 12 years in the computer field working for companies like IVM H Packard and AT&T I quit my job basically and uh when I finished a manuscript I started submit it to Publishers both large and small black and white and gay and straight and the manuscript was sarily rejected by every publisher that i' sent it to so I self-published it and started pedaling it wherever people were in beauty shops barber shops uh sorority uh conventions black Expos and what have you and that's kind of how the whole thing got started I just think that's a brilliant you know strategy go to where the women are the women who read and all that and get people talking one of our sales reps in that area heard about this amazing guy who was selling copies of his book in the back of his trunk of a car to um all these U hairdressing establishments in um Atlanta brought it to the attention of one of our then editors I called him and I told him who I was and he said you're John grisham's publisher aren't you and I said yes we are and he said nothing would make me happier than to be working with John grisham's publisher because that's what I want to be Harris didn't know he wanted to be a writer until some of his friends started dying from AIDS when I was losing a lot of friends to Aid I would write them letters and these would be long little letters about how we met in some of the good times in our lives because quite frankly I didn't want them to leave here without knowing what their friendship meant to me and one of my friends uh in his final days you know he called me to visit and we went to visit and he told me how much those letters meant to him and said that I had a gift for writing and and he said you should write you should write you should tell our stories now when someone's on their death bed you you make promises that you don't know how you're going to be able to keep but a year and a half later I just I started invisible life invisible Life the book that Harris first pedal from the back of his car was eventually picked up by double day and is now in its 40th printing invisible life was the start of the one day reads of eand Harris books we remember when visible life came out I was like is he gay Harris's devoted female readership can be credited for his unprecedented rise to success from IBM sales executive to literary Superstar an Ascension which has become a publishing industry Legend he gets what it is to tell a story he really writes about self-acceptance he believes in love and that is part of what makes this book so successful the same Publishers who first rejected Harris were now offering him multiple book contracts and six figure advances he's one of the few authors we really take a lead from on marketing plans um we we surely run everything by him his latest novel not a day goes by premiered at number two on the New York Times best seller list he has 10,000 hits on his website which is pretty extraordinary starting a while a couple months ago um we sent out some uh wedding announcements there's a wedding that takes place in not a day goes by we sent out a save the date card people were sort of emailing back and forth saying this is the wedding of the century what are you wearing it was like it was a real event which is pretty pretty amazing and then we sent out um an invitation to the rehearsal dinner um and that I think even generated more Buzz while Harris's work has been acknowledged by mainstream critics for shattering stereotypes about black gay men it has also been attacked by gay critics for its sympathy towards characters in the closet it I think uh my characters are like individuals within our community each person needs to make the decision on how they want to lead their lives if some people choose to live their life in the closet or choose uh to not identify themselves as gay or bisexual I'm glad that we live in a country where they're able to make that decision the fluid sexuality of Harris's protagonists is not a common characteristic in Mass Market fiction aimed at black readers but in pioneering a new genre Harris has attracted a wide readership gay and straight black and white married and single how do you Ladi think that um yansy really felt about baz's bisexuality no one really has been able to do what he's done in the way that he's done it in sort of a mainstream way there had never been a gay African-American romance as far as I know that had been published previously and that that was a a dramatic breakthrough I knew that to get noticed you had to be telling a different story you couldn't just tell boy meets girl or boy meets boy or what have you you had to have a story that was going to Intrigue people of all different backgrounds and the characters that I created uh identify themselves as bisexual some of them didn't identify themselves as bisexual at all even though they were having sex with men and um and found a huge audience I found that people were really interested in these type of characters it's been said that all novels are autobiographical and Harris's work is no exception as his characters have struggled with telling the truth about themselves so has Harris I grew up in Little Rock Arkansas and I grew up in a very lower middle class not even middle class it was it was low low income but one of the things that I could aspire to with things that I saw on TV and things I read in books to know that I didn't have to stay in the predicament that I was in as a child if you asked him if he was gay when I first signed him up he would say no I just went into the whole thing with him assuming that he was comfortable with it and was kind of caught up short the first time that I realized he wasn't for me personally the writing has definitely changed you know my Outlook I find that it's much easier to tell the truth about who I am uh that way I don't have to go back and correct anything that I've that I've said in the past and I think it's also been helpful in allowing other young African-Americans or Hispanics or anybody who's who's dealing with sexual issues to see that it's okay to say what so and to tell the truth in a further step toward telling the truth about himself Harris has begun work on his Memoirs the reason why we were interested in his autobiography is because he has an incredibly powerful story to tell starting when he was a child in Arkansas and going on I think probably right up to the point where he publishes the first book the reception of his Memoir I think will be um crucial as to how he decides to continue and whether he does any non-fiction it's it's always been my ambition to Branch out to not just be known as a black gay writer but as a writer and I know to do that I was going to have to attack different genres and and write different stories on this program's news and notes politics dominate the season in the south Georgia Democratic governor Roy Barnes spoke at a July meeting of the Atlanta executive Network an organization of gay and lesbian Business Leaders we were successful this year in passing hate crimes legislation which went into effect on July 1st now with this bill we're sending a clear message to wouldbe criminals Georgia does not tolerate crime and Georgia does not tolerate hatred and bigotry as reasons for Crime Roy Barn's appearance was the first by a Georgia Governor to a gay group in New York the political primary season Drew candidates to the gay and lesbian Community Center Al Gore became the first sitting vice president to speak at the center and it is an unparalleled opportunity in this election of the year 2000 to build a future where all Americans are seen for who they really are not because of who they fall in love with not first lady in Senate candidate Hillary Clinton Clinton