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lived it.
1:01
Pat Collins, Author, The Voice of the People
1:11
Good morning, I'm Pat Collins, and I
1:13
have an important question for you this morning. If
1:15
your child broke his arm and came to
1:17
in pain, obviously you'd care for
1:20
him and take care of him. And even
1:22
if he committed murder, I guess you'd
1:24
say, well, he's still my child no matter
1:27
what. But suppose your child came to you and
1:29
said, Mother, Dad, I am
1:31
homosexual. What would you do then? Today
1:35
more and more parents are having to face
1:37
this question. There are
1:39
parents of homosexuals who have
1:41
literally written their children
1:43
off as dead. And that is the idea
1:45
behind this poster put out by one
1:48
of the gay liberation associations. And
1:50
it says, Your Child is Not Dead,
1:53
Only Gay.
1:56
to
2:00
talk about gay kids. We weren't
2:02
supposed to exist. If gay adults
2:04
had no rights, gay kids had fewer,
2:07
and there was zero support for the families
2:09
of gay kids.
2:12
But the power of love is a
2:14
force to be reckoned with, and the quiet,
2:17
intense bravery of one mother's
2:19
love set in motion a domino effect
2:21
that continues to empower hundreds of thousands
2:24
of people through PFLAG, an organization
2:26
for LGBTQ plus people and those
2:28
who love them.
2:31
This is the story of the triumph of
2:33
love over hatred, the power
2:35
of community, and the story of
2:37
mom and pop revolutionaries.
2:41
I'm Eric Marcus. This is Coming of Age
2:43
During the 1970s, a production
2:45
of Making Gay History, Chapter 3,
2:48
Family Ties.
2:53
Interview with Gene Manford and Morty
2:55
Manford on Saturday, May 13, 1989. Interviewer
2:58
is Eric Marcus. Location is the Manford
3:00
home in Queens, New York. Tape
3:03
one, side one.
3:06
In a historical perspective, the
3:09
parents' organization began at a
3:12
time when police were still
3:14
reading bars where gays
3:16
were. Gays had no job protection
3:19
in any city in this country
3:22
whatsoever, where
3:24
there was still the stigma of being
3:27
gay.
3:28
The churches said we were sinners and
3:30
psychiatrists said we were sick. Capitalists
3:34
said we were subversive and
3:36
communists said we were immoral.
3:39
And many gays also accepted
3:43
those prejudices if
3:47
only tacitly. There was no
3:49
pro-gay propaganda. The
3:52
support wasn't out there,
3:54
at least today when people are facing
3:57
problems. They have...
4:00
an alternative voice to turn to.
4:03
In the early 70s, those
4:06
voices were very few and far between,
4:08
and that's why the parents' organization
4:11
was so important, because one
4:13
of the first voices.
4:15
We had to reach our own, and
4:18
I then reached the world. Morty
4:22
Manford was my favorite kind of
4:24
troublemaker. He was an early
4:26
member of the Gay Activist Alliance. In fact,
4:28
when I interviewed him in 1989, we were accompanied
4:31
by his dog, a sweet pooch named
4:33
Zap. Morty's activism,
4:36
right down to naming his dog, sprang
4:38
from a pride in his identity and his certainty
4:41
of the urgent need for equal rights. But
4:44
the road to that pride and certainty didn't
4:46
come without a struggle.
4:48
If Morty was my favorite kind of troublemaker,
4:51
his mother, Jean, was exactly the
4:53
kind of ally such a troublemaker needs, albeit
4:56
softly spoken. Speaker. I
4:58
think I'm actually getting it, because I have to balance her way
5:00
up. It's a
5:01
classical machine. It
5:04
picks up almost anything. Tell
5:08
me when you first became aware that Morty
5:11
was gay. Well,
5:17
he hadn't told me, but he did come
5:19
to me, I think at how old, to around 15,
5:21
and asked if you could go for
5:23
some help through a psychologist.
5:27
And I couldn't believe it, because Morty
5:30
was always a leader. He always had a lot of friends.
5:32
He had parties here. He was president
5:35
of the General Organization in his junior
5:37
high, and his
5:38
teacher had said, oh, send him to the best colleges.
5:41
He's going to be a senator someday. And
5:43
when he said he needed help, both my
5:45
husband and I said, you think so? Sure.
5:47
We didn't know why.
5:48
And
5:51
eventually, for some reason,
5:53
we did go to see the doctor, and he
5:55
told us without Morty's permission.
5:59
Certainly was. The
6:03
psychiatrist
6:06
I was seeing invited
6:09
my parents in for a meeting. He didn't tell
6:11
me what he was going to do and he
6:14
presented them with the fact
6:17
that I was gay. At this
6:19
time I was just
6:22
starting to come out of the closet
6:24
to myself and it was a period
6:27
of great turmoil and inner struggle
6:30
and it was a very upsetting
6:33
experience for me for
6:35
him to have done
6:37
this. I
6:40
was there. Oh, we did it in my presence.
6:46
I had to take a moment to pick my
6:48
jaw up off the floor. A
6:50
trusted professional outing a vulnerable
6:53
teenager without consent.
6:55
Can you imagine the potential harms and danger
6:57
he could be putting that kid in? In
7:00
the mid to late 1960s, Morty could have
7:02
been faced with criminalization, conversion
7:05
therapy, or treatments for his so-called
7:07
disease like electric shock aversion
7:09
therapy, chemical castration,
7:11
electroconvulsive therapy, even lobotomy.
7:15
Simply horrifying.
7:18
And it wasn't the first time Morty's family had felt
7:20
horribly let down by a psychiatrist. Morty
7:23
had an older brother, Charles, who had killed
7:25
himself in 1966, aged
7:28
just 21. Charles
7:30
had been under the care of a psychiatrist, but
7:32
just before he died, he reached out for
7:35
help and was told he had to wait a week for an appointment.
