 You know I speak all the time and for this bizarre reason tonight. I'm incredibly nervous, which is somewhat unlike me I think maybe it's the sensation of talking about coming to San Francisco to speak about gay issues I just went to Newcastle and brought coals so I thought you know, maybe that's why I'm intimidated, but I Grew up in rural North Carolina and anybody who is from there will be unsurprised that I start my speech by telling me telling you Let me tell you a story Storytelling is a great tradition in my family who's lived in the mountains of Appalachia for 200 years and My story centers around an incident that happened to me about a year and a half ago at this time In August of 1995 in Merrimack, New Hampshire Thanks to the help of the traditional values coalition based in southern, California The local school board was taking control of by religious conservatives and they passed a policy which banned any program They had the intent or effect of promoting homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative if I recall the wording correctly and There were a lot of local people in Merrimack, New Hampshire who were outraged by this and at the night They were gonna pass this policy They asked me if I would come to New Hampshire to speak and I said sure and I got my little Nissan I drove up to New Hampshire and I got there and I was dressed much like I am today and I've discovered this is actually a great benefit to me Because for whatever reason when I go into those places the Christian coalition people think I'm one of them So This is helpful in some ways since my dad was a Baptist preacher and I was taught I memorized 25 Bible verses a night as a child My dad could actually recite the entire New Testament from memory Matthew through revelation And so anyway, I think they have this stereotype of gay activists, you know kind of how I would dress at school Which is not like this but actually wearing a leather jacket So but when I've always taught when you're speaking in public wear a jacket and tie So I was wearing my jacket and tie and I got to this meeting which was actually quite an education because it was packed with people on our side People in the town were really outraged at this policy Which came as a big surprise to me and the Christian coalition types were kind of traumatized and huddling into a corner And I started taking notes because I always like to take notes so I can remember things and they thought I was a reporter so they they came sort of like a large amoeba and surrounded me And they said are you a reporter and I thought well, I've got my chance. I said, well, I'm a writer Because my dad also taught me never lie so And they proceeded to spew all of their frustration with this hearing which was going very badly for them At me and I'm taking frantic notes and this I very interesting conversation with one of women in particular She was a single mom. She had a fourth grader and a second grader and I actually learned a lot from her She was very concerned about her children's future Would they get the education they needed to survive in the global economy? And it was very clear that she saw this whole debate and the whole issue of gay and lesbian Issues in schools as distracting the schools from doing what she wanted them to do Which was to ensure a good future for her children And so she finally reaches over and like grabs me by the lapels and yells in my face What does homosexuality have to do with education anyway? And I thought good question and So that's the theme for my talk tonight What does homosexuality have to do with education? Because if we can't answer that question in a way that this mom in New Hampshire who I contend is not our enemy But is our potential supporter if we can't answer that question in the way that she can understand We will not be successful in our effort to create schools that are safe for all students So that's kind of how I framed things tonight. What does homosexuality have to do with education anyway? Now there's several ways you could answer that question One is to simply let students speak for themselves Let me share with you one of the things one of my students wrote for me a Day in which the issue of sexual orientation is not mentioned or spoken about in school would be unusual Every day I am forced to listen to the unaccepting or ignorant people around me. There seems to be no escape Lately I've started to lose hope all together It feels like nothing I can do will make a difference if I confront the homophobia around me It takes up all my time and energy and I feel totally alone in doing it. I Hear homophobic comments all the time in my classes Sometimes I think teachers don't hear what goes on in their classrooms But other times I think they don't listen Maybe they don't listen to the offensive comments because the issue isn't important to them I think there is a difference when it's people like you who are being constantly slandered misunderstood and hated and I want teachers to remember that I can't block out the homophobia I hear it even when I don't want to listen. I hear it every day that I am in this school and it hurts a lot Now for many of us in the audience whether we're gay or I'm straight allies I didn't read anything to you that you didn't already know The fact the matter is is that for quite a long time School has been a literal place of torture for most gay and lesbian youth Sometimes it is physical torture a study just released in Seattle showed that 15% of gay youth in their school system have not only been attacked But attacked to the point where they required medical treatment by a doctor as a result of the attack 15% Of those kids have had to go to a doctor because of what's happened to them at school and Beyond that, I think there are the psychic wounds that are the greatest the invisibility The sitting there while according to one study we did in, Massachusetts you hear 97% 97% of the kids said they hear their peers use words like faggot or dyke on a regular basis Or as we found among second graders in Massachusetts the number two most commonly used insult among those children was that's so gay second graders seven and eight years old What does that do to the spirit of a young person many of us know Because we've experienced it ourselves Let me read you another piece of writing at 340 today Tracy called me and told me she had slashed her wrists and taken two bottles of pills Tracy's a brave young woman who has struggled to come to terms with her sexual orientation and has bravely taken the lead in raising Awareness on our campus as one of the heads of our gay straight alliance She said to me on the phone. I always thought when I reached the breaking point It would be some big thing that pushed me over the edge, but it's not Later at the hospital while waiting for her father to arrive from out of town She said to me what do I say when he asked me why I did it dad I just don't fit in with the world as Tracy convulsed in her hospital bed her stomach torn to bits by the pills she had taken I murmured I know I know and in fact I do know because yes just like