also spoke at the center for the gay and lesbian independent Democrats I want to be very clear the cause of civil rights for gays and lesbians is one of the pieces of unfinished business that we face as a nation at the beginning of this 21st century there is still much to be done to ensure that lesbian and gay Americans are afforded the same protections as every other American for the GOP as the gay press considers a George W bush presidency the Texas governor met with gay Republicans from his home state in a well publicized and closed event last spring at the Philadelphia Convention openly gay representative Jim Colby of Arizona was invited to speak on trade issues and gay Republicans Hil this as a signal that lesbians and gays would be welcome in a Bush Administration meanwhile the presence of Mary Cheney purportedly the the first out lesbian child of a Vice Presidential nominee gave the gay press much to write about Edmund white was one of the first gay writers to explore his sexuality in fiction since the 1960s he has published 14 novels and has taught creative writing at a number of ivy league universities including Princeton where he currently teaches his writing Chronicles a generation and deals with life in the 1950s coming out love guilt the sexual Revolution and living with AIDS white recently moved back to the US after living in Paris for 16 years we caught up with him in Provincetown where he shared some of his thoughts and insights about his life and work I where going seems to me that AIDS is a subject that uh involves both Love and Death therefore it's perfect subject matter for a novelist and it's uh something I personally care about intensely because I've lost a couple hundred people that I've known including several lovers I was diagnosed HIV positive in 1985 and it turns out I belong to this very small and fortunate group of people probably only 2% of all HIV people who are what are called nonprogressors I mean that is I don't get worse feel like I was given a chance that was denied so many other writers I knew to go on writing and to testify to this important event wherever my eye would go in scanning the past in trying to remember what happened to me whatever seemed to me most momentous or most magical that's what I would write about for instance some of the first sexual encounters um the whole experience of going to a shrink and uh trying to go straight talking about that those things uh in the 50s actually participating in the Stonewall Uprising as I did um uh which ends the beautiful room is empty we rushed down to buy the morning papers to see how the Stonewall Uprising had been described it's really our pastile day loose head but we couldn't find a single mention in the Press of the turning point of Our Lives over his career 14 of white's books have been published however a number of his novels that were deemed too gay remain unpublished in an archive at Yale University I had started submitting gay novels in the 1960s to Publishers and they were always rejected often times by gay editors because they were all in the closet if they espoused a book it would mean that they would be coming out which they weren't prepared to do nor was it a good climate to come out in the first autobiographical novel I I wrote was Boy own story and it had a surprising success but I think it was partly because it was um about adolescence and the character was not really very sexually experienced I mean he was somebody who was worrying about his sexual orientation and I think that's something that teenagers in general can identify with not long ago I had a 19-year-old black man from South Africa come up to me and say oh it's amazing your story is exactly like mine I said it is how could that be but I suppose if you go far enough inside yourself and really present those innermost doubts and fears and longings that people will be able to connect with that no matter how diverse their background is from yours when I wrote my Trilogy the boys story beautiful room was empty and the farewell Symphony I I wrote it in the first person I felt like well I've done my duty I've written written about everything from the repression of the 50s to the liberation of the 60s to the exaltation of the 70s to the wipe out of the 80s uh through AIDS so I've I've sort of shown in my Trilogy this whole Arc of experience having finished that series now I can write about me I can and but paradoxically I chose to do it in the third person Austin loved walking the streets again and buying prints and old books along the caves he knew France was entering a major decline but he didn't care his own prospects were too dim to trouble himself about the future while many consider Edmund white to be one of America's preeminent gay writers some critics have charged him with being overly sexual in his writing the controversy surrounding white and sex prompted the English magazine Harper's Queen to describe him as the most malign man in America a badge which he says he carries proudly I think 2third of Americans I would guess are still still quite hostile to anything specific about about gay life and I would suspect half of all Americans don't want to know about sex whether it's straight or gay so somebody who writes as much about sex as I do is bound to run into a lot of hostility I believe in writing about sex realistically and not writing pornography pornography is is writing about sex that is designed to stimulate you and it's actually a form of sex it's one-handed reading there's an awful lot about pleasure in in my writing but being American I'm also puritanical so there's an awful lot about the fear of pleasure and so there's a kind constant struggle I suppose between wanting as much pleasure as possible and being afraid of it am I a crossover writer well I think I mean I'm always surprised by how many heterosexual women read my writing I think some uh straight women like to read gay male fiction and even gay male sex scenes because they get twice as much for their money people are alone when they read and I think it's a very precious and private moment when you have a chance to really say something to a reader and uh I just hope that I can write in a way that's effective enough and simple enough and moving enough that it'll get through to somebody Edmund white has given us awardwinning and provocative literature since the 1970s and helped to blaze the trail for other gay authors like me he's also been instrumental in the war against AIDS in 1981 before AIDS even had a name white co-founded an organization called The Gay Men's Health crisis better known as gmhc this institution has provided a place for our community to learn about the disease to mount a battle against it and to take care of each other in its way despite some major breakthroughs in treatment the fight against AIDS is far from over we still need places like gmhc and they need our support to find the link to gmhc go to the inthelife website at inthe tv.org check it out and get involved I'm elen Harris and you're watching in the life from all of us at in the life thank you for watching and we'll see you next time come together it's up to you what's your world there's a party going on right here there's a celebration to last throughout all this Millennium so bring a good time and your to in the life is funded in part by the H van amaran Foundation additional support provided by Michael a lepin Orlando Reese and Bill Becker Rick Wyland Peter Zimmer and Jim step the Arcus Foundation the Collingwood Foundation the Gill Foundation the Snowden Foundation the Mitchell Gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and Prejudice the gay network gay.com and the annual support of in Theif members like you