Significant Others - Eric Marcus on Bayard Rustin’s Legacy

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Founder and host of the podcast Making Gay History, Eric Marcus, on Rustin’s heir and the stewardship of his legacy.

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in yesterday's episode, we examined Bayard Rustin and his significant role in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. I'm now joined by one of my favorite sources, host of Making Gay History, Eric Marcus, to go a little deeper. Eric, thank you so much for joining us here today. Before we begin talking about Bayard Rustin, could you orient us a little bit about your podcast, what it is, and the inspiration behind it? Sure, glad to, and I'm delighted to be speaking with you today. Making Gay History was an accident, and I can't take credit for it. I can't even take credit for the book, for thinking of the book that was the reason I

recorded more than 100 interviews for two editions of a book called Making Gay History, first published in 1992. The idea for the book came from an editor at what was then Harper and Row, a friend as well. He called when I was working at CBS and asked if I would consider writing a proposal for an oral history of what was then called the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. That was in 1988. Wow. And it was just around that time that I found out that my career at CBS was not going to go where

I wanted it to go because I was gay. Oh, wow. I wanted, you know, I was behind the scenes. I was a segment producer and I wanted to be an on-air correspondent. In 1988, you hit that wall? Oh, yeah. There was nobody out on national news, either broadcast or cable. Nobody.

It's amazing how rapidly things have changed in recent history. I'm sure there's still much more work to be done. But I was a teenager in the 80s, and it doesn't seem that long ago to me. But in other respects, it's like absolutely different era. It's ancient history. And I'd asked for a meeting with the head of talent recruitment at CBS, who happened to be a Vassar graduate, as was I. Me too. Which was probably, oh, what class are you?

I didn't know you went there. I'm class of 92. Oh, I'm class of 80. Oh my gosh. Fantastic. It is. Oh, I'm so glad to meet a fellow Vassar alum. Likewise.

Yeah. What freshman dorm did you live in? Jewett. So did I. No. I was in, so I was on the third floor, which is right where the tower starts. Yes. And they turned a storage room into a triple. No. So I was on the third floor, which is right where the tower starts. Yes.

And they turned a storage room into a triple. Oh, my God. And that's what I was in. It was not good. They've since renovated Jewett, I would think. Or they did. I was on 4 East. Oh, my God. And I somehow wound up with a single freshman year, which was probably not a good thing because I got in a lot of trouble. Good trouble? Did you make good trouble? Yeah. Well, no, I got in a lot of trouble. I got in trouble that I, that was not good for me. So might've, might've, might've been.

You were not alone. No, no, no. So I had this appointment with, uh, with the head of talent and I wanted to know, because by that point, my first book had been published, The Male Couple's Guide to Living Together. So I was out, and my publisher helpfully sent a copy of the book to every single person at CBS News. So I arrived one morning, a few weeks after I started my job. They might have warned me, but I was out anyway. But it was on everyone's desk at the office, which led to some interesting conversations, including one with a colleague who wanted to know who played the husband and who played the wife. Oh, God.

So it was clear that my... So I asked for this appointment, had this conversation, and after much discomfort on the part of the executive, I simply said, I need to know for my career, would you ever put an openly gay person on camera? And she said, no. So it was around the time that I was offered this opportunity to write a proposal for a book. I wasn't being offered the book. Long story short, the proposal was bought. And then I had to do a little research because I knew almost nothing about the movement. And I had said to the editor when he first suggested this idea, I don't know anything about the history of the movement. I'm not an academic.

