In the Life: Ep. 1209, "The Body Politic"

tonight on in the life the body politic oh to be young and gay him and three of his friends started just beating the crap out of me and harvey fierstein's year in review so it's june again take me out dennis o'hare hosts in the life america's gay and lesbian news magazine in the life is funded in part by the hvan van ameringen foundation additional support provided by the ford foundation the gill foundation the otto haas charitable trust the pride foundation the ted snowden foundation the reed williams foundation adam a funding collaborative empowering queer youth broadway cares equity fights aids michael a lepen daniel h renberg and eugene kabaloski and the annual support of in-the-life members like you welcome to in the life's 12th annual pride special i'm dennis o'hare tonight america's gay and lesbian news magazine is here at rootstein mannequin showroom in new york to celebrate lgbt pride month with the body politic an examination of our community's health now whether it's the economy the aids epidemic the growing concerns of our community seniors getting into or coming out in professional sports or fighting for our physical safety our body politics are anything but simple and everything but trivial tonight lgbt elders find a senior world ill-prepared for their arrival heroism under apartheid and special guest patricia clarkson takes us out hey who is that handsome man and we begin with body positive designer john bartlett returns to interlife with a question now in 2003 what should aids look like in 1994 keith lewis president of the la based modeling firm the morgan agency received a request a client was looking for an hiv-positive model to appear in an ad for edvira a new supplement developed specifically for those with hiv at a time when a positive diagnosis could render one unemployable and very few in the entertainment industry were even talking about hiv lewis held a casting call to find any models willing to go public with their hiv status we thought we'd have you know a few people we had close to a hundred they helped us understand what this disease was and how the face of the disease had changed out of that first casting call lewis found chris craze and the first ad with an openly hiv-positive model hit the newsstand there was criticism that there was an ad that was out there and there was a hunky guy in this ad that obviously was not hiv positive chris was hurt and he was shocked he penned this letter uh to a newspaper in san francisco explaining that he was indeed hiv positive and this was something that he would use the national debate over a healthy-looking model like craze representing the hiv community inspired lewis to start a new division called proof positive juliet bruce beverly dion and jason are part of that division i think it's important for people to see my face in an ad for an hiv medication because they can they can put a face to somebody that uses the medication and they can also understand that you can leave lead a normal life the biggest thing now is so many people are ashamed of it and you know i'm not ashamed of it around that time i was about the only woman african-american woman she had a heterosexual woman that was willing to stand up and say that i was an hiv-infected woman still from the very beginning this sort of aids drug advertising has drawn harsh criticism mark milano is an aids educator and a member of act up i think frankly these are advertising people who know that if you want to market a product you put a cute attractive person in the ad and that's how you market your product and that it's giving particularly young gay men the impression that aids is over that it's controllable and that it's not that scary to get hiv the power of advertising to create imagery around any kind of product any kind of population is very strong howard buford is the founder and ceo of prime access a marketing and advertising firm that targets marginalized populations many people are forgotten just how absolutely devastating aids was in the very beginning and of course it still is but not to the mortality rate that we were seeing then you know early on you know one of the first images put out by benetton it was a very sick almost christ-like figure of suffering a lot of people hated that ad and thought it was very exploitative and northrop is a member of the new york city chapter of acta at that point in the epidemic we needed to see the reality of people dying human beings putting a face on it but in the midst of an epidemic mass media images like the benetton ad also confirmed the belief that people with hiv looked a certain way namely sick dying and predominantly white images that for the public define the face of aids in 1997 the fda began to allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers this decision roughly coincided with the marketing of protease inhibitors a new class of drugs the fda's decision set off a flood of advertising and the new ads raised new questions this quick savann ad was one of the earliest and most controversial it really gave the impression that having hiv was just about taking some pills and then you would look fabulous and be fabulous presenting these drugs as simple easy to take side effect free medications uh is very misleading jason jasnos appeared in the crick savannah ad i was taking quick savannah at the time so you know i am an outdoors person there was nothing untrue about that particular ad when someone looks at the ads and says that these individuals are too glossy they're too healthy looking i almost become angry because the people that we work with in this division are hiv positive they