 Hello everyone, I'm James Milan and welcome to this episode of the ABCs of LGBTQ Plus. I am joined today by a couple of experts who are going to guide us through the impacts and effects of COVID-19 on this particular community or set of communities. Joining me today from Simmons University is the assistant dean for social justice there and his name is Gary Bailey. Gary, thanks so much for being here. Delighted to be here. And also our old friend Valerie Overton from Lex Pride is joining us as well. Valerie, good to see you again. Good to see you. How are you guys doing by the way? We are starting every interview it seems these days. Just getting a couple of words on how things are going for you. I'm doing okay. It's certainly been a change and it's been a change for a lot of people I know. I feel relatively privileged that I am still able to work, albeit from home. And I'm able to pretty much quarantine at home. So I feel pretty privileged about where I am in this pandemic right now. I would say ditto. I keep saying to everybody this is not my first pandemic. Having survived the 1980s and 1970s the AIDS epidemic. So this is not my first time at this type of experience. It is my first time if one is going to compare and I've heard a lot of false equivalencies made. This is the first time in this moment where people cared as much as they do. They didn't care in the 70s and the 80s that people were dying. So there's that piece. But I'm privileged to be able to work, to have a roof over my head and to know that I have access to health care should I need it. I have to say I completely echo what you said Gary. Because having gone through those 70s, 80s, 90s with the HIV AIDS epidemic it felt like I was losing a friend every week. And that was a really tough time with the appearance of no caring or response from the government for many of those years. The government or from the government or from many sectors of the population I'm sure and what you were saying Gary is absolutely the case. Obviously people care now because it affects at least potentially all of us. Of course those effects themselves are very, very different for different. Well they are. They are. I would encourage everyone there is a recent piece in the Atlantic. There's been a shift in this pandemic if we look domestically. To where all of a sudden you begin hearing people say well we could in order to get the economy. So here's the dynamic. We need to start the economy so we're going to lose lives. What I keep hearing is what's very interesting is whose lives are we going to sacrifice to start the economy. We're going to sacrifice the very lives that helped 400 years ago to undergird this economy, black lives. Because the demographics are quite clear about who's affected. So it's not lost on me to hear that it was all hands on deck every time you turn around let's report and then people began to follow the numbers. I'm not a conspiratist but I also have seen enough ethnic cleansing in the world to see that people take and seize opportunities and I think we have to name things in very big ways. The populations that are being affected right now are older folks so that we have generational saturation and warfare that's going on and the decisions about who is going to get a ventilator. I don't know about you but we're a little scary in terms of how we were going to determine whose lives mattered and I understand the need for those kinds of protocols but when you look at yourself and check yourself off and say well I'm in that category I'm in this category I'm in this category doesn't look good for me should I need one of those so I think that brings it up women in Massachusetts women are disproportionately being affected by this epidemic unlike any other place in the country as a public health person we don't understand what that means yet but Massachusetts is outside of the outside of the realm so there's a lot here for us to really unpack and really think about yeah and I think also you know what we see nationally is that it's really you know black and brown people and you know in California and Texas and places like that the Latinx community is being desperately impacted as well as the black community and the indigenous populations you know that we've probably heard in the news but the Navajo you know are almost being wiped out at this point and so it really is kind of the black and brown and and similar communities marginalized communities that are being so desperately impacted yes so let me let me let me just say that we could we could keep going on this easily for a while especially I'll just add in my own two cents which is to say the idea of trading lives for the economy is an upsetting notion no matter where you hear it from it's particularly upsetting that's coming from the highest echelons of our federal government that that notion and from a number of state houses as well but we are here in fact to focus on a few of the vulnerable populations that are out there and to whom who are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 so whether we want to talk and I'm gonna let you guys basically I'll throw some things out here that we want to talk about and then I'm gonna let you guys kind of figure out who's gonna take to take you know each each question on or do so in in partnership but the kinds of things that we want to talk about the impacts are clearly broad they're social their health their employment their legal all all of those kinds of kinds of impacts and then of course we're talking about an LGBTQ plus community that is extremely diverse in its identities its orientations its ethnic and racial makeup etc so that's a lot of stuff let's start by looking because this began and still is primarily a public health crisis let's look at health first if that's okay and I know Gary of course all this all the students would have been sent home a long long time ago at this point from from Simmons and and the other colleges and universities in the area the population that we're talking about here how have they been impacted by the fact for instance that health requires that they now be home and therefore isolated how is that affecting the populations of students that you generally deal with well clearly are for our undergraduates and I interact predominantly with our graduate students so I'm dealing with an adult population but let's really think about what happens when you're going through your own coming out journey so that for many people that you know you're an 18 year