 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ interview show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Carolyn Gage, who's here for a return visit, as our viewers know perhaps. She is a lesbian feminist playwright, a Renaissance woman. She's written many other things, has a blog, has written essays, has written short stories. But we're here to celebrate the arrival of her new collection, Big Plays. Yes, I mean, I loved each play and we're here to talk about them. First, if I welcome Carolyn. I'm delighted to be back here. I've really enjoyed meeting you in the previous interview. This is wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing your work with us. And let me read a little summary of this volume that I recommend that you can purchase if you go to Carolyn Gage Big Plays on the internet. If you just Google my name and Big Plays, you will run across it. It's in Amazon. It's in Barnes & Noble. You can get it off my website. Or you can go to lulu.com and type in Big Plays, Carolyn Gage, and get to it. Let's read the summary. One reason you should get it. Huge casts, gigantic themes, multiple subplots, more scenes than a Shakespeare play, two intermissions, epic sweeps of history, breathtaking relevance with heart stopping suspense and momentum. In other words, what would have been known in previous eras as plays. By one of the world's most public and prolific and feminist and lesbian playwrights. So this is, you know, I spent all morning. I spent several days earlier this week going through this volume and, you know, I can't recommend it enough. It's very, very exciting. Yeah. There are three plays in McClintock's corn, which is about Barbara McClintock, the historical figure, Nobel Prize winner. And it also sheds a lot of light on autism. And we, I'd like to talk about that a little later. The second play is Stigmata, which explores the lesbian contradictions that we could be both victims and victimizers. And this is really riveting. I was raised Catholic, so a lot of it was familiar. I had to say it, even though it takes place in the 17th century. And the third play is The Spindle, which is a children's fairytale for adults. And it explores the banality and horror of incest. So that's a encapsulation. Let me ask you about the two historical plays. How did you have to choose these two figures to write about McClintock and Benedetta Carlini, the 17th century nun? Well, I read a lot. And every now and then it's like, I'll read something and I feel a little hand tap my shoulder and say that, write about that. I kind of feel that my plays come to me. And then I spend, I was seven years writing Stigmata. That was a big play. And I knew it. That was enormous. And the amount of research, I think I've got several banker boxes of notes about, you know, I had to look at early modern Italy, witch hunts, convent life, whole life of Galileo, who was kind of in the same time period. I mean, just massive amounts of, and the inquisition. But yeah, that was one that tapped me on the shoulder. And McClintock's corn was 30 years gestating. I had read Reverence for Life or it was a biography, I think Evelyn Fox, don't quote me, but it just, I knew I have to write about her. And it took me 30 years. And it's interesting because after I wrote it, which was in the pandemic year, the first year of the pandemic, two years ago, I realized I had to be old to write this. It spans, you know, her life from late 20s until she was in her 80s and won the Nobel Prize. And, you know, she'd crossed my radar in my late 30s. And I realized there's no way I could have written this. I am old now. And I can deal with that sweep. So that was, you know, that was wonderful. Yeah. And then, well, the autism is a piece of that also, but you were going to talk about that. Well, you just discovered more diagnosed with autism yourself in the recent past. I was, I wrote the play about McClintock. And then after that, I discovered she is considered autistic now. And that's pretty obvious if you look at her life. And then it began to dawn on me. And so am I. I mean, it just was very interesting that writing that play for some reason just broke open my denial about that. And now I am stunned. I mean, I was tiptoeing, buzzing, humming, spinning, just the just the behaviors as a very small child. But then of course, the adult choices, the fanatic hyper focus on the lesbian plays and the writing of them and the insane sacrifices I've made to do that. Autistic as hell. I mean, just like, how did I miss that? If you read the play, it really is clarifying in terms of the level of concentration that McClintock needed with her corn and how focused it was and how I know it's not necessarily how productive it was and how accomplished she became. She was a Nobel Prize winner. So this focus really paid off in terms of outside world. But you know, but notice that was not the reward. The work was the reward in itself. She did at a certain part, her work was very not what the culture was about. The culture was about the atom bomb and the discovery of the structure of DNA. And we've cracked the code from life. Everything's downhill from here. And she kept saying, no, no, you're missing it. Environment influences the DNA. And they're just like, no, we are little gods. We are little gods. And that's just not true. And she just sat it out for another 30 years. They gave her the Nobel Prize for work she'd done in the 50s when she was universally trashed. And I think that's autistic. She didn't care. And she stopped publishing. She stopped talking about her work. It's like, why bother? Why bother? They don't understand me. But that didn't put a dent in her agenda, her steady work. They're