 Hello, I'm Keith Ghostland. I'm Ann Jarls. And I'm Linda Quinlan. It's Tuesday, June 18th, and welcome to our award-winning, All Things LGBTQ. And I have a few events and some headlines. Just a reminder about Larks and Raven, the gender-feet confeder dancing, first, third and fifth Saturdays at the Capitol Grange. Drag Queen Story Hour is coming to our neighborhood. Saturday, July 13th, 10th, 30th, the Kellogg-Harvard Library, one o'clock in Williamstown. And you may wanna tune back to us on Saturday, July 6th, where there might be an interesting interview. Bennington, they're having their first Pride Festival. It will start on Friday, June 28th with an evening celebration at the Masonic Hall and a parade the next day, starting at one o'clock at the Bennington Museum. And they're having a queer youth prom. Nice, there. Brattleboro Summit is happening on September 27th to 29th. And if you go to look for it, Green Mountain Crossroads, you may want to look for We Are Out in the Open, which is their new name. We'll be doing a follow-up with HB to hear more about how and why they changed their names. Thursday, June 27th is National HIV Testing Day and a reminder that both the Pride Center and Vermont Cares will be doing the rapid HIV testing. Ann and I are very familiar with the protocol because you do a little finger stick and within 20 minutes, you get your results. Vermont Pride Theater, they're going to be starting their performances on Friday, July 26th. It will be that weekend and the following weekend. Three productions standing in this place, growing up LGBTQ in Vermont, a late snow, all things together now. And on July 16th, you might want to tune back in for Ann's grilling of the Pride Theater about what they're doing and why. Just a few headlines outright for month. Friday, they're celebrating their 30th anniversary. The Governor vetoed the 24-hour waiting period on the purchase of a firearm. We'll talk a little bit about that. Ooh, we'll talk a lot about that. Wednesday, July 10th, one o'clock, state office complex in Waterbury, there was a public hearing about proposed changes in Medicaid coverage for gender affirmation services. We'll talk a lot about that. There are new recommendations coming out regarding PrEP and HIV screening. And this week's trivia question, they didn't get it this week, even with a hint. June 1992, out in the mountains, front page story. The way you always wanted it to be. The way you always wanted what to be. And with that, you're gonna tell me about the Tonys. And I also wanted to just mention that on July 3rd, you will see all things LGBTQ and the parade with our truck and decorations and hopefully music, so look out for us. Join us. Yes. Speaking of joining people, if you're going to New York for Pride, I encourage you to go to the Reclaim Pride event. On June 30th, it follows the same route as the original march starting in Sheridan Square early, like at 9.30, I think. Then it picks up people at Bryant Park and there's a rally on the Great Lawn of Central Park beginning at one. Linda and I are gonna go to the, it's the alternative to the Corporate Heritage of Pride Festival that's also occurring in New York on that day. Since when was our history for sale? I know. Exactly. I did a little research. Kombucha, which we mentioned last time, is fermented tea. With yeast. Yes. And that how event was very successful, it looks like, that we mentioned last time. My headlines are many. Good news from Botswana and San Marino. Ecuador's highest court approved same-sex marriage. Hong Kong's top court issues a landmark ruling for LGBT rights. Bad news. The Vatican rejects a gender change to the alarm of LGBT Catholics. A very disturbing story from London. Rocket Man, that Elton John movie with gay content has been banned in Samoa because of the gay content. Israel is about to get its first gay TV channel. Gay Israelis hold a mass wedding to campaign for same-sex unions. 23 couples were wed. And I'll talk about that a little later. A European airline offers a non-binary gender option for the first time. And speaking of non-binary transgender concerns, I have to correct myself. I misgendered Masha Gessen last time. She's not undergone any transition. She uses, she her pronouns, so she's cisgender. And I misgendered her last time. Then I have pride news. And this I will not get to in-depth coverage of. An estimated more than 6,000 people attended Sophia Pride in Bulgaria on June 8th with a motto, do not give power to hatred. Ooh, I like that. Jerusalem Pride Parade draws 10,000 revelers. And that's particularly interesting because Netanyahu has appointed the first openly gay Likud cabinet minister, Amir Ohana. And he marched in the parade and was booed by the lefty marchers. Warsaw Pride Parade attracts a crowd estimated at 50,000. You just keep going up. I know it. It's incredible, really. And I have a little recap of the Tonys, which I can do right now. The Ferryman, a fabulous play that... I thought she