Why me? He said, I want someone fresh to the subject. And I said, well, I'm really fresh to the subject. Wow. So I thought the movement began at Stonewall at that point. So that's how I came to do the book. Fast forward many years, I thought I was done with all of my gay work by around 2005. And it may have been 2008, I'm not remembering now. And I turned over my whole collection, all of my interviews

and my papers to the New York Public Library with an agreement that they digitized the whole collection. And then fast forward again to 2015, I was trying to figure out what to do next in my career. I had just been fired from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which is a whole other story. So there I was, 55, a journalist. No one was going to hire a 55-year-old journalist ever. so i read one of my favorite journalist books um barbara bradley hagerty who had been an npr wrote a book called uh life reimagined for people who were making career changes in midlife i was past midlife but it was a very helpful book and one of the key things she said was to look at your assets called the new york

public library to see where they were with the digitizing. Because I checked in with them over the years and they hadn't done it yet. They had just finished digitizing my collection. Wow. So I did a second thing that Barbara Bradley Haggerty, thank you, Barbara, suggested, which was to go out for coffee or have drinks with lots of people to have conversations and to figure out what to do with this collection. And what came up was an idea for an education project to use excerpts from the Making Gay History interviews, which I had recorded with broadcast quality equipment. And I hired my neighbor, Sarah Burningham,

who had worked for the BBC and worked for NPR in Arkansas. I asked her if she could cut tape. And when she got down to about 18 minutes for the first couple of pieces for this education project, she said, sounds like a podcast. Wow. That was 2016. Our episodes have been downloaded. We've produced, we're just finishing our 12th season. Our episodes have been downloaded more than 5 million times in 220 countries and territories around the world.

That's incredible. And so are you only covering subjects who are already in your book, or are you doing new subjects all the time? No. And that's where Bayard Rustin comes in. So, no. Mostly for my archive, but we have gone beyond the archive because there are limits. I'm often asked, or I've often been asked, is there anyone you wish you could have interviewed who you didn't interview?

Bayard Rustin died in 1987. I started my work in 1988. And I often cited him, even though I knew almost nothing about him. I always cited him. And then somewhere along the way, Sarah Burningham said, we really should figure out how to do something on Bayard Rustin. And so this is where Walter Nagel, who was Bayard's longtime partner, enters the story for you, correct? Yes. And it actually starts with Sarah Burningham again. Okay. So Sarah Burningham at the time was my neighbor on West 20th Street in Chelsea.

She had two young daughters at PS11 down the block. And one of the other mothers with young children who she got to know, knew about our podcast and said to Sarah one day, you know, I grew up with Byard Rustin and Walter Nagel. I was in and out of their apartment. They lived eight blocks north of where Sarah and I lived. I walk uptown from 20th Street to our recording studio on 44th and 9th. I pass Bayard's building almost every day. I had no idea before we did this episode with Bayard, before the tapes were discovered by Sarah Burningham with Walter Nagel, that he was my neighbor. That's incredible. Yeah, it's just crazy. It's just crazy. You never know who's

living next door or up the block. And so then this woman who knew Walter was able to introduce you? Yes. And Sarah said, can you make an introduction? Because we had been looking for a speech that Bayard gave at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987, where he spoke about his sexuality, because there was nothing in the Library of Congress anywhere where he talked about his sexuality. So the mom at the school made an introduction, and Sarah got in touch with Walter. And he said, well, during the last 10 years of our relationship, they were together for 10 years. During the 10 years we were together, I recorded all of Bayard's speeches and interviews.

I mean, what a hero from the perspective of a historian, right? Yes, yes. Unbelievable foresight. Do you know where he kept the tapes? Uh-oh. In Trump's bathroom? No. Funny enough, I lived in such a small apartment. That was just about the only place I had room for my tapes. Uh-oh. In Trump's bathroom? No. Funny enough, I lived in such a small apartment,

that was just about the only place I had room for my tapes. He kept the tapes in a suitcase underneath his bed. So he arranged to pass off the tapes from the University of Pennsylvania to Sarah on the corner of 23rd and 8th Avenue, which is a place where- Many other transactions have taken place. Many other. We have lots of issues around drugs dealing here in Chelsea. I joke that we deal in tapes. So Sarah listened to the tape.

