In the Life: Ep. 1108, "Building Safe Havens" [repeat]

on this edition of in the life i had it really visceral intense need to paint the work of lesbian artists you know it was this matter of both wanting to be this powerful woman and wanting to be her lover a different kind of camp for kids and not just a touchy feely let's slap it up on the wall and shake hands and sing kumbaya and the extraordinary style of one photographer he lost 80 percent of his site in a 30-day period all this and more on in the life in the life is funded in part by the h van ameringen foundation additional support provided by william j resnick rick weiland amy zimmerman and tanya wexler the overbrook foundation the mitchell gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and prejudice and the annual support of in-the-life members like you welcome to in the life i'm kathryn linton on this edition we'll take a look at a sensitive topic that is seldom discussed in the gay and lesbian community domestic violence anti-violence groups estimate that physical or psychological abuse occurs in nearly 20 percent of gay relationships and this is seen as a significant health issue now it's not that domestic violence is more prevalent between gay partners in fact the same exact rate of abuse is reported among straight couples but because of the stigma already attached to same-sex relationships it's a topic that has pretty much remained locked away in the closet later in the program correspondent tanya barfield reports on victims of domestic violence and experts who want to bring this dark secret to light we'll also look at the contributions lesbian artists and their work have made to the visual arts in this country and jonathan capart profiles a remarkable photographer who sees his pictures largely through his mind's eye but first an update on gays in the military and a policy implemented during the clinton administration in 1993 congress passed the homosexual conduct policy more commonly known as don't ask don't tell don't pursue which replaces the blanket ban on gay men and lesbians serving in the military this meant that officials were prohibited from asking about or investigating a person's sexual orientation as long as he or she kept it a secret but as dan karzlich reports the policy designed to make it easier for gay men and lesbians to serve their country continues to have the opposite effect the numbers are growing at an alarming rate according to the military's own estimates three military personnel are discharged every day because they have allegedly violated the don't ask don't tell don't pursue policy compared to 1994 that's nearly twice the rate of discharge increasingly though it's the military that's being accused of violating its own policy we spoke to a young man who is currently serving in the military about how violations to the don't ask don't tell don't pursue policy have affected his career i enlisted to to travel and to serve my country my family background also has some somewhat of a military background in itself and i just wanted to see the world john not his real name has asked us to keep his identity a secret because by simply agreeing to be interviewed he could be putting his military career at risk i've gone through everything from verbal harassment taunting physical altercations almost pushing i've also received a death threat note that almost you know made life really bad john called us a while back he was very concerned stacy sobel is legal director of the service members legal defense network a group that assists individuals harmed by the don't ask don't tell don't pursue policy he found out that someone had alleged that he was gay the person had said that john made a statement that he was gay and he didn't know what to do he didn't know what his rights were and he needed some advice the command did an investigation to try to determine whether he in fact was gay and they decided to keep him in until i was under my first investigation i was not officially told what the don't ask don't tell policy was there were a number of places where the military strayed from the via from the policy in his case first of all he was asked that's the first thing don't ask other service members are repeatedly asking him if he was gay or not additionally he was pursued someone had alleged that he was gay that he had made a statement but there was no other evidence and we believe that that was not sufficient to start an investigation in july of 1999 at fort campbell kentucky private barry winchell was beaten to death with a baseball bat while he slept by a fellow soldier because he believed winchell was gay private winchell's murderer touched me when i thought about it and i sat down and i read the news and the articles about it i started reviewing the problems that i had had in the past and i wasn't surprised at all i've been in situations where that same exact thing could have happened to me many times as a result of his murder the department of defense started an inspector general survey and that survey went and interviewed about 75 000 service members from all over the world and what that survey found was that 80 percent of all service members hear anti-gay speech and that 85 percent said it was tolerated to some extent and those numbers are just unacceptable this department of defense report also characterized harassment of homosexuals in the military as commonplace and though its law that all service members received training on the policy an incredible 57 percent said that they