was gonna start singing and dancing. Oh, a fabulous play, won the drama award. There's no LGBT content, but it's really a fine play. Andre De Shields won the Best Actor Award for the Vermont favorite, Hades Town. He's gay. I think he's 73. He gave a very gracious acceptance speech. Ali Stroker broke ground. She's bisexual. She won the Best Actress for Oklahoma. And she's in a wheelchair. So she gave a very moving speech about being disabled and getting the Tony and being an actress and so forth. Judith Light, our ally, won a special award for her work with AIDS and to support LGBT causes. And Boys in the Band won the Best Revival. To my dismay, the prom didn't win. That features, it's about a prom. We showed a clip on it. That was so good. It features, anyway, the review that they had on the show did keep the lesbian kiss. So it didn't win, but we all saw the lesbian kiss once again. And you know where Hades Town had its origin? I certainly do. It was on the local news. The old labor hall in Berry, Vermont. I know it. And the woman who won... A grant from the Vermont Arts Council. And the playwright thanked her Vermont, the Vermont origins. So tickets in the orchestra are $400. So it may be a while before we can get tickets. I guess we should have seen it earlier. Yes. At the Berry Opera House, maybe. Yeah. When it was playing Berry, yeah. 10 years ago. All right, so those are my headlines. Good job. Thank you. There was a panic in D.C. Pride, which sent people running. There was a popping sound. I don't know whether it was fireworks or whatever it was. They thought it was gunshots. But they thought it was gunshots. And the crowd mistook the popping for gunshots and they began to run. Several people were injured. I have a little bit of a story that I'll go into in more detail about Detroit Pride. Wisconsin governor flies the gay flag over the capital, which is really nice, since we know that other governor, who was here recently, wouldn't do it. Pompeo restricts gay pride flags at embassies overseas. There have been three transgender women of color murdered this week in the United States. A New Jersey finds Jewish counseling group guilty. We'll go into that a little bit more. Stacey Abrams appears in the 2018 Atlanta Pride. 2019. 2019, yeah. Oh, sorry. It's a Doctor Who moment. As we know, she was a dynamic candidate who ran for governor. On the last show, we reported a transgender murderer from Malaysia, Booker, who was killed in Dallas. Kendra Lyles, 32, is being held in connection with her murder and also the murder of two other women. And they think that he may be involved in other murders. And Fox and Friends on Fox News, which I have never seen except in clips, but they celebrated anti-gay legislation with a Chick-fil-A feast on TV. Oh, and I know. Oh, you're trying to... I remember getting those stains or that smell out. Cheshire Police Panel chair asked their chief to leave because one of his police officers was wearing a Bolo and with a gay pride, and he asked him to take it off. And so there's some problem there. Where's Cheshire? I think it's in Pennsylvania. Okay. But actually it didn't say. Clarence Thomas suggests a Supreme Court marriage equality ruling should be overturned. Clarence Thomas suggests a Supreme Court marriage equality ruling should be overturned. Los Angeles, most famous deli, kicked out some lesbians. Yeah. And... They were bad tippers? Not at all. That's a myth right there. And I'm going to show a clip later on from Richard Blanco, who wrote a book, Our Work About Pulse. And he, as we recall, was President Obama's inaugural poet. And he honors the victims of the pulse shooting in this poem. So we'll have that a little later. Okay. Don't you have another story? Which one? For which you had pictures. Oh, the flamingos. How could you overlook them? The flamingos. Freddie Mercury and Lamb Bass. And you'll see a photo of them right now. Denver Zoo. Yes. They are a new male-male couple. And in recognition of Pride Month, the zoo said... They're going to give them an egg. Well, no, they have been, that abandoned or neglected eggs, they have been acting as surrogate parents. That's adorable. Because Anne can't get us with them penguins. No. I know it. And it's Denver, so I can't report on it. Okay. Flamingos is part of... One's pink and one's white. One's Chilean and one's an American flamingo, which accounts for the difference in colors. Yeah. And the color is determined by how much shrimp they eat. Oh, I didn't know that. I mean, is it specifically come from their diet? I didn't know that either. Otherwise they're white. Oh. All right. I didn't know any of that. How informative. Bass became a band about flamingos. So the real thing that I wanted to focus on this week is the hearing that's happening with the Medicaid people. And they have been rewriting protocols and what's in their formulary for covered procedures. And the thing that got people's attention, and it was particularly Vermont Legal Aid, and