WEBVTT 00:00:10.338 --> 00:00:16.154 - Thank you all for coming and welcome to tonight's conversation, which is centering on gay life in Bloomington 00:00:16.154 --> 00:00:21.811 - in the 1970s. We're probably gonna go a little past the 1970s. Many of you have seen the exhibit upstairs, 00:00:21.811 --> 00:00:27.098 - which tells the story of how a group of activists and the city officials who were willing to listen 00:00:27.098 --> 00:00:32.808 - to them made Bloomington one of the first handful of cities in the country to pass an ordinance prohibiting 00:00:32.808 --> 00:00:35.134 - discrimination based on sexual orientation. 00:00:35.906 --> 00:00:41.754 - And you might also know how this particular exhibit came to be. It grew out of the Monroe County History 00:00:41.754 --> 00:00:47.379 - Center's ongoing initiative to collect pieces of LGBTQ plus history and tell those stories that have 00:00:47.379 --> 00:00:53.339 - too often been forgotten or pushed aside. So as part of that initiative, we have collected and we continue 00:00:53.339 --> 00:00:58.964 - to collect oral history from people like Donna Faye Reeves and Michael Bedwell, people with memories 00:00:58.964 --> 00:01:04.478 - to share and stories to tell about Bloomington's gay history. And if you are in this room tonight, 00:01:04.770 --> 00:01:10.517 - I hope that you will either leave your name outside on the table or come up to me and give me your contact 00:01:10.517 --> 00:01:16.264 - information because I know that there are so many stories in this room as well and I would love to connect 00:01:16.264 --> 00:01:21.689 - with you. And I haven't actually introduced myself. My name is Annabel Vosmeyer. I guess curated the 00:01:21.689 --> 00:01:27.221 - exhibit upstairs and I'm a volunteer here at the center. We have History Center staff scattered around 00:01:27.221 --> 00:01:32.754 - the room as well. We have Hillary and Hunter who are the curators who've been working on this project. 00:01:32.754 --> 00:01:34.526 - So what are we gonna do tonight? 00:01:34.690 --> 00:01:40.419 - Tonight, we're not going to focus on the dates. We're not going to focus on the wording of each particular 00:01:40.419 --> 00:01:45.827 - policy. But we just knew how delightful it was to sit down and chat with Michael and Donna Fang. And 00:01:45.827 --> 00:01:51.181 - we knew that they had a wealth of memories and personal anecdotes about what it was like to live in 00:01:51.181 --> 00:01:56.589 - Bloomington at this point in our shared history. And many of you as well. So we wanted to give you a 00:01:56.589 --> 00:02:02.104 - chance to hear directly from them. And then I hope at the end, we'll have time for just a few memories 00:02:02.104 --> 00:02:03.550 - from the audience as well. 00:02:04.162 --> 00:02:11.020 - So let me close on this. So Charlotte Zitlow had really hoped that she would be here tonight to talk 00:02:11.020 --> 00:02:18.014 - about her experience. She was on the city council that passed this ordinance. She unfortunately is not 00:02:18.014 --> 00:02:24.872 - able to attend tonight because of her health. And I know that she is so disappointed to not be here. 00:02:24.872 --> 00:02:31.934 - She's really brokenhearted about it. But she has shared a statement that she wrote just for us tonight. 00:02:32.098 --> 00:02:40.052 - and it will be presented by Jeff Richardson who besides being a friend of Starlet was a member of the 00:02:40.052 --> 00:02:48.007 - audience in 1975 and a newly elected city council member who started in 1976. So I know that you will 00:02:48.007 --> 00:02:55.961 - all join me in sending well wishes get well soon to Starlet and I'll go ahead and pass my mic over to 00:02:55.961 --> 00:03:01.342 - Jeff. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Can you hear me all right? 00:03:01.698 --> 00:03:09.665 - This is from Charlotte Zietlow, and with the help of Lynn Schwartzberg, who's been by her side this 00:03:09.665 --> 00:03:17.871 - past week when she was published from a very serious fall. Charlotte, as some of you know, is 90 years 00:03:17.871 --> 00:03:25.997 - old, and she's been almost nearly 60 years active in public service, with some remarkable background. 00:03:25.997 --> 00:03:29.662 - She was with that city council the first time 00:03:29.858 --> 00:03:36.844 - Democrats swept in with Franklin Foskey. She was president for the first few years. After that first 00:03:36.844 --> 00:03:43.760 - term, a few years later, 81 through 88, she was a county commissioner. And there's many, many other 00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:50.746 - accolades. But she continues to be very active. I'm a rotarian. Every Tuesday, she's at the meeting. 00:03:50.746 --> 00:03:57.800 - Every other meeting I attend, she's always there and always active. So again, just to underscore your 00:03:57.800 --> 00:03:59.806 - point, she's very depressed. 00:04:00.002 --> 00:04:06.771 - and sad that she's not here tonight. Here's what she shared with our friend Lynn earlier. I was elected 00:04:06.771 --> 00:04:13.605 - in 1971 with a motto, a better way. My idea for more diverse planning and zoning among other priorities. 00:04:13.605 --> 00:04:19.723 - We hired work study students for the first time. One was Frank Thomas, a black man who worked 00:04:19.723 --> 00:04:26.231 - on environmental issues. Many volunteers looked at economic development for the first time as well. 00:04:26.231 --> 00:04:28.574 - We also started the farmers market. 00:04:29.186 --> 00:04:35.339 - We introduced a human rights ordinance that supported gay rights written by Brian de Saint Croix, president 00:04:35.339 --> 00:04:41.150 - of the city council with the help of an attorney, Steve Richardson. We had received a building permit 00:04:41.150 --> 00:04:46.904 - request for a gay bar that received huge pushback from local conservative citizens. We held a public 00:04:46.904 --> 00:04:52.715 - hearing on the ordinance and many attended using biblical scripture to defend their opposition to the 00:04:52.715 --> 00:04:53.342 - ordinance. 