 Hi. I'm Linda Quinlan. I'm Keith Ghostland. I'm Ann Charles. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. It is Tuesday, September 24th and we have a lot of news ahead. Starting with Linda's headlines. Alrighty. My headlines are poses. Billy Porter is Emmy's first gay black man to win for Elite Drama. We'll have a little more about that. Tell me you have pictures. I have a picture. Oh, good. Oh, I know. But I'm going to show it with the story. Gay skydiver Don Zorda is dead, but his legal fight could alter history. That's another story. And then highlights of the advocate's historic LGBTQ presidential forum in Iowa. Oh, yes. Did you watch it? No. Oh, it was really good. Three hours. Well, it's YouTubed, right? Two and, yeah. Yeah, you too. Two hours and 15 minutes. Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye reveals he's living with HIV, anti-gay church in Florida, and um, Saturday Night Live fires cast member for using racial slurs. And homophobic slurs. Well, we'll get to that. Okay. Phoenix, Arizona in a 43 opinion. The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Phoenix based brush and nib studio. We'll have more about that. Robert Destro was confirmed for the State Department position. We'll talk about that a little bit. And gay couple are attacked. They were held hostage in a church by their family. And so we'll have more about that. So that's my basic headlines. Okay, but they're free now. They are free. And where was this? Um, it was in, um, Blackwell, Oklahoma. So a hotbed of progressive liberalism. So on to you. So before we totally forget to do it, this week's trivia question, September 1988 out in the mountains, front page story, talking about a new queer holiday. What was it? So and then I'm going to do an entire section just talking about events coming up. There may be some that are very exciting. And then we're going to have a little conversation about Bernie. Oh, and we might talk a little bit about the advocate forum and power of our pride. And Bernie's campaign response, Bernie's campaign response. All right, are you going to talk about the trans woman? Oh, aren't we just okay. So we also might want to talk about the Vermont Catholic diocese and why do we have to maybe a little stab here and there because it will make Professor Charles happy about how their great revelation and disclosure may have been not so great and not so revealing. And we're going to talk about Maine because we've got to have some good news and there's really good news coming out of Maine. Bye bye Susan Collins, you mean? Well, we'll see. My hope. We haven't gotten to that election. That's 2020. And then we're going to talk a little bit about, oh, and I can't believe we're doing it again, bathrooms and pronouns because you all know the fun I have with pronouns. Well, I got a lot. It is as follows. Trans Pride March in London, the first ever. A Welsh rugby legend, Gareth Thomas reveals his HIV diagnosis and I have a clip of that, it's very moving. Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, holds the first gay Pride March ever. Security risks force cancellation of Montego Bay Pride. Jamaica once again is proving itself to be deplorable, at least to city fathers in this case are. Off the vacation list. You know it. Hasn't been on for a long time. No. Murder in Tashkent, the killing of a gay man, spotlights the plight of the Uzbek LGBTQ community. And I'd like to show a picture of this young man now. His name is, was Shokir Savkatoff. His body was found in an apartment just days after he came out on Instagram. He was 25. Good news and bad news from Nigeria. Rwandan Gospels, I have a little Africa segment. Rwanda's gospel singer comes out as gay to the country, Shok. His name is Albert Nbobinbo. He's 35. Collude your dentures on that one. And I'll show you a picture when we get to this story. Well, I can show you. Let's look at the picture now. He's 35. His coming out has been greeted by a lot of aprobarium, but he feels better. I mean, friends have stopped talking to him. Nobody's, people are afraid to admit that they ever knew him and so forth. Yeah. I'll tell you more about where Rwanda stands. Young Mauritanians, this is good news, seek to challenge the country's sodomy law. There are four young men, part of the queer youth group in Mauritania. They filed suit. A suspected Ghanaian gay who fled Ghana over attacks finally secured asylum in the U.S. More good refugee news. A trans refugee held by ICE for 20 months has finally been released. I have a picture of her. Her name is Alejandra Barrera. She's from El Salvador. Speaking of El Salvador, I now would like to show you a picture of Bianca Rodriguez, who was named the regional winner for the Americans for the UN High Commission for Refugees, Nansen Refugee Award. She trans champions transgender communities rights in El Salvador and deserves this award. I was going to show you a clip about queer tango in Argentina, but I couldn't pull it up. So we'll have to wait with that. In any event, those are my headlines. Well, thank you, Ann. Well, I'll be waiting for the tango. I know. Just to add, Linda and I read a wonderful novel by Caroline D. Robertis called Last Tango in Brazil. No, Last Tango. All right. Come back to me. Yeah. You'll have to look it up. Yes. It was a very good book, though. Well, let's have a picture of poses Billy Porter. Yes. The Emmys. What