It was unusable. He was too far away from the podium to... Yeah. And Sarah said, well, what else might you have? What else you got? And it turned out he had a recording of an interview that Bayard gave to Peg Byron at the Gay Paper in Washington, D.C. The tape recorder was on the desk between Bayard and Peg Byron. And even though there's a lot of background noise from Park Avenue South where he had his office, it was usable. That was in The Blade, right? That was the newspaper? That was in The Washington Blade. Thank you for reminding me because I was trying to avoid, get around the fact that I suddenly couldn't remember.

I'm amazed that I remember it. So, yeah. That was in The Washington Blade. So we had this interview. And what's crazy to me, so then I actually pitched a piece to NPR, to Michelle Martin, and she said, how is it that no one has ever heard this before? Right. And I said, well, no one knew it existed. And so I felt a little self-conscious as a gay white Jew from Queens, where I'm from,

being the person who had the privilege to share this audio. But I take great pride in it, especially since Bayard, during his lifetime, spoke of the importance of the alliance between Black Americans and Jewish Americans in fighting for equal rights and against discrimination and antisemitism. So it's actually one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire career. Although I didn't initiate it, Sarah Burningham is really responsible for this, along with Walter Nagel for saving the tape. It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire career. Well, it was really, it was pivotal. It was profoundly, you know, instrumental in this, I don't even know whose project it is, but the sort of overall project of trying to unearth him from where he's been buried. Yes.

You know, in preparation for our conversation today, I read his obituary in the New York Times. And it was fascinating because it wasn't until the last paragraph that they mentioned his homosexuality. because it wasn't until the last paragraph that they mentioned his homosexuality. When that, in fact, was central to his experiences throughout his life, it shaped him. And he was out at a time when virtually, he was out before anyone spoke about being out because it was so dangerous.

The phrase hadn't even come into use. And here he was on tape talking about it. And it just blew my mind. And not only to be out in that moment, but to be a Black man who is out at any moment, especially earlier in American history. Right now is a little bit of a spoiler alert, so maybe we'll take it out of the episode.

But I just wrote the episode on Billy Strayhorn, who was Duke Ellington's collaborator. He was also out in the episode but um i uh just wrote the episode on billy strayhorn who was duke ellington's collaborator he was also out in the 40s in new york and that's why part of why we don't know anything about him and duke was like mercer ellington has this great quote where he's like oh my dad didn't care at all if anyone was getting and uh you know it was the music industry everybody was you know whatever and right he was industry. Everybody was, you know, whatever. And he was, he's like, if they were a good musician, like, who cares what else they are? And we think that every time, we think that decades ago were just like today.

Most people knew nothing about homosexuality. And for that reason, it was often more accepted than it came to be in the 1950s and 60s when suddenly people were more focused on homosexuals. I was surprised in my interviews how many of the older people I interviewed who grew up in the 1920s and 30s were accepted by their families. Sure. In part because it wasn't demonized in the way it came to be. Right.

It wasn't demonized in the way it came to be. So that tape of Bayard, to me, brought to life his words. Because there are places where those words have been voiced by others. Where he talks about his sexuality. But to have him talk about it in his own voice, with his own inflections, is so much richer and important. That story he's telling, first of all, I love hearing him call out for Walter on the tape when he's trying to get something. And you sort of hear that, you know, it's the sort of quotidian reality of a couple. Walter's not answering, not listening, whatever.

Yes, yes, yes. No, it's a typical couple. In the New York Times, he's referred to as his adopted son, which he was, because that was the only way they could protect each other. There was no marriage then. And his assistant. But it's not mentioned in the New York Times that he was Bayard's partner in life and archivist and all of that. So, I mean, the New York Times was late to describing the partners of people as real partners. And this is the case during the AIDS crisis.

So often it wasn't mentioned and sometimes it was mentioned as companion as if that person was a dog. Right. I was going to ask about the adoption actually because I had been aware of that as well. And it made me curious about how how it's such a smart move. It was such a prescient thing to do.

I'm wondering how uncommon it was or wasn't. I'm not an expert. I'm going to guess that it was rare. Their circumstances were such that made it easier because of their difference in age. Oh, right. Sure. Walter was much younger.