are indeed part of this disease i think these campaigns are not inappropriate in showing people that there is hope now at the same time a lot of it is unrealistic and we don't see ads of people sort of wasting away for people who are living with hiv it it hurts it hurts to look at somebody who is suffering and so to have an advertisement that shows suffering and shows pain it's like what's the message there a more recent ad campaign that drew criticism was this life goes on campaign for sustiva proof positive models dion and bruce both appeared in those ads the fda's pinpointed that ad saying that we the models looked too healthy okay that's almost like saying that somebody might look too white to be latino so what is it how am i supposed to look i mean we work hard those of us some of us who are hiv infected we work very hard to be healthy and to look good and to keep ourselves together i mean sometimes it's not like that sometimes we do get sick but those of us who manage to stay healthy it's been through medication are not to take medication some of us are just naturally healthy but beyond the aesthetics of the ads more far-reaching questions are being asked about this kind of direct to consumer advertising and its effect on the accessibility and costs of these drugs the drug companies are very willing to do all this advertising but less willing to really make the drugs accessible to everyone who needs them we are seeing this currently in international issues around the world where millions and millions of people are dying for lack of access to these drugs but even in this country it's been a terrible problem with people unable to afford the drugs and with government programs designed to help running out of money to this day a look at the wholesale prices of some of today's drugs show that costs are high the companies are spending far more money on marketing than they do on research they claim they have to charge these really high prices for these drugs because they need the money for more research but much more of the money is going into marketing so we really question if it's wise to spend all this money on these ads and they also raise the price of the drugs the expense of the advertising for hiv medications i believe in my experience has very little to do with the cost of the medications there's been almost no hiv advertising in the television arena the production budgets there are much higher than they are for print so if you look at hiv advertising has been unusually unusually efficient as far as the cost of the advertising itself pharmaceutical companies also have the highest profit margin of any industry in the world advertising is certainly a significant expense and a significant part of their cost but just the profit margins they take is an unconscionable part of their uh cost we think a decision to use a drug is a decision between a patient and the doctor they need to look at the drugs to look at the data to make a decision what drug is appropriate and to take that drug we say cut the advertising cut the price of the drugs you know people can make these decisions for themselves without heads still many of those without access to care use drug ads as a way to find out what sort of treatment is available we have had reports from people who in focus groups say i didn't have a doctor they typically go to the emergency room for their medical care where they have actually torn the advertising out of a magazine shown up at the at the emergency room and said can this help me people still don't know enough about how treatment works and this is a downside of the advertising because all it says essentially is take drugs if you have hiv take drugs when in fact what we have said as activists for 15 years now is delay treatment wait wait until you really need it ironically it's the revenue generated by these ads that promotes access to information on a broader scale many publications rely on these ads for their funding and that includes paws hiv plus anu so i think actually many of those companies might fold if if the drug company ads dried up i think that advertising is one way of getting word out to a lot of people it should not be the only channel well maybe the interesting thing about having an industry of aids ads is that there is a market you know there wouldn't be those ads if they didn't think they could make money so in some ways that's a good thing because the minute the possibility of a market disappears so will the research i remember back in the 70s with the wta rene richards who used to be richard raskin wanted to play on the tour and the women just went crazy what i did because i didn't know really understand transgender i had heard of it but i didn't really understand it i called up renee and i said can i talk you know can i listen to you so went over to her place and listened to her for four hours i went back to the wta to the women at the wt i said you guys the gig's up she's going to be on the wta tour she's a woman now and uh if you can't beat her too bad she's been my mentor as far as understanding the world of being a transgender i'm billie jean king and you're watching in the life the debate around age representation points up our community's image consciousness so in the fervor over how to represent ourselves what gets left out entirely pamela snead considers this in the golden years between two and four million gay and lesbian americans are senior citizens while gay and straight seniors share concerns about housing income and health care gay seniors sometimes find themselves uncared for and often invisible it takes no more than a few snapshots of gay society to see how obsessed our