a outfit, wasn't it great? And his speech was wonderful. And the category is love. Love. The category is love, y'all. Love. I anticipate. As he took the stage at the Emmy Awards on Sunday, he won for Best Actor in a Drama Series for his role in Pratel. As Pratel. In the landmark FX series. Pose. Will you please be quiet? No. I'm such an eager beaver tonight. Sorry. She's irrepressible. Oh my God. I see. I want to add something, but... Carry on, Linda. Carry on. Oh my God. Oh, sorry. He also won a Tony for his role in Kinky Boots. He quoted James Baldwin well on stage. It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself and half-believed before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here. I have a right to be here. We all have a right to be here. It was beautiful. It was really beautiful. And if I may add something? No. Last? Yesterday. I said no. Linda and I saw a play directed by Billy Porter called The Purists in Boston. Highly recommend it. Yes. And here are a few highlights of the advocates historic LGBTQ presidential forum forum in Iowa. And it was co-hosted by GLAAD, One Iowa, and the Gazette. And it was also hosted by poses Angela Ross. The forum featured conversations with Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Mayor Pete, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Camilla Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Sestak, Elizabeth Warren, and Mary Ann Williamson. And guess who's missing from the list? Which you will of course talk about in your segment. Yes, I will. Please watch it on YouTube if you get a chance. It is really, really good. And I think you'll enjoy it. We had some winners, but we're not going to try to influence anybody right. And we thought- Oh, I have strong views. I'm trying to influence people. And an anti-gay church in Flora can be labeled a hate group. Yes. According to a judge, the Southern Poverty Law Center says, Coral Ridge Ministry maligns the entire LGBT community and is deserving of being labeled a hate group. They challenged it and lost in court. Yes. So there you go. Then there was this really strange event in which Dad beats and calls the F-word as this designer after his daughter didn't get to the runway. Did you hear about this? I know. No, I didn't. Tell us. Paul Attu and husband Patrick Simpson threw a charity ball for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Attu says that around 6 p.m. during the show, a man went backstage and started punching him and calling him names, including Faggot. The designer thought the attacker was angry because his nine-year-old daughter wasn't chosen for the runway. And I read that it was actually the father of someone's daughter who didn't get to walk the runway. The father of the daughter? Well, the father beat up the guy who didn't let his daughter... Right, right, right. I became confused. He became very angry. I was slightly disoriented. And Duke University rejects a group over its homophobic policies. Young life applied for official recognition but was refused. The Christian groups, national rules prohibit any participants that are living a homosexual lifestyle from volunteering or to hold any positions. And student government rejected the group's application because their stance on homosexuality conflicts with their non-discrimination policies. May I pause now and correct myself? The title of the novel is The Gods of Tango. Right. It's highly recommended by us. So continue tangoing. So looking at events coming up, even when it's not her, I hear voices. So someone who might be one of our favorite poets on September 30th, seven o'clock, the Lamp Shop, North Winooski Avenue in Burlington, and then at our own Kellogg Hubbard on November 4th at 7 p.m., you might get to hear some lovely verse read to you. And maybe some that will be a little unsettling. You can never tell. Maybe. Other events going on. If you're watching this, you're not at the out in the open summit. That's true. It's coming up this next weekend. Oh, which is when, I'm just, she is irrepressible and Zach will have to take her under control. Shut my mouth. So they will be at the summit. So they will report back. The Pride Center, please go to their Facebook page. It's a public Facebook page. You don't have to subscribe to Facebook. They are in collaboration with the Vermont Department of Health who are trying to do an LGBTQ plus health survey. The other thing looking at coming up in the future on October 3rd, the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules is going to be looking at the Medicaid formulary and gender affirmation procedures. My concern is that looking at the list of excluded practices are still some that, depending on the individual case, may actually be essential and best practices. So if you have an interest, you can either submit testimony in person or in writing. And the LGBTQI Alliance of Vermont is finally trying to truly conduct outreach and public forums. There is one scheduled already for Brattleboro on November 8th, one in Bennington on November 9th. There is one to be confirmed maybe as I am sitting here for St. Johnsbury. Rainbow Umbrella may be asked to sponsor another forum and Momentum has already scheduled or looking at a date in late October. So, well let me begin by apologizing to my colleagues. You just saw I corrected him and I was wrong. I wouldn't let Linda deliver her headlines. I