you Tracy I took a hundred and forty aspirin one night in high school because I couldn't see a way out I couldn't see a future. I couldn't see a way to go on you see when you're a gay teenager You don't need some big thing to push you over the edge as Tracy discovered You get the message every day of your life just like Tracy did that you just don't fit in with the world You get it driven through your skull sooner or later. You get the message you get the point Tracy got the point at about 340 this afternoon Wonderful brave Tracy whom everybody thinks has it sewed together with her student leadership position and her 1420 on her SAT Yeah, Tracy got the point today. I wrote that and And what struck me as I sat next to Tracy in her hospital bed in 1991 was that it was exactly ten years almost to the day that I had tried to do the same thing to myself and The startling news that I bring for those of us in enclaves like San Francisco or New York where I live now is That in most American schools. It's no better than it was when you were there Whether that's 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago 40 years ago and in fact in many schools in this city It's no better. I want to see history quit repeating itself Now in order to understand what homosexuality has to do with public education We have to go back and you'll excuse me You can take the history teacher out of the classroom, but you cannot take the classroom out of the history teacher and have a history lesson Now we can appeal to this woman that I met in New Hampshire on the sheer basis of Student welfare and say it's bad for the kids we could present the statistics the statistics on our side We can present the moving testimonies But I contend that these will not be effective because there are certain historical forces We have to first take into account in order to make an effective argument to this woman And the first historical force we have to take into account. I knew this was not gonna last I just can't stay at a podium for long The first historical force we have to take into account is why are there public schools in America? Where did they come from? Why do they exist? Public schools in America were started in the 1830s in Massachusetts by Horace Mann. It was called the common school movement Why was it called the common school movement for a couple of reasons first of all? Mr. Mann thought that making sure that every child had a chance to get an education was a fundamental element of democracy That an educated citizenry was a prerequisite for people's ability to govern themselves So therefore we had to have public schools to make sure everybody could get an education But secondly he called them the common school because he thought part of the mission of public education Was to bring together all the different kinds of people in the community So that they could learn to get along in a heterogeneous society It was really critical that people from different walks of life all went to school together that people were not Segregated into separate kinds of schools and this was about the whole idea behind public education in America as you're aware I'm sure was the first country in the world to set up free public education for all of its citizens Because we saw it as a fundamental element of democracy Everybody had to be able to learn everybody had to have access to education And everybody had to go to schools with different kinds of people so that they would learn from different kinds of people It's a fundamental building block of democracy Now with that argument that easily makes it apparent to people why we need to address homophobia Because it prevents people from getting an education it blocks equal opportunity to education But this argument is not enough for us either because we're still ignoring some more history The second lesson history teaches us is that whenever a minority group is making progress towards equality in Western culture The number one attack made on them is they're after your kids Go back in Western history think about the Middle Ages when Jews were supposedly killing Christian children and drinking their blood in the Passover Seder And how that was used to justify pogroms against Jews think about the American South where I grew up where? 1200 black men were lynched between 1900 and 1925 almost universally because they supposedly have been after little white girls Throughout history. This has been a very effective act of aggression against minorities. Why? Well, those of you who are pee-flag parents in the room don't need me to tell you this What's the number one concern of a parent is my child safe? And if you believe someone's a threat to your child's safety The average parent is going to do whatever they can like that single mom I met New Hampshire who's working 12 hours a day as it is who's trying to take care of two kids for herself But somehow finds the time to come to that school board meeting Why because she's a bigot because she's a bad person no because she's a good mom who thinks there's a threat to her children Why does she think that? Because the third lesson of history is throughout gay and lesbian history The most effective attack on us in particular has been to claim that we are threats to children that we are child molesters That we are predatory etc. Now, of course, this does fly in the face of all statistics The study done in Colorado based on reported child abuse cases found that a child was 100 times more likely to be molested by a heterosexual male family member than by a gay or lesbian person And my personal theory about that report It's an underestimate because if you think about it the vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed by adult Male family members and it doesn't get reported. I think a child's probably 500 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 more times like likely to be molested by one of their male family members than by a gay or lesbian person So it's not a question of facts. It's a question of what people have been taught throughout history. Let's go back 1950 and the becoming visible book I did I excerpted it the American Senate did its first report on gay and lesbian people Remember the McCarthy era and how gay people were supposedly giving away all our secrets to the Russians and stuff They conducted an investigation and they published a report called employment of homosexuals and other sex perverts by the federal government first ever published report 1950 you can't blame it on Jesse Helms So what does this report says is there's two reasons why you can't employ federal Homosexuals as federal employees number one Because they will give away all our secrets to the Russians because they're easily blackmailed and since they're homosexuals They have weak emotional constitutions and they will collapse quickly under interrogation perhaps a kind of truth um, but Secondly because they will convince younger federal employees to become homosexuals Okay, now not so long after that in 1977 remember Anita Bryant. She was not just for breakfast anymore She was for homophobia as we recall and she launched