culture is with youth so what's the problem one word ageism discrimination against those who are older it's nothing new to the general population but experts say it's much worse in the gay community want proof just flip through the pages of your local gay newspaper and try doing what ken south did one friday afternoon i went through it and just took counted all the pictures in one episode of the paper there were like 152 pictures in that particular you know volume of the newspaper of that three were people that i could think were over 50 years old two were obituaries and one was an ad for marlon brando for a new movie south is an expert on lgbt aging issues and co-authored a landmark study called outing age on federal policy in the needs of gay seniors he says in our society if you're not young you're invisible somehow they think that people over 40 just drop off the face of the earth there's no gay people over 40. or they have very slanted very sad images of what it means to be an old gay person but old and sad are not synonymous carl martin is proof carl is 76 though he realized he was gay as teens he remained in the closet right through a marriage that lasted nearly 50 years carl started coming out just six years ago shortly after his wife passed away today he has a partner and newfound freedom now that i am free to be myself i'm more happy than i've ever been in my life carl is in good health but like many men his age he has a slow growing prostate cancer and sees the doctor regularly to be sure it stays in check carl hasn't told his doctors about his sexual orientation but he also doesn't let that barrier stop him from getting the proper health care needed at his age your dealings with the doctor is as patient a doctor it doesn't have to be as a particular kind of sexual person in the doctor that choice works for call but certainly not for all gay seniors in fact the need to hide one's sexual orientation is so stressful for some that they avoid health care and home care altogether if you're 75 80 years old you grew up in the 50s you grew up in the mccarthy era if you were a lesbian school teacher in the early 50s or late 40s and you came out you could easily end up in a state hospital with lobotomy today of course things are much different still even beyond the problems in nursing homes we've all heard about there are a number of well-documented cases of substandard care and discrimination in health care settings against gays and lesbians so many who do use mainstream social services work very hard to hide their sexual identity from their caregivers okay people are going to stay in the closet as much as they can they will deny who they are because they're even more dependent on people they're dependent every minute of every day for their for their nourishment for their well-being for their medical care so several studies including ken sows call for training those who staff home health agencies and nursing homes to combat this lack of awareness and sensitivity when you start talking these issues to some of these professionals their eyes glaze over and they look like it's like deer in the headlights you know they're like oh my god you know i never thought of that you know that you know two you know men in their 80s could love each other hmm well i suppose that's true i think that all people are feeling like sitting ducks in a sense esther katzman is out to change that with senior health resources in washington d.c shr is a non-profit she created to provide home health and other social services to the older lgbt community her first big project is one potential small solution a survey of local providers from doctors offices and health clinics to assisted living facilities and nursing homes the goal to let seniors know how aware or unaware those agencies are of lgbt concerns there were several places who actually either refused to answer those questions or didn't really know whether they were gay people in their facility or didn't know if they were gay clients if they weren't a residential facility they didn't know they didn't ask and they didn't have any mechanisms of actually making people feel comfortable enough to come out esther says it's a matter of education and the process is a slow one so meanwhile she and her team are looking beyond health care into other needs of the aging gay population one possibility developing retirement housing for the lgbt community and she's not the only one currently there are two major lgbt retirement communities in existence the palms of minnesota and the resort on carefree boulevard both in florida but neither offers assisted living so there's a push for communities that provide health care and home care services and to make them affordable the other thing though that i think is really needed are the social services for people who don't have the big bucks who can't get you know the big homes and the you know go to communities but if a gay retirement community is right for you the fact is there just isn't much out there especially when compared to the wide availability of options in mainstream society in the dozen or so that are in the works are in the very early stages with just a website or brochure to show for their efforts so far from our town in san francisco to stonewall communities in boston birds of a feather for women near santa fe even a place for us in cleveland ohio let's face it you'd have more fun because everybody would understand yeah your comfort level would be would be higher but but then meryl curly and her partner pat sagad say they like the idea of a gay retirement community but aren't sure it's right for them like many they hope to stay where they are