00:04:53.730 --> 00:05:01.301 - I, along with four other city council members, all different faiths, Southern Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, 00:05:01.301 --> 00:05:08.377 - Methodist, supported the ordinance. Mayor McCloskey, friends, Roman Catholic, supported it as well. 00:05:08.377 --> 00:05:15.523 - My belief was also biblical. Do unto others and love thy neighbor as you love thyself. We're guiding 00:05:15.523 --> 00:05:20.830 - principles. During the last meeting of 1975, which became extremely nasty, 00:05:20.930 --> 00:05:27.169 - The ordinance finally passed after hours of debate. It was the first of its kind in the state and served 00:05:27.169 --> 00:05:33.349 - as a model for other communities, including South Bend in Indianapolis. Years later, Indiana University 00:05:33.349 --> 00:05:39.469 - found our ordinance to be unacceptable and wanted it removed from the books. They prevailed and it was 00:05:39.469 --> 00:05:45.589 - removed. And there's going to be more details about that. It's a little bit more complicated than that 00:05:45.589 --> 00:05:46.718 - sentence suggests. 00:05:47.042 --> 00:05:58.018 - In 1993, the ordinance was reintroduced and received almost no fuss at all. It has been in place ever 00:05:58.018 --> 00:06:09.317 - since. People working together despite coming from very different backgrounds is how we get things done. 00:06:09.317 --> 00:06:15.774 - We can get along even if we disagree. Thank you. Thank you. 00:06:16.226 --> 00:06:24.170 - Thank you for sharing. All right. So I'm going to transition into the questions. So my panelists have 00:06:24.170 --> 00:06:32.115 - approved my questions. They've also very kindly agreed to let me interrupt them if we get too far off 00:06:32.115 --> 00:06:39.358 - piste. But if the tantrums are sometimes more exciting than the question. So it's all right. 00:06:39.778 --> 00:06:46.234 - So I will start. I'll start with Donna Fay. Can you introduce yourself, say your name, and then when 00:06:46.234 --> 00:06:52.882 - you came to Bloomington and what brought you here, and then Michael, if you could follow. Okay. My name 00:06:52.882 --> 00:06:59.338 - is Donna Fay Reeves. I'm originally from Martinsville, and I graduated from high school in 1969. The 00:06:59.338 --> 00:07:05.731 - day after I graduated, I ran away from home and moved in with friends in Bloomington. I had friends 00:07:05.731 --> 00:07:09.566 - who already lived here who were a little bit older than me. 00:07:10.050 --> 00:07:19.294 - So I came out in high school and I already had a girlfriend and I ran away and lived with my friends 00:07:19.294 --> 00:07:28.903 - and lived with my girlfriend. And well, that's how I got here. I never was in school. I just lived here. 00:07:28.903 --> 00:07:37.598 - How about you, Michael? I'm Michael Bedwell. I went to high school and college in Terre Haute. 00:07:37.954 --> 00:07:48.891 - And while I was there in a used bookstore one day, I found a used copy of Kenzie's sexual behavior in 00:07:48.891 --> 00:07:59.828 - the human male, which was published in 1948 for those who are unaware. And I was still in the process 00:07:59.828 --> 00:08:03.902 - of accepting myself. It blew me away. 00:08:04.194 --> 00:08:13.672 - This happened about the same time that the movie The Boys in the Band came out. And though I've been 00:08:13.672 --> 00:08:23.808 - a gay activist ever since and I'm older than most of the people in the room, I'm in something of a minority 00:08:23.808 --> 00:08:32.254 - of gay activists that I think The Boys in the Band ultimately had a positive message. So, 00:08:32.386 --> 00:08:41.570 - Even though I wasn't a student, I got approved to write a article about homosexuality at Indiana State 00:08:41.570 --> 00:08:50.576 - University, which was a mix of talking about Kinsey's book and the movie. And of course, in learning 00:08:50.576 --> 00:08:58.334 - about Kinsey, I learned that it all happened in Bloomington. And most in the room are, 00:08:58.434 --> 00:09:07.534 - familiar with the old term, the grapevine, which preceded Facebook and social engineering, et cetera. 00:09:07.534 --> 00:09:16.724 - And whether or not you lived here at the time, I can assure you that in 1973, the word was that if you 00:09:16.724 --> 00:09:25.914 - are gay and can't get out of Indiana, Bloomington is the best place to live. So I moved to Bloomington 00:09:25.914 --> 00:09:27.966 - in the summer of 1973. 00:09:28.130 --> 00:09:35.394 - and quickly became involved with Bloomington Gay Alliance. And we can probably talk about that later. 00:09:35.394 --> 00:09:42.729 - Yeah, thank you. So one of my next questions is, what was Bloomington's reputation to the wider world? 00:09:42.729 --> 00:09:49.921 - And it sounds like both of you would agree. If you're in Indiana, Bloomington is the gay Mecca. Does 00:09:49.921 --> 00:09:57.470 - that sound about right? Yeah, Donna, you said you moved in with some friends. Were they from Bloomington? 00:09:58.306 --> 00:10:08.427 - I went to school with I went high school with him, but they they had come down here to go to IU But 00:10:08.427 --> 00:10:18.547 - you know, yeah, I moved in with gay people and they For the first probably ten years I lived here I 00:10:18.547 --> 00:10:22.494 - only knew gay people and 5% men People 00:10:27.586 --> 00:10:34.967 - Hopefully the mic will turn out, it's cutting out a little bit. We'll figure it out. So what was one 00:10:34.967 --> 00:10:42.348 - of your first memories of arriving in Bloomington, finding gay Bloomington? What spaces did you walk 00:10:42.348 --> 00:10:49.802 - into? What do you remember? Well, one of my first jobs that I had was at RCA. And I looked around and 00:10:49.802 --> 00:10:53.310 - there were hundreds of lesbians working at RCA. 00:10:54.466 --> 00:11:02.643 - I was only 18 or 19 then, and so they told me, well, they told me about gay bars in Indianapolis, women's 00:11:02.643 --> 00:11:10.820 - bars, and I was 18, and one of them who was 34 loaned me her ID to get into the gay bars in Indianapolis. 00:11:10.820 --> 00:11:18.843 - So, yeah, and then also, I was a girlfriend that had just moved here. When we broke up, I started going 00:11:18.843 --> 00:11:23.934 - out with somebody else who knew every gay person that lived here. 00:11:24.034 --> 00:11:33.579 - And I met every gay person that lived here, I think. But we went to places like, let's see, Rapp's Pizza 00:11:33.579 --> 00:11:43.034 - Train was pretty well known. Bear's, Bear's Place seemed to be pretty gay. Not? I mean, not officially. 