Yes. They lived in New York City. Yeah. They had to be investigated by child services, whatever it was called back then. Even though Walter at the time would have been in his 20s, 30s? They still had to be. I don't remember how old he was at the time, but yes, they still would. Yes, they absolutely had to be. Yeah. And apparently they got through it. It's kind of remarkable that it worked.

It is, but there's a big problem with adoption in comparison to marriage. You can get divorced, you can't unadopt. Right. So you have to be pretty sure of the relationship. Yes, you do have to be sure. And what privileges did that afford them? That meant Bayard could pass his estate untaxed onto Walter. It meant that he could also assume the lease on their apartment. It meant he could visit him in the hospital. He could make medical decisions for his adoptive father. All the rights and privileges and more that would be associated with marriage. And in this case, he was the immediate next of kin. Next of kin, he was the child. And then Walter did his part spectacularly in terms of, you know, I can imagine there's one part of that agreement that's just

the you know we want to be as much together as we can be while i'm here and then we want you not to suffer when i'm gone because you don't you know have access to the things we shared but then also for walter to take the responsibility so seriously as he did yes um i wonder how unusual that is for any you know partner in anyone's life to be so conscientious know that he was preserving something like those very rare tapes that have offered us a window into Bayard's life that we would not have otherwise. How do you, and this is one of those annoying theoretical questions. I love those questions. I ask them myself. What opportunities do you think Bayard might have seized on had he been able to extend his life another 50 years? Because his response to advocacy was so personal and specific, and he was so, you know, those Quaker values so informed everything he did, and he would have agitated in a very specific way.

I'm wondering if you have thoughts on that. Well, it was 87 when he spoke about this publicly, about being gay. Yeah. about being gay yeah um whereas the new york times said it and his uh uh obituary is homosexuality um not sure they were using the word gay yet in 80s at that point in 87 he he would have been such an important and iconic figure um and would have been an elder statesman easy easy to imagine um as, as the late 80s unfolded and we moved into the 90s, and would have had such, he would have been untouchable because of his cred. And I think he would be taught more frequently than he is now. I think back to when I was in school, and how interesting, a whole aspect of the Black Civil Rights Movement is unknown because it involved him and Dr. King and the FBI suggesting that he had a homosexual relationship with Dr. King.

And Adam Quayton Powell. Oh my God, yes. And his response to that. Yeah, and who wouldn't remember those? Who wouldn't want to know about that? I know. That's delicious for kids. It really is. It makes history much more interesting. It does.

It does. And it's not taught, you know. So that's the idea that gay history is separate from American history is just, you can't. A fallacy. Yeah, you can't take it apart. I wanted to ask you about your research process because you cover people who not only are lesser known but sometimes actively hidden and on multiple counts. And so how has it worked? I'm sure there are many different versions of the story you could tell, but I'm interested in all of them. When I was doing the book originally, it was pre-internet.

I did a lot of research. So the first challenge for me when I did the book was to create a timeline of the movement. There was none. So I sat in the, what was it called then? It was the Gay and Lesbian Bay Area Historical Society. I'm forgetting the exact name. They had a building in Noe Valley. It was a Victorian building, a one-time house,

and sat in the living room at a big table with all of the copies of The Advocate, which was first published in the late 1960s, all the copies of the Mattachine Review, and one magazine, and the latter, and created a timeline. And that was just after the 89 earthquake in San Francisco. So every once in a while, there were tremors and the house shook. Oh, man.