had received none i believe people are uncertain what the policy actually means reverend bernard wilson who was not gay served as a naval chaplain for more than 20 years before retiring in january of 2000. so when you have an ambiguous policy it's difficult to train to it because you're uncertain what you're training people to do despite our repeated requests no one from the pentagon would agree to be interviewed for this story we asked sociologist laura miller for her take on why some people feel the policy is necessary one argument that's been very effective in upholding people's convictions that the don't ask don't tell policy should remain in place is the argument that eunuch cohesion will be disrupted if open gays are introduced into the unit my response to individuals that say it's a morale or trust or whatever reason it is to be honest with you they're full of crap i've served on like i said an area or command that i was able to see individuals in a non-homophobic environment serve openly and there was no camaraderie problem there's no morale problem as a matter of fact you know everybody seemed closer together we like said they were like a family straight men in the military who are worried about gay men in the military are worried that gay men are going to act toward them the way they act toward women so pursuing harassment potentially assault and they don't want to be in that position there's often lifted the concept that having homosexuals serve on in such a closely knit environment invites trouble that has not been my experience in the military morale suffers if leadership isn't doing its job if if it isn't taking care of its people it has nothing to do with whether there are gays serving in those units and i'm always always surprised when they use that reason for not allowing gays to serve in the military studies of soldiers attitudes before racial integration reflected some of the same uh strength and opposition to integration a lot of white soldiers said i shouldn't have to be in intimate circumstances with blacks they said differences in the races and problems that the races had getting along would lead to mistrust and discomfort and serving with one another and a number of people have drawn parallels between the opposition by soldiers now to working with homosexuals and oppositions that happened with race when the forces were desegregated in 1948 there needed to be a cultural change and certainly churches helped by declaring racism and a sin i think that's a place for the religious institutions to step in and say the attitude of our citizens against people who are homosexual or lesbian is is wrong it's a sin and we ought to take a stand against it one thing the ban does i think is give soldiers who would have a tendency to act hostilely toward gays sort of the i don't know wink and nudge to go ahead and do it and also they have the confidence that gay soldiers aren't going to go complain about how they're being treated because they know if if that person reveals their sexuality that they'll be dismissed from the military there's nowhere to turn to when you're in a hostile environment you cannot turn to a chaplain you cannot turn to a doctor and sometimes you try to turn to a superior and that superior will turn you in so and that starts a whole another ball of wax right there it is very difficult for service members to have to live a lie every single day while they're serving and it's especially difficult when the services have what they call their core values and those core values tell service members that they are supposed to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity and it's the double lives that service members have to leave that often make them contact us why do i remain in the military after my situations and problems first of all i'm a fighter i'm not a quitter i did not realize that until after a few years of being in the service and the main and wholeheartedly reason is because i joined the military to serve my country to be a patriot in the best of all possible world worlds the united states military would have united states citizens serving fully in every and any job required to protect our nation whether we're whether we're gay straight lesbian bisexual transgendered whatever if you're an american citizen you have the right to serve and die for your country just like anyone else currently 23 nations allow gays and lesbians to serve openly within their militaries in fact with the exception of turkey the united states is the only original member of nato that continues to ban service by open gay and lesbian people only time will tell how the bush administration will handle this controversial policy during the years that i played for the dodgers the padres and the tigers i knew i couldn't come out and continue to be major league baseball player for those serving in the military under don't ask don't tell don't pursue the consequences of coming out are even more clear service members have been harassed imprisoned discharged and even murdered the service members legal defense network offers legal advice and support to those harmed under this policy for more information look for a link on the in the life website at in thelifetv.org i'm billy bean and you're watching in the life in the history of american art lesbian artists and their work have seldom received serious consideration now with the publication of her long-awaited book lesbian art in america harmony hammond positions lesbians and lesbian themes as one of the most