00:11:43.034 --> 00:11:44.670 - Well, no, we had. 00:11:45.890 --> 00:11:56.204 - We do need to employ some years. What year? Well, yeah, I did a little bit before you. I moved here 00:11:56.204 --> 00:12:06.518 - in 69, and so I'm talking 70, 71, 72. Yeah. Do you remember what year bears opened, Wayne? I don't. 00:12:06.518 --> 00:12:11.262 - Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for reminding us. Yeah. 00:12:11.906 --> 00:12:24.861 - Wayne wants everybody to know he's younger than we were talking before and somehow he managed to mention 00:12:24.861 --> 00:12:35.966 - three times that he was 17. I was a little older and there was no gay bar in Bloomington. 00:12:36.162 --> 00:12:45.364 - Some of you may remember a cover story in Bloom Magazine in 2014 called Gabe Bloomington then and now. 00:12:45.364 --> 00:12:54.030 - There wasn't much then in the article. I don't know if any of you are friends with Mike Leonard, 00:12:54.030 --> 00:13:02.965 - the author, but I hope if he's still alive, I get the chance to tell him how much he missed because 00:13:02.965 --> 00:13:04.126 - he basically 00:13:04.962 --> 00:13:14.530 - He only mentions the ordinance once, nothing about its historical significance. We are on Cass TV as 00:13:14.530 --> 00:13:24.097 - well, so. Oh, OK. All right. But anyway, there was an older gay man who was mentioned or interviewed 00:13:24.097 --> 00:13:33.854 - for the article. And he mentioned places that were, if not officially gay friendly, which bears place, 00:13:33.954 --> 00:13:43.582 - became, there was this underground knowledge, solis, the oaken bucket, 00:13:43.746 --> 00:13:52.645 - He also mentioned a place which has been closed for years that I had never heard of until I read the 00:13:52.645 --> 00:14:01.545 - article. And he said they had a jukebox and a way of signaling that you were a friend of Dorothy was 00:14:01.545 --> 00:14:10.620 - to play if somebody played, you know, I don't know, Moonlight Sonata or whatever. And then another man 00:14:10.620 --> 00:14:12.030 - played the same 00:14:12.130 --> 00:14:23.321 - song it was kind of like I'm where we're in in this uh together but socially uh parallel of Donna's 00:14:23.321 --> 00:14:34.513 - experience I knew I was gay I had had some sexual experience when I moved here but my coming out as 00:14:34.513 --> 00:14:37.758 - a gay person socially was in 00:14:37.954 --> 00:14:48.310 - Bloomington and though there was no gay bar, though there was no gay bookstore, there was no gay student 00:14:48.310 --> 00:14:58.371 - center on campus or LGBT or whatever, there was just you would meet people and just meeting other gay 00:14:58.371 --> 00:15:05.374 - people, other lesbians was so life-affirming that Bloomington lived up 00:15:05.762 --> 00:15:13.163 - to its reputation immediately with me. Another place I forgot to mention was a lot of gay people hang 00:15:13.163 --> 00:15:20.782 - out at the Commons in the Union. All the time, every day we went there. I remember one day we went there 00:15:20.782 --> 00:15:28.184 - with the script of the boys in the band and the people that were sitting there, whether they were men 00:15:28.184 --> 00:15:33.118 - or women, we read the whole script of the boys in the band one day. 00:15:43.682 --> 00:15:51.815 - when he was 17, when he was 17. So that slightly leads me into the next question. I was going to ask 00:15:51.815 --> 00:16:00.270 - just briefly, what was the Bloomington cruising scene like? You can keep it EG. And was that exclusively 00:16:00.270 --> 00:16:08.725 - a gay men's world or did lesbian women and others participate in it? Well, I'm going to say that I don't 00:16:08.725 --> 00:16:12.510 - think most women, we met people somewhere, but 00:16:12.898 --> 00:16:24.020 - and we got with them somehow or other, but I don't think we called it cruising. So I'm just, huh? Yeah, 00:16:24.020 --> 00:16:34.713 - I mean, we were looking at things, but that wasn't a lesbian word. So I'm going to pass it over to. 00:16:34.713 --> 00:16:40.702 - Well, it very much was a male gay world word and world. 00:16:42.082 --> 00:16:53.935 - We're a block from the county library, I think. A year after the ordinance passed, this wonderful ordinance 00:16:53.935 --> 00:17:05.021 - which affirmed our value as human beings, legally as well as sociologically, I happened to be at the 00:17:05.021 --> 00:17:08.862 - library one night after it closed. 00:17:09.442 --> 00:17:19.117 - along with several other gay men because it was a cruising spot. I think more, there was probably more 00:17:19.117 --> 00:17:28.510 - socializing than actual pickups there, though there was some of that. And one night in June or July 00:17:28.510 --> 00:17:37.246 - of 1976, I was talking with some of my friends, socializing, and all of a sudden five or six 00:17:37.666 --> 00:17:49.392 - teenage boys leapt out of the bushes and started attacking us. And you can read about it on my Facebook 00:17:49.392 --> 00:18:00.780 - page, but the short of it is that the ordinance was a major, major step forward, but it did not make 00:18:00.780 --> 00:18:05.854 - the dent in homophobia among homophobes that 00:18:06.178 --> 00:18:18.157 - that we wish it had. I have a tendency to talk too much, so I'll wrap this up real quickly. The bittersweet 00:18:18.157 --> 00:18:30.358 - closure of this story, I'm going to tear up, is that one of the boys was gay. He was a student at Bloomington 00:18:30.358 --> 00:18:36.126 - South. I don't know to this day if he ever actually 00:18:36.738 --> 00:18:44.724 - did anything violent. I was clubbed to the ground, wasn't really hurt badly. A friend got a cut on eyes. 00:18:44.724 --> 00:18:52.785 - Police came and said, it's another part of the story. But anyway, he was friends with a professor couple, 00:18:52.785 --> 00:18:59.326 - Wallace Williams and Jim Justice, that some of you might have known or have heard of. 00:19:00.098 --> 00:19:08.056 - And he would come in, by this time the Kirkwood Bar was open, and though he was not even 17, he was 00:19:08.056 --> 00:19:16.333 - allowed in the bar. He told Wallace and Jim that it wasn't about attacking gays. It was, you know, they 00:19:16.333 --> 00:19:24.371 - had heard that one of us had a nice leather jacket and they wanted to steal it. Well, it was June in 00:19:24.371 --> 00:19:28.350 - Indiana. Nobody was wearing a leather jacket out. 00:19:29.602 --> 00:19:39.550 - But one day when he was in the bar one night, he was wearing his Bloomington South track jersey. 