her save our children campaign in the late 70s You know which manifests itself in California, of course with the Briggs initiative And in 1994 when Lon Maybaum was launching his latest anti-gay referendum campaign in Oregon Guess what their slogan was? Protect our children Now what we learned here is a very fascinating lesson, which is the right wing does not believe in recycling paper and cans But they do recycle ideas very efficiently They have one big idea and it keeps coming back sort of like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park They just keep coming back with one simple idea now This is very devastating to us because we have this good mom in New Hampshire, right? Who's working hard to take care of her kids who's working hard to make sure their kids have opportunity in the future? Who's worried that her schools are not up to the job? She starts hearing from these large right-wing groups like traditional values coalition that these people are foisting a homosexual Agenda on her children that her children are some are going to be recruited into this dangerous lifestyle Where they're more prone to get AIDS where we're more prone to be beaten up all these awful things are going to happen What did we expect her to do? applaud She's going to be very very nervous and she's going to want to come to that board me. She's going to want to stop it Now how do we speak to her then? How do we find a way to talk to this woman so that she understands that homosexuals are not a threat to her children? Homophobia is the threat to her children Because if we can't help her understand that we won't be effective And if we can't know that history that she's coming in with all that baggage all that fear and all that Stereotyping all that misinformation that she's been fed that's being reinforced day after day after day through Videotapes like the gay agenda or direct male campaigns are all kinds of ways in which she's being told to be afraid How do we make her less afraid? This was the problem that we confronted in 1992 in Massachusetts when our governor William Weld appointed a commission on gay and lesbian youth And I was appointed to co-chair the education committee Which was charged with finding ways to change our schools to make them more accepting around gay and lesbian issues We knew this history Okay, we knew that we would have to somehow effectively address that history if we were going to somehow make changes I'll tell you the end of the story before I tell you what we did in 1993 Massachusetts passed a law making it the first state to ban anti-gay discrimination in its public schools It set up the first statewide program to address homophobia schools called safe schools for gay and lesbian students And as of an email I got yesterday out of 320 public high schools in Massachusetts 105 have gay straight alliances now one-third of all high schools in the state have a gay straight alliance student support program something worked So the question is what and I have kind of three lessons to offer to people from what we learned there That might be helpful as you think about it here, and I know that people working very hard here I've read about the lobby day and everything in Sacramento to replicate some of these Achievements in California, so I hope that these will be helpful to you as you're trying to do this The number one lesson we learned is you got to reframe the issue That if that a debate is basically one in the first ten seconds that if this becomes a debate over whether or not we molest children There's no way we can win that debate and always demonstrate this by asking a question. Don't think about chimpanzees What are you all thinking about? Chimpanzees, okay the longer we argue over whether or not we're child molesters. What's that mom? What's the image? What's the film running through that mom's head in New Hampshire child molester child molester child molester John Wayne Casey child molester child molester she can't even hear what we're saying because the whole issue of child molestation things like that Make her so nervous. She's freaking out and That by the way is not the issue at hand So it's very important that we reframe it and we set the terms of the debate So the people understand what the issue is at hand So we thought a lot about the semestuces and we called our report making schools safe for gay and lesbian youth because we wanted to put the Issue in terms that people could relate to terms that they could understand No one's going to be a favor of child molesters being around their kids. Okay, and even if you know you win the debate There's always that lingering suspicion. No one's also going to be in favor of an unsafe school So we knew by framing it the way we did there are opponents would automatically be on the defensive Because and also the fact of the matter was they were in favor of unsafe schools They wanted what was going on in our schools to continue and kids to keep getting beaten up and kids to keep killing themselves They need to be called to task for that So they became the party of suicide and violence and we became the party of safe schools. Guess what? It's easy to win that election. So We found this was really important to do that it was more important almost what the question was being asked Then what the answer the question was that once we turn the question into do you want safe schools for your students? We couldn't lose That the question I remained are gays child molesters are gays threat to children. We couldn't win So reframing is issue number one Lesson number two that I would offer is that we need to Reframe ourselves in a way that is universal and appeals to everyone Like I don't think I've said the word or may have said it once or twice the word homophobia much yet Because it's not a word I use very much anymore Because it's a word that a lot of people kind of shut down when they hear it So what's something universal that everybody believes in that is that fighting homophobia in schools is related to? Well, how about equal opportunity for everybody to get an education? How about children being safe from being harassed? By starting to talk in that language people like that mom who would never support fighting homophobia in schools Could suddenly hear what we were talking about and she could hear that and say that's something that I actually believe in That's something that I can support And I think it's a cardinal rule about using those universal principles. You got to meet people where they live You know, I think we've all heard the joke how many gay and lesbian activists it take to change a light bulb That's not funny the fact of the matter is is that if we continue to kind of harangue and berate that woman in New Hampshire, we're never going to win her over whereas in reality She should be on our side because she too wants to see schools that perform well for children She just doesn't understand that we are the ones who want that too not the religious right So use universal organized themes But also third we knew that we had to use universal organizing that it couldn't just be gay People