7:39
He didn't make it. We
7:41
can't know if it was because she had already lost
7:44
one son or because she just thought
7:46
the world of her possible future senator
7:48
son Morty. But Jean
7:50
Manford accepted the news of Morty's homosexuality
7:53
delivered without thought or care by a psychiatrist
7:57
with love.
8:00
My mother's initial
8:03
reaction was, I only
8:06
want you to be happy and whatever makes you
8:08
happy is fine. Yeah, it's
8:11
different than you were yesterday. I didn't look
8:13
at him in any different light. I didn't understand.
8:15
I was very naive anyway.
8:17
I didn't understand society's condemnation
8:20
and took people at face
8:23
value.
8:24
My father, on the other
8:26
hand, he had a lot of thinking
8:29
to do about it. He
8:31
didn't say anything critical, but he
8:34
just decided apparently
8:37
he had to think
8:39
about it. And I think he harbored
8:43
a hope
8:44
that things would
8:46
change. You've
8:49
got to remember was in
8:51
another era that this was
8:55
the fall of 1968. And
8:59
we'll get to it later, but as you
9:02
probably suspect, there was quite an evolution
9:04
in both my mother's and my father's
9:07
thinking and my
9:09
own. There
9:11
was quite an evolution in Morty's thinking.
9:14
From the uncertain, confused, depressed teenager
9:17
of the late 1960s, Morty went through the radicalizing
9:20
spin cycle of the Stonewall uprising and
9:23
came out an activist.
9:24
In early 1970,
9:28
I
9:34
became very involved in the
9:36
Gay Activists Alliance. I
9:39
had begun to get involved in the
9:41
militant sense of participating
9:44
in sit-ins and picket lines
9:46
and getting arrested. And
9:50
over a short period of time,
9:52
I was bringing
9:55
friends home. We
9:57
would sit down and we would talk with my parents.
9:59
Do you remember any
10:02
stories from that time when Roy's
10:04
friends came home? No, I liked them.
10:07
They were friendly and talked and
10:10
wasn't. But I don't remember.
10:15
Well, I have an anecdote. One
10:18
evening a friend, Lou Todd, who
10:20
lived not far away, came over
10:23
and we were going out that evening to
10:25
the Continental Bands.
10:28
This was around 1971. It was a different
10:30
era. Did
10:33
you know the Continental Bands were then? No,
10:36
I don't know that I've ever heard. I'm
10:39
likely not surprising anyone here, but
10:41
in addition to never having been to the meat rack,
10:44
I never went to the Continental Bands either.
10:47
But it was a legendary venue in the
10:49
1970s. Legendary,
10:51
because it was one of the most popular bathhouses in
10:53
New York City, when bathhouses were a key
10:55
gathering place for gay men in search of
10:57
companionship and sex. Legendary,
11:00
in part because Bette Midler and her accompanist Barry
11:02
Manilow, got their start there performing
11:04
before men who were wearing nothing but towels.
11:07
This is my 800th farewell appearance
11:09
here in Continental Bands. I swear
11:11
to you, I'm getting you like a jack in the box. Listen,
11:14
I didn't expect to be back here. I really didn't.
11:16
They had me booked
11:18
as Fire Island Cherry Grove. I
11:21
was supposed to work at Cherry Grove. You see, I was supposed
11:23
to sing, but they couldn't find
11:25
room for me in the bushes. My
11:29
parents were both sitting here at the table speaking
11:31
with Lou, and it was the winter
11:33
time. I came downstairs.
11:36
I was all bundled up in a
11:38
heavy coat, and Lou
11:40
looks up at me and says in front
11:43
of my parents, you know, what do you have so
11:45
much clothes on for? As soon as we
11:47
get there, you're going to have to take them all off.
11:50
Now, as open in the
11:53
discussions had become at that point,
11:55
I had never really broached such subjects
11:58
with my parents.
11:59
And they looked and wonder
12:02
where are you going? Yes
12:10
They
12:10
asked what you realized where he was going well, I
12:13
probably didn't probably went way over
12:15
my head
12:30
I Careful
12:38
about worries involved in activism about being
12:40
arrested I was as a matter
12:42
of fact. I remember one night I got it
12:47
Just I was arrested and I think
12:50
my I was something about why don't
12:52
you come back to criminals? I don't
12:54
remember the exact words
12:57
That was apparently what you said
13:01
How did you find out what I was in the
13:03
police station and the Officer
13:06
made the phone call and I remember
13:09
he went out of his way to say your
13:11
son's been arrested and you know he's homosexual
13:15
and Apparently my mother
13:17
said yes, I know and why are you bothering
13:19
him? Why don't you go after criminals and stop
13:22
harassing the gays? I
13:24
couldn't hear what she was saying but
13:27
I remember the officer scratching his head after
13:29
he put down the phone and You know,
13:31
he had just been zapped
13:37
At that occurrence
13:39
there was a cruising
13:41
area in the village and a
13:44
lot of gay people were Along
13:46
I think was Washington Street and
13:49
I was just standing there talking
13:51
with some friends And there were other
13:54
people who were nearby in the
13:56
back of these trucks doing
13:59
whatever people
13:59
used to do in those days in the back of trucks.
14:03
Whatever people did in the back of trucks
14:05
back then was also legendary.
14:08
There used to be an elevated highway that ran
14:10
down Manhattan's west side along the Hudson River.
14:13
Big empty cargo trucks would park overnight
14:15
under the highway adjacent to Greenwich Village and the
14:17
meatpacking district. At times,
14:20
there were hundreds of bodies doing whatever people
14:22
used to do in the back of trucks
14:24
in the dark. And when
14:26
the police came over, they started
14:28
chasing everybody, including those
14:31
of us who were just standing around talking.