old young woman or person individual who comes to university and then begins to understand that you like people of your same your same gender and that's who you're attracted to and you haven't come out yet you haven't come out to your friends you haven't come out to your family haven't come out to anybody and you're trying to negotiate you know that spring break because that's when we ended we extended spring break so first week of March so that you're getting through that period knowing that you can come back and trying to figure out if you're like I was how do I get to stay in Boston with the person now that I'm involved with so I don't have to go home or how am I going to be my authentic self and then next thing you know you're not coming back you're now in this space where you have to negotiate these new parameters and terrains and it gets very complicated and so that we have continued to provide the kinds of social supports the social emotional supports through our counseling centers to students who who need that support thank God for telehealth and telemental health as a way of helping people stay connected but it does put you into a kind of a hotbed of angst that you would otherwise have some distance from and that taking that away really heightens some of the anxiety you know social isolation let me say this about social isolation you can be surrounded by people still be socially isolated if you can't be your authentic self so that if you're withholding your truths from people around you you're you're ultimately very very isolated in the worst way which is why we see such a high suicide rate amongst adolescents as they're doing their coming out journeys because they feel extremely isolated yet they're surrounded by people yeah and you know your response reminds me that of course there's there are physical health aspects that's what's driving all of this in a lot of ways is concerned about the virus and contacting it and contracting it and what can happen but then of course there are infinite number of mental health repercussions for what's going on right now within the communities that you guys you know know so well within the LGBTQ plus community do you see that there being much of a any difference in the health physical health concerns of folks in that community versus the mental health concerns where it's clear there's going to be you know an outsized impact yeah I think that we certainly you know in talking with high school and college students I'm hearing on a daily basis like the mental health impacts there's a lot of anxiety and depression and in suicidality going on because so many are living in unaffirming circumstances without kind of the outlets that they normally have on the physical health side you know it's a complex arena because on the one hand you have members of the LGBT community who have underlying conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 on the other hand you also have a lot of members of the LGBTQ plus community who don't have easy access to appropriate health care so if you're transgender for example if you contract COVID-19 you are unlikely to find yourself in a clinical setting that is going to be affirming of your identity and so what we see is lack of access to appropriate health care given kind of someone's identity and also reluctance to seek health care for those very reasons so it's pretty challenging one of the risks for particularly for the members of the trans trans community is having access to affirming health care options and I can't tell you how many of my trans friends will talk about not being seen by health care providers because of the fear of being poorly treated or dead named or mispronounced or all of all of those things that occurred that you know there's not a Fenway health in every city a small hamlet in town and people here in the Commonwealth come from all over New England to go to Fenway because of its reputation those don't exist across the country and so getting that kind of access I'm trying to stay on hormone treatments trying to have access to your so if you're on any kind of hormone therapies or interventions it's one thing to go to a CVS where no one really knows who you are it's another thing if you're in a small town where everybody knows who you are how you're gonna get that script filled what do you need that for if you're on prep why are you taking this I've known you and your family for a hundred years what are you doing Johnny why do you need this medication for what reason or you need to have you're an adolescent or a college student whose HIV positive which there are numbers of who need to have their meds filled and no one in their town and community knows but you're all of a sudden your pharmacist knows your parents and HIPAA HIPAA's there but you still know that someone knows something that that you know yeah I appreciate the fact that you guys are are are starting to put us into the mindset to share to to to empathize with what kinds of thoughts are going through people's heads because I suspect that there are plenty of people out there who would think hey you're talking about your health and life or death if you go and seek treatment versus oh they might not use your right pronoun etc and people aren't going to understand that that that that can be a real inhibitor so I'm glad again and and invite you to you know continue to flesh out for us just what what kinds of internal conversations are going to be going on that would stop people from actually accessing health care even even if it's possible even if they have options of that let me say what I often say in settings around the country about this shame is probably one of the most powerful forces that any of us have ever experienced and everybody knows a moment when they have because of shame not done something that they know was in their best interest but because of the fear of being shamed of being embarrassed of being called out of being othered of being made less than we are pack people you know one of the interesting things about human nature is we need to be part of the pack you know it's it in many ways is deviant to be the one outside leadership I always tell my students leadership by definition it's deviant because it means you're outside of the that pack that safety space and so when we think about the power of shame I have watched people on their deathbeds literally standing by their deathbeds who won't acknowledge what they're dying of because they don't want to be embarrassed they exit