they reached out to the LGBTQ community because they were looking at coverage relative to gender affirmation surgeries. And there was a whole group of surgeries that are covered under Medicaid. But there's a whole group of surgeries that are not. And some of the things that were not included are facial feminization surgery, electrolysis, hair removal, voice modification, shaping of the Adam's apple. All things that they were determining to be elective or cosmetic surgery. Let me challenge that. If you talk with people who do service providing for people within the transgender community, these additional surgeries add to your self-esteem and your sense of well-being. Yeah. That it greatly assists in the transition process. It also greatly assists in your acceptance as your identified gender. So this is not just this casual of, oh, you know, I, you know, I'd like a little talk. Yes, I saw the Stonewall 50 rally video. Can we all? Yeah. But this is one of the things, you know, it's a public hearing. On, as I look really quickly again, Wednesday, July 10th at one o'clock. And they're taking written comments until July 17th. So the Alliance will be submitting a statement saying, you know, these are not elective. Yeah. You know, that our lack of knowledge and understanding of gender affirmation and transition should not be an impediment for people getting the surgeries, the services for which they truly need. Yeah. And now I'm going to let you have it, and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about vetoes. All right. And you can boo again. Well, I'd like you to go now to Botswana where good things have happened. In a groundbreaking unanimous decision on the 11th of June, the Botswana High Court became the second court in Africa after South Africa to decriminalize same-sex sexual conduct among consenting adults. There are draconian restrictions in the Botswana penal code that outlawed or criminalized sexual intercourse and or attempts thereof between persons of the same sex. These provisions imposed up to seven years of imprisonment for individuals, and they have been abolished. They've been overruled. The court rejected the government's arguments that public morality or public interest is a valid justification for these laws. It's a combination of many years of public activism that was incremental. And it's a significant victory for LGBT activists both in Botswana and across Africa for clearly and unambiguously dispelling the myth that homosexuality is in any way un-African. It should therefore serve as a highly persuasive precedent to courts across the region. Good news there. San Marino, you may not know about it. It's an enclave state in Italy. It's home to 33,500 people. It's been independent since the year 301. Really? Yes. It's been independent since the year 301 AD. So it is a long history. It's become the 11th country in the world to include LGBT rights directly into its constitution. Joining the UK, Sweden, Portugal, Malta, Bolivia, Ecuador, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa and the Fiji Islands. So it's a liberal little country. It is. It's one of Europe's smallest countries and they've chosen to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation by the Constitution. The motion passed with 71% of the votes in a referendum. We'll go there. More good news from Ecuador. I'd like to show you a picture now of Afrean Sofia, Soria, who's at the center of this picture. He's celebrating with other leaders of the gay community after the legalization of same-sex marriage. They're standing outside of a court in Quito, Ecuador. The decision by the Constitutional Court came after a lengthy legal battle waged by several couples and gay rights advocates. The ruling was five to four. And with this, Ecuador joins a handful of Latin American nations that have legalized same-sex marriage. The others are Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia and Uruguay. So the plaintiff told the Associated Press that he would immediately begin planning a wedding with his partner Xavier Belcazar, whom he met years ago and has been in the civil union with since 2012. One more international point of good news. I'd like to show you a picture now of Lung Chung-Kwang, who's on the right, with his partner Scott Adams. They were instrumental in the top appeals court of Hong Kong issuing a landmark ruling granting spousal benefits to a married gay couple. This is the latest rebuke to chief executive Kerry Lam's government over the issue of equal rights for LGBT people. And Kerry Lam has got a lot of trouble in Hong Kong if you've been watching the news. So same-sex marriage is not recognized. But the first court of appeal ruled that the same-sex partner of a British expatriate married abroad was entitled to equal visa treatment under the law. And so Scott Adams is a British expatriate. Don't they have a lot of trouble there now with some decision about it? People can be deported to China. Yes, and under the horrible