00:19:39.550 --> 00:19:49.806 - And I said, well, that's really cool. And he said, would you like to have it? I said, yes, I would. 00:19:49.806 --> 00:19:56.062 - And he took it off and gave it to me. And I, 49 years later, 00:19:57.058 --> 00:20:09.300 - I am sure that was his way of saying, I'm sorry. I can't follow that. I've got to follow that. And so 00:20:09.300 --> 00:20:21.421 - I'll say a little bit on themes that politics can't fix everything. And so we passed this ordinance. 00:20:21.421 --> 00:20:26.462 - Both of you, before the ordinance passed, 00:20:26.722 --> 00:20:35.583 - had experienced discrimination at your workplace. So Donna, you have you have the big stories on the 00:20:35.583 --> 00:20:44.444 - wall upstairs, but you want to talk about it a little bit? Like, what what did it feel like to be in 00:20:44.444 --> 00:20:53.304 - Bloomington and to know that you didn't have this kind of protection? Sure. Well, is this one? Okay, 00:20:53.304 --> 00:20:56.638 - so I got a job at as a janitor at the 00:20:56.738 --> 00:21:04.015 - college mall, and all the other people that worked as janitors there were friends of mine. And they 00:21:04.015 --> 00:21:10.928 - told me when I got the job that my boss had been sued for discrimination against a, let's see, 00:21:10.928 --> 00:21:18.204 - a black woman, a white guy with long hair, and a white woman because she was a woman. And so he had 00:21:18.204 --> 00:21:25.263 - been told that if he was sued for discrimination one more time, you know, he would lose his job. 00:21:25.263 --> 00:21:26.718 - So they said, well, 00:21:26.946 --> 00:21:32.968 - they're gonna have to hire you. And they did, they hired me and they, you know, at first, my boss, who 00:21:32.968 --> 00:21:38.873 - was named Jess Martindale said, I mean, at first he bragged on what a good job I did, and that I was 00:21:38.873 --> 00:21:44.895 - better than all the men. And within about six months, I don't know why it took him that long to figure 00:21:44.895 --> 00:21:50.801 - out I was gay, because I had a girlfriend, she would drop me off at work, she would come meet me for 00:21:50.801 --> 00:21:54.718 - lunch and stuff. And as soon as he figured it out, he just started 00:21:55.650 --> 00:22:02.446 - saying nasty things about me when I wasn't there and just making up new rules that only applied to me. 00:22:02.446 --> 00:22:09.373 - Like I had to work two eight hour shifts back to back. When other people couldn't, I was working because 00:22:09.373 --> 00:22:16.037 - we weren't allowed to do that. He just started doing all kinds of things to make it, to make me quit 00:22:16.037 --> 00:22:22.767 - because he didn't want me to, he didn't want to fire me and then get a lawsuit. But I finally had had 00:22:22.767 --> 00:22:25.406 - enough and I did quit, but I just said, 00:22:26.818 --> 00:22:35.034 - I don't care, I'm still gonna, you know, file a lawsuit. So I went to, yeah, I'm not gonna remember 00:22:35.034 --> 00:22:43.413 - the names of things and people. The Human Rights Commission. Yeah, Human Rights Commission, and Bruce 00:22:43.413 --> 00:22:52.122 - Wachowski was there, and I said I wanted to file a suit based on sexual discrimination, you know, because 00:22:52.122 --> 00:22:55.326 - at the time there was no such thing as 00:22:55.714 --> 00:23:03.967 - sexual orientation in the human rights bill. And I said, do you think it would win? And he said, well, 00:23:03.967 --> 00:23:12.380 - nobody's ever done it before. And I said, well, they have because I read about it in Lesbian Connection. 00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:20.473 - They did it in some other city. And that's what I want to do. So that's what we did. And there was a 00:23:20.473 --> 00:23:23.838 - big trial about it. And at the end of it, 00:23:24.034 --> 00:23:37.088 - They said, well, you have been discriminated against, but it's not illegal. So then, well, so then it 00:23:37.088 --> 00:23:49.886 - happened with the. The ordinance? Yeah, I was trying to do, the city council. Yeah, it was the city 00:23:49.886 --> 00:23:52.446 - council decided to, 00:23:52.962 --> 00:24:02.973 - you know, decide whether they were going to add it, and they ended up adding it. That was in 75. How 00:24:02.973 --> 00:24:13.380 - did it feel? Well, you know, shitty. I do have to say that really when I filed it, I really didn't think 00:24:13.380 --> 00:24:21.310 - I was going to win, but I just thought that he's not going to get off scot-free 00:24:21.794 --> 00:24:28.305 - I'm going to make him at least sweat it out for a few months. And he did. He sweated it out a whole 00:24:28.305 --> 00:24:34.946 - lot for a few months. The fact that I lost didn't really matter because there was still a trial about 00:24:34.946 --> 00:24:41.522 - it. A lot of people heard what happened. And something good came out of it, although if you know the 00:24:41.522 --> 00:24:44.126 - rest, that was kind of a waste of time. 00:24:55.074 --> 00:25:04.471 - My own experience is dramatic in a different way. It's kind of R rated, but I'll try to clean up. Anyway, 00:25:04.471 --> 00:25:13.426 - I worked for a restaurant on North College or Walnut, I can't remember. It's where the CVS is now on 00:25:13.426 --> 00:25:22.202 - the north side of town. It was a fine dining restaurant, Sir Lancelot. I cannot remember the name, 00:25:22.202 --> 00:25:24.862 - I'm afraid. This was like 74. 