who were speaking up around this it couldn't be just teachers It had to be gay and straight teacher and student community member and educator Republican and Democrat people of color and white So we were very careful We did our organizing to make sure that all of the community was represented because we knew of course as you know That a special rights agenda attack was one of the most effective ways to attack it What we're trying to do if it was gay teachers trying to force their sexuality on children It was dead in the water, but if we had all people in the community involved parents students teachers We kind of recreated the PTSD coalition in a way because we knew that that was really critical to help you people understand What we were about and that disarmed the ability of our opponents to portray us as some kind of special rights agenda But the fourth I think a most important thing that we have to do was to put a human face on it for these people because a lot of these people that we were dealing with Had a hard time imagining gay people at all, you know, and if they did they probably imagined uncle Arthur and bewitched or something like that You know that was about their consciousness level and certainly there were no gay kids Okay, there was just completely oxymoronic to there was no such thing as a gay youth So one of the things we did is we made sure that every senator in the state actually met with a gay student from their district and When those students would tell their stories about what happened to them Like one kid named mark from Belmont, Massachusetts who had been surrounded by a soccer team and had been spit on so much that his entire Jersey was dripping with spit off of it His senator who was a conservative Republican became one of the sponsors of the bill Or when another kid named Dan from Newton, Massachusetts talked about being shoved into a locker and having the locker locked and Left there for several periods by his peers because they knew he was gay That senator suddenly turned around Because it quit being an issue of the bogeyman the molester the frightening other and it became Someone they knew and when they went on to the floor of the Senate to vote if they voted against us They were voting against that kid and they couldn't bring themselves to do it because they knew it was wrong Three years before we passed this bill in Massachusetts. We had passed our first gay rights bill Virtually the same senators we passed that bill by a 21 to 19 vote We passed the gay and lesbian students rights bill by a 33 to 7 vote Because the senators understood it as an issue of welfare for the students They had personally sat down with and talked to and the most amazing thing about this was it was the students who made this happen 500 of them came to our state house and staged a rally and one of the senator's offices And said we're not leaving until you meet with us And they stayed there until said it sometimes into the evening until senators came out and I thought for me as a History teacher also thought it was a great lesson in democracy here were kids seeing that this was their government They could have an impact they could make a difference democracy actually could work and so if nothing else I thought it was the best civics lesson the kids in my school got much better than what they got my history class So I think those four lessons The issue of framing the issue appropriately using universal language when talking to people Organizing across lines of sexual orientation and race and politics and putting a human face on it We're what enabled us to be successful in Massachusetts and what enabled us to pass our law Now in the two years three years since we passed that law things have become very hot in this country around this issue You may have just seen the national school board's association study that was released They showed that 54 percent of all school board members in this country are religious conservatives 54 percent and you may also be aware that Ralph Reed the executive director of the Christian Coalition has set a goal of taking over 2,500 school boards in this country in the next two years Why are they doing this you might ask? Why do they're doing it for a very basic reason and it's two basic reasons one is if they can control what the next generation learns They can make sure homophobia goes on forever The next generation is what happens in our schools But secondly, it's a wedge issue those of you who are not educators are not involved with youth may think well This has nothing to do with me But if they can successfully demonize gay people as a threat to children, which is what this is all about Then it's not going to stop with preventing pro-gay programs in schools It's going to keep going because if someone's a threat to your children, you don't want them living next to you You don't want them working with you. You don't want them in your community This becomes the way to terrorize people And feed a whole new level of anti-gay backlash We saw Anita Bryant do that in the late 70s when we saw the massive repeal of gay rights ordinances around this country And they've learned that worked once and they will do it again So that's why they are putting all this emphasis on it and it puts us at an extreme Disadvantage because they are organized in every community in the country And also we sent our director of field services John Spear to their convention to study them and see what they were doing And we discovered one of the facts they've uncovered is that in the average school board election in America You only have to to win eight percent of all eligible voters to get elected Now I will tell you a fact eight percent of every community in America is crazy So they don't need to win everybody They just have to get eight percent of crazy people out there and they're in control of your school board and The control of your school board leads to much larger things think of school boards They're the farm team for the majors there were the future legislative candidates the future gubernatorial candidates the future presidential candidates get their start So I think this is a very dangerous threat to the gay community that in a lot of ways It's hard for us to see because it's kind of flying underneath our radar Because a lot of gay people have no connection with schools and would never think of going to a school board meeting or even turning out For a school board election. Why should I I don't have kids in schools and a lot of our straight allies don't either So here they are making their wedge issue in starting to demonize us Starting to control what happens in the schools and we're not even aware it happens sometimes until it's too late We can win this remember Merrimack, New Hampshire remember that mom Last May that school board was turned out of office and what was basically a referendum on the gay policy. They had passed Why because our chapter in New Hampshire went back to the issue of history They started talking to people about what public schools were for About the fact that every kid has a right to go to school and not be