laws of mainland China. And they are protesting. Kerry Lam is calling for her resignation. I know. Good. Okay, do you want to hear more from me? No. I know. Moving on. Yes. Detroit Pride. On June 8th and 9th, at Heart Plaza in Detroit, the LGBT community held its 46th annual Motor City Pride Festival and Parade. With over 50,000 attendees, it was the largest Pride celebration in Michigan's history. The development represents a significant change in the attitudes of workers. And the credit goes entirely to organizers in the community who have struggled for rights, recognition, and liberation for the LGBT community. And on the first day of the Pride celebration, the festivities were protested by a small contingent of armed neo-Nazis. The Nazis were escorted into Pride and protected by the Detroit Police Department. The fascist tore up Pride flags, made chimpanzee noises at Black celebrants and tried to physically intimidate a number of Pride attendees. The Detroit Police handling of the situation has been the subject of national outcry. The police outrageously chose to protect the Nazi aggressors after the people defending Pride. The police, however, insist that they were protecting the Pride participants from the armed Nazis. So these guys were going... They had guns. That's a carry state, apparently, so you can just walk around carrying them. Open carry in Michigan? Open carry, yeah. Pompeo restricts gay Pride flags at the embassies. As we know, Pompeo is an evangelical Christian, and he said that he defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. He feels the flagpole should only have the American flag, and that's it. As an aside, he also recently said that if you don't like climate change, I love this. I know. To another, to Mars. I know. I know. Some embassies have been flying the Pride flag despite Pompeo's orders. The Washington Post reported Saturday that diplomatic missions in Seoul, South Korea, India, and they sent out a release and a video advertising the flag hanging outside their respective buildings. While the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi updated its Twitter cover photo showing a rainbow projected on it. There are others, but, you know, those were the main ones. New Jersey, the jury, finds Jewish counseling group designed to turn people straight is guilty of consumer fraud. This is kind of interesting because other people are going to be using this defense. The Jewish counseling center has been ordered to pay $72,000 in damages, which includes therapy to undo conversion therapy effects. So we have that. We did fucks and friends. So I think we will go to you and I will finish up these in the later segment. To you, meaning me? Yes, to you. So the U.S. Prevention Services Task Force, there's a mouthful. They recently gave both PrEP, which we've talked about, Prophylactic Treatment, Prevent Transmission, Infection with HIV, and the fourth generation HIV testing, an A rating. Now what's significant about this is under the Affordable Care Act, anything that the U.S. Prevention Services Task Force gives an A or B rating to, must be a covered expense by insurers, which means you get a prescription. There is no co-pay and no cost share. Isn't that nice? You're talking to your insurers. So the Governor vetoed a bill this past week, and it was the bill that included a 24-hour waiting period for the purchase of a handgun. I think she's going to get a lot of gun lobby people back. I don't think so. But what was very telling about it for me was we had submitted testimonies supporting this bill, looking at the Alliance for LGBTQ Communities, looking at the level of violence against the LGBTQ community. This bill was vetoed two days after the anniversary of the Pulse massacre. So it just had a somewhat of a chilling effect. And we'll be reporting on future shows about what actions might be taken, because neither leadership in the legislature indicated the ability to do an override at the veto. They didn't have enough votes in the House. So this may be an issue that's just reintroduced and see what it is that can happen next. Why did he do that? His statement as to vetoing the bill is because he had looked at the data coming out of other states. He had looked at the legislation that had been enacted by other states. The argument, as Linda was referencing, that had been put forth is the waiting period was to diminish suicide or the risk of suicide. He said that they could find no credible information that supported that. My perspective is that dealing with gun violence is going to be incremental steps and it's going to take a combination of them. As happened in Botswana, finally, except the outcome was positive at the end. Well, let's go to this deplorable organization, the Vatican. That was quite the lead in. I've rejected the idea that people can choose or change their own genders and insisted that on the sexual complementarity of men and women to make babies. They published a document during LGBT