00:25:25.026 --> 00:25:36.047 - and they had the dining room and then to the side they they prepared pizzas for the dining room and 00:25:36.047 --> 00:25:47.398 - carry out and strombolis and I got a job there making pizzas and strombolis and the guy I was reported 00:25:47.398 --> 00:25:53.790 - who hired me a young man quit like he walked out like two 00:25:53.986 --> 00:26:07.622 - nights after I started. And even in that short of time, I realized it was because the actual boss was 00:26:07.622 --> 00:26:22.462 - a raging asshole. And the most unashamed, proactive racist I've ever met in my life, and I grew up in Indiana, 00:26:23.202 --> 00:26:35.578 - And so the intermediate guy had left, so I picked up a lot of hours, which I liked. Then he hired a 00:26:35.578 --> 00:26:48.326 - man to replace, let's say, Joe. And my hours, my hours would be posted on the wall in this part of the 00:26:48.326 --> 00:26:52.286 - kitchen. They began to go down. 00:26:55.010 --> 00:27:06.220 - Pure and pure and pure. Well, what he did not know is the man he hired was gay. And he and I developed 00:27:06.220 --> 00:27:16.777 - an affair. And by the time, his name was Clint, and I'd say, Clint, why are my hours going down? 00:27:16.777 --> 00:27:22.654 - And he goes, well, you know, Joe, whatever, you know, 00:27:23.074 --> 00:27:33.363 - He doesn't like it cause you're gay. He doesn't realize I am too. So I was never directly fired. It's 00:27:33.363 --> 00:27:43.653 - just my job disappeared. But even after that, what he did not know is that when Clint got off of work 00:27:43.653 --> 00:27:52.126 - each night, I was waiting for him in his car in the parking lot. But the part that, 00:27:52.386 --> 00:28:02.326 - is somewhat parallel to Donna's, is I did go to the Human Rights Commission, probably was Bruce, and 00:28:02.326 --> 00:28:12.168 - told him the story. He was very sympathetic. And he said, well, there's no sexual orientation part, 00:28:12.168 --> 00:28:22.206 - but maybe we can argue that it is sex discrimination in some way. But he wasn't convinced enough that 00:28:22.498 --> 00:28:32.343 - that had any traction that I didn't follow up. So mine never actually went to court. My connection with 00:28:32.343 --> 00:28:41.809 - the ordinance is that I was one of the organizers at BGA of the 74 Indiana Gay Awareness Conference 00:28:41.809 --> 00:28:52.222 - at IU. And the principal speaker was the father of the gay rights movement named Frank Kameny. And during his 00:28:53.122 --> 00:29:03.425 - keynote address at the Poplar's, he said something to the effect, I understand Bloomington has no gay 00:29:03.425 --> 00:29:14.233 - rights ordinance. Why, and what are you going to do about it? A year later we had an ordinance. If nowhere 00:29:14.233 --> 00:29:22.718 - else, but I'm sure it did generally, the seed was planted in Brian de Sequa's mine, 00:29:23.554 --> 00:29:33.959 - don't think he was out yet publicly at that time until he was on the council. And during our second 00:29:33.959 --> 00:29:44.364 - conference in 75, Elaine Noble, the first gay person elected to a state legislature. There are lots 00:29:44.364 --> 00:29:48.318 - of myths about Harvey Milk first, but 00:29:48.418 --> 00:29:56.193 - a lesbian scored before he did. Anyway, she was one of our guest speakers and she met with Frank McCloskey 00:29:56.193 --> 00:30:03.459 - because she was told there was something in the works. I was head of BGA by that time and I went in 00:30:03.459 --> 00:30:10.943 - and met with him privately one day and I said, well, I'd like to tell you that we have, there are lots 00:30:10.943 --> 00:30:17.918 - of gays in Bloomington, but we don't have the political clout that I wish we did to help you if 00:30:18.818 --> 00:30:28.662 - and when you get in trouble for this. And one of the many reasons I respect him and miss him is he simply 00:30:28.662 --> 00:30:38.228 - said, I understand. And you've stayed right on schedule because my next question was going to be about 00:30:38.228 --> 00:30:42.686 - both of your involvement, so about BTA as well. 00:30:43.106 --> 00:30:50.265 - Donna, you were involved in the New Horizons Gay Community Center, and then you were first involved 00:30:50.265 --> 00:30:57.638 - in BGA. So I'd love both of you to talk about those experiences of early organizing in Billington, and 00:30:57.638 --> 00:31:04.869 - then kind of the student-non-student relationship, because neither of you were students at the time, 00:31:04.869 --> 00:31:10.238 - but they were students and non-students, kind of in both. Well, let's see. 00:31:10.818 --> 00:31:19.045 - how New Horizons came about was a lot of gay people just got together and we organized gay coffee houses 00:31:19.045 --> 00:31:27.194 - at the Lutheran Church, yeah, across from the Union. And we made so much money from them that the group 00:31:27.194 --> 00:31:35.421 - that was doing it said, well, what are we gonna do with this money? We can't just keep it. And we looked 00:31:35.421 --> 00:31:39.966 - at it and said, we have enough to rent a place full time. 00:31:40.450 --> 00:31:47.353 - So I found this really dinky old place on South Rogers. I don't know what it used to be, but it was 00:31:47.353 --> 00:31:54.256 - on my way home. That's why I found it. And we rented it full time. And let's see, we had a, well, I 00:31:54.256 --> 00:32:01.020 - was one of four people who co-founded it. And then we had a board of directors of 12. And we had, 00:32:01.020 --> 00:32:08.061 - you know, you could do something in it every night. We had a women's night and a men's night and then 00:32:08.061 --> 00:32:10.270 - dance night and then, you know, 00:32:11.170 --> 00:32:21.034 - all that and eventually, so that was probably started in 74 and then by 75 we had moved to this place 00:32:21.034 --> 00:32:31.478 - that was on 3rd Street in between Walnut and College and it's a place that used to be a garage or something 00:32:31.478 --> 00:32:36.990 - is what it looked like and we fixed it up pretty nicely. 