powerful currents in women's art in the last century we caught up with harmony hammond at home in new mexico i really believe all artists connected to lived experiences into life and social political climates and therefore how do we look at lesbian art i think in some of the older artists and these are broad generalizations i'm making a lot of their work was more about hiding or about guilt you know so you look to somebody like fran wynette for instance uh whose early work are portraits of her dog cindy okay not her girlfriend and the background behind cindy her dog is all this kind of almost like a hieroglyphic language well it turns out that is a secret code that fran developed early on as a young girl writing secret poems to women when she was on the school bus through the 80s all the way up until the 90s we're talking about a flaunting of sexual difference there was more space for it once we found a common ground there was now room for the visual expression of difference in the life traveled around the country to talk with three distinguished artists featured in harmony's book janet cooling based in san diego has had 19 solo exhibitions since 1976. cooling's early paintings were some of the first images of lesbian sexuality a lot of my work is based on restructuring art history okay because i hate what it's about but i love the way you know i love paintings it's a girl was painted in 1996 i used the structure of a renaissance painting here to set it up structurally lots of stuff tumbling in and it's it's an epiphany for me this painting it refers to the birth of a girl the birth of a female painter the bunny man character is myself i had a really visceral intense need to paint to communicate to express myself after the it's a girl series i began really becoming interested in painting women's bodies and i actually became interested in changing my painting and actually wanted to to work with classical figure painting techniques and and i wanted a real different look to the paintings and on a political level i was interested in really portraying strong women you know you stand this painting it's like you're you're you're eye level middle of the painting is is this basically a crotch that you're looking at it's an extremely confrontive painting but on the same time you think you're looking at a classical figure painting you don't know if you're looking at a drag queen you don't know what you're looking at here maria elena gonzalez a cuban-born artist has been working in sculpture for nearly 15 years reworking classical elements of sculpture her work invites a complex and surprising interaction with form we met gonzalez in her brooklyn studio to talk about the evolution of her work a cut above was made in 1990 what it is is a stretch of rawhide in the form of a torso rawhide being a transparent material there's obviously something behind it and here's i guess where being a lesbian has to do with what informs my work my sexual identity was hidden for a long time you know i'm very well acquainted with this mysterious aspect of what you don't know about a person the persistence of sorrow was about loss it was about my friends that had passed away from aids i took the whole room and changed the shape of it into an oval that whole expanse of rubber had the names of people that had passed away in braille also these names had a swatch of vaseline on top when you touch it when you read the name this residue of vaseline stayed with you for a long time so even after you left the exhibition you still had this residue in your hands that brought back you know your experience magic carpet home is the first public art piece that i've done i used an architectural floor plan or an apartment and the only rooms that i marked were the closets and what i did was like this undulating surface which i equate to a magic carpet the great thing too is like the thematic is changing into this full blast celebration like i did a piece last year out of tile called cake and you can stand on it and you are celebrating yourself you are the trophy one of the installations that i'm doing in march in italy in torino is a series of cakes and champagne glasses and so you can't get more celebratory than that and finally we spoke with deborah bright in boston about her 25 years as an exhibiting photographer deborah is well known for her campy dream girls series well the first body of work i did with a sort of explicit queer theme was the dream girls series which was to take old movie stills and to insert myself in them to mess with the logics of a heterosexual love story i remembered watching these as a kid way before i you know knew what a lesbian was and realizing that you know it was this matter of both wanting to be this powerful woman and wanting to be her lover the being in writing series like with the dream girls which was also an excavation of childhood this was just another phase okay before we can name our desire what are those signposts along the way that we forget at puberty you know when we're conscripted into this very narrow heterosexual drama so i want to get back to these more anarchic phases when i do use what i would call the tack not the bondage it's usually in a very over elaborated way that's up front about it as a very eroticized part of why we enjoy looking at horses but it is you know it's skating on thin ice but i i court that you know i think sometimes it's useful to get at a thorny issue by doing it through humor and pleasure when i have shown the work publicly lots of women