harassed and not be attacked and not be made fun of and not Be made to feel like they don't belong and The good people of New Hampshire, which in New England is nicknamed the Mississippi of the north the good people of New Hampshire Live free or die The good people of New Hampshire turn those folks out of office because they realize that the values They put on their license plate live free or die were the values that we were standing for not these folks Who wanted you basically to live their way or die? That's what we have to start talking to middle America about They have to start understanding that the values that the kids pledge allegiance to in school Remember liberty and justice for all are the values that we stand for now. I think that on a more personal level We have to think about what happens for kids if we can achieve our work And I'll share with you two things that I've Received this is a letter I got from a lady named Emily Ladner in Bel Air, Texas Dear glisten We're sending you a check because our son was tormented throughout his school years and often blamed by teachers and principals for Inviting this mistreatment His tormentors were never punished We hope you can change the atmosphere in our schools I think a lot. I actually literally do carry this letter with me. You can see by how worn out it is The first reason why we have to win this fight is because somewhere out there today in Bel Air, Texas or Louisville, North Carolina Where I grew up or maybe in San Francisco, California There was a kid at school today who went to school Thinking he belonged maybe thinking he had friends Thinking that this was his school Who was called faggot Who is spit upon Who is beaten who started learning a lesson early on in his school life Which is that pledge we make kids say in school equal justice for all is a lie We don't mean it but there are all kinds of exceptions to it and that for him or for that young lesbian There's the gay exemption And they start losing their faith in this nation They start losing their faith in the ideals that they're being taught in school And this reminds me of something I read in the book I dream a world portraits of black women who changed America. You've seen this book There's a wonderful interview with a lady who has been teaching Kindergarten in South Carolina for about 65 years. She's in her 80s and their interviewer asks her when is the worst period you've lived through She said oh today And she said and she says and the interview says how can you say that you live through segregation? You live through lynchings, etc. She said because today what I see among young people is A belief that nothing can ever change that things can never get better And I will tell you what nothing is sadder than a cynical young person because they've gone from knowing nothing to believing in nothing How can we I thought often about this when I was teaching? I would look at my students I would look at the students who were gay. I would look at the students who were female And I would look the students who were students of color. I look at all kinds of kids and I would think How sad it is for these kids To know that there's a limit to what they get in life in this country That they've been told that they'll get everything, but we don't really mean it How sad it is for them to learn from an early age that adults don't tell the truth. I Want to start telling the truth in this country. I Want those little kids to sit in that class and to imagine that the world is theirs I don't want any more letters like this from Bel Air, Texas I don't want any more little kids to think that their future has a limit Just because they are gay or lesbian Or for any number of different reasons I always thought that I was doing this work To help gay kids Perhaps to help them come out of the closet. I always thought gay people were the only ones who came out of the closet And um A few years ago when I was on sabbatical I had a student we had a tradition at my school of chapel talks Where students got to give up and give a 15 minute talk to the entire school their senior year These were completely uncensored and unpreviewed talks And which is quite nerve-racking for us teachers But also it was a wonderful event because the students really owned the space they got to say What they really thought what they really felt and that was very important to them And they looked forward to it for years and I was on sabbatical And I had given one a couple of years before In which I talked about growing up gay and what that was like because teachers gave them sometimes too And I got this uh, I got this from a girl I'd had in class with a little note attached saying uh, dear kevin I miss you. You're on sabbatical this year. I I thought you'd want to read my chapel And my first thought was one an arrogant little kid. Um, you know, she just assumes everybody wants to read her chapel And um I uh later felt somewhat ashamed when I actually read what she had written It's kind of lengthy, but I want to read it to you because I think it speaks to the larger Agenda since we'll use the right wing word that we're trying to accomplish through our work I look back on my elementary school years and I feel a certain amount of longing for the little girl that was me She knew she was smart. She knew she was beautiful and nobody was going to tell her different She had changed by the time she was 10 or so She had stopped believing she had talent or brains or worth by the time I entered fourth grade I hated being a girl. Why shouldn't I? I had to fight harder for attention than the 20 boys in my crowded classroom of 37 My fifth grade teacher told me I'd never have a boyfriend if I couldn't learn how to keep my mouth shut Every storybook I read every tv show I watched every billboard on the highway seemed to tell me that I mattered less That any value I had was purely aesthetic Perhaps most of all I hated my body for making me vulnerable When I was a little girl a man taught me I had no control over what happened to my body and I believed him I never blamed him for my abuse. I blamed my sex After all he couldn't have done these things to me if I wasn't a girl I started having regular nightmares about rape and being raped when I was 12 years old If I wasn't born a girl I thought I would be immune if I did not possess this anatomical vulnerability. I would be free Men and boys were my enemy and at the same time they were the yardstick against which I measured my worth as a human being I hated boys who only wanted to be my friend because of the way I looked but at the same time I desperately wanted them to like me My appearance was what was important to people and as much as I hated it. I was convinced it was true I was told I was pretty or skinny by total strangers, but nobody seemed to notice the things I worked to be good at People especially boys liked me because of the way I looked and naturally I wanted to be liked So looking good or looking right became more important than anything and in my world this meant staying thin I can remember staring at the reflection of my naked 11 year old child's