14:34
And I protested. I
14:37
said, we're not doing
14:39
anything wrong. And they
14:42
reacted by
14:45
grabbing us and arresting us
14:47
for no apparent reason. That's
14:50
when you got the phone call. You believed what
14:52
Morty was doing was right. I believed he
14:54
had a right to do what he was doing. I didn't
14:56
think he did anything illegal or
14:58
unlawful. I didn't think
15:00
he was being harassed. Morty
15:02
believed he had a right to do what he was doing, too.
15:05
He refused to accept the status quo of casual
15:08
harassment and anti-gay violence perpetrated
15:10
by the police. He refused to accept
15:12
that being gay meant he was less
15:14
than. And he continued to protest.
15:18
Fast forward to April 1972, and a night
15:20
of skits and politics at
15:24
New York City's Inner Circle dinner at
15:26
the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
15:29
The Inner Circle is an annual shindig.
15:32
City Hall reporters put on a show for
15:34
an audience of the great and the good of
15:36
New York City's civic life. And
15:39
this time, Morty was there with other members
15:41
of the Gay Activist Alliance handing out leaflets.
15:44
They were protesting the New York media and
15:46
the city government's bias against gay people.
15:49
Specifically, they were protesting an
15:51
editorial that had run on the daily news a week
15:53
or so before about the US Supreme
15:56
Court's decision not to hear an employment
15:58
discrimination case concerning two
16:00
men who had applied for and been denied
16:02
a marriage license in Minnesota.
16:06
The New York Daily News editorial
16:08
was titled, quote,
16:12
Any Old Jobs for Homeowners.
16:15
And the lead-off sentence
16:18
was, quote, Fags,
16:21
Fairies, Nances, Swishes,
16:24
Call in, Posture for EM, What
16:27
You Please. By today's
16:29
standards, that's pretty outrageous stuff.
16:32
Was that as outrageous then as it would
16:34
be now? Certainly to us
16:36
it was outrageous. So we
16:39
went to this dinner armed with leaflets
16:42
and proceeded to distribute the
16:44
leaflets to people in attendance,
16:47
many of whom were good people who were very supportive.
16:50
There were a number of thugs in attendance
16:53
who were guests of the dinner
16:56
that proceeded to physically attack
16:59
the demonstrators. And
17:01
a number of us ended up hospitalized
17:04
and I was one of them. What happened
17:06
to you? Well, I was beaten up, punched
17:08
and kicked and no broken bones,
17:11
no internal injuries, but a bad
17:13
beating. I had a call
17:15
from the hospital and then I sat
17:17
down and wrote a letter to the New York Post.
17:20
I said
17:20
my son was gay and that the police stood by
17:23
and watched the young gays
17:25
being beaten up and did nothing
17:28
and it was printed.
17:31
What right did they got to assault? My
17:34
son and others. Why didn't the police
17:36
protect them? I guess
17:38
it was the first time the mother ever sat down and
17:40
said yes I have a homosexual child. I
17:43
didn't think anything of it. And
17:45
then Morty called me up and said you can't believe,
17:48
you know, everybody's talking about
17:50
your... Did you have any annotations
17:52
about writing this letter? No, I didn't. No, it's
17:54
furious. A
18:00
couple of months later, in the summer of 1972, Gene
18:04
was on the march, literally.
18:06
I said to him, I will march if you let me carry
18:09
a sign. Parents of
18:11
gays unite in support for
18:13
our children. On
18:18
Sunday, June 25, 1972, Gene
18:21
Manford stepped off with Morty in the
18:24
third annual Christopher Street Liberation
18:26
Day march.
18:27
As we walked along, people on the
18:29
sidewalk screamed. They yelled, they
18:31
ran over and kissed me. Would
18:33
you talk to my mother? Wow,
18:36
my mother saw me in a ear, you
18:38
know, and they just couldn't believe
18:40
that a parent would do that.
18:42
Were you with your mother during the march? Oh, yes.
18:44
We marched shoulder by shoulder there.
18:48
Nobody got the loud,
18:51
emotional cheers that
18:53
she did. The outpouring of emotion
18:56
from our own community was overwhelming.
18:59
We learned that they were
19:01
fearful of telling parents, most of them wouldn't
19:03
tell, and many had been
19:06
rejected because the parents
19:08
knew. And I
19:11
guess they just didn't feel that any parent
19:13
could be supportive of a very gay child.
19:17
Being estranged from
19:20
your parents is a
19:22
very traumatic thing. Being
19:24
forced to closet your
19:27
lifestyle from them is
19:29
a very devastating thing.
19:31
The symbolic presence
19:34
that my mother provided was
19:36
a sign of great hope
19:39
that parents can be
19:41
supportive. As Morty and
19:43
I walked along during that first march, so
19:46
many people said, talk to my parents, and there were
19:48
little phone calls. All day long, that phone
19:50
was ringing. So that's
19:52
when we decided during the march that it might
19:54
be a good idea to start something, some
19:56
kind of an organization. Yes, that's really
19:59
where it began.
19:59
An organization for parents.
20:02
To talk to each other, to know that you're not
20:04
the only one. Because each person thinks,
20:06
oh, I'm the only one who has a child
20:08
who is homosexual and nobody
20:10
was willing to let anyone else know about
20:13
it.
20:13
And an organization which would be supportive
20:15
of the struggle for gay
20:18
liberation. And actually,
20:20
the parents' group was a bridge between
20:22
the gay community and the straight
20:25
community. We will fight
20:27
for the rights of our children. We will be
20:29
political. We will make her have a national
20:31
organization. I remember thinking of that at
20:34
the very beginning.
20:36
And so it was.
20:37
The very beginning of what would become PFLAG.
20:40
In March 1973, a year after
20:43
Morty's assault and Jean's letter to the New York
20:45
Post, Morty and Jules and
20:47
Jean Manford organized the very first meeting
20:49
of POG, Parents of Gays.