getting up the working seven days a week, because that was her area of special interest. And I absolutely relate to that. I began my career when they were like three lesbian theater companies in the country. I don't know that they're any now. And I write on, you know, subjects that are difficult. I write heavily censored archetype, the lesbian butch, especially these days. I write the survivor of child sexual abuse. It has never phased me. I had a New York agent. She's like, you've got to write more men in. You've got to like de-lesbian. If these were straight women, I could market them. None of that phased me. It was like, I just felt like, I have to write what I write. They come to me. I write what I'm given assignments and I write them. That I think is autistic. I look at that and I look at McClintock's work. It's like, I know what she's doing. And it's incomprehensible to other people who want a family, a home, a decent income. How can you write over 100 plays knowing that most of them will never be seen in your lifetime? And then if they are, they'll be so controversial they'll make your life incredibly difficult. Autism? Easy answer. One of my favorite lines in the play, and this is what I was trying to articulate earlier, is that it's not really about outside rewards. And the McClintock character in the play says, the idea is not to win but to prevail. Yes. And I think that's really key. Yes. I certainly learned a lot from that play. So thank you for writing it. Okay, let's go to the Catholic Church in the 17th century. Plague times. Plague times. What is plague times? And we're in plague times now. Yeah. And the ending is kind of apocalyptic. I don't know if I want to spoil it. But the play doesn't spoil the ending. But yes, absolutely. And we are in a time of hysterical beliefs in silver bullets that are demonstrably not silver bullets. Very much like what people did in the plague time. Believing in something even if it doesn't work assuages the anxiety, you know, and then a fanatic embrace of that is a part of that. It's really, yeah, that was interesting. I mean, I wrote this before we were in plague times, like it was something long ago and far away, but apparently not. I know. And all the machinations of the ins and outs of the Catholic Church. The third play is the spindle. And I was really, I think it's really an important play. You say it's your most autobiographical play. Can you talk? Yeah, this is a this is a radical retelling of Sleeping Beauty. That's the spindle. Yeah. But it's the phallus. The pricking of the finger when you turn 16, the, you know, traumatic teenage encounter with the philocracy, if you will. And then she just goes to sleep. She dissociates. She becomes a knesiac. She that's falling asleep. There are many young women that fall asleep, not literally, but in terms of the dissociation amnesia, per identifying themselves with the perpetrator, all of those things. I actually feel like that, that fairy tale has always been a reference to the interference of girls coming of age and the falling asleep. Well, the tale is that if beauty, one of the heroines is pricked by the spindle, she'll fall asleep for 100 years, but then that's redefined as for a long time. And falling asleep becomes more metaphorical. And I mean, the whole use of scar tissue and this symbol of having who, how many people have been pricked in it's almost like a stigma to think from the other play. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's true. Spindle scars. And those of us that are in late stage recovery from child sexual abuse, I think we are, we are adept at identifying those spindle scars. You know, I hang out with unrecovered survivors and I, I can, you know, maybe so grandiose, but I feel like there's a lot of markers and that, you know, if you're on the far side recovery, you know, I think it's kind of like being in recovery from alcoholism or addiction, you can probably walk into a room and pretty quickly pick up who's who's active in an addiction. There's just subtle markers and stuff that a lot of people in the culture don't pick up on. But in this, that's the metaphor. And that little butch heroine, Doko, who's like 13 years old, she begins to perceive that everyone has spindle scars in the whole kingdom, all the women. And that's why she's not able to get anywhere. She's trying to talk about this frightening situation with the spindle and the curse and, and then, and the women are not responding appropriately. And suddenly the horror is like, you know, you, they reveal their hand, their palm. And she's like, Oh my God, they've all been pricked. None of them think clearly, they're all asleep, they're all dissociated, they're all perpetrator identified. And I kind of feel like, yeah, I mean, we've survivors, we certainly have that experience a lot, you know. And one of a great part of the play that I personally enjoyed was when you put in that they're going to Doko and Andrea, the godmother who's butch, they have a butch to butch conversation. Yeah, four times. And then it comes up a few, you know, that's their conversation. And I was, I just loved it because I personally am a lesbian. And I wonder if it's a lesbian audience would really appreciate. I'm thinking, Oh, it's a little bit of a stereotype. But you know, Doko has had her first rejection, crushing rejection by a heterosexual girl who has been flirting with her, you know, it was not and is crushed, confused. And here's the butch fairy godmother who's like, realizes I got to talk to her about this. And then and she doesn't really have the skills and Doko doesn't either. And they're just doing this little butch bonding thing that I'm trying to infuse a little humor into