Pride Month, as we know. It was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence. An advocacy group called New Ways Ministry said it would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm. The text, male and female, he created them, was intended to help Catholic teachers, parents, students and clergy address what the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education called an educational crisis in the field of sex education. It called for a path to dialogue and listening on the issue of gender theory and education. But even priestly advocates for LGBT Catholics noted that the text appeared to have relied entirely on previous papal pronouncements, backward documents so that they are, and philosophers and theologians from the past. The real-life experiences of LGBT people seemed entirely absent from this document, said James Martin, a Jesuit priest, who wrote a book on improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBTQ community entitled Building a Bridge. I bet that went far. Well, I mean, you know, it's just so hidebound. It boggles the mind. Another bad story. I'd like to show you a picture now of Melania Greimanot, which she posted on her Facebook page. This is Melania and her partner, Chris. They had a date. They were on the way home on public transportation. Where was this? In London. They were harassed by five males between 15 and 18 years old. They were robbed. They kissed each other, she thinks, and on her post she said, they started behaving like hooligans, ending that we kiss again so they could enjoy watching, calling us lesbians and describing sexual positions. The couple was beaten and bloodied as the picture shows by the group who allegedly also stole their belongings. She expressed frustration at the violence the LGBTQ community has had to endure. I'm tired of being taken as a sexual object of finding out that these situations are usual, of gay friends who are beaten up just because. So that's a very disturbing incident. Well, skip Rocket Man, as Samoa has chosen to, and move to Israel, getting its first gay channel. It's going to be called Out TV. It's going to launch. The day before Tel Aviv Pride occurs, it's going to have reality TV documentaries, gay romantic comedies, and exclusive original productions. Do you think they pay our way to go and interview us? Well, we could go... Reality TV, do they really need us? Well, it's going to celebrate the launch, as I said, on Thursday. Now I'd like to, in a counterpoint to some of the bad news I've reported, I'd like to show you a couple of pictures of gay Israelis having a mass wedding. There are 23 couples. They married. They held an unofficial mass wedding in Tel Aviv, walking down the aisle and exchanging vows to highlight the country's discrimination against same-sex unions. So there's the first picture of them. Hundreds of friends and relatives attended the events. And the next picture I'd like to show you features a lesbian kiss prominently. Six couples... No, six people, three couples, all kissing and celebrating. Israel, as we know, champions itself is gay-friendly, and will this month hold a world-famous gay pride week. And let me pause for a second to show you the 10,000 revelers in Jerusalem. That's a picture that I neglected to highlight before. Nevertheless, homophobia and transphobia are widespread among religious and conservative groups, including those in government. They don't have gay marriage. And there are allegations from Palestinian groups that Israel is trumpeting its gay-friendly reputation to cover up the atrocities occurring in Palestine. So, I guess Linda's giving me the cue. Let me just say that the European airline that's offering the non-binary gender option is Air Italy. Ah, okay. All right, that's it from me. Thank you. I just have a few stories, and then I want to save time to have this poem read. But as Trump launches his reelection campaign in Orlando, a gay bar will host a huge protest rally. The Stonewall Orlando just blocks away from where Trump and the orange... Oh, where Trump is having his reelection campaign. But they also have the orange baby Trump, which they will be flying right near where he's having his campaign. So, that should be pretty fun. It's a balloon, right? Yes, that big orange balloon that was in London. So, and let's see... Oh, so now I want to save some time for gay poet Richard Blanco to read his poem about the pulse shooting. So, here he is. For the victims of the pulse tragedy, to honor their lives, preserve their memory, and help us all heal. One pulse, one poem. Here, sit at my kitchen table. We need to write this together. Have a sip of café con leche, breathe in the steam, and our courage to face this page bare as our pain. Curl your fingers around mine, curled around my pen. Hold it like a talisman in our hands, shaking eyes swollen. But let's not begin with tears, or the flashing lights, the sirens, nor the faint voice over the cell phone when you heard, I love