20:51
It was held at the church of the village, a stone's
20:54
throw from Christopher Street, in the Stonewall
20:56
Inn. Morty had placed an ad
20:58
in the village voice and recruited Barbara
21:00
Love, a well-known lesbian writer, to
21:03
help organize and publicize the new group.
21:05
I think there must have been about 18, 20 people. In
21:08
those days, we were very sensitive to
21:11
the need for men and women
21:13
to be working together.
21:17
And it was very important that Barbara was
21:19
one of the organizers. She was
21:22
able to reach out to the lesbian community.
21:25
As I reached out to the gay male
21:27
community in an effort to publicize
21:29
this and ask everybody to let their
21:31
parents know, we've
21:33
got a place for you to come.
21:35
If you build it,
21:36
they will come. The Manfords
21:39
were amassing accomplices. And one of
21:41
Jean's closest allies was Sarah Montgomery.
21:43
Sarah called me. We started at the
21:46
end of March, and she called me back September
21:48
and told me the story of her son, who
21:50
was in California. And because
21:52
it was discovered that he was gay
21:54
and it lost his job,
21:55
he and his lover committed suicide. Oh,
21:58
God. You didn't know that story. Until
22:01
Jean told me I didn't know that story.
22:05
Here's Sarah in 1974 on the Pat Collins Show, the
22:08
one we played at the top about don't
22:11
worry if your kid's gay, at least they're not a murderer. Sarah
22:14
is dressed in a sensible navy blue dress, a rectangular
22:16
gold brooch at her neck, cat's eye librarian glasses,
22:20
and dangling old-fashioned
22:22
antique earrings. In Jean and Morty's
22:24
words... She's very diminutive
22:26
in size. She looks like anybody's grandmother.
22:28
Like New England...
22:31
Grandmother. Sarah
22:34
is 75 years old, although we've been
22:36
telling her all morning she doesn't look it. And
22:39
in the late 60s, she discovered
22:42
that her son Charles was a homosexual. It
22:44
was in 1972, at the age of 46, that
22:48
Charles and his male lover killed
22:50
themselves in the garage of their
22:52
home. A tragic and
22:55
awful story, as I'm sure you can imagine it was, for
22:58
Sarah, those close to you. I
23:00
know that it's not easy to talk about this, Sarah, but
23:03
looking
23:03
back, and it's been a couple of years, you've been able
23:05
to think about it. Do you know why
23:08
Charles killed himself? Yes, I
23:10
feel that it was life itself
23:12
that killed those two men, because
23:15
they had lived all their lives in the closet.
23:19
And when they finally came
23:21
out, they brought a house together. When
23:24
they brought that house together, John,
23:27
who had always been in the closet, it
23:30
was known then that they were homosexual. Charles
23:32
had come out quite a few years before.
23:35
And John was demoted
23:38
from a job that he had held for 15 years back
23:40
to what he had been doing 15
23:42
years before. My
23:44
son's job was threatened every
23:46
day. And at 46 and 48, they
23:50
just couldn't face any more
23:53
of what they had been taking all their lives. The
23:56
first thing a parent has to know is their child
23:59
faces a very...
23:59
hostile world and
24:02
that they need them more than ever.
24:04
Don't go away. Not less. Don't
24:07
go away. We're right back.
24:09
She was very much loved
24:11
in the gay communities. Of course she upset
24:14
some people because of the story, but
24:16
the gay people really loved her. Her
24:18
loss was so propelled.
24:20
But she turned it into a
24:22
great commitment of love and
24:25
dedication.
24:27
Both Sarah Montgomery and Jean Manford put
24:29
that commitment of love and dedication into
24:31
action with a quiet determination, a kind of stealthy
24:34
radicalism. While Jean insisted
24:36
she herself was very shy, Sarah
24:39
had been a long-standing troublemaker. Sarah
24:42
was marching for
24:45
black civil rights in the 1920s. In the 1930s she
24:47
was a premature anti-fascist.
24:53
In the 1940s she was demonstrating
24:56
against the Dies Committee,
24:59
which was the predecessor of the House
25:01
on American Activities Committee. In fact,
25:04
they subpoenaed her to testify before
25:07
it because of her involvement in the Communist Party. She
25:10
refused. She was something of a cause celebra
25:13
back then. She would tell
25:15
of this chronology. And now
25:17
I'm marching for gay civil
25:19
rights to show that her has
25:22
been a life of commitment to
25:24
justice.
25:26
But there she was, in a grandma dress,
25:28
smiling demurely behind her bifocals
25:30
at Pat Collins, looking every bit
25:32
the New England grandmother. In
25:34
some ways, this was the beauty and
25:36
the genius of their fledgling organization.
25:39
They were parents who loved their children and
25:41
almost no one dared to question their sincerity.
25:45
Or their politics.
25:46
Call
25:55
us and we'll put you in contact with these nice people.
25:58
Take care of yourself. We'll see you tomorrow.
25:59
These nice people
26:02
were becoming a political force. Revolutionaries
26:05
in, forgive me, grandma's
26:08
clothing. Here's Jean Manford
26:10
speaking at Philadelphia's Gay Pride Rally in 1975.
26:16
We are fighting for the dignity
26:18
of members of the same sex to
26:21
love one another. I
26:23
hope parents of gay groups
26:26
will form in every city and community
26:28
in America. Too many
26:30
parents of gays are still in the closet.
26:35
The main battles of this war
26:38
are fought by the younger generation
26:40
of gays who fight in the streets, on
26:43
picket lines, in television studios,
26:45
and the offices of the oppressors,
26:47
in the courts and in the legislatures,
26:49
for the implementation of the rights and
26:52
liberties that the Constitution guarantees.
26:55
We parents in our small
26:57
sector have an auxiliary aim to
27:00
help other parents untrouble their
27:02
minds and free their spirits so
27:05
that they may help their children
27:07
to achieve what other people's children
27:10
take for granted, namely the right to
27:12
live in dignity and with
27:14
integrity.