it. But yes, I think my plays are very there's a lot of things lesbian audiences get from my plays that a straight audience wouldn't necessarily understand that they're in the presence of lesbian archetypes because they're so heavily censored. And the butch on butch, you know, mentorship, you never allowed to even see one butch much less to much less an older one, a younger one, you know, there's a lot of scenarios that are missing from the canon that my plays are trying to write back in. And the three godmothers are all lesbians. Oh, yeah. Doko's been raised by these three godmothers who some of them have the scars too, right? Bethany, yeah, one of them is confused, as many family members are and they feel the best way to protect the family is to kill the memories to split off. That will not serve us well. You know, your father's a wonderful person or whatever, just that false was misguided loyalties and and we see her she's a good hearted woman. And it's just doing knee jerk, you know, keep the secret stuff. And we see her come come to consciousness about that and is horrified by her complicity and just really devastated that she was protecting the perpetrator and sacrificing the child and didn't see it didn't even see it. Yeah, that kind of remorse. And, you know, I have worked with mothers where incest happened and there's a tremendous sense of guilt and there's very few recovery programs for those mothers. There's just so much shame, so much guilt. So and again, that's a difficult archetype and I wanted to put her in my fairy tale. And of course, there is redemption and compassion and forgiveness for her. Well, to change the tone, one there was a little revenge scene in the scene of violence against one of the perpetrators in the play. I don't want to give too much away, but the guy says you can't kill me. I'm your father. And don't go kills him. Yeah, she's I guess I can. And that's my own journey. That's like probably the most important scene in the play. That's why I wrote it. That's what I was trying to get to. I think she says just because you're my ah, this was this was the one that was so important to me that the line just because you're my father doesn't mean I have to be your daughter. And that frees her up. She treats him as an enemy threatening her life in the lives of one she loves and that warrants killing him. But yeah, that's a real revelation. That those are words, those are just you don't act like a father. You know what? I have no obligation, none along familiar lines. And I personally found that scene very empowering. I loved it. It was empowering and you know. Yes, I you know, I love Tony K. Bambura taught me you know that you know it's we write for revolution, you know, and that's certainly and I and I like that I use the conventions. It is a children's theater play. It's got the four primary colors, the fairy godmothers, the magic, the chandelier swinging, the sword fights. And it's all about child sexual abuse and a culture where incest is the central paradigm of patriarchy. I can't remember what famous feminists said that, but that is true. And that's it isn't an isolated incident. And I felt like setting it as a children's theater with the sparkle and the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, the horror of you know, actually, this is a common experience for a majority of little girls. This isn't a bridge too far. I'm not reach overreaching here. You really want a fairy tale about the lives of children. Here it is. In your intro, you say 30 to 40 percent of young girls experience incest. That's a huge number. Well, and in that, it's like a father figures, the dentist or the priest or whatever. We're an uncle or, you know, it's not always the biological father, but it's kind of a father figure, authority figure. Yeah. And the percentage is one out of three. It really I always remember that they say if you want to terrorize a whole population or control a whole popular, colonize a population, terrorize 15 percent. That's enough to achieve it. And I'm like, well, we've got 33 and a third percent for girls and women. So we are like double colonized. That's like overkill. If you only need to terrorize 15 percent, we can, we got double that and then some. And the whole culture, I think of women, femininity, all that stuff, myths about motherhood. I mean, I feel like what we're looking at is a colonized culture. And the roots of that are this terrorization. If we weren't raped in childhood, we certainly are surrounded by friends and family members who were and all the lessons that come from that. The other thing I liked about the play was the ending. I mean, you subverted the conventional expectation that, you know, the Prince figure was going to kiss sleeping beauty and, you know, everything was going to end happily ever after. I thought that was really cool. Well, the traditional fairytale is, again, I think it always was about child sexual abuse. It's so phallic and graphic and the falling asleep and the pricking. But the answer is find the one good man. That'll fix it. And, oh my God, we, you know, battered women, shelters are packed with women who thought they found the one good man. We know that's not the solution now. It's the self-love and the women who can model the self-love and teach us to love ourselves. Yeah, I think that when Angelina Jolie did the film Maleficent, I think they had the Prince kiss and nothing much came of it. They made a point like that too. I think it was the love of a mother or something, the self-love. I mean, we've evolved. We know waiting for the Prince is not a good, no, it's not good strategy. Yeah, but I think what was upsetting for some lesbian audience members is they