body and feeling that I wanted to die Overwhelmed ashamed and disgusted fat fat fat me I began to grow terrified that I would gain weight and lose my value in the eyes of my parents my teachers and the boys I wanted to please so one sunny morning in april. I bought my first package of diet pills in the conquered cvs Some women I know can and do lose 10 pounds in one week But I found it impossible to stop eating altogether So I took triple doses of diet pills and went to class shaking too hard to take notes Fasting got harder and harder and when I gave in an eight I hated myself for being weak for being out of control It didn't take me long to find the solution One two as many as seven times a day. I would carefully tie my hair back and purge When my stomach was comfortably void I washed my face brushed my teeth and continued on with my day for close to two years Nobody knew what was happening. I was good at hiding the truth My parents my sisters and my friends were all oblivious to what was going on often in the next room My throat swelled up. I stopped getting my period. My hair began to fall out. I was a mess Then last year kevin jennings gave a chapel that changed my life He talked about courage and about strength He said that while it takes a certain amount of strength to force oneself to do what society demands to conform to someone else's ideals It takes far more to be what you want to be true to who you are on the inside That has stuck with me throughout my struggle to change my definition of strength and courage I used to pride myself on my control and willpower. I used to congratulate myself on every pound shed to me That was real strength What I have since realized is that what I was really doing was giving power back to people who deserved at least Every time I stepped with trepidation onto the scale I supported the english teacher who told me I was too pretty to be smart Every time I had a diet pill for breakfast. I agreed with my dad that yes indeed I could stand to lose a couple of pounds Every time I purged I let the man who abused me tell me yet again that my body was not mine But his and with this chapel. I am rejecting all of that I am telling everybody that most of the time I love who I am and I love what I am The ghost of my abuser will no longer haunt me because I know now that I have the power to say no And I know I have the right I'm no longer willing to live my life for other people or buy other people's standards I will say what I want and do what I want and eat what I want I am taking back my body and I am making it my own There isn't a woman in this room without the power to free herself from her cage of imagined fat and invented cellulite And I am up here today to tell you it is worth it I can't say I love my body, but I am happier than I can ever remember being I'm 20 pounds heavier than I was seven months ago yet. I take pride in my body now I used to wonder what I would have to live for without my slim appearance Now I can't believe how much more I can do and feel and enjoy when I don't have to worry about constantly getting rid of my lunch I wasted four years hating myself because of the body. I was born with and I don't deserve to be hated None of us do People have asked me what my chapel will be about and now that it is done. I think I can answer them It is about growing up female about the pain of believing you are worthless and the joy of discovering You were wrong As you must imagine, I was completely blown away to get this in the mail And read it And it also left me with a very important lesson that we often don't know as teachers the impact we're having for years to come In the lessons we teach And it's also struck by the fact that biz was an exceptionally smart young woman because she somehow figured out that my real game plan And coming out as a gay man was to be a role model for heterosexual bulimic girls And um, you know, if you think about it, she and I have nothing in common, right? You know gay white southern baptist preacher son man Heterosexual bulimic jewish northern wealthy girl. Okay On those traditional demographics, we don't match up So why did biz see me as her role model in this, uh, world of you know, where we're all being put in our own little separate boxes She should have not been able to see me Well that same week I had a conversation with my mom which taught me a couple lessons the number one to help me understand business Talk and number two it reminded me of a very basic premise that I think we have to move upon Which is that we have to move as we approach that mom in new hampshire Under the assumption that everybody can learn Our schools have to be places where everybody can learn and we also have to approach Even our political opponents with the belief that they can learn We must never sink to their level and think they're incapable of learning Now my mom is one of those people who you would say could never learn Let me give the official the unofficial, uh, family biography for kevin jennings I grew up in lewisville, north carolina, which is a tobacco farming community about a thousand people My dad was a southern baptist evangelist My parents were fairly well known traveling gospel singers in the south in the 60s My uncle fred was grand regal of the klu Klux Klan in the state of north carolina My older brother might work for a senator you might have heard of called jesse helms So, um, I I know bigotry um Now my mom has a sixth grade education. She grew up in apple age during the depression She's the oldest of 11 children her father thought that once a girl had learned to read write and figure She'd had enough education So he made my mother drop out of school when she was nine years old And go to work picking cotton and tobacco in the fields of local sharecroppers to support her 11 younger brothers and sisters My mother then went on, um, she married at age 17 Uh, which may seem young to you, but you have to remember that my grandmother married at age 11 had her first child when she was 13 Um, and that by the time she was 17 she already had three children my mother married at, um, 17 Without much formal education Um, and my father died when I was eight and my mother then supported five children working at mcdonald's Imagine supporting five children working at mcdonald's Um, she thought jews had horns until she was 16 years old a common belief in appalachia in the early 20th century When my older brother allen married an african-american woman in 1971 she didn't speak to him for four years She did improve over time in 1980 when I came out. She didn't speak to me for three years so Here's my mom the woman who is the stereotype of the person who can't change The woman who founded the first chapter of parents and friends of lesbians and gays p flag in the state of north carolina Now I want you to remember also another phrase which is that change is a process not an event It's not like things happen all at once my mom founded the chapter of p flag in 1988 But you know I was a little nervous as 1994 I was going to be on a A daylight mbc as first time I never done national television I thought