this world they have exited this world telling me stories that we both know not to be true but as long as they don't say it therefore they die with a reputation intact I've seen it I've seen it countless countless times you can see someone do something and they'll tell you they didn't do it because the shame is too great to bear shame becomes such a powerful powerful anchor in so many people's lives you know that's why recovery if we think about recovery part of the recovery model is letting go of the shame of having an addiction of having a problem with having a challenge until you can let go of that you can't begin to recover because you'll do everything to mask it and so the shame of being called out of being denied of being mistreated that is that's a universal most people get it they just didn't have to be able to take that from an electoral to a empathetic point of way and I think when you also like you know for a lot of transgender people and even you know LGBT people as well a lot of people have pretty unpleasant experiences with the health care system and so then when you think about going into a clinical setting where you don't have a previous connection where you don't have a level of trust and you aren't sure that they are going to respect your need for hormones or prep or whatever the case may be you it becomes frightening at that life and death level about whether you're going to receive the other care that you need in addition to the COVID-19 care really excellent points you know I'm mindful of the fact that we are going to be talking again about a number of different areas of impact and then a number of different portions of the population as we go through these areas I think it will be important to balance what is a lot of grim acknowledgement of reality with resources ideas etc so in the health area for instance mental and or physical what are you know what can be done where where can people go what are resources that can be useful that we should share well clearly Boston Medical Center is great Tufts New England Health Tufts Health Hospital that there's your decadence medical center where I get my cure the Brigham where I've consulted and help people to really think about how can they be more embracing of trans patients the hospitals are doing you know and particularly the practices within the hospital children's hospital for their gyms unit is one of the best in the country have not been one of the best in the world we have great resources what we've learned through this epidemic is the falsehood of what it meant to be some of the best in the country is that our system still failed our systems are the best when they weren't taxed and in crisis it's very easy to be the best now we are looking at we're not the best mass general I mean our systems failed and so and they failed everyone they just didn't fail queer people they failed everyone and I think that that's been a wake-up call to the systems of the mental health system I think that we have a lot of work that we need to do there's a lot of health community based mental health centers private practices there's a lot out there the National Association of Social Workers has referral system American Psychological Association American Psychiatric Association social workers are the largest providers of mental health services in the United States so that's where you go to get your care primarily so that there's no question that there are providers our systems were taxed before this there were waiting lists before this and the more intersectional a therapist you needed the longer the wait was so Fenway is great but if you needed a queer therapist of color you were going to wait because there aren't that many there's so few is to be embarrassing so that there is a need for us we are going to get slammed I'm not a denier of reality because you can't fix anything you know what a James Baldwin says everything not everything can be changed but nothing can be changed until it's faced so that we have to name the complexities the complexities are our systems were mental health systems were under water this is the opportunity now for us to become much more creative and it's a frontline issue that we need to be able to create that kind of training that needs to happen to get that next generation workforce up and running but I think I think we're going to be there and I think we have the right systems in place to begin to respond to this right at that systemic level like we we need so much more as Gary was saying I think for people who are looking for like support groups and peer groups and things like that you know there the Fen Fenway health has a number of support groups and in peer groups Bagley for youth for teens and young adults Boston glass for teens and young adults of color and it's action committee it's action committee you know all of all of these have support groups and peer groups and they're running virtually uh that people can join and a very informal basis just on an as-needed basis and also Lex Pride here in Lexington we serve you know the greater area as well not just Lexington so there there are those resources as well for people who need something right now yeah those are those organizations are I bet like other folks we've talked to actually you know running uh at at you know running on all cylinders at the moment because it's it's remarkable just how much uh how how busy people can be in this socially and physically isolated situation of art because of the services that need providing let me ask you guys one more I just wanted before we move I just wanted to add one other thing or two other things there's also lgbt flashback sunday there's a group for lgbt elders of color that is part affiliated with it's now a separate entity with Fenway health and their lgbt aging project is another great resource that continues to work in the in the community and so those are just important resources because we often forget about older lgbt folks we kind of go off the radar at times let's let's talk about the the economic impacts and employment impact here again uh we've already acknowledged and you know bears uh briefly repeating that all of us are dealing with uh you know a whole confluence of uh of effects of COVID-19 um and of course the lgbtq plus community is dealing with those same effects um what are particular though in terms of economic and employment effects here uh that that that are impacting this community well you know one of the things is I look at my own I'm