wanted to see the Princess get back together with this childhood friend, Doco, and the Princess is too far gone with privilege. And that's what's so good about the play. I mean, to turn to meta fiction at that point, I thought it was brilliant, really. Yeah, the happy ending. It has a happy ending, but it is not going to be romance. And I want to say that it is true. It's just like in recovery, there are some people not capable of it. And beauty does not have the structures and a lot, and she's inundated with privilege. She is, she's not going to make it. She's got too much incentive to be complicit in her own abuse. And she's surrounded by people that are supporting that. And her little friend is a working class kitchen helper and a child and not part of her blood family. And you know, it just, it's, I just want to say that's real. That's real. She's never going to wake up. And, and the sad thing is when you love women like that, you have to turn and walk away. You have to realize I am going to have to become part of this or else leave to save myself. And doko with the help of her godmothers has a wonderful resolution. But the romance junkies are like, I knew it was hoping for that, the convention. But I can't work miracles. I wrote this character. I'm like, you know what, she's going, I got, you know what, she's not coming with us. I know that's so much more real. Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary. You know, it's like, you know, those girls, those straight girls, you know, sometimes you just got to turn and just kind of wrap them in a little warm blanket and say, I got to, I got to turn this over now. And I'm leaving. Good luck. Good luck and good night. Yeah. So tell me, what's your next project? What are you working on now? I'm working on a play called St. Francis and the Fallen Angels. And that sounds kind of evangelical or something. But keep in mind the line, there are no fallen angels. There's only women who've been pushed. And this is about Francis Perkins, the secretary of state and secretary of labor throughout the whole Roosevelt four terms. And it's a particular night. And she's in a crisis. And she's being sandbagged and set up by the president to fail. And the issue on the table is social security, which is literally, literally the lives of millions and millions of people. And what people don't know about her is once a month, all those 12 years, she would leave Washington and her male only environment and go up to a convent in Baltimore, an Anglican convent for three days of peace and quiet. So that's where I've said it. And she's on the verge of quitting. The deck is stacked, the pressure realizing she's been set up. And also she had a partner who was a woman, a roommate who had just died unexpectedly. And there's no acknowledgement of this because it was a closeted relationship. But she's lost her housing. She's lost the love of her life. She's lost this tremendous Washington wife who made, you know, stuff happens in Washington at the dinner parties as a single woman. But that couple, you bring Mary, Mary and I are going to have, you know, whatever, Mary's gone. And so she's grieving but not allowed to grieve. And she's kind of on the clock with this impossible job she has to do. And it's Christmas. It's Christmas Eve. And so all these, it's a very intense little one act play. And it's about quitting. It's about, I can't do this anymore. And of course that's a crisis of faith also. God has begun to look a lot like FDR. Like I expect you to do this, but I'm not going to give you any of the shit you need to do it. And I think all of us, especially Dykes have come to a point where it's like, you know what? That's not fair. This is, I feel that way often, you know, writing lesbian plays like building the Ark in the middle of the desert. There's no rain in sight. There's no lesbian thing. There's nobody producing work like I'm doing. And the academics won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. And it's like, I can't do this anymore. And then there's, you must. And then it's, I can't. And that is, I'm writing as usual, right on my own, Rad Hot Issues. And I'm up against it right now when it's seeing queer cultures incredibly hostile to lesbian culture. And that's breaking my heart and my back. And I'm kind of like with Francis in that convent. And Francis, 20 years prior to where my play happens, she stood on the sidewalk outside the triangle, shirt waste fire. That is what forged her. That's where she got this spine of steel. I think if you stand there and you watch these 147 mostly girls and young women jump out the window, most of them on fire, they didn't jump until they absolutely had to. I mean, I think you either just come away broken or you pick up a good alcohol habit so you don't have to think about it. Or you become Francis Perkins, who's responsible for the 40-hour workweek, the child labor laws, social securities, unemployment insurance, you know, like, oh my God, she was, but again, mission driven. And often when you're mission driven, the breakdown is horrendous. It's just like, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. You know. Carol, keep going. Because we read big plays, everybody. And we want to hear more from you. Come back any time because your work is so exciting and interesting. Well, thank you. And I also want to tell people, email me, carolin, at carolengage.com. I have a reading on February 6th of a play called Star Pattern that I absolutely love. It's a very short play. It's about the 1966, Texas, Utah, Texas, Austin, the first mass shooting as we know them. Of course we've been shooting people, indigenous people, but it's the first contemporary mass shooting. And