just am a smarty pants today, but I do apologize. I deeply respect you both. This may mean she's paying for dinner. All right. Let's talk about the trans march in London. Hundreds of people, there were more than 1,500 people. They filled London streets. It was the first ever march. The organizer Lucia Blakie said the sun is out and the sky is blue. If you look at everyone's faces, it's just big smiles for trans people. It's a lot different being out in public. Usually we're scared. We're having things shouted at us. We're humiliated and just really embarrassed. Social interactions aren't usually that relaxing. So today is all about being together in public and keeping each other safe and uplifted. It's the one day we're not outcast. So I have a picture of that celebration before you now. Sticking in that part of the world, I'd like to go to the Welsh rugby legend, Gareth Thomas, who is an ex-British Lions captain, believed to be the first UK sportsman to go public about living with the virus. He came out as gay in 2009. He's thought to be the—he's revealed that he was driven to suicidal thoughts as a result of his diagnosis. He told the Sunday Mirror, I've been living with this secret for years. I felt shame and keeping such a big secret has taken its toll. I was in a dark place feeling suicidal. I thought about driving off a cliff. To me, wanting to die was just a natural thought and felt like the easier way out. But you have to confront things. He's 45. He's going to be a TV pundit in the upcoming Rugby World Cup. He said he broke down when he got the news of his diagnosis. I went for a routine sexual health test at a private clinic in Cardiff. I didn't feel ill and thought everything was going to be fine. When the doctor said those words, I immediately thought I was going to die. I felt like an express train was hitting me at 300 miles per hour. Then I was thinking, how long have I got left? He won 103 caps and scored 41 tries for Wales between 1995 and 2007. And he's 13th on the all-time international test tri-scoring list. I'm not sure what that means. I don't follow Rugby. Last November, he was attacked in Cardiff City Center in a homophobic hate crime, but he asked instead, rather than charging the 16-year-old assailant, he asked the police to deal with him with restorative justice. He now takes one tablet containing four medications each day. Doctors have said his condition is under control to the point that it's considered undetectable and cannot be passed on. His partner, whom he just met after his diagnosis and married three years ago, does not have HIV. He said he hopes that his openness will help help end the stigma around the condition, adding, I'm speaking out because I want to help others and make a difference. I hope me speaking out about my diagnosis will help a lot of people. And now I have a clip that I'd like to show you of his talking to the world about it. Hello, I'm Gareth Thomas, and I want to share my secret with you. Why? Because it's mine to tell you. Not the evils that make my life hell, threatening to tell you before I do, and because I believe in you and I trust you. I am living with HIV. Now you have that information that makes me extremely vulnerable, but it does not make me weak. Now, even though I've been forced to tell you this, I choose to fight to educate and break the stigma around this subject. And that begins today, when I take on the toughest Iron Man in the world in Tenby, and I push myself physically to the limits. I'm asking you to help me to show that everyone lives in fear of people's reactions and opinions to something about them. But that doesn't mean that we should have to hide. But to do this, I really, really need your support. Very moving. Wow. Let's go to Ukraine, if we may. Around 2,000 people attended the first-ever Gay Pride March in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. 2,000 people were estimated to participate. It was one of the largest events to be held in Ukraine in recent years. Of course, the mayor threatened legal action against the organizers, tried to block them from marching. Conservative activists threatened violence. Many marchers wave rainbow flags and chanted, Kirka for all, security for all, we are equal, we are all different as they paraded. So that's my first segment. There's more to come. So back to national. Saturday night live, fires cast member for using racial slurs. Shane Gillis was fired over a video which surfaced him when he was making offensive remarks, including racial slurs about Chinese people. They cast a new member, and his name is Bowen Yang, and he's the first Chinese gay American to be on the show, and the third out member of Saturday Night Live. Robin Destro was confirmed for a State Department position. He's a Catholic School University law professor, and Trump nominated him to be assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He's against the Equality Act. He criticized non-discrimination protections that allowed transgender people to use the restrooms that corresponded with their gender identity, and he is called for trench warfare with the LGBT community. And the gay couple were violently attacked in a church to turn them straight. Sean Cormy recently came out to his family in Blackwell, Oklahoma. Since then his family has been trying to get him to go to church with his boyfriend, Gary Gardner. So he says, Sean