27:16
We care about our sons and
27:18
daughters, their lovers and friends,
27:21
and all oppressed people.
27:23
As the gay struggle moves into
27:25
its seventh year, I pledge to you
27:28
that as parents we will sustain
27:30
the fight alongside you, that
27:32
Gay Liberation shall come closer
27:36
and closer.
27:37
Thank you. Alright! With
27:41
Jean and Jules Manford, Sarah Montgomery
27:44
and others, parents of gays were finding
27:46
their voice and joining the movement for gay liberation.
27:49
But another
27:50
set of parents, for the longest
27:53
time silenced by fear, were reaching
27:55
public consciousness. Gay and
27:57
lesbian parents were routinely cut off and
27:59
denied custody. or even visitation
28:01
rights with their kids because of their sexuality.
28:08
I received the citation
28:11
telling me that I was
28:13
unfit as a parent because of my homosexuality,
28:16
and Mr. Risher wanted the children immediately
28:19
removed from the home.
28:21
Mary Jo Risher, a nurse from Texas, was
28:23
in the fight of her life. After
28:25
her marriage collapsed in 1971, she
28:28
fell in love and started living with Anne Foreman.
28:31
Anne had a daughter from her previous marriage, and
28:33
Mary Jo had two sons. Anne's
28:35
former husband was supportive and agreed
28:37
to maternal custody.
28:39
At first, so was Mary Jo's ex,
28:42
until he found out she was a lesbian.
28:44
Then the legal paper started flying.
28:47
Mary Jo's older son had already moved out, but
28:49
her younger son, Richard, wanted to stay with
28:51
his mother. A temporary hearing
28:54
in 1974 allowed Richard
28:56
to stay with Mary Jo, but then a jury trial
28:58
was set.
28:59
Oral historian Studs Terkel interviewed
29:01
Mary Jo Risher and Anne Foreman in 1977. We
29:05
come to the judge, don't we? He
29:08
at first agreed, the same judge, that this was not an issue
29:10
at all. As far as the happiness
29:12
and health, mental health, spiritual
29:14
health, the child is concerned. Then
29:16
how did he change? Well,
29:18
from the time that we had the temporary hearing until
29:21
we went into the courtroom, it was a
29:23
year and about two months had passed. But
29:27
in September of 1975, the
29:30
judge heard expert witnesses. My lawyers
29:32
had presented a motion to
29:36
keep the issue of homosexuality
29:39
out of the courtroom. But after
29:41
the judge heard the expert witnesses
29:42
and what they had to say about it, found
29:45
and decided that homosexuality, any acts
29:48
or what have you on homosexuality,
29:50
could be brought into the courtroom.
29:53
Maybe he was curious too. Oh,
29:57
I think so. called
30:00
as an expert witness for Richard's father, said
30:02
he found two examples of Mary
30:04
Jo using, quote,
30:06
poor judgment as a mother. My
30:09
son Richard was nine
30:11
years old and capable of dressing
30:13
himself in any attire he wanted
30:15
to, you know, his clothes. He had his clothes in
30:17
his closet. I had
30:20
led him wear a boy's
30:23
blue jean outfit, bought from Sears, tough
30:26
skin I believe is the brand, a
30:29
blue jean jacket and blue
30:32
jeans. They had belonged
30:34
at one time to Judy Ann, Ann's
30:36
daughter, and she had outgrown them and Richard
30:39
received them and he was quite happy. The
30:42
psychologist complimented Richard
30:45
on how nice he looked. But
30:47
he said, as soon as he found out that the outfit,
30:49
when Richard said, well, thank you, it
30:52
used to belong to Judy Ann. He said
30:55
that, you know,
30:57
that me being a lesbian, I
31:00
could never allow that to happen. Now it
31:03
could happen
31:04
with a heterosexual mother or father.
31:06
We know that these kids are Asian. Yes, but under the
31:09
circumstances. You can't tell
31:11
them it's different today. I'm not even chasing this guy, I would say. But
31:13
under the circumstances, me
31:16
being a lesbian, I could never allow this.
31:18
The other poor judgment that I used,
31:21
exercised, he said, was that I allowed
31:23
Richard to wear a YWCA t-shirt. Now
31:27
Richard belonged to the YWCA
31:29
in Dallas County. They
31:31
had many wonderful
31:34
programs
31:34
for men and women and boys and girls.
31:37
And Richard and Judy Ann belonged
31:40
to a gymnastics class there. And
31:43
that was a form of Richard's uniform.
31:45
He was quite proud of it.
31:47
I mean, this guy was unaware that the YWCA
31:49
had co-educational. It didn't matter
31:52
to him again. Oh, it didn't
31:54
matter. By the fact that you were a lesbian, therefore
31:56
you must behave in other matters,
31:58
all together different, to someone else's. Yes, my
32:00
whole mannerism would have to be completely different
32:03
than any other person. Well, this goes back to you and your
32:05
work again. All too often, gay
32:07
and lesbian parents were held to a completely
32:09
different standard, an impossible standard.
32:13
What society demanded was that
32:15
they be
32:17
straight. The case made headlines,
32:19
of course, wasn't the media, of course, took it up. Of
32:21
course, they were just ravenous. You realize
32:24
you were taking a tremendous risk, didn't you?
32:25
Right. Yes, and of course, we
32:28
also realized that it was the first jury
32:30
trial in the history of the United States
32:33
that set judgment on a homosexual parent. Yes.
32:37
A jury was 10 to 2, wasn't it? Yes,
32:40
it was. Mary Jo
32:42
lost custody of her son, Richie. Their
32:45
case was probably the most high profile of the time,
32:47
and it may have been the first jury trial.
32:49
But gay parents all around the country were facing
32:52
the prospect of losing their kids.
32:54
Remember Joyce Hunter? We heard
32:56
from her in Chapter 1. Describing the
32:58
mixture of exhilaration and overwhelm,
33:00
she felt walking into the Gay Activist Alliance
33:03
firehouse for the first time.