Yeah. So that's how I started. John D'Amelio had written a book on the gay rights movement, and so I pulled from that as well. So you started with the prominent leaders of the movement. gay rights movement. And so I pulled from that as well. So you started with the prominent leaders of the movement. Well, I started with people who were mentioned in print. Okay. Smart. Not all of them prominent. I see. Okay. So a lot of them were, and a lot of pseudonyms. So someone like Lisa Ben, whose real name was Edith Eyde, I came across her name in the latter, and I knew I wanted to interview her because she created Vice Versa, America's Gayest Magazine, which she typed on her office typewriter in 1947 at RKO Radio Pictures in Hollywood. Typed it through twice, using five sheets of carbon each time, and had 10 copies of each. Also sang in the gay clubs in the 1950s and 60s. Wrote her own

music and her own lyrics to popular songs because she didn't like the entertainment at the time. Drag queens who play to the straight men who are led into the lesbian clubs at night to watch the women dance. This is what we're on. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So I knew I wanted to interview people who are not so well-known. And I wound up leaving people out of the book, some of them who are very well-known. And I wound up leaving people out of the book, some of them who are very well-known, like Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who were then, when I was working on the book, well-known. Today, most people don't know who they are,

so I was able to use them in the podcast. I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people, getting their suggestions. So if I may, I just want to give one example of how I found somebody who was pivotal. I knew I wanted to interview somebody who had been at the Mattachine Society Convention in Denver, Colorado in 1959. So I called these two guys, a gay couple in Denver who had the gay bookstore who I'd interviewed for my first book and then stayed with them when I was on tour for the first book in 1988. And I said, do you know anybody who was involved with the Managing Society in Denver? And they said, oh yeah, Elver Barker. Here's his number. So I called Elver. He had been at the 1959 convention. And before I hung up, the last thing he said was, oh, you should talk to Wendell Sayers. I haven't talked to him in years,

but he was at the 59 Convention. He's Black. He was born in 1903. I'm sure you'll be interested. He said, we don't talk anymore, but I'm sure you'll be interested to talk to him. Well, Wendell Sayers is in my book. Elbert Barker is not because Wendell's story was extraordinary. At age 16, in 1919,

he was sent from Western Kansas to the Mayo Clinic by his dad. He drove with his mom, slept in a tent on the side of the road, bought food at gas stations because they were Black and weren't allowed to stay in hotels or even restaurants. And he was diagnosed as a homosexual at the Mayo Clinic in 1919. So that's how I found Wendell. A lot of it was serendipitous. So the book is not a comprehensive book. The podcast is not comprehensive. I really followed my late ex-partner, gave me a quote from Lytton Strachey about the search for history, how you row out on this vast ocean and you dip your bucket into the sea and you put a spotlight down to the bottom of the ocean and you fill your bucket and pull it to the surface and see what you find.

Wow. So I'm not a historian, by the way. My background is in urban planning and architecture and then journalism. But I know how to ask questions. Yeah. And I'm very curious. And once I started asking questions and interviewing people, I was so totally hooked and also terrified that something would happen to me and I wouldn't get the chance to finish the book. Every time I had to travel to interview people before I got on a plane, I made a hard disk copy of what I was working on, put it in a FedEx envelope to my editor with instructions of how to pick up the project where I left off so that it got done.

So many of the people I interviewed had stories to tell that would never have been told otherwise. I think that's such a great sign of when you're onto something is when you worry about your peril only as it relates to not finishing the project. Yeah, yeah. Are there others who you have run across in all of this massive exploration you've done who are similarly important in, you know, sort of our historical understanding. Yes, you're nodding already. I'm excited. Yes, I'm nodding vigorously. I don't know if it translates into audio. That is a very firm nod.

So, a couple of years ago, we're already a few years into the podcast, somebody asked me if I'd ever interviewed Craig Rodwell. Craig Rodwell was the principal organizer behind the first pride march now what the first pride march did a year after the stonewall uprising in june of 1970 was cement stonewall as a symbol and a key turning point it was a key turning point but it wasn't a brand. And I didn't know how that all happened, but it turned out Craig Rodwell, who had been involved in the movement from the early 1960s, who dated Harvey Milk, you know, go know, when he was a teenager, and Harvey Milk was working on Wall Street.

Oh, man. This was pre-gay rights harvey milk um so i i said no i don't i don't think i interviewed craig rodwell and then one of the people i work with said uh she saw the the emails going back and forth she checked the archive she said you interviewed craig rodwell oh wow he wasn't in the book, so I didn't remember everybody. What happened was I interviewed Craig. I had a terrible cold, and he was also late for a train. So we had about an hour and 15-minute conversation, and I said, I'll come back and interview you.