have come in the space and burst into cafes it's like you know this huge relief harmony hammond herself has been an out lesbian artist and lecturer since the early seventies much of her work incorporates found objects i feel my work was most consciously lesbian probably not until the late 70s when i was working with found fabric and rags i started wrapping these huge forms that were abstract body forms and then i just wrapped fabric from the inside out building it out of itself and so in a very metaphoric way it was about creating my own life moving from the center out most of the artists in this book while there is a kind of pride and a stance in being who we are no woman not no artist in this book wants to be limited by a definition of lesbian art any label is is contingent and strategic okay so in the 70s uh when these desires were just being identified and named of course you know people called themselves lesbians that you know had a different kind of strategic confrontational oppositional quality to it that it no longer does in this you know 1990s early 21st century environment i still want to see all of us go to the center of the mainstream and i've always felt that way about it i want to see this work in the context of painting period for this episode's in the news we travel to the southwest to talk with the coalition for equality in new mexico a federation of 48 different gay lesbian bisexual and transgendered organizations what we do is we work on legislative work on the state level and on local levels and we work with rural communities in particular to help build an infrastructure so that queer people can stay in new mexico and stay in their home towns we have lots of good pictures it's difficult to work in to be out in small towns particularly if you have 200 families in your town or your little village and you want to be out it's a hard place to come out because your whole family's there and people have their attitudes so we're trying to make it a safe place so that people can stay and do their work and where young people can come up and know that they're out gay people in their communities that they can see as role models and mentors the coalition for equality believes that this kind of grassroots work is key to the future of the gay rights movement i think that we have to have organizations working on federal legislation but i also think that those federal legislators come out of communities and they need to know that the constituents in their communities support a civil rights agenda or human rights agenda and that's our work here at the state level that's what's going to move this country forward it doesn't always come from the top down the strength is when it's really broad-based and coming from a lot of places and i think that's where the movement is right now i think the movement is in all states not just states that are very populous there's a lot of really exciting wonderful things happening in rural parts of this country and we need to get that word out in colorado revelers took to the slopes for the 24th annual aspen gay and lesbian ski week the church lady the winner of last year's costume contest is back to visit dubbed by its organizers as the world's premier party for charities gay ski week 2001 attracted over 5 000 lesbian and gay winter enthusiasts who enjoyed the cold knowing there were plenty of places to warm up later in the day an old silver mining town that became a world-class ski resort aspen in recent decades has attracted high-end retailers nightclubs and art galleries all ingredients that make gay and lesbian ski week a hot destination organizations benefiting from the week's many events include groups with national profiles you know gay ski week is interesting in that some of it is about dance parties and skiing and fun things but there are other more intellectual components to it fundraisers for the victory fund a major fundraiser for the human rights campaign at the cariboo club of a seminar on gay politics they come to aspen for a week have a wild a good time entertain themselves hugely ski up a storm and raise the money for good causes organized by the aspen gay and lesbian community fund the now famous ski week includes dozens of dinners parties performances and even a film festival it's very committed very intelligent gay and lesbian people who are here to put up the flag next january of 2002 we'll make it 25 years since a small gay group of aspen locals met a handful of gay skiers from california and made plans to meet the next year all of that became this yearly event i'm rupaul andre charles and you're watching the emmy award-nominated gay and lesbian news magazine in the life still to come on in the life going to camp and finding the common threads among today's kids and photographer john dugdale taking pictures in his own unique way but first when the subject of domestic violence is addressed the image that typically comes to mind is a woman abused by her husband or boyfriend but according to statistics domestic violence occurs just as frequently in same-sex relationships as in heterosexual couples and in both cases the numbers are alarming it's an issue that the gay and lesbian community has been slow to respond to but anti-violence groups consider domestic violence to be a serious health problem and are working with victims to bring this closeted issue out into the open we spoke to two gay men who have been victims of physical abuse one of them still fearing for his safety would not be identified on camera there's