you for the last time. No, let's ease our way into this. Let our first lines praise the plenitude of morning, the sun exhaling light into the clouds. Let's imagine songbirds flocked at my window, hear them chirping a blessing in Spanish, bendición, bendición, bendición. Begin the next stanza with a constant wind trembling every palm tree, yet setting our minds just enough to write out bullets, bodies, death, the vocabulary of violence raging in our minds, but still mute choked in our throats. Leave some white space for a moment of silence. Then fill it in with lines repeating the rhythms pulsing through pulse that night, salsa, deep house, electro, merengue, techno heartbeats mixed with gunshots. Stop the echoes of that merciless music with a tender simile to honor the blood of our blood without ever writing blood. Use warm words to describe the cold bodies of our husbands, lovers and wives, our sisters, brothers and friends. Draw a metaphor so we can picture the choir of their invisible spirits rising with the smoke toward disco lights. Imagine ourselves dancing with them until the very end. Write one more stanza right now. Set the page ablaze with the anger and the hollow ache of our bones. Anger for the new hate, same as the old kind of hate for the wrong skin color, for the accent in a voice, for the love of those who are not supposed to love. Anger for the voice of politics armed with lies, fear that holds democracy at gunpoint. But let's not end here. Turn the poem. Find details for the love of the lives lost, still alive in photos. Spread them on the table. Give us their wish-filled eyes glowing over birthday cakes, their unfinished sand castles, their training wheels, Mickey Mouse ears and tiaras. Show their blemished yearbook faces, silver teeth smiles and stiff promposes. Their tasseled caps and gowns, their first true loves, and then share their last selfies. Let's place each memory like a star, the light of their past reaching us now and always, reminding us to keep writing until we never need to write a poem like this again. Good ball. Very moving. Yeah. So why don't you introduce the interview? Okay. Let me introduce. Keith Gosling. And John Colacky. Yes. It was a great interview. It was a very good interview. But here it goes. Hello. And I have a guest that I have been excited to have on our show, this representative, John Colacky. You may remember him from our legislative review. Only today. And I've warned you. During the legislative session, there was the queer leadership summit that happened at the State House. And you were one of the representatives who talked with our youth as an openly gay legislator, which gives them such incredible hope. But you made a statement that so got my attention. You said that you wanted to talk to them as a gay man with a disability. And a gay man who was the survivor of the AIDS epidemic. So, welcome. Well, thank you. Thank you. If I start to ask questions that are too intrusive, you can tell me to stop. That won't happen. But from our brief conversation, you've lived your adult life in a very public forum. I have. Since I think in the age of 20, I moved to New York to be a ballet dancer. And I was in a play called Coming Out. It was like the first gay history. Jonathan Katz. Yeah. And a remarkable thing. It was my 21st birthday. I turned 21. It was a gay pride march. And we ended up in Washington Square Park that year. And we were going to perform a section of the piece. And there I was standing backstage. Here was this red-fire head. So, I performed my little piece with my other actors, the men and women coming out. And then, out comes Bette Midler. And I just thought, my world has changed. It's bigger than I ever imagined. My tribe is more powerful. Yes. And I think from that moment on, both as an artist and as an administrator, I decided that I was going to make affirmative work that was about my realities. And that I was going to find my community and being exactly who I am. And so, when those kids from outright came to the state house as a legislator, in my life, I never imagined that I certainly could be a politician. And then Harvey Milt gets elected and he gets assassinated. So, my first role model is a politician. But I want every one of those kids to know, first, you can be as queer as you want to be and you have to be authentic about that and you can do whatever you want. We're living proof of that. We are. Here we are. And, you know, the power of this program you do is very important, because it's affirming as a community and we find each other in community. The other thing is, I talked about, in 1996, I had surgery that, what, unexpected... You're going right to where I want to talk. Well, I had been a dancer, I mentioned, and then when I stopped performing... And a marathon runner. A marathon runner. The first Gay Games, 1992 in San Francisco. I finished ninth in the marathon. Congratulations. That was terrific. And it was great to be among queer men and women and we