00:32:42.562 --> 00:32:50.699 - Oh, you know, a bunch of women. We had refreshments. We didn't have a liquor license or anything. Yeah, 00:32:50.699 --> 00:32:58.054 - it was a great place. You could rent it for meetings. It didn't last all that long. Actually, 00:32:58.054 --> 00:33:06.112 - at some point, me and my girlfriend at the time broke up and she was one of the people that was on the 00:33:06.112 --> 00:33:11.902 - board. And so I kind of quit going because I didn't want to run into her. 00:33:12.130 --> 00:33:23.488 - But after that, something happened that sent something along. Since I wasn't involved, I wasn't sure 00:33:23.488 --> 00:33:35.521 - what it was, but it was part of this whole story of... I wasn't here when it petered out, but I'm guessing 00:33:35.521 --> 00:33:38.782 - that a part of what happened 00:33:39.458 --> 00:33:52.326 - And BGA had the same problems too. The students, members, participants, ended up graduating and moving 00:33:52.326 --> 00:34:04.945 - away. And there were, though, you know, your events were successful. BGA's Halloween dances were the 00:34:04.945 --> 00:34:08.318 - events on campus. But the, 00:34:09.154 --> 00:34:20.280 - number of people actually carrying the load as it were was very small. So if you lost someone, like 00:34:20.280 --> 00:34:31.406 - I'm sure Joe Metzinger and Jim graduated and simply moved away. I became president in 74 after Jim, 00:34:31.406 --> 00:34:36.190 - excuse me, John Struble, who was president 00:34:36.450 --> 00:34:50.850 - When I moved here, he graduated and he moved away. The value I think that New Horizons had beyond BGA 00:34:50.850 --> 00:35:06.238 - was creating these social meeting groups. BGA would sponsor speaking events or the conference, for instance. 00:35:06.338 --> 00:35:16.780 - the dances, but those were episodic. I remember that there was an effort to train people to counsel 00:35:16.780 --> 00:35:25.342 - people. BGA ran what we call the hotline, you know, and it was a published number 00:35:25.474 --> 00:35:35.934 - under a fictitious name, Pat Henderson, which was unisex enough for that. But it wasn't a real person. 00:35:35.934 --> 00:35:46.496 - And we contributed to people coming out in a variety of ways. A book club developed after I moved. They 00:35:46.496 --> 00:35:55.230 - would meet in the ghetto. How many remember the ghetto on the square, the gay ghetto? 00:35:56.098 --> 00:36:09.259 - where what is it called? Fountain Square is. When you go in the main entrance with the canopy of Fountain 00:36:09.259 --> 00:36:21.923 - Square, it is actually occupying what was an alley between a building on the west side and a building 00:36:21.923 --> 00:36:24.158 - on the east side. 00:36:24.450 --> 00:36:34.224 - The ground floor of the building on the east side, when I moved into the ghetto, was Charlotte Zitlow's 00:36:34.224 --> 00:36:43.058 - first location of Goods Inc. On the second and third floor above that, there were apartments. 00:36:43.058 --> 00:36:52.926 - At that time, the university owned them. And as Wayne remembered when he moved in, they were very cheap. 00:36:54.466 --> 00:37:04.520 - like RCA, so many gay people ended up renting there, though of course it was open to anybody, 00:37:04.520 --> 00:37:15.751 - that colloquially it became known as the gay ghetto. So if you go in the main entrance there, the facade 00:37:15.751 --> 00:37:24.094 - of the building is on the east side where our apartments were is still there. 00:37:24.290 --> 00:37:36.562 - but they've torn out the inside. The brick wall, which you see to your left when you go in there, I 00:37:36.562 --> 00:37:49.079 - believe is the wall, what was the exterior wall of our building. It was a part of the social culture, 00:37:49.079 --> 00:37:54.110 - the mutually reinforcing gay and lesbian 00:37:54.338 --> 00:38:02.396 - culture, the occasional bisexual and transsexual of the time. Thank you. So I want to take us briefly 00:38:02.396 --> 00:38:10.534 - into the future. And this is a question that I never got to ask you during our interview. Can you talk 00:38:10.534 --> 00:38:18.434 - about the National Women's Music Festival when it was in Bloomington? And I actually saw a National 00:38:18.434 --> 00:38:23.806 - Women's Music Festival t-shirt in the audience. So that's exciting. 00:38:23.938 --> 00:38:38.595 - What was it like? What happened? Where was it? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Let's see. Well, okay, the national 00:38:38.595 --> 00:38:53.822 - began in Champaign-Urbana, and it was there for about eight or nine years, and then somewhere around 1980, 00:38:54.050 --> 00:39:01.417 - it moved here. And it was here for about 15 years until 95. And it was a really big thing. It was a 00:39:01.417 --> 00:39:08.858 - really big deal. Well, it still is. It kind of moved around for a while. And right now, it's been in 00:39:08.858 --> 00:39:16.372 - Madison, Wisconsin for a long time. But there were so many women here that would work on it. That was 00:39:16.372 --> 00:39:19.614 - one good reason why it was here. Mary Byrne 00:39:20.162 --> 00:39:28.276 - from Indianapolis had, she had a women's bar at that time and she brought women's music to her bar. 00:39:28.276 --> 00:39:36.795 - So she, you know, knew a lot of the people and had a lot of experience in organizing that kind of thing. 00:39:36.795 --> 00:39:44.990 - But it was really one of the best times I had in my life. I mean, it brought thousands of women here 00:39:44.990 --> 00:39:47.262 - and wish it was still here. 00:40:12.002 --> 00:40:21.515 - You're still going now? OK. And they're in Madison? It's in the middle of Wisconsin. It's a bit smaller 00:40:21.515 --> 00:40:30.937 - in Madison. I think, wasn't this year the 50th year, I think? Next year will be the 50th festival. The 00:40:30.937 --> 00:40:40.541 - 50th year was last year, but there were a couple of festivals for that. I'm sure every woman here worked 00:40:40.541 --> 00:40:41.822 - at festivals. 