33:04
That moment of revelation for her was tempered by
33:07
a deep-seated and well-founded fear
33:09
that she could lose her kids.
33:10
I first spoke to Joyce all the way back
33:13
in 1989, and we've stayed in touch
33:15
since.
33:16
I interviewed her again last year. And
33:19
I kept my life as a gay person,
33:21
as a lesbian, very quiet.
33:24
I didn't let anybody
33:28
know that I was a lesbian, and I didn't
33:30
come out to a lot of people at all
33:32
because my fear was, well,
33:35
that somebody would want
33:37
to take them.
33:37
And eventually, my
33:40
sister wanted them. Because
33:42
you were a lesbian? Yep. Well,
33:44
what did she say? She didn't
33:47
think that it was proper for a lesbian to be
33:49
raising children, especially girls.
33:52
My sister went and got custody of my daughter.
33:56
How did she do that? She
34:00
reported me to social services
34:03
and in those days it wasn't they
34:05
didn't you know, they were all
34:07
lesbians raising girls How
34:11
did you resolve that with her I Don't
34:15
know if it ever got resolved So
34:18
you really had no option but to fight for
34:20
your rights having lost you kidding.
34:22
Yeah You know, these are
34:25
my kids. I gave birth to them. You give me a
34:27
break You're not
34:29
good. You know, just take these kids because you
34:31
feel like I'm not good enough, but
34:33
I was good enough
34:35
one of the things that always bugged me when I
34:37
when I thought about it and I said
34:40
That we have a right to be who
34:42
we are and might to have families
34:45
and children and stuff like that
34:49
The lesbian mothers National Defense Fund
34:52
was formed in Seattle in 1974 to
34:55
help those in custody disputes in 1978
34:58
Sandy Schuster and Madeleine
35:00
Isaacson from Seattle, Washington won
35:02
in America's first custody battle in
35:05
favor of a lesbian couple and The
35:07
gay father's coalition which would go on to
35:09
become the Family Equality Council was
35:11
founded in 1979
35:13
While gay parents fought for access
35:15
to their children and growing numbers of
35:17
parents of adult gay children accepted and became
35:20
fierce allies of liberation gay
35:22
kids were almost invisible
35:24
The first time I saw a gay teenager represented
35:27
anywhere was in the mid 1970s and in my experience There
35:31
were not many ways to be out as a gay kid
35:34
without finding yourself in situations that
35:36
were not at all age-appropriate
35:38
People who actually wanted to support gay youth
35:41
were prevented from doing so because of rampant
35:43
homophobia Gay adults
35:45
were labeled petarass and branded
35:47
a danger to children There
35:49
were no services. There was no support Anti-gay
35:53
activists claimed all gay people wanted to recruit
35:55
and corrupt kids Sounds
35:58
familiar doesn't it?
36:00
But still, gay people have always
36:03
been here of all ages, and there have always
36:05
been chosen families that found ways to provide safe
36:07
spaces for LGBTQ young people, despite
36:10
the risks.
36:11
I'm thinking about Shirley Willer, who started
36:14
taking in young people as far back as the 1940s. I
36:18
may have to remove this little
36:20
guy, or he's going to be taking over
36:22
the mic. I interviewed
36:25
her as her many caged pet birds kept
36:27
an eye on us while we talked on her screen porch
36:29
in Key West, Florida in 1990. There
36:32
were so many young women that were being
36:34
thrown out of their homes. So
36:36
we started our own little informal
36:39
groups. And we
36:41
would take in all the kids that
36:43
got kicked out in the street, and
36:45
we would keep pushing
36:48
them to stop trying to hide
36:50
it, be
36:53
themselves. In those
36:55
days, why would a young man or a young woman
36:58
be thrown out of his or her home?
37:00
Because as soon as their family
37:03
would realize that they weren't the accepted
37:06
heterosexual, they
37:11
would be horrified,
37:14
terrified, and disgusted.
37:18
These little lost
37:20
ones would show up in our
37:22
place, and we'd have
37:25
them hang out there until we could
37:27
help them find jobs that were suitable.
37:31
Many of them we were able to get scholarships
37:33
for and get them into school. They
37:37
weren't old enough to be out on the street. How
37:39
did they find you?
37:41
It wasn't hard. Word
37:45
of mouth, I think. In
37:48
fact, we not only took in women, we took
37:50
in young men. I can remember
37:52
having three of them sleeping on the kitchen floor.
37:54
It must have been so much heartbreak. Oh,
37:57
there were, as I say,
37:59
I've stayed angry. most of my life.
38:02
Shirley told me that after she joined the homophile
38:05
group, Daughters of Bletus, in the 1960s,
38:08
she was dismayed to find they turned away gay kids
38:10
looking for help. But they were just
38:12
terrified. Terrified of police
38:14
entrapment, terrified that the whole organization
38:17
could be brought down by any accusations of consorting
38:19
with minors.
38:21
The new gay liberation organizations of the early
38:24
1970s were also terrified of working with
38:26
kids. When Sylvia Rivera
38:28
and Marsha P. Johnson of the Street Transvestite
38:31
Action Revolutionaries tried to provide
38:33
a safe house for LGBTQ street kids
38:35
in New York City in the early 1970s, which
38:37
they called Star House, they
38:40
were on their own. When we asked
38:42
the community to help us,
38:46
there was nobody to help us. We
38:49
were nothing. We
38:53
were taking
38:55
care of kids that were younger than us. I
38:58
mean, Marsha and I were young, and
39:01
we were taking care of them. And
39:06
GAA
39:08
had teachers and
39:11
lawyers and whatnot, and all we asked them
39:13
was, well, if you could help us teach
39:18
our own
39:20
so we can all become a little bit better. There
39:23
was nobody there to help us. They
39:25
left us hanging. We didn't know
39:27
what the fuck we were doing. I mean, we took a
39:29
building that was, I mean, a slum
39:33
building. We
39:38
tried. We really
39:40
did. Marsha
39:43
and I and a few of the older
39:46
drag
39:46
queens kept it going for about a year or
39:48
two. We went
39:50
out and made that money off the streets
39:53
to keep these kids off the street.