were racing and we were having the time of our lives. And you were out running the night or the day prior to your surgery? I was, because I was still pretty fit and they found a tumor inside my spinal cord, up in C2, so way up here. And because it was inside the spinal cord, they couldn't do a biopsy. And so, they said, okay, well, we have to take it out. It was blocking about 60% of the cord. And unexpectedly... Okay, so you must have been having some type of physical response just to that. Now husband, but we were laying down and he was reading and I fell asleep and I had sort of like a seizure or something, he thought. So he was like, you had a seizure? I said, no, no, he woke me up and I said, no, no, I'm okay. But we went to the doctor and I did a doctor and they did an MRI and found the tumor. So the doctor said, well, you'll probably be in the hospital three or four days with a sore neck for a month. That's great. Let's schedule it. We're done. And so before I ran five miles and got up early in the morning, went to the hospital and 12 hours later I came out of surgery and... Life had changed? I was completely quadriplegic. The doctor said to my husband, well, I'm not really sure what happened and we don't know what the recovery will be. So I spent 10 days in intensive care and then I was moved over to a rehab hospital. Okay. Sister Kenny, a student in Minneapolis where we were living and I spent six weeks there and then I was sent home in a wheelchair. Not knowing if... They didn't know. But the interesting part for me and it ties to I'm so lucky that I had been a dancer because as people would lift me out of the bed and then shift me over and then they put me in the wheelchair, I realized that somehow I thought my body could hold itself up. You recognized your center of balance. Yes. But I have no relationship with my legs. I have no sensation of my legs even today. That was gone. So I said to them, bring the mirror over. I think I can learn to stand a vision. I read that and they resisted that. They said, okay, well, why? And I said, well, I was a dancer and I learned to dance in a mirror and we'd rehearse with mirrors and stuff. And I said, so let me... So I had braces on both legs. They'd stand me up. They'd beat a walker and they'd get me to stand. I said, okay, just let me... Let me talk. And I eventually learned. I said, okay, now this is what it means to stand up. And to this... Then you could recognize that new... Visually. But I don't have sensation in this part of my body. And I don't have proprioception, which is location in this half. It's called Brown-Secard syndrome. In every part of the spine, different things cross. So it was at C2, the sensation of proprioception is lost. And mostly people who have this have been either shot or stabbed in the spine. Right. And do not... Some kind of spinal cord injury. Right. And do not live very long. So they didn't actually know what my proprioception was going to be. But being a dancer, even though you were absent some of the physical sensations to which you were accustomed, your mind-body connection from having done movement could recognize, oh, this is the new normal. This is what this means from seeing in the mirror. One of the other senses took over. And that's what I've read a lot about this. And it's interesting. So visually, I walk through the world now. Right. And if we're walking down the street and we start arguing about something, we're getting some... My foot will just stop because my brain still does not know I had this foot. So it's sort of, you know, I walk with a cane. I kind of creep around. Okay. But it was as important to me with those 91 kids from outright to say... Absolutely. You can be anyone you want to be no matter what because that was a very dark time in my life. That's anyone going through this. There was a huge challenge for you and from having read too many Google searches about John Kalaki, it talks about being a Buddhist and authentic relationships. And you created... You co-authored a book, Queer Crips, which won a Lambda literary award. Yes, it did. All right. And then a video holding on talking about re-establishing relationships. So what gave you strength and the ability to be here today? All of my life, I was making political work. And so as my friends were dying from AIDS from my New York time and in the late 80s and early 90s, I made three AIDS-related films. Unforgiven fire. Yeah. And so now that I, in my newly-abled body, I felt like I had to figure out what to do. And even when I was there, I couldn't move anything. I was able to move this finger first. And I remember one time Larry came in and I said, Okay, look at this. Look. And he said, At what? I didn't know where he started. My toe? What did he look at? Because I couldn't move it. And I just went, Hello? And that afternoon, when they sent me over to occupational therapy, I said, Get me to a computer. And I said, Why? And I said, I'm going to start writing about this. And