I better warn mom this is coming because it's one thing to be in your little p flag chapters Another thing to have your homosexual son on national television So that everybody and wins this animal know miss jen and son's a homosexual So I called a warm mom and my mother just been diagnosed with uh emphysema and been put on oxygen 24 hours a day And I I told her this show was going to be on the next night at 10 o'clock and there was this long silence at the other To the phone. I thought I killed her Um, and she finally comes back on she says to me now kevin I understand this is real important to you But do you have to be quite so public about this? And I said to her what uh, all the p flag moms audience maybe we'll be able to relate to this I said to her the words I think every uh, dr. Spock raised mom dreads dear. I said, yes mom. You made me this way um And I went on to say I said, well, did you know how you made me this way mom? Do you remember when I was little and we used to go to robin hood road Baptist church every sunday morning and sunday evening and to wednesday night prayer meeting Where my dad was the minister when I was a little boy my dad would harp on the ten commandments now shout not lie And whenever I was a little mom when I got in trouble you'd always set me down you'd say remember kevin Whatever it is the truth shall set you free Well, guess what mom? You turned out to be right And it was that conversation with my mother that helped me understand Why biz saw me as her role model? Because I had told the truth And it had set me free So she told her truth and it set her free that's glistens agenda in a word Let's tell the truth Right now our schools play don't ask don't tell on a lot of issues And only one of them Are gay and lesbian issues We play don't ask don't tell for the young girls who are throwing up at lunch because they don't look the way perfect little california girls are supposed to look We play don't ask don't tell for kids who don't have enough money to afford the right kinds of clothes To fit in with their peers For the kids who don't have the same abilities as their peers for the kids who don't have as much Disposable income as their peers for the kids who've been sexually abused the kids who are alcoholics the kids whose parents have alcoholics We play don't ask don't tell on a lot of places and we put a lot of kids in closets And since I rent a pay about thousand dollars a month to rent one in new york city I can tell you that living in a closet is not a particularly pleasant experience I think that what we have to do in our schools is wipe out all the closets Because you can't just tell one truth Truth has this way of spreading when I told my truth suddenly biz told hers And I found students of color started getting up at chapel and telling their truths and all kinds of kids suddenly felt freer And didn't we establish schools in this country to teach the lesson of freedom? Can we teach the lesson of freedom when we tell so many people you must lie? You must not tell the truth I don't think we can And I also think that people can't learn when they don't get the opportunity to do so I'm lucky that my mother was a willing learner Um and this spring I was invited back to Winston Salem, North Carolina my hometown where they were having their first ever gay pride parade And uh by Winston Salem standards. I'm what passes for a famous homosexual So they asked me to uh come back and speak at it because I guess the most famous homosexual ever came from Winston Salem Which is not saying much But in any case I came home for the speech And uh I had to call my mom a warner ahead of time this time because they were going to do a front page article And the newspaper and I thought well, you know people miss the Dayline NBC thing. They're surely going to see this so I called mama And um, it was uh in march. I remember and um, I was very nervous this time to tell her that I was coming I was very nervous about how she replied and about halfway through the conversation my mom said neck heaven I've been reading about this march and I figured you was coming. So I've already made plans to march with you Now the story gets even better. Um Now When the article came out about a week before uh pride, um, I got paged by my brother who used to work for jesse helms Now my brother and I have a very cordial relationship We are southern family. If you haven't got anything nice to say, you don't say anything at all So, uh, we never talk. Um Except when my mother is sick the last time my brother had called me was about a year and a half ago My mother had a stroke and he found her on the floor of her apartment And the pager went off and I saw his number and I can't even begin. I mean I get choked up every time remember I remember thinking oh my god This can't happen Not a week before I come home to march with my mother and my city's first ever gay pride breaks I thought my mother's dead It was all I could think and I left this restaurant in New York and I ran down the street I remember running four blocks before I could find a payphone and I call my brother up and I'm like Mickey what's going on and he said well I'm very angry at you that pay that newspaper article came out today and I was like oh Jesus Christ um You know on the one level i'm relieved because mom's not dead and on another level i'm annoyed because why is he like pulling me out Okay, and I said well mike. What's the problem here? I said I didn't use your name. He said that's exactly the problem I said what do you mean when they interviewed me? They said do you have any family still? What's the Salem and I said yeah, my mom still lives there, but I have a brother who lives there My mom said I could use her name And my brother I said well, I don't really think he'd want his name in the paper and that's how they'd printed it and he said I've not seen the article at this point bear in mind So he reads this to me and I'm thinking well I didn't think you would want to see your name in the paper. What's the problem here? And he said well reading this one would think that I was ashamed of my brother And I said yeah Um And he said well, I want you to know that last week at church now My brother goes to Calvary Baptist church in Winston Salem This is one of those churches where they have about 4 000 people every sunday It's where the christian coalition actually meets in Winston Salem And if you're in a Baptist service, you know that there's a period for witnessing at the end of the service when being There's the congregation who stand up and witness to the whole congregation So my brother tells me it turns out that the preacher in his church is the one who's organizing the counter protest against the gay pride march And I just finished this sermon denouncing gays as perverts and bad people and stuff And he called for people to witness and my brother went to the microphone and said I want you all to know that my brother is the speaker at that march And I think it would be a sin if you went out and harass those people Now this is my jesse helms brother Now remember change is a process not an