00:40:41.954 --> 00:40:57.478 - And Bloomington, Bloomington Gay Alliance shortly after I left became Bloomington Gay and Lesbian Alliance, 00:40:57.478 --> 00:41:10.846 - which was a part of the evolution too. I remember being introduced to lesbian singers that I 00:41:11.234 --> 00:41:23.857 - never heard of in there, though I didn't go to any of the conferences. I appreciated the music musically, 00:41:23.857 --> 00:41:36.361 - but because I'm so political, sociopolitical, the reverence lesbians had for these, the courage of these 00:41:36.361 --> 00:41:39.934 - singers to be out and realize 00:41:40.034 --> 00:41:51.109 - that at least at that time in the early 70s there would be a very thick ceiling you know it was it was 00:41:51.109 --> 00:42:01.861 - a long time before I'm forgetting her name yes exactly you know it was a long time before a lesbian 00:42:01.861 --> 00:42:08.958 - entertainer broke through that ceiling but these women kept going 00:42:09.506 --> 00:42:24.180 - And I remember being touched by the tenderness of the music and this common thread of you and I are 00:42:24.180 --> 00:42:39.294 - alike and I will shelter you. And the gay men's culture did not have any parallel at the time, nor for 00:42:39.490 --> 00:42:48.256 - for years. What made Bloomington the right place? So you had the two, the awareness conferences, you 00:42:48.256 --> 00:42:57.282 - had all the 15 years in the National Women's Music Festival. What made Bloomington the place that those 00:42:57.282 --> 00:43:06.482 - big events could happen? Well, obviously, the university. I mean, Bloomington is university town. There's 00:43:06.482 --> 00:43:09.086 - way more university here than 00:43:09.570 --> 00:43:20.613 - people that are not connected to it. In Indiana, if you're gay, you want to be in Bloomington. Indianapolis 00:43:20.613 --> 00:43:31.349 - people get mad when you say that, but it's true. It's an open-minded place. There's always young people. 00:43:31.349 --> 00:43:38.302 - There's always people of all ages, but gay people are welcome here. 00:43:39.650 --> 00:43:50.015 - which wasn't always true, but I get ahead of myself a little bit. I again think, I mean, Kinsey was 00:43:50.015 --> 00:44:01.105 - not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I think, first of all, he armed the gay rights movement 00:44:01.105 --> 00:44:09.086 - after it got rebooted in the 50s, after the Nazis stamped it out in Germany. 00:44:09.474 --> 00:44:20.042 - uh he he armed them with statistics uh there there was a well-known uh gay lawyer whose name escapes 00:44:20.042 --> 00:44:31.341 - me at the moment and in an article uh when the marriage debate first kicked up uh largely in the Washington 00:44:31.341 --> 00:44:35.422 - Post or the the New York Times he said 00:44:36.258 --> 00:44:46.354 - justice and equality should not be about numbers, but it is. And it was too easy for centuries, 00:44:46.354 --> 00:44:57.185 - for decades, to say, well, why should we be worried about those sodomites' rights? Or those, you know, 00:44:57.185 --> 00:45:04.126 - they're just a few of them. And Kinsey proved that was wrong. And 00:45:05.730 --> 00:45:18.014 - By 73, again, when I moved here, BGA had an office in the Union Building. It was not a university 00:45:18.014 --> 00:45:30.549 - organization, but the university gave it a home. We never had to fight to be able to rent an alumni 00:45:30.549 --> 00:45:34.686 - hall for our dances or whatever. 00:45:36.098 --> 00:45:49.327 - it grew and grew and grew and grew. But the irony is that whereas the board of eons, I understand, was 00:45:49.327 --> 00:46:03.070 - involved in the creation of the LGBT plus culture center on campus, 20, 25 years before the board of eons, 00:46:04.130 --> 00:46:15.022 - period of 1955, 1959, led a witch hunt against gay men on this campus to the point that they installed 00:46:15.022 --> 00:46:26.020 - a hidden camera in one of the restrooms in the old library and filmed men coming in, cruising with each 00:46:26.020 --> 00:46:32.894 - other, and offered them to police, et cetera. Lives were ruined. 00:46:33.570 --> 00:46:43.021 - And eventually it was shut down. And again, decades later, the new members of Board of Youngs had culturally 00:46:43.021 --> 00:46:51.692 - grown. I would like to think in part whether they were aware of it or not because of the seeds that 00:46:51.692 --> 00:47:00.970 - Bloomington Gay Alliance, Bloomington Gay and Lesbian Alliance and the New Horizon people planted. Because 00:47:00.970 --> 00:47:02.878 - some people did stay. 00:47:05.218 --> 00:47:17.079 - And my anger about the article I referred to earlier that was in Bloom in 2014 is not consciously, but 00:47:17.079 --> 00:47:28.710 - functionally how many people who sacrificed here, who fought the battles here, who would not take no 00:47:28.710 --> 00:47:33.662 - for an answer. Those shoulders I stood on, 00:47:34.498 --> 00:47:44.712 - And every LGBT person, whatever their age in this town, now stands on two. And they should be named 00:47:44.712 --> 00:47:55.335 - and remembered and honored. And thanks to people like Annabel and the History Center, that is happening 00:47:55.335 --> 00:48:03.710 - formally. And more of it needs to be done. Sorry to get on my soapbox. All right. 00:48:03.938 --> 00:48:09.826 - Come to my last question and so I will ask our two panelists but also listen very closely because this 00:48:09.826 --> 00:48:15.542 - is a question that might be coming out to you in the audience. I would just like to ask both of you 00:48:15.542 --> 00:48:21.259 - to share your favorite anecdote or a favorite anecdote about being gay in Bloomington in the 70s. I 00:48:21.259 --> 00:48:24.574 - know it's very open ended, but you have anything in mind. 00:48:32.450 --> 00:48:39.578 - wanted to tell this story because I loved it so much. Another thing that we had was, I think you referred 00:48:39.578 --> 00:48:46.505 - to it as hotline. And what we would do was like lesbians would take call from women and men would take 00:48:46.505 --> 00:48:53.566 - call from men. So I worked the lesbian listening line a lot. And I was sometimes we'd get letters. First 00:48:53.566 --> 00:49:00.358 - of all, I got a letter from a very young woman in Spencer. And she was in high school, she was about 00:49:00.358 --> 00:49:02.174 - to graduate. And she said, 00:49:02.946 --> 00:49:09.823 - My best friend is a man that he's been my best friend for years and years and I'm afraid to tell him 00:49:09.823 --> 00:49:16.837 - that I'm gay because I'm afraid, you know, he won't be friends with me anymore. And well, so everybody 00:49:16.837 --> 00:49:23.646 - that worked on the different lines would get together and, you know, talk about what kinds of calls 00:49:23.646 --> 00:49:26.846 - they had received. And so one of the men said, 00:49:27.106 --> 00:49:34.766 - Well, that's weird, because a man from Spencer wrote us a letter saying, my best friend, I'm scared 00:49:34.766 --> 00:49:42.579 - to