when the first victim lay on the mall, wounded, nobody would rescue her because he was still shooting. This lesbian, this 23-year-old lesbian runs out, huge risk, lies down next to her and keeps her conscious and alive until she's able to be rescued. She was bleeding out. She would not have survived without that. This is a play about Rita Star Pattern, that lesbian who did that, like, a staggering act of courage and solidarity with a woman she didn't know who was eight months pregnant. It's a huge, it's a really important play about establishing matriarchal spaces in the belly of the inferno of patriarchal violence. And these women did something so radical. All right, I'm going to shut up now. Go on the website. But email me and I'll send you the registration number. It's a Zoom reading and then later I'm going to put it up on YouTube. But come and join us live on February 6th, four o'clock Eastern time, because there's going to be a question and answer and a talk back. And I love this play. I love this play. Carolyn, thank you. Thank you. Anyone who has been an activist within the LGBTQ plus community knows that historically, religion has been used against us to justify discrimination. However, there has been an movement with openly identified LGBTQ plus leaders of faith to try and change that and to change it from within their religious institutions. And joining us today is someone who has been very involved in that initiative within the reform movement within Judaism. And from Temple sign, I am Burlington. Please welcome Rabbi David Edelson. Welcome, David. Thank you. It's very nice to be here. I appreciate the invitation. I am so glad that you were able to accept because I understand that your schedule is very demanding these days. It's a busy time right now for clergy in general, I think. So I've read as you are experiencing. Exactly. So I want to start talking a little bit about your personal spiritual journey and how you came to the decision that you wanted to be ordained as a rabbi. And reading your biography, which if someone can find the seven days article, it is entirely worth the read. Your spiritual journey started in an unusual manner as a drum major for a marching band at your Georgia High School? That's correct. Well, I don't know if I would say my whole spiritual journey, but my adult spiritual move happened there. I was, as many people know, marching bands and football are very big in the South particularly. And as it was at my high school, and I was elected drum major after my freshman year to become drum major myself more year, which is very young. And so I was very honored and worked very hard and did very well. We had a very good band year in all the competitions and things like that. And then that spring, I got, I came down with a very bad case of mononucleosis and was out of school for six weeks. And during that six weeks, I later learned that the band parents, not including my parents, we were the only Jewish family in the county in the town at the school. And so the band parents had gotten together behind my family's backs, so to speak, and had decided unanimously that they weren't comfortable having a Jew lead the band down Main Street. That's the quote that I was given when the band director called me in and informed me that I was not going to be drum major again because of that. So and my family was very assimilated. I mean, we did holidays sometimes, but not even every year. The nearest synagogue was an hour away. So it wasn't an active part of our regular lives. We certainly knew we were Jewish, but that that was about it. And obviously, if I was doing football games and banned every Friday night, we weren't going to synagogue on those nights. So I was pretty surprised and shocked and angry. And in many ways, the reaction to that and figuring out, well, if this is going to affect me this much, I should know more about it led to the spiritual journey of discovery for me. And without denigrating anyone's faith tradition growing up in the South back then, particularly, this is in the mid 70s. It was not a religiously terribly diverse area. And it's certainly when it came to LGBT issues and frankly, Jewish issues and issues of people of color, the organized white institutional religious world, the church, the Baptist church particularly was not a friendly place. So it was a journey of discovery for me to learn more about my own tradition and find that I resonated with it intellectually quite a bit and spiritually. I think you're probably being more gracious than they deserve. I'm trying to be. But I'll let that go by in reference to your revered status now. Okay, after high school, you did not immediately start the rabbinical studies. You got a degree in something else. Yeah, rabbinical school is a graduate program in for most streams of Judaism, rabbinical school is post your bachelor's degree or it's a graduate degree. It's a five year graduate program. And depending on your background, six years. So I first went to William and Mary and majoring in comparative literature, which I love very much. And it still informs like the way I approach Bible and things like that. I'm a very much a literature person. But was your long range expectation was that after you finished the undergraduate degree, you would start the rabbinical studies? Well, actually, this is almost embarrassing to admit when I was still in high school, I guess at junior, we had to do a big, you know, what do you want to do with your life kind of presentation. And mine was I was always a Star Trek person, I'll just admit it still am. And mine was to be a rabbi in space. And so I knew I was interested in it. I didn't know just how motion sick I become that space