a big sense of shame because of being a gay man who is should be able to protect himself we met and fell in love everything felt right he had many qualities that i really admire everything happened so fast from the very beginning i lost control of my identity of who i was he was trying to come out to his family there was a lot of difficult phone calls you know followed by a lot of a lot of drinking first it was just threats and then it became slaps and kicks and slowly the evolution became turned around towards me where there would be violent it would get violent and and his frustration and anger was turned towards me as more gay people come forward with their stories of domestic abuse organizations like new york's anti-violence project are working to draw awareness to the problem at the anti-violence project we define domestic violence as any pattern of behavior which coerces dominates or isolates it's the exertion of any form of power which maintains control within an intimate relationship in 1999 the anti-violence project found that of reported cases among same-sex couples 56 percent of abuse victims were men and 42 percent were women what we do know from the limited research that has been done is that the incidence of domestic violence in the queer community is parallel to the incidence of domestic violence in the straight community and that number varies depending on the study between a quarter and a third of all relationships he became violent and i was trying to deflect and talk him down basically and and and he he connected and hit me in the face and broke my cheekbone and he chased me down and basically got a hold of me my throat and wouldn't let go and i pushed him off and i threatened to call the police and he said if i did he would kill me i needed help and i came to the fenway violence recovery program not quite sure knowing what i would get the violence recovery program at fenway community health we serve people who identify as gay lesbian bisexual or transgender and our domestic violence services include short-term counseling we do support and safety planning we do advocacy which can include police advocacy helping people to deal with police and report crimes to the police we also do court advocacy which can include going to court with people and helping them talk to the judge it's just a very uncomfortable experience not so much embarrassment or anything it's it's more of do they get it does my love matter as much as a a straight couple's love and and is this courtroom going to understand that domestic violence happens within lesbian gay transgender and bisexual relationships similarly but also differently from heterosexual relationships getting the legal system and service providers to understand the dynamics of same-sex relationships is one challenge facing organizations like the anti-violence project and the fenway community center we do a lot of community education we go wherever we can to talk about domestic violence in many communities there are no resources so for example that lesbian couple that that the woman is being abused may not may not think of going to a battered women's shelter maybe she would think of going to a better women's shelter she goes there and maybe she's going to face some homophobia there unfortunately most of those resources are not specifically designed to assist lesbian bisexual and transgender women however at the very least they will open the door for a woman they see a man coming down the walk they identify him immediately as the enemy and they don't even stop to think have we let a woman and who's an abuser and have we shut a man out who might be a victim but there are increasing examples of traditional service organizations responding to the needs of gay people who are seeking help to better serve the gay community in dallas the gay and lesbian center is working with a domestic violence program to create a shelter for gay men one of the first of its kind in the country we were contacted by the center and just began a dialogue about domestic violence and their concern or interest was what resources might be put together for gay men who are in a situation with domestic violence because there there was no facility to shelter them good afternoon dallas gay and lesbian community center we on average were getting i'd say at least one call every two weeks of someone trying to find out about domestic violence what could be done where could they go what services were out there the information was put out in the community that if a gay man were in a domestic violence situation to contact the center and they would link them up with us and we would provide them shelter and the center would provide them ongoing counseling and within a week gil called me and said well we've got a client here we think is appropriate and we're able to that day provide him shelter rather than recreate something that has already been done it's working with something that was already in progress which to me is i think is one of the big points about this project is that it'd be very difficult any place to try and start something from scratch but if you work with facilities or services that already in place it's a lot easier and you can get the service done a lot quicker collaborating with a traditional anti-violence program also serves to educate the mainstream about same-sex issues i'll be honest this is a very new program there's going to be a lot of learning as we go but again we wanted to do something now we felt that there are a lot of