39:59
Instead of showing
40:02
them what we were doing. Because
40:06
we already went through it. What were
40:08
you protecting them from? From
40:12
the world, from life in general.
40:16
Who were these other kids? The young ones, where
40:18
did they come from? From
40:20
everywhere. We had kids from Boston, California.
40:24
Where were their families? I
40:27
guess at home.
40:29
So things didn't turn out as you'd hoped? Well,
40:36
you figure it's always going
40:38
to happen. Yeah, but if you got in your way,
40:40
you would have had a building where kids could
40:42
come. I
40:45
would have loved to have had a storehouse
40:48
for the children. I would imagine
40:50
you and Mark had not had the
40:53
resources, the experience.
40:55
We just didn't have any monies. We
40:59
needed the help of GAA. We needed the
41:01
monies from the community. The
41:05
community was not going to help
41:07
us.
41:08
It would be the late 1970s before a group
41:10
of concerned adults, including mental health
41:12
professionals and members of PFLAG, got
41:15
together to start an organization that would come
41:17
to be known as the Hetrick Martin Institute
41:20
for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth. Today,
41:22
we know it as HMI. More
41:25
than a decade after Starhouse folded,
41:28
this new organization began providing help
41:30
to some of the most vulnerable and marginalized
41:33
LGBTQ youth on the streets of New
41:35
York.
41:43
It's Friday, March 3rd, 2023, the
41:46
night of PFLAG's 50th
41:48
anniversary gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel
41:50
in Times Square. Technically,
41:53
I'm here in my role as a journalist, so
41:55
it's my excuse to mostly hang back and
41:58
watch from the sidelines as the hundreds of gay people The
42:01
parents, the allies, the fabulous drag
42:03
queens with towering hairdos, the spectacularly
42:06
dressed young influencers teetering
42:09
on their super high heels, trans,
42:11
non-binary, gay, all the letters
42:13
of QTPOC LGBTQIA+.
42:17
This gathering is so beautiful and joyful.
42:21
Here's Dylan Mulvaney, an actress and
42:23
comedian known for her daily TikTok
42:25
videos of her gender transition journey.
42:29
If I can do
42:29
something for a queer youth that
42:32
I wish that I could have had growing up, then this
42:34
is definitely worth it. Also here,
42:37
Olympic diver Tom Daley and his husband,
42:39
the writer and director Dustin Lance Black, who's
42:41
posing for the cameras while Tom gives an interview.
42:44
To be honored here tonight on the 50th anniversary
42:47
is so special, it's such an honor. And to actually
42:49
be here, not only with my husband, but also
42:51
my mom and our son are
42:53
upstairs in the hotel, so it's really special
42:56
to be here all as a family as well. Comedian
42:58
Amber Ruffin takes the stage to
42:59
MC. We're here to celebrate PFLAG's
43:02
greatest accomplishment, creating something
43:04
cool that involves parents. It's
43:07
hard.
43:07
It's hard to do. It's
43:10
hard. It's hard, but you did
43:12
it. And Grammy Award winning
43:14
bounce music superstar, Big Freedia
43:16
is here to get an award tonight. I
43:19
know the powers of walls. You can
43:21
break down when you have parents and people
43:23
who see you. Thank God for the people
43:25
who saw me. I
43:30
am here today because I was seen and
43:32
supported and encouraged to be
43:34
myself.
43:36
As I take it all in, a middle-aged
43:38
woman with silvery blonde hair approaches
43:41
me with an outstretched hand. She
43:43
looks as though she'd be equally comfortable at a well-appointed
43:46
country club, as in this ballroom full
43:48
of flamboyance and LGBTQ plus
43:50
plus folks. She shakes my
43:52
hand, introduces herself as Susan
43:54
Thrunson, PFLAG's president, and
43:57
with a warm smile, she adds that she's the first parent
43:59
to be a part of the world.
43:59
of a trans child ever to hold that
44:02
position. Another self-spoken
44:04
revolutionary. I love
44:06
PFLAG parents.
44:08
I'm so still inspired
44:10
by Jean Manford and what she did 50 years
44:12
ago by taking the step off the curb
44:15
and joining the protesters in Christopher
44:17
Street March. And she was spurred on
44:19
by her son, Morty. And I'm here
44:21
because of my family's experience.
44:24
At this time, it's both
44:26
a festive evening, but we understand that we're
44:28
in one of our most challenging times in our shared history.
44:34
In 50 years, PFLAG has done so
44:36
much to transform life for LGBTQ
44:38
people through the work and advocacy of
44:40
our fiercest allies, parents,
44:42
and the other people who love us. PFLAG
44:45
is now an international network of organizations.
44:48
In the U.S. alone, currently counting 400 chapters
44:51
nationwide and 200,000 members and supporters, people
44:55
who have directly benefited from PFLAG's
44:57
support must number in the tens of millions
45:00
by now.
45:01
But despite the party spirit,
45:03
honestly, I'm feeling wistful.
45:05
I'm missing the people who are gone from
45:07
PFLAG,
45:08
the people I knew when I was a young gay man, like
45:11
Amy and Dick Ashworth, who I had the pleasure of
45:13
introducing at an event in 1979 during
45:16
Parents Weekend at Vassar College. Amy
45:19
and Dick's son, Eric, wound up being my literary
45:21
agent on the original Making Gay History book.
45:24
Bob and Elaine Benov, the super loving
45:27
parents of two gay sons from Long Beach, New York,
45:29
who I interviewed for a couple of my early books.