and use home care services in their local area if needed and if sensitive i don't want to have to hide who i am and i want the staff to be very sensitive to my needs retirement is still several years away from maryland pat so for now they've got more pressing concerns most of them financial another big issue for the aging lgbt community why because same-sex partners do not have the legal protections that straight couples do so marilyn pad are trying their best to protect themselves they've had three key legal documents drawn up to ensure that they get the recognition they deserve in a time of crisis your worst case scenario would be that something happens to your partner and you you go to the hospital and they basically kick you out of the room because you're not family well you know pat and i have been together almost 18 years and i can't think of anybody else that i would consider family so among their legal strategies a health care proxy adorable power of attorney and a will we consider ourselves married whether the state does or not and that we wanted as much protection as we could get for each other and that was very important it's all about financial security in preparation for the inevitable the death of a partner because when it comes to spousal benefits like social security and pension same-sex couples are not allowed to collect with very few exceptions 401ks are treated differently too taxed heavily if a same-sex partner dies not at all if you were married and the same for a state and inheritance taxes same-sex couples are taxed where married couples are not they're you know blatantly unfair for people who are living very very similar lifestyles who love each other who have put into the system just like anybody else but are not getting anything out of the system in fact the national gay and lesbian task force estimates that gay elders lose up to 124 million dollars a year would be social security benefits alone there's um a theme that i'm treated as a second class citizen but the news is not all bad as marilyn pat learned there is help out there from legal and financial experts both gay and straight in fact a few of the bigger investment firms like merrill lynch have even created departments devoted specifically to lgbt clients but being prepared must start with the individual don't bury your head in the sand you need to stop and think about your future and where you want your future to be and you're the only one that can control it still whether it's housing or health care marilyn pat feel that these are not issues just for gay seniors rather for the entire gay community especially as the huge baby boom generation races towards retirement a gay or lesbian baby boomer turns 50 in this country every single minute and with a little organization and planning it's this generation that could at least begin to affect the change needed we are uh people who expect uh the government and the society to respond to real needs and we'll make it happen if we have to make it happen that's our generation where that's part of who we were so that's not going to change as much as gays and lesbians might be just like everybody else under the law we are not we are in fact deemed legal strangers from our partners unless we protect ourselves documents like domestic partnership agreements health care proxies adorable powers of attorney and living wills create rights and a legal recognition of our relationships that we don't otherwise have so please if you're in a partnership find your local family or a state attorney and begin the process of safeguarding your family i'm leslie gore and you're watching in the life still to come on in the life boys will be boys i used to have bruises on my arms from this pastor's son a change-up in america's favorite pastime kind of a hallmark card with sodomy and harvey has the last word ain't that good news while issues like treating disease and navigating the aging process crop up as obvious health concerns the physical integrity of many in the lgbt community is threatened most frequently by the very real danger of physical violence walk like a man follows the story of one student's fight for his safety in the halls of a public high school and this episode's real to reel simon and i traces the lives and the work of two south africans who managed to secure gay and lesbian civil rights when as black people under apartheid they were not even citizens of their own country i am black and i'm gay i cannot separate the two parts of me into secondary or primary struggle they will be all one struggle simon and i is about simon and cody who was a mentor of mine who was a leader in the anc movement until apartheid he was jailed for a long time and he came out as being gay and then kind of started the gay movement as it happened in the early 90s and in johannesburg in particular you know started the first pride march and that type of thing it's also a history of how the south african gay and lesbian movement emerged all the way to when the constitution passed sexual orientation in the late 1980s apartheid had reached a fever pitch blacks continued to be classified as non-citizens and the south african political and social climate was in turmoil within this oppressive setting anti-apartheid activist simon coley formed glo the gay and lesbian organization of vidvatesrand adding sexual orientation to his fight for equal rights when i first met simon it was at the first first meeting of flo and for whatever reason i just felt that i should be one of the people that's like standing right next to him you know largely because there wasn't any black queer woman coming out at that time so he taught me a lot he