people that could use the service as gay organizations strive to educate mainstream institutions they are also working to get the gay community to look within and acknowledge that domestic violence is a serious problem that needs to be addressed there's often this feeling that we need to protect our community and we need to put you know not air the dirty laundry and we need to not give more fodder for the antis out there you know the people that like you know the fred phelps is out there the people that are gonna say all those relationships are dysfunctional and here's our proof that you know they beat each other up all the time and we don't want to show them that that happens and so what happens is then it forces the issue into the closet you know the truth of the matter is we are not making progress if in our own communities and in our own homes we're not creating safe spaces for our relationships to exist in healthful ways there is life after that relationship it might not seem that there's a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak but there is and once you get through the hard part which is the leaving and the healing process then you'll be okay my hope is that people in our community become more aware of these issues and how important they are we really need to take care of the people in our community build our community warts and all on this episode's in the arts two very different shows heated up the new york city winter on broadway kathy najimi burns up the stage at the helen hayes theater as she steps into the role of may west in dirty blonde make it a great big portion because west scandalized new york authorities with plays called sex and drag which invited not only audiences but the police and jail time she had numerous gay friends from the theater featuring them in the show called drag and according to dirty blonde gave them parts in her films as well ahead of her time she battled with the sensors throughout her career that's why it is so nice with charlie jimmy enjoys playing mae west who she sees as a revolutionary who wore her sexuality on her sleeve and advocated freedom and choice for women are you a virgin like west najimi has a large gay following and lists in her credits a passion for animal rights as well as aids women's and gay activism she makes her broadway debut in dirty blonde off broadway at the new york theater workshop the wit and warmth of quentin crisp was captured in resident alien someone wrote to me recently and said you're a sad lonely and bittered old queen who isn't interested in anything that interests anybody else and i thought that's right featuring betty bourne as quentin crisp resident alien is based on the life writings and musings of the self-proclaimed stately homo of england it's funny because in england when the law was changed regarding homosexuality people said oh it'll make a great difference to you i said it'll make no difference to me people didn't look at me and point at me and say look at him he's illegal they said he's effeminate that was my sin crisp documented his life as a gay man in london in his celebrated 1968 autobiography the naked civil servant he later emigrated to america and became a prominent and beloved resident of new york's east village he always insisted that he never dusted his one-room flat i live in exactly the same way i lived in london in a room that has not been dusted for 18 years after the past four years it doesn't get any worse on stage actor betty bourne was portraying his old friend as he knew crisp for nearly 20 years quentin crisp died in 1999 at age 90 and in keeping with his wishes his ashes were scattered along the streets of new york's east village the same neighborhood as the new york theater workshop in our next segment in the life goes to camp but not the kind of camp you may remember from your childhood this one has a different agenda altogether fighting homophobia in our nation's schools first through sixth grade i got teased constantly i don't know why it's just because i was just the weird girl whatever probably 30 times a day i hear all types of slurs and anti-gay epiphanes such as [ __ ] queer homo you know just anything like it doesn't even matter if it has any if it doesn't even have to be a person it could be like a class like this class is gay or someone's a [ __ ] because you don't like them not because they like guys with observations like these so common among high school students a coalition of community groups in new york's hudson valley responded by organizing the common threads youth empowerment project an annual weekend in fishkill new york where high school students and counselors share their views on diversity with a special focus on sexual orientation i'm glad that this has brought like straight and gay people together to let them know different things you know because there's certain things that people need to know in order to survive in this world together you know with men there's often been a more vehement type of homophobia taught to them where forms of affection between men are disallowed i'm hearing veteran teachers say things like i've been teaching for 30 years and this is the first time i'm having this conversation they're greatly relieved to find out that talking about gay and lesbian issues does not mean talking about sex it means talking about people it means talking about a culture it means talking about a history and it means talking about fairness and civil rights it's been really neat for me to see this whole thing take