lucky to have friends who are at different parts of the spectrum we have friends who are just so economically secured that this just is not going they're looking at the market the market is what's determining how they're going to be and they've got that's been like they've got more than enough cushion but then I think about those people for every restaurant that closes I think about all of the barbacks the bartenders the waiters the wait staff others uh who um don't have that don't have their income I think about every hairstylist every beauty salon not to be stereotypic but we are in terms of talking about queer spaces and queer places of employment um you know we are in those salons we are in the galleries we are in the the places where people are decorating we are in those places where um people are doing uh gardens we are we're doing a lot of those things that are hard to get industries right now and so people are not necessarily working I look at all of my friends who are real estate you know big players in real estate well they it will bounce it will bounce back but the market is not moving right now um and so those industries as we begin retail just really think about retail in general for across a whole continuum you know where to queer youth where does trans youth go to get a job well they can get a job at j crew they can get a job possibly at uh because some of those industries depending upon if you're a black and brown trans person you aren't going to get jobs in some of those places because of the profile of who they wanted to hire but those were places where you could get that job um if you walk into you know I say to everybody walk into your local grocery store see who's standing at the cash register who's essential they're young people they're brown people they're black people because that's who people are hiring to do those kinds of jobs those are also when you look at the black and brown you can't immediately see you don't know that they're not queer you don't know that they are queer so that there are a lot of intersectional pieces that are happening there and you also see lots of older folks doing those jobs as well those are continuals and yeah I I agree completely and I I would just add too that there we're starting out with disparities in employment so LGBTQ people and especially trans people have are starting out uh with lower employment rates or higher unemployment rates than the general population to begin with so we're starting out at a lower economic level for many of our populations not all right and then those who do have employment are disproportionately in these industries as Gary said that are hard you know that have been impacted most severely so that we see a lot of disproportionate economic impacts in the LGBT community yeah I'm struck by the fact and what both of you have said about the intersectionality that you were mentioning by which I mean the overlap between what you were just saying Gary about you know queer and trans the opportunities for queer youth for trans youth etc where are they going to be and then also what you were saying about you know folks working in these essential industries that in terms of grocery store type essential industries there's such an overlap between what I know about what's happening with brown and black populations and again disproportionately within these particularly vulnerable industries etc but also you know on the front lines in a sense not by choice I'm sure and so just talk a little bit more about that well when you when you're part of you know when you're a young person the privilege of being a young person with a job is to be able to take the money and put it in your pocket so that you can go out and buy another pair of Air Jordans which I've never owned so I don't know how much they're expensive so that that's that's one level of privilege so that your money is your mad money I had that kind of privilege when I was a kid you know I was looking up to have parents who gave me an allowance for doing work around the house so that but when your money that you you have to bring in helps to contribute to the love to the livelihood of the entire household it isn't that you're doing something for yourself you're part of what's helping this whole household and you may be the only person right now with a job or you're the only person that you're the one that's working because everybody else in your family might have been working under the table depending upon your status so and that they're not able to get the because they don't have some security number that your family members aren't able to get that small amount of money from the government that really doesn't pay for much of anything so the importance then of being able to have work means that you take on more risk that you might not otherwise want to risk so you're going to work more shifts which we know is probably the expo the risk of exposure goes up the more you're in spaces where the virus is there so you're at greater risk to being exposed because you're there too long and so you're working as many shifts so you're working seven days a week to be able to make ends meet is going to increase your risk you add to that the other risk to all of to covid particularly looking through a youth lens is the belief in every teenager has it of they're being infallible it's not going to happen to me this isn't going to happen to me this is something that's going to happen to you therefore i don't know how many times i go into the grocery store and say why is your mask not up on your face it's not a neck band you know it's not helping you around your neck you need to have it on your face oh well i know these you that that's not how this works that's not a logical statement and but that's how their brains work you know and and that's any young person so trying to speak into safety into an adolescent brain and then you add into that all the other kinds of intersectional pieces of what does it mean to be um queer different what does it mean to take risks sexually at this point not understanding you're at a point where your hormones are telling you to do things that your your you know my brain is telling me now i'm not going to do that because it's too risky my 18 year old brain probably was not going to think about certain things in the same way and so the exposure of doing something that you should do as part of your growth process now could be risky because we're not even talking about safe sex in the age of covid i've not heard