I said, You can only move a finger. And I said, It's okay. So I... Hunting pack. I... Spent 23 hours thinking about what I wanted to peck away. And so I started writing about it. And I got published and stuff. But... And you talk very much about how... I want to tell you why I... So I'm in the hospital and I write out an intensive care. I rolled into the psychologist's office and we're supposed to have a weekly meeting. So she says, What's on your mind? Oh, yes. Exactly where I wanted to go. And I said, Well, this is new. And... Could you talk to me about the return of sexual function? And she says, I don't know. I'm not gay. And I said, I didn't ask you who you were. I don't care. I couldn't even move. I said, I didn't have... So it was like... From that moment, I thought I want to make sure there's a book that people like that could say, Oh, here's a book for you and your family. And this... Because that's what we did in the middle of the HIV and AIDS epidemic was rethinking intimacy and what it meant to have physical contact with each other. And as we're rapidly running out of time, raindrop. Who... My darling. I... When I read the brief narrative in your comment of, I get to dance again. Tell me about raindrop. Well, I had a childhood pony near raindrop that I loved very much. And so fast forward from my dancing days to my marathon days to my paraplegic days, I had lost function in my legs. So I reconnected it with my childhood passion of shetland ponies. And I hitched this pony up on a cart. We've been together for 12 years now. And you don't need your legs to drive a cart. And this morning I was doing it. And I get into that cart. And I'm dancing again. I'm running again. I don't need my legs. And it is the only time in any part of my day that I'm not disabled that I'm free. That sounds just... So in our last three and a half minutes, you have helped create wonderful art exhibitions. You have been an administrator for wonderful art centers. You have a show that you have helped create this opening in Brattleboro the end of this month. June 22nd is going on all summer at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. It's a 45-year retrospective of a woman named Donna Ann McAdams. And Zach's going to show some of her photographs. And it's queer liberation movement. It's a lot of the performance artists that were in the culture wars in the 90s. She lives on a goat farm. She's a dairy farmer with her and her husband in Sandgate, Vermont. And she's like this world-famous photographer that Vermont doesn't know about. And her backyard. And she's collected all over the world. And so I said to her, this is going to be my project. I've worked on it for two years. I love this artist. I love her as a person. She is such a fierce person. And she had a wonderful story about walking into a San Francisco camera shop because she had run out of film and meeting Harvey Milt. Because he had a camera shop. So he got a charge account for her. And he encouraged her before he was killed. And she has just blossomed since then. As have you. So thank you. It's an honor to know her and it's artists like that that fuel my passion. Which is very evident. So thank you for being here. A reminder that every Wednesday at 4.30, the Price Center of Vermont has an LGBTQ with disability support group. There is so much more that you have done that I want to talk about including your time as a classical dancer and an arts administrator and what it was like to go from San Francisco to Burlington, Vermont. That's quite the leap. Donna McGat. And then your first year as a legislator. And myself. I say that we are so happy we moved to Vermont. Otherwise we'd be just these jaded and erotic New Yorkers. So we're lucky our New York roots are there and all the aesthetics are there but it's like here we are able to have full lives. Her with her goats. Me with my ponies. It's a good life here. He is so nice. What a powerful. And there was so much more to talk about. I know we have to have him down. We didn't even talk about some of the individual arts. No, these are awards. Yeah, I know. Amazing. He will definitely have to be back. So the trivia question. The way you always wanted it to be. Doesn't it sound like the tagline for some? It sounds like a music. The way you would. Or a musical currently on Broadway. As I'm going quickly to the answer now the answer might have been 1992. This is the 30th anniversary for outright this year. So maybe this was the first outright LGBTQ. Oh, where was it held? Burlington. At Conteuse Auditorium. Nice. City Hall. How many people were there? Do you know? Several hundred. I mean it was well attended. Really? Were you there? As an observer or a shepherd owner or something? Because people will go back and look for photographs. I might have been there in a tuxedo. Oh my gosh. Very nice. Yes. So with that. I think. Okay, on that note I think we should say good night and more than ever and every single day remember to resist. Resist.