was a very very good friend that first pride was one of the best days of my life but i was on tv that night it was a religious show and a priest was saying these people should be killed all of a sudden i was getting funny looks from people in the street i thought oh oh what have i done two days later i was sitting in my room when i heard voices outside calling my name i ran into the lounge and my granny opened the door and told me to hide about 20 angry men were surrounding our house demanding that i come with them so they could teach me a lesson the worst thing was that they threatened to take my grandma if i didn't go with them again today the world is going to know that we here in south africa have been oppressed for too long we can't stand it anymore why do we have to fight for the right to love who we want to love i have like several underlying reasons for wanting to tell the story but i think the first thing was to acknowledge simon and cody for who and what he really was i needed to make sure that that's known that this is the man who started this movement in this way and it's not like there was no movement there were organizations in south africa before simon and cody came along but they were very white male and there was nothing that could unify black gay and lesbian or any other people of color basically inside the movement so that's really what he sparked a self-confidence amongst young gay people to actually have them stand up for themselves and that first pride march was ingenious it was at the right moment you know all races came together everyone had this vision that was organized in 1990 the same year nelson mandela was released from prison four years later the results of these two events would converge following the first all-race elections in south africa as the newly elected president nelson mandela proposed a constitution that guaranteed equal rights to all citizens the constitution was approved in 1996. they speak of a constitutional democratic political order in which regardless of color gender religion political opinion or sexual orientation the law will provide for the equal protection of all our citizens south africa is one of i think the only one still with a constitution that includes sexual orientation under the bill of rights yeah and that is still a phenomenal thing to a lot of people around the world after the constitutional fight was won simon formed the township aids project which bev joined as an aids educator specializing in lesbian health issues soon this change in focus saw bev and simon going their separate ways simon's battle with aids was a personal one as he himself was hiv positive and his work became more and more devoted to this singular cause while bev defined her role as a spokesperson for women's issues it would be the 10th anniversary of glow that would bring the two back together i think we really like inside africa to be talking today after 10 years of our struggle i mean it's 10 years i'm talking about when blow has formed because there was nothing nothing was happening before then simon passed away a week after we did the first filming with bev and simon and so we had to change our perspective a little bit i think for bev of speaking for bev emotionally a very brave movie she put her heart and soul on the screen and i think there were some rocky times there but she came through it was really my vision to make sure that the history comes out and just the acknowledging of the person who meant a lot for all of us even to people who don't know that this was the guy that actually gets you walking in the street a little freer than normal you know we are the largest generation of lesbians and gays to have had such a fearless selfless visionary for a leader i am me because of him we are all weak because of him i know his own rest in peace he did his work and he did it beautifully oh do i'm stacey ann chin i'm dan pintaro carol channing rachel true marissa darwin oaker milan harris i'm rufus wainwright i'm paris barkley and you're watching and you're watching and you're watching the emmy award nominated emmy nominated gay and lesbian news magazine in the life in the life in the life a rash of recent studies on bullying in schools has produced a number of alarming statistics every seven minutes a student is bullied 85 percent of the time no one intervenes and according to the national institute of mental health lgbt youth and those who are perceived to be are perhaps the most frequent targets kids just treat you like you're lower just because of your sexuality and i don't think that's right i'd get paper thrown at me or notes in the hallway that just said gay i'd hear kids call me or oh here comes kay scott it made me feel low and like i didn't want to even get up in the morning i still don't want to get up in the morning you know i'm 17 but it's i really just didn't want to get up and start my day because i know that it was already ruined bowling's been with us since the beginning of time and for that reasons people tend to minimize bullying to say well kids will grow out of it everybody experiences etc in fact bullying is incredibly destructive do you have any memory of being bullied um maybe like push into a fence um being surrounded by a whole bunch of guys i used to have bruises on my arms from this from this pastor's son what would he do he would just like be like i'm going to pound you i wouldn't want to go to school because i was so afraid of what was going to be happening when i got there and it was really terrifying bowling can take a lot of different forms uh there's harassment verbal harassment a fairy boy butterfingers there's a lot of physical bullying