We have used pieces of that interview, I think now three or four times. His story is incredible. He was at and helped organize the first public protest of gay people in the U.S. ever in 1964 in front of the Whitehall Army Induction Center in downtown in the Financial District of Manhattan, was involved in the first public protest in 1965 in Washington, was one of the people who helped organize the Reminder Day protests, the first annual protest beginning in 65 in Philadelphia. And then he was the one who got those Reminder Day protests shifted in a vote at a meeting of the North

American Conference of Homophile Organizations in November of 1969, got it switched to the last weekend in June to mark the Stonewall uprising. It was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March. They didn't want to be associated with a bar raid. And really the fight was in the streets of Greenwich Village. He got the date moved and then urged all the other organizations from around the country to mark that date as well and to have marches or celebrations or protests of their own and to do it every year thereafter. Almost nobody knows who Craig Rodwell is. Everyone knows, well, not everyone. Um, we often speak of Marsha B. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in relation to Stonewall. Sylvia wasn't at Stonewall. Marsha B. Johnson told me that. Uh, Marsha didn't get there until after the first night was pretty much over. Um, but Craig Rodwell is such an important figure in our history and he's virtually unknown, but we have tried very hard through his own voice, telling his own story to make sure that he is not forgotten. And does he talk at all about where he was inspired to organize in that way? Yes. Oh yeah, he was arrested at 14 for having sex with a man in Chicago. Yeah, he was radicalized early. And then he was at Reese Park, which is a beach here in New York City. It is on a barrier island off of Queens, where my dad took me when I was a kid.

I didn't know it was a gay beach. I don't know if he knew it was, but it was just a popular beach. And he was arrested for wearing a Speedo bathing suit. Men were not allowed to show their navels or upper thighs In public in the early 1960s. I think it was 61 when he was arrested. And he pretty much knew that if he walked by the police, they were going to grab him.

But they brutalized him and threw him in jail. He had a long history of being what Frank Kameny, one of the other key figures of the movement, called being radicalized. That the hobeny, one of the other key figures of the movement, called being radicalized, that the hobnailed boot of the government came down hard on you and you fought back.

And I heard this over and over again from people I interviewed. They were arrested. They were fired from their job. A close friend was murdered. And they were driven to get involved because they didn't want the same thing to happen to someone of the next generation. Are there other partners that have come up in your research that spring to mind

right now as being worth mentioning in terms of their significance? Partners meaning? Life partners, people who were either working visibly in tandem with a same-sex partner or hidden. Absolutely. My favorite couple of all time, Barbara Giddings and Kayla Hoosen. They were the happy warriors of the movement. They had such a good time and used humor in such a way beginning in the 1960s. such a good time and used humor in such a way beginning in the 1960s. And they survived what I think of as the purge that came after the Stonewall uprising, the purge of the older homophile activists because they were in their 30s. And the new activists who came in after

Stonewall were much younger and more radical. Barbara and Kay were instrumental in the mid-1960s in those first marches in front of the White House. Barbara was the editor of The Ladder, the lesbian magazine, and pushed it more to being more activist-oriented. And they were key in getting homosexuality removed from the list of mental illnesses in 1973. And they used humor and they were inventive and they had fun. I remained in touch with Barbara and Kay long after the book was published. And Kay became a phone buddy for me after she and Barbara moved into a retirement community in Pennsylvania. And after Barbara died, Kay and I would talk every other week, sharp as a tack. She was a photojournalist. And if you've seen pictures, black and white photos, of the movement from the 1960s and the early 70s, it was almost certainly Kay's photos. was her pseudonym. She was Katova Luhusen. And she died not that long ago. And when my enthusiasm and my energy flagged, which it often has over the last six years of doing this podcast,

she would say, you can't give up. You must tell these stories. You are the one to carry the ball forward. And I said, okay, you know, I'm just one person and I can only do so much. She said, no. And I'm tired. I'm tired. Exactly. I'm old. I started on Medicare in November. She'd say, you have to. You have to do this. So I think of Kay all the time.