says, well, I went to church to make my mom proud and to make her happy, but what happened when they got there turned out to be a trap. The congregation started saying it's a sin and abomination. You need to wake up. The couple started to leave. Gardner, his Sean's partner, was pushed away. Sean was forced to stay, and he was slammed to the ground by his stepfather. What denomination was this, did you say? I would say evangelical, but I don't know for sure. Twelve and fifteen church members held him down and prayed over him. They were speaking in tongues. I just started crying, Sean said. His sister convinced them to let him go. The police have been contacted. So that sounds pretty bad. Okay. All right. So very quickly there's a lot of conversation that's happening now relative to bathrooms and pronouns. One of the things that of which we should be critically aware is that every time we engage in these types of debates in the public forum, it actually puts our youth at risk because it puts greater attention on them and highlights how they may not fit in with the rest of the student body. Looking at pronouns, Marion Webster has redefined they to include used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is non-binary. I might have to reconsider the Hans designation. The Vermont Catholic Diocese was getting praised for having been forthcoming with a list of priests who had, you know, they were able to substantiate abuse. What's coming out now is they never committed to a course of action in response to that. They never told how many people might have, they did not know. Okay. They, here was the thing people said, oh, this will make it easier for someone to file a civil suit. I would, as a victim survivor, I would still have to file a civil suit. They did not offer a reparation. They also didn't say how many people that might have been involved as victim survivors and they did not identify how many other priests might have had a complaint that was not able to be substantiated. So there we are. Maine, we love Maine. We do. Remember how I said that, you know, citizens initiative and there was one of those groups who were not so progressive thinking that we're looking at filing for citizens referendum on a number of different issues to try and repeal positive legislation that they missed the filing deadline. They didn't have enough signatures so the ban on conversion therapy, the ban on the use of gay or trans panic defenses, it just became law. And finally, Bernie. Yes, Bernie. Angelica Ross at the advocate forum that Linda was referencing called Bernie out about his not being there. He's not going to the other one either. Well, we haven't gotten there yet. Someone who was a part of this panel might have been reaching out to Bernie's campaign for perhaps the last month saying his name is not on the list. And on Friday, the day of the advocate forum, they might have finally issued a statement saying, oh, he had a scheduling conflict. So he is going to miss both of the LGBTQ forums. And what wasn't disclosed in the public accounting is these invitations were extended in March. The advocate interview happened last Friday. The CNN is not scheduled until October 10th. The invitation was extended in March. Instead of being at the advocate, he was at a barbershop. Are we going to talk more about this forum? Yes. The presidential forum? Well, he also, I did a little bit. Not anymore? You're not going to see more? We're running out of time. But he also missed the Black feminist forum also. And one of the things that Angelica Ross had called him out on is he and his campaign were not seeing the intersectionality of issues, LGBTQ people of color, feminist women. And he doesn't like it. He is beyond labor. That's what I heard. I mean, I don't know. The unfortunate piece of this story is that when Angelica called him out, oh, please protect me from your followers, the deluge she got from Bernie's supporters were such that she closed her Twitter account because she didn't want to put up with the abuse. This is not what I expected from someone who issued a proclamation in support of Vermont's first Pride celebration in 1983. My theory is he dismisses it all as identity politics, which is a way he can't afford to do that with this electorate. Well, let's go to Nigeria. Shall we? Do I have to? How much are the tickets? It's not on my bucket list. I'm skipping the Jamaica canceled Pride. We can all figure out what happened there. And in Nigeria, the bad thing was there was an anti-Gate Nigerian group of protesters who demanded harsher laws against LGBTQ plus homophobic Nigerian youth protested this week. Even though a recent survey has shown some progress toward LGBTQ acceptance in the country, Nigeria remains one of the most homophobic countries. A typical display of such ignorance and homophobia came Wednesday in Abuja in a protested spearheaded by the National Youth Council of Nigeria. It focused on a popular former cross-dresser who recently identified as a trans woman. Members of the group who stormed the headquarters of the LGBT group in Abuja held placards that read NYC and the Youth Council of Nigeria is against LGBT. Speaking of the protest, the vice president of the North Carolina north central region of the group said we are here to submit our petition. We want the legislative, the national assembly to please strengthen their legislation