that goes on one day in the pool he popped me in the face all four jumped out uh two of them with two by fours and they came after us ready to kill it forcibly removing my underwear while i was still wearing it about every month 160 000 kids skip school because they don't feel safe there gay and lesbian students are more likely to be threatened more likely to be physically harassed and a fairly large percentage have reported at some point they've been beaten to the point of needing medical attention when you are continually harassed that takes up all of your mental space and attention it's very difficult when you're trying just to survive throughout the school day to focus on learning so these kids are not only being physically threatened emotionally harassed but they're also missing their education this kid came over to my table while i was eating lunch one day and he had kept on her asking me like all year long so he came over and just said to me hey you effing you enjoying your pudding sweetie and i said yeah actually i am he goes yeah go figure so i just i was already really mad that day and i just didn't feel like dealing with him anymore and i got to the point where i was so angry at him i just threw the pudding on his brand new shirt so after that happened him and three of his friends started just beating the crap out of me and throwing me on top of a table and just beating me until i was on the ground and then the nurse and principals and stuff came to stop the fight and there were people there were some of my friends on top of these kids just beating crap out of them too and one of the vice principals got hit during this fight there were 650 kids around just staring and watching a fight not doing anything and so a big crown crowd gathered up around me and i started bleeding and everything and they rushed me into the nurse's office my mom had to come pick me up that day obviously i had to go to the emergency room and it turns out that i had a fractured nose and couple chipped teeth that i had to get fixed and the school tried to suspend me for a day for throwing pudding at this kid who just beat me up and constantly harassed me meanwhile they were not keeping documents on this kid harassing me or hurting me the adults in the school environment often don't get involved they don't step in to call harassment what it is when they see it most of the kids in our survey reported that teachers did not did not step in did not get involved and the gay kids who we interviewed said that four out of five of those kids said that they did not have even one supportive adult in their school following day i went and gave my tape statement to the police officer and he told me that all this news media and stuff were coming to the police station and he said basically they are going to find a way to get in touch with you so be aware and keep your mouth closed while i told my mom that i was tired to keep keeping my mouth closed thursday i was handing out papers to advertise a protest for that monday and a couple of them got to the principal and he called me in during my lunch period and i said well i'm a diabetic i have to eat lunch you know i'd be happy to discuss this with you later and he said if i left his office that i would be suspended because he don't like the fact that there was all this media going around the school already now there were already a couple articles out in the papers as soon as i walked out of the principal's office he told me i was suspended for 10 days and i said fine and all and these other three kids that beat me up got suspended five to seven days at the time monday came around so i went right across street from school and we held up signs we were screaming about 50 people came total throughout the entire day superior court of new jersey i have a bunch more of these i just don't know where they are right now but this is the first one that i put in the book it was from one of the kids that beat me up they had to write me a letter of apology and it says scott i'm sorry for doing what i did it was wrong and next year don't feel threatened because nothing will happen it's over and then you sign his name most of the kids we interviewed uh didn't think that anti-gay bullying was appropriate felt that it wasn't fair that people shouldn't be treated badly but fi only five percent of those kids were verbal about that in their school environment actually stood up against bullies and we think that if the adults in their lives primarily parents but also teachers and others were more vocal about why bullying is inappropriate we think these kids would be more encouraged to stand up against it themselves and also create an environment where bullying's not a cool thing to do now they actually call down students this kid that was pick that was picking on me the football star he got called down while he was in the same class with me so i know that they talked to him and he was gone out of the classroom for a long time so that's a good sign and since then the kid hasn't said anything to me and what surprises me is after all this finally blew over there must have been there must be 10 kids that i know that came up to me and said you know i'm gay i'm bi i am a lesbian and it's just it completely shocked me i don't look at it as a win-lose situation i look at it as i told them that i'm not putting up with this and i went to the extreme to do it too but i but i had to otherwise it wasn't going to stop a recent study showed that slurs against gay people with words like or dyke are constant in high schools and many times it leads to violence if you have any connection with youth let them know that harassment of their gay