a discussion about that about how do you have sex if anyone else has please let me know about how do you have sex with this virus i can tell you what you do around the age for hiv but no one has told me what you do with covid at a time when young people should be sexually experimenting and then we're not talking about i want to name another population when we talk about job because it's the shadow industry we're not talking about sex workers sex workers are still having to work there are still johns out there who are looking for sex workers and you know and what does that mean in terms of the risk and the exposure and that whole industry the johns who participate are very secretive they are risking they've been willing to risk lots of different things to take back to home and so this this is a whole other much more complex discussion that one needs to have and that very often those sex workers are young queer people and very often trans women of color yeah and as you're speaking i'm realizing also that you're talking a lot about the impact on young people and i'm glad you're doing so because i was thinking oh well at least there's been this expansion of unemployment that i know has been you know has helped a number of folks in the restaurant and other kinds of service industries that i know of um it has it has improved their circumstances of course young people can't even draw an employee they can't draw they can't draw right there are many immigrant communities sex worker communities you know there are many communities that are disproportionately queer that that cannot draw on those right right i mean i'm always i remind i say to my students to think about all of the names every september 11th we read names we call names and we you know i have a friend who a queer friend of mine who died on one of the planes i watched the plane go into the tower did not know he was on the plane and so i get that piece but i always think about all the names who we will never know who are the undocumented people who are working in the kitchens in the building whose families can never have those names read because they can never say that they were there because by acknowledging that they were there they expose themselves so that we know that without a social security number you cannot access any of these benefits and what does that do to families and particularly if you're DACA and you and so you don't want to expose your your families so i think that we really have to think about this is a very very intersectional piece Larry Kessler said many many years ago and i had the honor of working with Larry when i was chair of the AIDS Action Committee board early on and he talked about the how smart viruses are and i'll never forget this he said the AIDS virus is very smart virus viruses adapt they figure out where they need to be and how to be there so that you really have to be smarter than they are because they're looking for opportunity and he says that with and he talked about the HIV virus HIV virus found all the cracks and fissures in our society and it filled them in it filled in all of those places um that we were vulnerable so any of the spaces racism sexism heterosexism homophobia that's where it went COVID is doing the same thing it's the same smart virus um and it is filling in those cracks um and the vulnerability of youth if we look i remember the LGBT youth commission and one of the things that was real clear when we look at LGBT youth is all of the risk factors the degree of trauma that exists in the pop in the youth population um but i just saw a piece from the national association of mental illness that basically said there are going to be more people in the united states with PTSD like symptoms this was before COVID that whoever saw combat so these were non-combat related individuals from violence and living in our in our cities in this country who were developing uh who had trauma and PTSD that's alarming now that was pre-COVID that's data pre-COVID yeah so um we have large we have large conversations about the inequities that have been um exacerbated through COVID about the ways in which again as you were just saying this virus has crept into all these existing gaps in our society and made them worse in many ways um there are smaller conversations that we're also having about is there an opportunity here is there something that we can learn and move forward with etc i'd like to to ask you to focus on on that part of things uh for a couple of minutes and and tell us you know are there things that we can or should or have been learning uh through these you know through this emergency extraordinary time um that we can bring forward in a way that holds promise yeah the silence no no no no no no no you know it's it's interesting that i'm i'm a i'm a perpetual optimist i always think that things can be better um but i'm also a harsh realist that says nothing can get better if you don't look at what's not working um that you can't make it better on a hope in a dream you have to make it better based on data and facts and the data and facts are that this new normal that we are having the opportunity to build and i've been saying this in terms of we're coming out of a we're in the midst of a new gilded age where the rich are so rich and the poor are so poor you know we've lived through these periods before out of that gilded age came the progressive era that progressive era created more reforms and created the side the society that most of us grew up understanding how you work where you live quality of life air access to space etc and i think that we'll come out of this similarly i think that we're going to come out of this gilded age with a new progressive era that this period and i just thought this the other day has been a wake-up call we have gone from the helicoptering parents to what i've heard referred to as the curling parents you know that sport curling where people run is in front of this brick getting every little piece of dirt right behind so did it go well we really want to think about that the helicopter parents created the curling parents the curling parents who wanted nothing their kids to never experience anything bad that's now off the rail it's a new generational moment and no parent could fix this there was no magic because parents couldn't figure out what to do for themselves so here's a wonderful opportunity for a couple of things kids didn't discount discombobulate they're they're stronger than we gave them credit for being they're