event. I have a bad ending for the story Mike voted for jesse in november Um Because you have to remember that learning is a slow and difficult process Remember taking french or whatever you took in school. He didn't learn all the first day. Now did you? Takes a while And for our nation to learn about this issue, it's probably going to take a while just like it took my mother about 15 years It may take my brother longer. He is a slow learner um But he seems to be moving He seems to be moving and um On that day in um june and winston-salem when it was 90 some degrees and my mother came out with her portable oxygen tank And walked down the street in 91 degree heat and you can guess the humidity in winston-salem I thought if my mother can come this far Surely the schools of our country Can come this far Right before he was shot martin Luther king gave a speech in which he said someday children will learn words whose meanings they do Not understand Children in india will ask. What is hunger? Children in herosima will ask. What is an atomic bomb? And children in alabama will ask. What is segregation? And we will say to them. These are words that no longer have meaning. That is why we have removed them from the dictionary I've lived long enough to see that martin luther king was right We're hardly over racism in this country But the winston-salem i grew up in and the winston-salem that exists today are very different places In 1971 when our schools were integrated my mother was the only white mother in our town to put her children on the bus We were instructed by the bus driver to lay on the floor of the bus because the windows were being shot out Across the city by members of the kkk who were wielding sawed-off shotguns That night my mother about my mom's about five one. She weighs maybe a hundred pounds Walked across the street to her brother's house Her brother the grand cleagle of the kkk in the state of north carolina And said to him that if anyone he's about six foot four by the way weighed about 220 Said to him that if any child in winston-salem was harmed the next day She would make sure he wished he had never been born Now i'll never know why But there wasn't another single shot at a bus in winston-salem the rest of that school year Now I went through school and white children sat on one side of the classroom and black children sat on the other and we never spoke When I was home in 1996 for my first gay pride parade I was talking to my niece who's 13 Who boards these buses every day and goes to school in the south? Which I might add by all indicators is the most integrated area in america today as opposed to areas in the north and west And she's known nothing but going to integrated schools and having friends of various racial backgrounds And I started telling her about when I was in second grade and lay on the floor of the bus and I had this moment of horror Some of you probably had it ever gotten from your children or your niece or your nephew what I call the crazy uncle kevin look April's looking at me like i'm like she's like oh, he's just crazy my uncle's crazy, you know because she can't believe this crap Like maybe she's seen it in history class, but she can't really believe that anyone she knows ever participated in something that was so foolish She now has to learn about segregation in history class She has to watch eyes in the prize to know it whereas my generation had to live through it firsthand When I was home for gay pride weekend, um, my brother, um, I have um My partner I have to come out of the claws around this is a republican um, and um he and um My brother, uh, he wanted to get my brother and I had a fight Okay, so he kind of egged us on politically so that we get into a fight I kind of I said this is a very northern cultural custom don't do this um Because you don't know where it will end. Um So my brother and I ended up getting in this shouting match about the employment non-discrimination act Uh, and how important it was to pass and he was just like well, you're already protected by the constitution You don't need special rights In the middle of this debate, this is the day after I've told my niece about the segregation thing My niece looks up and she says People who are gay can get fired from their job I think that's ridiculous 13 years old Winston Salem, North Carolina. You have seen the future She will someday Be talking to her Children or her nieces and nephews and she'll explain that she had this uncle This uncle who ran this crazy organization That um was dedicated to trying to create schools where people were not persecuted because of their sexual orientation And she'll get the crazy on april look Because the children of her her children's generation won't get it. They won't understand Hopefully homophobia is something they will have to learn about Because they saw it in a historical documentary What's going to make that happen? Two things I want each of you to go back to school And I don't mean enroll in a course I want you as a result of coming tonight if you do nothing else to make contact with someone at the school you attended I want you to write them. I want you to tell them what homophobia does to young people I want you to tell them that you went to that school and you saw it firsthand And I want you to tell them it's got to stop And you're willing to help make it stop Because the reason why it continues is because far across this country. There are people who still think they don't have any gay people Who ever went to their school or any straight people who had gay children or anything like that They still think in places like lewisville, north carolina that we all live in san francisco or province town or new york We've got to go back and tell them different But secondly and this is a challenge specifically to the gay and lesbian people in the audience Not every parent in america like the p flag parents are here tonight or like my mom as you know There are millions of gay and lesbian kids who for all practical purposes don't have parents because what's the function of a parent To fight for their child and to make sure their child gets the best in life Many gay and lesbian people have children. I don't and I don't plan to So I've changed my notion of what parenthood is I hope every gay and lesbian person in the audience will start thinking of every gay and lesbian kid out there as their biological child And they will go out and fight for those kids just as hard as we would as if we ourselves had given birth to them Because there's a whole generation of kids out there who deserve good parents And we may be the ones who have to provide that support Because that's the future Thank you Thanks for joining us with glisten founder kevin jennings Watch for other p flag talks shows featuring historian jonathan ned cats And avan wilson director of the marriage project of the lambda legal defense and education fund You can purchase a videocassette of this and others in the p flag talks series by sending a check for 25 dollars to media production San Francisco public library civic center san francisco california 94102