peers is just not cool young people are hungry for role models so be one for the past year in a broadway show take me out i've played mason marzak the fictional alter ego of the show's playwright richard greenberg richard's close friend our special guest patricia clarkson recalls the show's origins take me out is a provocative drama written by a great playwright it throws a curve in america's most beloved sport and chronicles the fallout among the new york empires on and off the field by having one of his players come out in the all-american boys club of baseball rich challenges the stereotypes around gay men's relationship to sports and vice versa if i'm gonna have sex and i am because i'm young and rich and famous and talented and handsome so it's a law i'd rather do it with a guy but when all this said and done kippy i'd rather just play ball it's focused through the lens of baseball but it examines so many uh issues you know in contemporary american society that uh many times don't get examined it's obviously got its finger in the pulse it can't take forever i mean at some point somebody's got to come out the award-winning playwright of eastern standard three days of reign and the dazzle ran across what became the genesis of take me out in the summer of 2000. and ripped into left field for a base hit up i was watching tv one night and i happened on a yankees game in 96 and 98 i had sort of vaguely accidentally become engrossed in the world series because it was sort of a civic duty at that point those were the years that the yankees returned after a long hiatus and and discovered that um the game was interesting i i had never suspected that before so when i happened on this game in 2000 with nothing else to do i thought it would be a good idea to sort of legitimize my emotion by putting in my time in the regular season and within a few days i was obsessed another thing i like is the home run trot okay not that mad dash around the bases when it's an inside the ballpark home run couldn't really think or or focus on anything else and it's reevaluated everything in my life by its relationship to baseball i mean it's insane but i cop to it anyway um and at the same time i realized that i was a playwright that was my profession that i wasn't going to be commissioner of baseball i am talking about that graceful little canter when the ball has been crushed and it's missing and the outcome is not in doubt what i like about it is it's so unnecessary the ball is gone it was about that time that billy beam the former utility player came out four years after leaving the game i looked at myself in the mirror and i said wow you know if i had seen a story about a kid named billy bean playing baseball who admitted that you know he was a gay man i wouldn't have gotten married and i would have saved i would have confronted my sexuality so much sooner and i think i would have saved a lot of people a lot of heartache i believe it was he who said that the only way someone could stay in the game and come out was if he were an already established superstar that was my angle you know i'll write about an already established superstar who comes out take me out first stepped up to the plate at the dunmar warehouse in london hitting home runs with critics and audiences alike and continued its winning streak on broadway at the walter kerr theater the whole mess started one morning when darren lemming said to himself what the hell i'm darren lemming and that is a very good thing he is the perfect balance between black and white he's a perfect balance between standoffish and affectionate he's a god but he's an approachable god and now suddenly he's gay i don't mean for this to be a distraction i'm hoping this is going to ward off distractions and if incidentally there's any kid out there who's struggling with his identity i hope this sends a message that it's okay they can follow their dream no matter what any young man creed whatever can go out there and become a ballplayer yeah or an interior decorator i think that darren comes out to own himself in a larger sense i don't think he does it to mystify the public i don't think he does it to intrigue people or to evoke sympathy or adulation he does it for him you told me to reveal my true nature you said i could only do this through love that's before i knew you were a pervert it makes the rest of the guys more uncomfortable than it makes darren it's he's such a untouchable superstar that he just kind of gets more motivated and plays better whereas everyone else starts to think what does this make me if i'm in the shower or in the locker room with this guy who's gay what are people not thinking about me and that kind of has this domino effect this is about something that's about identity um and sexuality in this country is still taboo especially in a bastion of masculinity like sports you're going to the core of what it is to be a man and to challenge that through sexuality is really terrifying darren lemming meet shane mungett shane is the instrument of darren's self-destruction and darren says god can get me but short of god there's nobody and uh and then shane comes in didn't he ever go to foster homes or something like that oh yeah but uh i got they returned me you turned why was that were you already offensive as a youth chain shane symbolizes to darren you know all of the things that that you know that he that he despises or that he's fought against or tried to resist you know in terms of you know his dealings with people and i think that darren does the same thing for shane just rubs him the wrong way you put two people like that in an environment like that and you're bound to have