was not really an option for me. But so I knew I was interested in it. But at the same time, I was far from decided about it. In college, I ended up being William and Mary does not have a large Jewish community. And I ended up being the president of the Hillel there for a couple of years. And that reinforced the thoughts. And then when I graduated from college, I moved in with my, my boyfriend, who was also my boyfriend back in Georgia when I was drum major. And we moved back in together in Atlanta. And there I started being more involved in the Jewish community. And as you know, we went to Jerusalem for a couple of years. And somewhere in that first year there, I was clear what I wanted to do. So it was a longer process, although it would have been my number one choice from high school, but it was not, it was, it was in competition for other ones, other graduate degrees in academic degrees. And then William Shatner was given the opportunity to touch space. A rabbi in space may still be within the realm of possibility. It may be, it should not be me. Okay, but while you, you were not only open and clear about your Judaism, from reading your bio, you were also very open about your sexual orientation. You started, you were one of the founding members of a student organization looking towards the inclusion and ordination of LGBTQ plus rabbis. Yes. Yes. When I interviewed and I interviewed in Jerusalem because I was already living there. And I was open, you know, they said, is there anything else you want us to know about you? There's never, there's rarely the right time to put it, but when they said, is there anything else that you want to know about us? I was like, well, yes, I'm gay, I'm here with my partner, that's likely to be, you know, and you should know that. And I was accepted and there was not a reaction to it. And so I was like, great, that's good. That's what you want. They're like, okay. I didn't fully realize that the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis was not yet decided. I realized I should have known, but it was before the internet and those things weren't as easy to find out as I guess they were, as they are now. And I knew some older gay rabbis that I'd been in touch with talking about it. So when I got back from Jerusalem that first year and that first year, my partner was welcomed on like school field trips, like he was part of the class. It was, there was never any issue whatsoever at the school or frankly in Jerusalem during those years. So I was pretty surprised when I got back to New York of all places and the issue was presented to me. Now I need to really give credit that some amazing rabbis had been working on the other side having been ordained. They weren't open when they went through school, but they came out later. Or they were straight and they simply were allies and advocates. So rabbis like Maggie Winig and Joel Kahn had done tremendous work and others as well. So there was already a movement among the rabbinic conference to support the ordination of LGBT rabbis and I should say at that point it was probably gay and lesbian rabbis. I don't remember the transgender community being fully included in that conversation at the beginning, but very soon it was for sure. But it kept being voted down as as happens in other faith traditions or it kept being tabled until the next year sort of thing. And as a student I was not that patient. I had a desire to change things. So I and a couple of other people started Hinenu, which means here we are. In the Bible anytime in Hebrew it says Hineni, it's usually somebody speaking when God calls them and they have to respond. So we did Hinenu, which means here we are, not here I am. And as since I was openly gay already, I very willingly became the the the spokesperson publicly for the organization. There were we had a good many members who were lesbian and didn't feel as comfortable yet since being a woman rabbi was still one. I don't want to call it a burden or a gift, but it was certainly something they were aware of that could affect their employment opportunities. And so there was some reluctance then to be as open. I was pretty clear and it was already open. So that that genie was out of the bottle so to speak. So we lobbied in the school for changes and we lobbied the conference for those that had been ordained for changes. And so we worked with the rabbis working on the other side so we could coordinate our efforts a bit. And what happened interestingly is that, and this is a little complicated so I'll make it as quickly as I can, the agreement in the reform Jewish movement there's one rabbinical school in the US, and there's one rabbinic conference. So if you were ordained by the rabbinical school, if they said yes, you were automatically admitted into the conference of reform rabbis, which was the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the CCAR is what it's called. And so one of the issues that was coming up was we kept figuring like, well, I was open when I interviewed other people were and we are getting through the school, you know, what's going on with that. And so we decided to have a town hall meeting before the big vote that was coming up at the annual conference or at the biennial conference. And we had a town hall meeting to say, you know, what's going on with this. And in the process of that meeting, it became clear that there had already been a letter by the president of the school saying we are not going to discriminate on this basis. And so it was already it just hadn't been publicized. It was an internal memo. So the school was already ordaining people they knew were gay or lesbian. And so then the question is, is the Central