off you know the first year we had like 50 people and last year we had 80 and this year there's 130 and next year we're hoping to have one in the midwest i think the young people here this weekend are truly becoming empowered they realize that they in fact can make a difference that is not something that is left up to the adult community or somebody else that they can be the catalyst both in the power structure of whatever institution or school or organization they come from but most importantly perhaps with each other and the change that we try and provide here is like really a heart change and not just a touchy feely let's slap it up on the wall and shake hands and sing kumbaya you know there's a structure to it it means that they get to learn that they do in fact have a lot of common threads through role-playing and trust games participants learn how to safely and successfully confront homophobic actions and remarks rather than react with silence and fear just knowing like that i'm not alone you know really knowing it now like i mean i've known it for a while to some degree but now it's just like wow not alone so now it's like all right i'm sick of being teased i'm gonna stand up and fight for my rights the other thing that i think is really important is to get allies to get people who are going to stand up with you the featured speaker at this year's retreat was jaime nabuzny the first student to win a lawsuit against high school officials for failing to protect him from severe anti-gay abuse i came here this weekend to talk to the youth about i guess empowering them letting them know that the problems that they face in high school people have faced before i went before them and i hopefully establish a precedent that make sure that kids are safe in school that gives them legal precedence saying that they don't have to put up with the harassment that they're putting up within schools the harassment that jaime suffered was unrelenting and extreme and he had to be hospitalized on several occasions the kinds of violence and verbal and physical harassment that happened to jamie are still happening in this country jamie's story is such a landmark case both emotionally and legally schools are on notice that they do in fact have the responsibility to protect all students they need to provide safe space for glbt folks they're going to be looking to models like this to try and actually make change for those of you that um are not glbt but our allies it's really important to to be there when people are being harassed i mean i think that's that's because in a lot of ways it's easier for somebody to stand up that isn't gay or lesbian and say stop this is not right i'm not going to put up with this than it is for somebody who is glbt a lot of the students here perhaps the majority are straight students who can become very effective allies and now they can listen to people's stories and kids know that they have somebody else to talk to i'm a street advocate the fact that we're breaking the silence just communicating about it is a great tool for education gay and lesbian and transgender and bisexual teens mostly have a really really tough life because of all the negative response they get from their peers i feel that these people are targeted the the largest population targeted for put downs before i was involved in the cause i would not speak up about it now that i am involved with cause i don't hesitate before saying please don't use that language around me and if i embarrass them by saying please don't use that language then good because maybe they'll think twice before they do it i think there's there's two pieces of it and the first piece is a very early intervention stopping any kind of harassment a zero tolerance policy in grade school and then continually enforcing that throughout school i'm doing it because it's the right thing to do and i know that that must sound really like i have all these morals you know but i couldn't you know turn my back on it after giving the opportunity to become involved i couldn't be like oh no i don't have time for that because someone has to have time for it you know several different studies have indicated that gay teenagers are three to four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers adolescence can be a difficult time and kids who are seen and treated as different can be devastated by the rejection isolation harassment and even violence they sometimes face we have a lot of work to do to make a future that is truly safe for our gay lesbian bisexual and transgender children one organization that provides information and support to gay and questioning youth is the trevor project it offers a nationwide hotline open 24 hours a day 365 days a year young people can talk to trained counselors and find local resources and all calls are free and confidential if you're feeling hurt and alone or if you know someone who is look for a link to the trevor project helpline on the in the life website at in the life tv.org i'm susan sarandon and you're watching in the life for any visual artist the loss of sight is a terrifying prospect but that's exactly what happened to john dougdale at the height of his career as one of the world's most sought-after commercial photographers doug dale was 34 when aids-related illnesses left him partially paralyzed and legally blind but doug dale was determined to pursue his art even against overwhelming odds the result a new photographic genre that has critics talking and museum scrambling what attracted