some sparks fly and it seems the sparks and take me out maybe a sign of things to come while the show was running in london former nfl football player esra tuallo came out to america on national television what is the secret um that i'm gay that's the big secret we seem to see uh out homosexuals in most fields of of endeavor in this country now but team sports has a separate aura and a separate tradition and seems to be the um the the hardest field to crack what my biggest fear was was total rejection basically of and and feeling like the 11 years that i killed myself to to make it to that level would be just swept aside or erased with the big word homosexual tattooed on my picture it just seems like one of those questions that's just really bubbling up in the zeitgeist right now we're so fascinated by what goes on in stars lives and especially icons and sports superstars are icons i had this idea about you and this guy and me and susan and the three kids having dinner so you have this sort of neo-comfy image floating through your head i see kind of a hallmark card with sodomy the more that athletes that might be you know at the end of their career or done um kind of water down the idea that there's never been a gay athlete on a major league field or nba court or nfl field then all of a sudden it starts to you know kind of mainstream the the idea in society and then we get closer and closer to um a day when it's just a non-issue that team is like the military unit cohesion i think it's a fiction that a gay person couldn't fit into that unit but there seems to be a standard idea that unit cohesion suffers when you have a gay burst in the ranks i think the is the other in in um in team sports i think you know that's the term that's the epithet that's used so for the for what you don't want to be and i think kids growing up in sports learn that before they even know what they're talking about so it's it's a deeply um entrenched male heterosexual preserve and and i and i and i think it's um you know it seems to be the the last one to go i think it still is uh this closetedness that's keeping us back go back to where you grew up and come out to your pastor come out to your teachers come up to your neighbor so they go oh you know joe black you know he's he's gay but he's not anything what i've seen on tv or what i've heard that really makes a difference in the long run if you make it personal and so i still think that's the key really to our making more more of a progress is for more people to be out this is martina navratilova and you are watching in the life finally in the likes harvey fierstein evaluates the year 34 post stonewall so what happened was these words are making me nervous what happened was you're in my key light well so far that's not offensive come on papa what do you say so it's june again gay lesbian bisexual transgender and two spirit month time for the parades and parties and fundraisers it's also occasion to tally the gains and losses the last year brought we've got good news on the political front with a record nine state senators seated there are in fact 241 openly gay lesbian or bisexual elected officials now serving including the first openly gay indian and latinos non-discrimination bills have also had good luck this year well if you don't count the watering down of the new york state bill seems somebody sold out our transgender members in a back room deal ah politicians gay or straight yet just can't trust them good news also in the tv world as queer as folk and six feet under remain hits with viewers and there are several gay themed pilots in the works for next season gay characters are down overall in network tv shows and hollywood films but they're up in cable and now it looks like we're getting the first 24-hour american gay and lesbian cable network as well as the first 24-hour a day satellite radio station created just for us so i guess all in all we're moving on up just like we did last year and the year before and the year before that one slow and steady does win the race right well i did witness one more evident sign of progress i was asked to help promote this year's national coming out day a press event was scheduled at a large record store in midtown manhattan and the organizers rallied the community celebrities to carry their message it's safe to come on out of the closet guess what no one showed up well a couple of minor photographers a couple of reporters from gay papers a couple of members of the public but all in all it was a huge waste of time and effort and i couldn't have been happier coming out has become as newsworthy as reporting the weather now i ain't saying that everyone's out we know that's not true and i'm not saying that our youngsters don't need our support in finding themselves and adjusting to the realities of living in a straight world but as far as carrying the message it's been received loud and clear we're here we're not so queer they're used to us yes my friends if national coming out day is any barometer of progress then we've hit a new plateau we are at last just plain everyday folks ain't that good news i'm dennis o'hare for all of us at in the life here in new york thank you for watching and we'll see you next month in the life is funded in part by the h van ameringen foundation additional support provided by the ford foundation the gill foundation the autohaz charitable trust the pride foundation the ted snowden foundation the reed williams foundation adam a funding collaborative empowering queer youth broadway cares equity fights aids michael a levin daniel h renberg and eugene kabloski and the annual support of in-the-life members like you you