and how to nip down all those who are involved in lesbianism and gay activities. We must come to tell the whole world this is not part of our culture. Our culture is about decency. Nigeria's has already has repressive anti-LGBT laws. The same-sex marriage prohibition act calls for prison sentences of up to 14 years for any Nigerian who enters into a same-sex marriage and up to 10 years for anyone who attends or assists a same-sex wedding. It outlaws public display of any same-sex amorous relationship and provides for a 10-year prison sentence for anyone who registers, operates or participates in gay club societies organizations or supports the activities of such an organization. But now I have a good story. A new film coming out of Nigeria captures the truth of gay life. Members of the gay community are excitedly anticipating it. It's called Walking with Shadows based on an award-winning 2005 novel of the same name. Set in the city of Lagos, Ebele Nyoko has been running all his life. A search for acceptance and love from his family has led him to recreate himself with another name, respected father, husband and brother. Suddenly his past secrets have caught up with him. His world begins to crumble as he frantically tries to control the ripple effect of these revelations. Let me show you a clip now. Truth in it. If your personal life is affecting your work and your colleagues. If I had told you about my past, it never would have given me a chance. That is not a decision for you to make. It's good you came. You see, the Holy Spirit spoke to me about you. I remember you. We go way back. Are you doing this to us? I gave you everything. This is a sin. You're a coward. Get out! It's a letter. Something must kill a man. Looks really good. Good one, yeah. Really intense. Do we know if there's going to be a US distribution? I certainly hope so. Right now it's premiering in the British Film Festival. I hope so. It's being shown in the West. I don't know if it's being shown in Nigeria. Probably not. Yeah. A lot of really good writers come out of that area, too. Oh, yeah. Look, how much, may I? You have some more time, yeah. Okay, I'd like to talk about this Rwandan gospel singer and show you his picture again. Alberto Nobibio shot many Rwandans in August when he really revealed in an interview with a Christian YouTube channel that he's gay in a country where such public assertion of homosexuality is unheard of. Although the Central African nation has been relatively free of the anti-gay rhetoric commonly heard in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, homosexuality is still widely despised and LGBT people keep a low profile. He says, there's no going back because I have to live my real life. The reaction he's received, he says, has been horrible. It's so sad to see people you know abusing you. He's an accountant. He had become an outcast at his workplace after he came out. He's afraid he's going to lose his job. Even at home, news of his homosexuality shocked many relatives, although some have been acting tolerant, he said. Rwandan's penal code does not explicitly prescribe gay sex, but of course same sex marriage is banned. This means that many homosexuals are forced to live underground lives to avoid the harsh judgment of society. He was compelled to come out because he could no longer live in denial, he says. I can't talk about gay rights in Africa generally. If you have a minute, you can. A brief synopsis. I wanted to talk a little bit about, I forgot about the Larry, is it Larry Cohn, the FBI guy, or is his first name Cohn? Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn. There's a despicable documentary. Well the documentary isn't despicable, is it? No, but about him, he is, yes. And so there's a documentary and it also ties in with his McCarthy era. Activities. And also that he was a mentor of Trump. Yes, and he was a really legal counsel to McCarthy. He helped to mentor him. And apparently he was the one who said never apologize, never tell the truth. And all of the splendid things, many of the splendid things that our president is showing today. So. That's such a wonderful setup for our interview. And I did hear. Is that, is it true that I just heard before we came in that Nancy Pelosi is going for impeachment? Yes, that's what they said, but. She's announcing it at five o'clock. Okay, we have an interview. Yes, let me introduce it. Our colleague Keith, interviews, you and Bear, you'll see it right now. Hi, and welcome to an interview that I have really been looking forward to. And it's not often that I get to do two interviews in a row with old friends. But you and Bear is decidedly an old friend and someone who's been involved in queer politics for many years. Now, you were saying you first came to Vermont in 1977. That's correct. And what brought you here? What drew you to Vermont? What drew me to Vermont? There are the things that that pushed me away from New Hampshire, where I came from, including having been arrested at Seabrook at the Nuclear Power Plant. Thank you. Well, Seabrook was about 15 miles from my parent's house. And that my boss at the University of New Hampshire Library wanted to put a letter of reprimand in my file because I was AWOL for two weeks with and there was 760 something people, including me incarcerated in an armory. And while negotiations went on and there were two telephones, I was