actually more creative because if it wasn't for them and the vision some of the exciting stuff that's going to come out of this technology can be useful who got it is beyond social media what we're doing right now could not have happened 10 years ago so this ability to use technology to reach people that's a young person's game they're going to take this to such a place that is going to be so exciting you're still going to have tiktok you're still going to have this and that i i think that's really super exciting and i also think that it means that we now see something in the in real time i have more people now who have been awakened who no longer deny that things weren't working their ability to stay in that space there's a dissonance they don't know what to do with it but they can't go back to pretending now that they haven't seen what they've seen they just can't and so they're in a space now of trying to figure out okay how can i be part of making it better but i can't pretend that i haven't watched what i've watched and seen or heard about or looked at and i think in that comes the opportunity to create those new systems to train people in different ways to what a perfect time to look at you know boston is hiring 40 new social workers in boston public schools they're needed now more than ever when kids get back to school there's going to be a frontline workforce that's a positive who are trained in different models than people who've been doing this work for 20 and 30 years they're coming out with a better understanding of today's kid than some of the people who like myself who trained in a very different model so i think that's exciting i think that we are it the positive about this is that you could be involved with covid and be queer and not be minimized in the same way that it's still a virus people talk about the virus and the shame that goes with the virus but there's a different thing that society doesn't see you and say that you're a bad person unless you're at this point asian asian that's a different discussion that we're having right very different discussion and so i think that that's a positive that we can reframe these pieces because we built the infrastructure if we hadn't had AIDS and HIV we wouldn't have helped move people in some ways to where doctors and nurses were putting photos on their gowns so that you if you were going to be in a hazmat suit that they wanted you to know that they were human being that didn't happen 30 years right so i see the positives i think that we will come out of this in a very exciting innovative way i don't want and we'll fight with every ounce in me to go back to where we were because i do think when people some people talk about the new normal they want to go back to the old bullshit yes well as you said about James Baldwin you know now people can't unface no reality but anyway Valerie i wanted to ask you yeah no i think that you know gary said it you know beautifully kind of spot on in terms of kind of where kind of the excitement is and what the possibilities are for the future i i'm also just struck by kind of what's happening right now when we are needing to connect virtually rather than in person what we are seeing in some instances is actually greater access so for example when we run kind of some of our virtual activities like pride ones kind of a variety of virtual activities to help people connect as does other organizations and even like the the pride prom for teens which was virtual so people who didn't have access to the transportation needed to get to places in person many have access to the internet and are able to connect with these activities virtually not everybody because not everybody has computers and internet and you know all of all of that stuff but that you know there are these kind of pockets where we are actually able to expand access compared to having everything in person so you know and also you know we you know we see a lot of innovation in terms of like lex pride has a library of books well people can't just go to library anymore but we have our listings online and we have contactless exchanges of books and so forth so a queer theme books so you know there are these you know kind of snippets of what gary's talking about in terms of like reimagining things for the future you just see like the little beginnings of that little snippets of that now you know we we could go on for a long long time really we definitely have not gotten to everything we we were hoping to but our time is running out i wanted to ask you both as a kind of concluding question and with the acknowledgement that this is not an easy thing but because you'll be asking or you'll be thinking on your feet but if we had the old magic wand here and each of you got to pick one thing that you could change either on a systemic level or much more locally or personally or something like that right away what would it be my magic wand it would go back to dickens it would be if you look at a christmas carol when the final ghost comes out and lifts up to his gown and the two children under the gown and want an ignorance i would eradicate all the neighborhoods yeah well um i think that probably covers it because i was thinking of like you know raising the magic wand and um and eliminating you know racism and homophobia and transphobia um but i think what gary said kind of you know if you erase mental ignorance you're going to kind of cover that's right those and many others i actually like gary's better than mine well they're dickens 180 years ago 150 years ago dickens had figured it all out right well i want to thank you both really for joining us very much and it has been you know i often say this and i never and i never don't mean it but i want to say again i learned stuff um listening to you you both of you were able again to take populations that you know very well and to put us as viewers as people interested but ignorant put us into their into play into those places so that we have a better understanding of what it is that people are dealing with even if we don't know those people ourselves so i appreciate it very much i'm sure our audience will as well this has been an episode of the abc's of lgbtq plus looking at the many impacts of kovid 19 on the various populations that make up that community i've been joined by gary bailey from simons university and by valerie overton from lex pride again thank you both for being here and thank you audience for joining us we'll see you next time i'm james mullan