I think of Barbara all the time. They devoted their lives to this and they are my heroes. So yeah. That's amazing. All right. Well, my final question, which you may have just answered, is if there is a person that you would consider to be a significant other, you know, prominently important in your life's work.

I don't know if it's Barbara Bradley Haggerty or if it's, you know, these sort of godmothers of carrying the the historical ball forward but that's my last i've been fortunate to have a number of mentors um i think back to when i was working on this book and one of my key mentors was randy schiltz um who wrote and the band played on i interviewed randy for the book and he said at the end of the interview if if you ever need help, if you need encouragement, call me. And he meant it. And I did. I did call him for support. And he was a generation ahead of me. A generation? No, not even 10, 15 years older than I am. And he gave me all of his FBI files from his Freedom of Information filings, which served me well in my work on the history book. Wow. No kidding.

So Randy is one of those people. He's also forgotten for the most part by now because his book was published in the 1980s. But he was somebody who really struggled as a journalist because nobody would hire him because he was gay. And he was fierce. And he was fierce. And I'm not. I really am not fierce. And I tend

to set the bar lower than it needs to be. In my current work, it's Sarah Burningham. She has the founding producer of Making Gay History, and the story editor for our current season and many of our other seasons. Sarah sets the ball very high. And I listen to her because 99.999% of the time,

she's right. So even if it means, oh, the worst words that Sarah can ever say are, I have an idea. Because that always means a lot of work for you. I just found a piece of tape. So with the episode we're working on right now, there's a speech that Harvey Milk gave on, I think it was called Gay Liberation Day or something like that in June of 1978. It was a key speech and everyone has said there's no tape. Sarah came across a little piece of tape of a little of it. So we have a little of it. Oh, wow.

Really, so Sarah has really been my mentor throughout this journey since we first started working together in 2016. since we first started working together in 2016. There are so many people who were the angels who made this podcast possible and made this work possible. I was just lucky to be asked to record the interviews. And here I am. And I didn't die during the AIDS crisis, as did so many other people.

Yeah, no kidding. Well, do you think CBS is mad that they fired you? They didn't fire me. They just said that I couldn't. They didn't take advantage of your skill set properly. My partner in life, who I've been with for nearly 30 years, has said that on a number of occasions, it's a good thing that CBS didn't put you on air. Exactly. Well, not because of the reasons you're thinking.

He said you would have been insufferable. Oh. Oh, not because of the reasons you're thinking. He said you would have been insufferable. Oh, oh no. I thought it was one of those closed door, open window. He always does say that. No, no, no. When I got fired from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, he said, he waited a day. He said, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to you. I didn't appreciate it at the time. He was right. And I really think, I'm not spiritual. I'm not religious. I do think that the people I interviewed were not happy with seeing their words in print. They wanted to speak for themselves.

And so they, this sounds crazy, they conspired to get me fired. So that I would come back to my gay work and have a whole new chapter to my life. And that they would then get to tell their own stories. and that I would help them tell their stories through the podcast. So, you know, a lot of mysteries in life and I've come to think I like that. I like that story. Yeah, that's a good one. Well, thank you so much for being with us. This has really been a treat and I hope everybody goes to listen to every episode of Making Gay History because it's such a resource. Oh, thank you for saying so. Thank you. And I so appreciate being with you today.

Join us next week on Significant Others to find out which aviating heroine wore men's underpants when she flew and find out whose they were. Significant Others is produced by Gen Samples. Our executive producers are Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Colin Anderson. Engineering and sound design by Eduardo Perez, Rich Garcia, and Joanna Samuel. Music and scoring by Eduardo Perez and Hannes Brown. Research and fact-checking by Michael Waters and Hannah Sio. Special thanks to Lisa Berm, Jason Chalemi, and Joanna Solitaroff. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.