not going to spend my one telephone call talking to my boss, even if I could get it during work hours. But so that's the one of the things that drove me away. And one of the things that drew me to was that I had met members of the Redbird Collective who were had bought some land in Heinsberg. And we're trying to build a house and a school and a women's health center. And a yurt. I don't know about a yurt. There was an eight said the house was an eight sided Okay, that may be why I'm thinking yurt. Eight sided house on big, you know, 12 by 12 peers in a floodplain. And it flooded a time or two. We were young. Yes. And we had a lot of energy. And there were no power tools allowed on the land. But I had met them. Yeah. And but that was one of the things that drew me to because some of my housemates wanted to be part of that at that time. And so a bunch of us just came up and started tending we were camping on the land for the whole summer. Now it was not merely a women's collective. It was a lesbian collective. It was a lesbian collective with three children, including two boys. Okay, that must have been challenging. I think it was, but there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about it. It was just a fact of life. You know, there was Lee Zepp's child, Bjorn. And there was another woman's another woman's child who was a toddler. And then there was one another piece of that was that one of the members was being sued for custody by her ex husband of her daughter. Yes. And I'm a little hesitant to mention names because I don't know where these folks are. And sort of where things stand. Yes. I remember. Yes. But that was one of the first custody cases in the United States. And one of the things we did that summer was we all piled into a van, drove to the Michigan Women's Music Festival. We got in for free because we were raising funds for the custody case. And they let a couple of the women from Red Bird speak from the stage and explain during an intermission and explain about the custody case. So all of that brought me to this is a place where being a lesbian is going to be okay. You know, it might not be okay everywhere, but in this place, it was going to be okay. And over the years since then, you've taken on a number of different roles. But right now, you're one of the elders of our community. And you're one of our historians or her historians. I want to be very conscious of gender balance. And at times when, you know, what the men's community does supersedes what the women's community does. Or the men's community comes on the tails of the women's community and tries to take credit for work. That's really not theirs. However, where I was going with this, Stonewall 50 rally, you spoke about the women's history in Vermont, and people heard things that they didn't know. So what do we need to do or what has happened that that strong movement that started with Red Bird in Howell seems to have gotten lost? What have we forgotten? Well, Red Bird predated Howell. That I know. Yes. And Howell happened in part because one particular woman who was involved in Common Woman, which was an early newspaper, a volunteer newspaper. For which you may have been an editor and contributor at one point in time. Yes. The same as without the mountains. That's but Common Woman was how I met my wife. And we were two of the people who took responsibility for making sure everything got done. And that some poets who really wanted to arrange their work on the page and left no room for anything else, except lots of white space, that that didn't stand before we went to the printer. Because you can't do that as a volunteer organization with very tight budgets. You just can't. And so. Vermont Woman just did their last issue. That was Vermont Woman. I'm talking about. No, no, no. I know. But Common Woman closed as well. A long time ago. Vermont Woman did. Yeah. Out in the mountains did. Yes. What's happening with our alternative press? What's happening to our voice? Well, it's similar to what's happening to mainstream legacy press, you know, that access to the internet and to interest groups in particular. And Twitter streams and so on. You can find resources that certainly didn't exist back then. And we, I remember without in the mountains, we had our best subscription numbers while civil unions was happening. And then after it passed, they dropped off seriously. And we had less budget. Our voices got co-opted. Well, yeah, it's a similar discussion as to why so many pride parades have so many liquor sponsors. It's because we used to, that was, the bar was the place where we hung out and met each other. And that stopped being true a long time ago. Though it's still true probably in some communities. The question now is, why are there no political speeches at Pride Festivals? But going back to Vermont women's history, what have we forgotten? What do we need to remind ourselves of now? Because certainly on a federal level, we're under incredible threat. And the queer community, we grew out of the women's movement. We really owe a lot of our advocacy and our organizing to what the women's community did. So what have we forgotten? And basically, let's take it one step further and say out loud that you guys get treated like shit because people relate to you as fake women. You're not really men. You're not really women. You're somewhere in the middle. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Having grown up in Vermont is the city. Yes. Yeah. But it's from the status as a maybe woman that ranks you down in the hierarchy, in the patriarchy. So what we've forgotten is that sense of community and that sense of if we're not standing arm in arm, we are alone and just totally vulnerable. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there are certainly high roller women among the donors to political campaigns. But I don't know if there are as many of them. I certainly don't hear about them. Neither do I. With few exceptions, the case that established marriage, and I can see the picture of the woman. Edie. Edie, yes. That case exposed one pair of women who obviously were high rollers. I'm sure there are others, but I don't know about them. So we need to engage more politically and not wash our hands of patriarchal dirty politics, I think. And that's a tough one. It's a tough one for me. I am the town vice chair now of my town Democratic Committee. And you were the moderator for town meeting. I have been the moderator for town meeting for three years, but that's a different, that's nonpartisan. And that's okay, but that's still a very public role. Some of the conversations I've had with people recently is looking at what is supposedly our community's agendas and how they're being pushed. And looking at us as sort of grassroots activists, why was it that marriage equality and the right to serve in the military was the issue when there were still 26 states for which, okay, I can now get married, but I'm now going home. And it seems to be talking to what you were just saying. Yeah, you can still be fired for being gay. And lose custody of your children and get evicted from your home. Yes, you can get married, but as soon as that becomes known, you can lose a lot. Yeah, that's true. I think for me, it's such a mixed bag. We've gained so much and we're in danger of losing so much. And especially in Vermont, where we pioneered civil unions and we were not the first state to do marriage, but we were in the first. The first by legislative process. Yes. I mean, one of the unique things about Vermont that most people forget is other states had achieved their political victories by court litigation. We did it by being visible in our own lives, standing up and having a voice and then building off, you know, each successive. So Vermont, you know, the right to marry movement in Vermont was very deliberate and about we need, you know, four people every hour at this table at this county fair to be there and be visible and be willing to talk to people because it's by sharing our stories that people realize we're not very different from them. However, there's, you know, there is only, I think I am different, but that's okay. Exactly, that's where I'm going. It's exactly where I'm going. A lot of lesbians, I know we're like, what do you mean we're not different? You know, we are different. We believe differently. We care for each other differently. And how I construct my relationships are different. Yes. And how I view myself in this body and how it relates, it's different. Back in the day, in the late 70s and early 80s, monogamy was a bad word in the lesbian community. I imagine that there were similar feelings among the gay male community. Well, maybe she thinks it's changed. And so marriage was just kind of a, why do we want this? It has so much baggage with it, and most of it's bad. And it's a patriarchal condescending. Some of us called it mahogamy. Exactly. Ownership. It was ownership. Well, and I remember, you know, the Gay Liberation Front and the 60s when all of this started, that was one of the things we were going to undo. We were going to undo that social paradigm. We were going to dismantle the military machine. So now here we are advocating for. So in our last minute, I know. Choices. I mean, what we were really advocating for was choices. And if one of those choices needed to be in the service and not be thrown out simply because of being gay, then that was a choice we needed to support, because not all of us are radical lesbian feminists. Well, and at that point in time, military service may have been your way out both socially and economically, etc. We have 30 seconds. Okay. So you will come back and we will talk more about anything that I should have asked you that because we had all of that conversation before we started taking your treasure. Well, thank you. You know much of our history and we need to record it. I appreciate that you include me. Some other forums I've had to fight my way into to make sure that lesbian herstory in Burlington does not disappear. As the sister I never had. Thank you. Sure. As the brother I never had. And now we have trivia. That was a great interview. I just adore you. Yeah. So very sweet. Ewan is one of the few remaining elders who truly remembers Vermont, herstory, and all of the components of it that we seem to be forgetting. So out in the mountain, September 1988, a publication of which Ewan might have been the final editor. New Queer Holiday. What was it? Well, if I said the Queer Holiday happens on October 11th and it was the anniversary of the 1987 March on Washington, it might be National Coming Out Day where the challenge was what is the next step for you to take personally in your LGBTQ plus visibility? I got that. So with that, yes. Resist!