art directors and editors worldwide to doug dale's work was his uniquely sincere but sensual style which evoked the work of 19th century photography pioneers like julia margaret cameron and henry fox talbot i really imitated what i thought 19th century photography looked like and i did very saturated deep old-fashioned colors and i really it really ran the gamut from shoe catalogs for ralph lauren to pizza pictures for mccall's in the high-tech days of the early 90s dugdale vowed never to touch a computer and so far never has dugdale's love of all things 19th century was more than a hobby it became a way of life i had a wonderful experience for about eight years of living in a house that had no modern um amenities whatsoever and was the most quiet house i'd ever been in it was easy to find the past here you know shards of pottery from a hundred different decades coming up from under the ground every time i made the garden making more of a sense of the 19th century here at the house the first thing i did was rip everything out of the house that was be you know post 1875 which is the latest addition to the house and some of the wiring was kind of dangerous and it was very old and gave me the excuse to take out some of it which then led to me taking out all of it which then led to me removing all the appliances including the heat as his commercial career skyrocketed doug dale's increasingly harried life was complicated further in 1993 when he learned he was hiv positive i thought i would be asymptomatic forever but um you know i thought well i'm a healthy boy i don't do drugs i don't drink i go to bed early i pray i spend a lot of time in the country what i didn't really understand was the main factor in so much illness of any kind hiv or not is stress and i had untold stress in my life i believe it was the late winter of uh the winter of 93-94 so the the late winter when he when he had a he had a stroke and a very serious one it was hospitalized i believe for four months cmv retinitis came i believe in may he lost 80 percent of his sight in a 30 day period like robert maplethorpe keith herring and other artists in the early 90s doug dale's brush with mortality brought a sense of urgency to his work we've had political art you know from the 60s on that was very powerful and important but i think aids turned that that sort of more general protest kind of art into something much more personal especially because it involves sex and the body many artists took a confrontational style in dealing with the epidemic creating angry activist art dug dale's approach however stripped the stigma from sex death loss and love and presented them in photographs which could have been taken 100 years ago the timelessness has something to do with john's technique he's working in a 19th century technique he's reviving a lot of looks and styles that that come from the past and clearly wants to place his work and his subjects in a time that's that's really hard to pin down i think john would cringe to have someone in front of his camera with clothes on creates so many complexities of fashion and it would create a very specific time for the photograph of his work tends to be very timeless his lighting is mostly natural light it's the kind of light you would get in an 18th century farmhouse it's the light coming from the window which is the most beautiful kind of light it's not the kind of strobe glossy glitzy light it's a very subtle contemplative light it's a where the shadows have their own life that's perfect james though critics will debate the meaning of doug dale's technique his signature style actually emerged when his needs as an hiv positive artist intersected with his knowledge of 19th century photography being a student of the past when i came out of the hospital i knew that i wouldn't be able to use the normal fairly toxic chemistry that comes in the normal black and white dark room process but i did know about cyanotypes which are made in ultraviolet light in the sun it's a pre-electric process from 1841 invented by an astronomer and a philosopher named sir john herschel the most simple formula for it is two iron salts mixed together in water brushed on a piece of archival paper and sandwiched together with one of the large format negatives exposed to the light of the sun and rinsed in water that's it there's no dark room involved you can do them outside in the yard ironically doug dale's return after his diagnosis to more personal and substantial work has catapulted him into the realm of art world superstar earning him greater success and respect than his commercial career ever could he talks a lot about his condition that it was pre-ordained and that it was all destined there's there's no sadness in that there's no regret if i had one thing to tell any artist in any medium to do while while they were sick after they were sick before doing after any time is to take their experience and channel it through their filter of whatever their medium is and use their talent to possess the thing that's happening to you from all of us in the life thank you for watching and we'll see you next month that's perfect chance but just exactly that's just what i wanted so in the life is funded in part by the h van ameringen foundation additional support provided by william j resnick rick weiland amy zimmerman and tanya wexler the overbrook foundation the mitchell gold company in the hopes of eliminating all types of fear and prejudice and the annual support of in-the-life members like you you