45:32
And my mom, who helped
45:34
co-found the Queens, New York chapter of PFLAG
45:37
with Gene Manford, and co-chaired
45:39
a PFLAG gala dinner a quarter century
45:41
ago, just up Broadway from here. My
45:44
grandmother came to that one.
45:45
They're all gone. They'd
45:49
be so proud of how far we've come.
45:52
Still, not nearly far enough,
45:55
not when so many thousands of young LGBTQ
45:57
people wind up living on the streets. Parents,
45:59
struggle to accept their trans children, and
46:02
supportive families struggle to access care.
46:05
Today's PFLAG members are again called
46:07
on to fight the bigots and the legislatures
46:10
waging an all-out war on their loved ones.
46:13
And so, while I miss all those people, my
46:15
PFLAG people, it is so right
46:18
and reassuring to see the new guard
46:20
celebrate and support each other in this
46:22
fight. My PFLAG
46:24
family was there for me. And the gathering
46:27
in this ballroom is just a tiny fraction
46:29
of the activists and allies on the front
46:31
lines of today's battle. To
46:33
see Susan Tronson fighting for her son,
46:36
just as Jean and Jules Manford fought for
46:38
and alongside their son,
46:40
well, there's a lump in my throat.
46:42
And there's a lump in my throat when I think
46:44
about how, despite all her best efforts
46:47
to protect her son Morty from homophobia, to
46:49
hold onto her surviving son in a world
46:51
stacked against him, Jean
46:53
Manford lost Morty.
46:55
The world lost him.
46:57
To complications of AIDS in 1992. So
46:59
yeah, I'm
47:01
feeling wistful,
47:03
but also hopeful as I turn to leave
47:05
the celebratory hubbub and catch
47:07
the subway home. I'm
47:09
an early riser these days. 9 p.m.
47:12
is pumpkin time for me. I'll
47:14
leave all those young folks to tie one on for
47:16
PFLAG.
47:22
Next time on Coming of Age During the
47:24
1970s, Chapter 4, respectable.
47:30
This season of Making Gay History was produced and
47:32
written by me, Eric Marcus, and
47:34
Making Gay History's founding editor, Sara
47:36
Birningham, with archival research
47:38
and production assistance from Brian Farray. Our
47:41
studio engineers for this episode were Casey
47:43
Danielson, Charles de Montobello, and
47:45
Catherine Cook. Coming of Age During
47:47
the 1970s was mixed and sound
47:50
design by Ann Pope. This
47:52
season of Making Gay History was recorded at CDM Sound
47:54
Studios. Our theme music and
47:56
additional scoring were composed by Fritz Myers.
47:59
Our new theme...
47:59
features floutist Anna Urie.
48:03
Many thanks to our hard-working crew at Making Gay
48:05
History, including Deputy Director
48:07
Inga Dattagha, photo editor Michael Green,
48:09
and our social media producers Christina
48:11
Pena and Nick Porter. Thank
48:13
you as well to the New York Public Library's Manuscripts
48:16
and Archives Division for use of their Morty
48:18
Manford collection, including archival
48:20
photos as well as other material. And
48:23
a big thank you to Suzanne Swan, Morty's
48:25
sister, for permission to use Morty's archival
48:28
recordings. And thank you to
48:30
the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, courtesy
48:32
of Chicago History Museum and WFMT,
48:36
for use of their interview with Mary Jo
48:38
Rischer. Thank you to PFLAG National
48:41
for the 50th anniversary gala audio.
48:44
We'd also like to thank the LGBT Center Archive
48:46
for their help with this season.
48:50
Making Gay History is made possible thanks
48:53
to the support of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation,
48:55
Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, the
48:57
Calamus Foundation, Andrew and Erwin
48:59
Press, Louis Bradbury, David
49:02
Carollo, Kathy Dancer and the Dancer Family,
49:04
Rick Fischel, and we are so
49:07
grateful to Patrick Hines and Steve Tipton for
49:09
their support of Making Gay History's mission to
49:11
bring LGBTQ history to life through
49:13
the voices of the people who lived it. This
49:16
episode has been made possible in part by
49:18
PFLAG, the nation's largest organization
49:20
dedicated to supporting, educating,
49:23
and advocating for LGBTQ plus people
49:25
and those who love them. Thank You
49:27
PFLAG. Please
49:30
consider joining us on Making Gay History's Patreon
49:32
channel, where you can support our work and
49:34
at the same time gain access to exclusive
49:37
interviews, behind-the-scenes conversations,
49:39
and additional archival audio excerpts that
49:41
we think you'll enjoy hearing. Sign
49:43
up for just $5 a month at patreon.com
49:46
slash making gay history or
49:48
just go to makinggayhistory.com and click on
49:50
the Patreon button. Next week,
49:52
Patreon subscribers can access my conversation
49:54
with PFLAG president Susan Thronson.
49:58
One very last thing. I
50:00
couldn't leave without this update from Joyce
50:02
Hunter.
50:06
So when were you able to get your daughter back?
50:09
She came back. How so? She
50:12
got old enough. She turned 17, 18, and she decided to come home.
50:18
She couldn't do it earlier, but she
50:21
could do it at that age. And so she came home.
50:24
And we're very close, my daughter and I and my
50:26
son and I, and our grandkids
50:29
and my grandkids, their kids. Jane
50:31
and I have been together over 40 years, so we
50:33
have collectively. Yeah.
50:35
I'm
50:37
going to count our kids. Together
50:40
we have five children. Of
50:42
those five children, we now
50:45
have 16 grandchildren. And
50:49
out of that 16, we have... Let's
50:55
see. Ezra,
50:59
Clara, Ellen.
51:03
Six or seven great-grandchildren. That's
51:05
a lot. Yeah, it's
51:08
a big family.
51:11
Coming of Age during the 1970s is a production
51:13
of Making Gay History. I'm Eric
51:15
Marcus. So long. Until
51:17
next time.
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