Conference going to decide not everybody gets to be in the conference, which was a change. And so what ended up happening is the Central Conference said, well, if the schools already said that, then we're not changing our policies. And so gay and lesbian rabbis were then automatically accepted. Now, there had already been accepted, but just not openly. And so I have professor one professor in particular who wouldn't sign my ordination because of it. But then most of my classmates also said they didn't want him to sign theirs. So, you know, I had a lot of solidarity from my class. So I, you know, it was a fight, but it was a fight with a lot of allies, I have to say. And in fact, in the class beneath me, one year below, was a young man who was heterosexual and was an ally and was part of the work we did. And he ended up being the president of the college until he died in an airplane accident a couple of years ago. So and another member was the dean of the college. So the acceptance has not just been lip service. It has it has clearly been demonstrated over and over at the highest levels of administration and leadership. So before we run out of time. Yeah, sorry, that was a long answer. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's the kind of LGBTQ plus history that we are not documenting that we are not sharing with those people coming up behind us. Yes. They have no idea how within the reform movement you were able to achieve what it is that has been given what has been granted to you. But I want to get from, you know, you spend time in New York City. You were the rabbi for your association for the death. You are an accomplished musician with piano clarinet flute that you incorporate into your faith traditions. You made this statement that I cannot just let go of sometimes you have to leave home to come home looking at what other faith traditions have to offer as well. And you end up in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, another Bethlehem, and then and then you end up here at Temple Sinai. I as an LGBTQ plus person. If I approach Temple Sinai, what can I expect from you? That's a good question. I you would expect a welcoming inclusive community made up of Jews and Jewish adjacent people, spouses, family members that aren't Jewish necessarily, but are part of our community. You should expect when we can get back together in person again. A lot of joy is singing, a lot of laughter. I very much believe that music and a sense of humor are crucial tools, not just for getting through life, but for having an open spirit and being spiritual people. So I think that's what you would expect. And I think that's what you'd get. We're a very welcoming community, I'm proud to say, and have been. And the reform movement remains very open. We've had presidents of the CCA of the rabbinic conference and other very high positions, repeatedly held by LGBT people or very strong allies. So as someone who is not brought up in the Jewish tradition, I would be welcome to come in and sit and experience that sense of spirituality. Absolutely. You would also experience Hebrew, which is a barrier if you don't know it. And I say it's a particular barrier because most of our songs are in Hebrew. So we have a Judaism as a very rich singing tradition, but it's almost it's almost always in Hebrew in services. So so you would have that experience as well. But our prayer book is translated and transliterated. So and people would be happy to show you what page we're on and so that you can participate. And our prayer book is also gender neutral and things like that. So you would be welcomed in and included to the level that you would feel comfortable including yourself. You can all just sit and see what's happening. We have groups come in that want to learn about it and they're always welcome. I was going to say from having seen your name in the news since you came to Temple of Sinai in 2018, it seems that within the larger communities of faith in Burlington, there is a concerted effort to present a in solidarity interfaith response. I mean, I have seen you standing side by side with the amount who I would tell you traditionally that's not a relationship we would expect. Is that something that we should get used to and we will be seeing more of? I believe so. We are working very hard to be partners where we can be partners. Of course, there are issues like on from our perspective is reform Jews issues of LGBT rights are reproductive choice that are and egalitarianism that are not up for debate for us. They're fundamental bedrock principles. So certain areas we can cooperate on other areas we try to be respectful to each other in our disagreements, which frankly in this day and time feels probably just as important as solidarity is the ability to disagree respectfully. So, you know, certainly the Imam, I think it's important for people to understand that the probably Judaism the closest religion to Judaism in terms of religions and how they work is Islam. We are very close in a lot of our approaches to spirituality in terms of how we do things and how we how we see religion playing out in our lives. It's mostly since the early days of Zionism and Israel now that it's become an area of significant dissonance and on those areas we don't totally agree and we have agreed to be respectful in our conversations. And the Imam has been a role model in that. So I'm very, very appreciative of that. And with that I need to say thank you. And I'm looking forward to the time that I get to sit and experience that spirituality with you in person. Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you very, very much. Anytime. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.