tell her that I'm gay. I'm afraid she won't be friends with me anymore. And we usually didn't talk 00:49:42.579 --> 00:49:50.469 - too much about these things, but we just said, we're just going to have to tell them. So I wrote back, 00:49:50.469 --> 00:49:55.678 - and he wrote back, and said, you know, I think your friend might be 00:49:56.034 --> 00:50:03.704 - gay and of course yeah it did turn out that they it that's what it was it was two best friends writing 00:50:03.704 --> 00:50:11.299 - to us and calling us and they came out to each other and then they then we became friends with all of 00:50:11.299 --> 00:50:18.894 - them and then uh one of the men went out with the guy and they were they were a couple for years that 00:50:18.894 --> 00:50:24.702 - is really cool that's really exciting and and i have an almost parallel story 00:50:24.802 --> 00:50:37.603 - which involves somebody who used to be an assistant to the mayor here and the previous mayor in Washington, 00:50:37.603 --> 00:50:49.694 - but I won't go into that. It's most of all the experiences at the conferences. Gay marriage wasn't on 00:50:49.694 --> 00:50:52.894 - our radar. It was in 1970, 00:50:53.026 --> 00:51:05.344 - for 75, 76, it was such an impossible, you know, it wasn't, you can read our agenda, you know, and it 00:51:05.344 --> 00:51:18.387 - wasn't there. Sodomy was not decriminalized in Indiana to 1976. So it was mainly about anti-discrimination. 00:51:18.387 --> 00:51:21.406 - But most of all, it was, 00:51:24.450 --> 00:51:34.643 - you know, an average gay man, young man, average lesbian, by whatever, coming to our conferences and 00:51:34.643 --> 00:51:45.642 - hearing Frank Kameny, this great orator, who was like Johnny Appleseed at that time. It was after Stonewall, 00:51:45.642 --> 00:51:47.358 - but he was still 00:51:48.418 --> 00:51:56.320 - gay Johnny Appleseed going around the country hundreds of speaking engagements of year and saying you 00:51:56.320 --> 00:52:04.221 - deserve your rights with great eloquence. It was Phyllis Lyon who co-founded the Daughters of Boletus 00:52:04.221 --> 00:52:12.278 - in San Francisco in the 1950s who spoke at our first conference. It was Reverend Troy Perry who founded 00:52:12.278 --> 00:52:16.926 - the first gay denomination who held a gay religious service 00:52:17.058 --> 00:52:27.646 - in the union building in 1974 and told these people whose families whose churches that you know you 00:52:27.646 --> 00:52:38.659 - all have heard it too but this this is when it was the fire of that self-hatred was burning it was what 00:52:38.659 --> 00:52:46.494 - became a close friend of mine Leonard Matlovich in 1975 who was the first 00:52:46.754 --> 00:52:56.291 - gay service person to purposely out himself to fight the ban. The Air Force didn't know he was gay. 00:52:56.291 --> 00:53:06.020 - He could have kept quiet and eight years later retired and lived off of his Air Force pension for the 00:53:06.020 --> 00:53:15.557 - rest of his life. But Nexus, Nexus, Nexus, he met Frank Kameny and Frank Kameny was searching for a 00:53:15.557 --> 00:53:16.606 - test case. 00:53:17.282 --> 00:53:24.871 - And Leonard was the perfect one. He had served three tours in Vietnam. He had a bronze star, 00:53:24.871 --> 00:53:33.113 - a purple heart, all of these great ratings. He was on the cover of Time Magazine in his uniform with 00:53:33.113 --> 00:53:42.089 - the caption, I am a homosexual. To this day, 50 years later, people who see that or see his iconic tombstone, 00:53:42.089 --> 00:53:45.598 - it blows their minds away. I can remember. 00:53:46.370 --> 00:53:57.570 - When he spoke and talked about he did not have the courage to accept himself being gay, did not hold 00:53:57.570 --> 00:54:08.659 - another man in a romantic way until he was 30 years old. And there were men and women holding hands 00:54:08.659 --> 00:54:13.982 - in that audience crying. Elaine Noble's speech. 00:54:15.778 --> 00:54:25.169 - a state representative from Massachusetts who ran as an open lesbian. And it wasn't all good. She often 00:54:25.169 --> 00:54:34.198 - told the story of she walked on the street. She was well known because she had worked in the busing 00:54:34.198 --> 00:54:43.679 - wars in Boston, had gone to school with little kids in Boston who races there were saying they shouldn't 00:54:43.679 --> 00:54:45.214 - be allowed to be 00:54:45.602 --> 00:54:55.634 - ride the same buses. Anyway, this elderly man approached her, you know, and he said, hello, Ms. Noble, 00:54:55.634 --> 00:55:05.861 - and she said hello, and he spat on her. But she inspired us all. And Vito Russo, if for no other reason, 00:55:05.861 --> 00:55:14.238 - if you have not yet, go upstairs and read the excerpt of his article in The Advocate. 00:55:15.682 --> 00:55:24.194 - that's a part of the exhibit, thank you Annabel, about his experiences speaking at Indiana University 00:55:24.194 --> 00:55:32.956 - in 1975. He was already, I mean the pictures from that period, he looks 14 years old, but he was already 00:55:32.956 --> 00:55:41.468 - a big shot activist in New York City, part of Gay Activists Alliance, you know, the home of Stonewall 00:55:41.468 --> 00:55:44.222 - and it all. And in that article, 00:55:44.834 --> 00:55:58.560 - is so beautifully written. And essentially he says, I learned to see my own people in a different way 00:55:58.560 --> 00:56:12.286 - because of what I experienced in Bloomington, Indiana, where these people were above everything else. 00:56:12.418 --> 00:56:22.231 - in this backwater, being themselves and loving it. Rita, go upstairs and I don't do justice to it. You 00:56:22.231 --> 00:56:31.949 - must read it. I think you did a good job doing justice to it. Thank you both so much. And I will turn 00:56:31.949 --> 00:56:42.334 - the mic over to the audience if anyone has their own anecdote they want to share. All right, we have a hand. 00:56:44.290 --> 00:56:57.911 - Michael actually brought up the Halloween dances that the BGA used to do and those continued after Michael 00:56:57.911 --> 00:57:11.023 - left town and this sort of is a full circle thing for the building that we're in because one year when 00:57:11.023 --> 00:57:14.206 - it came time it was 1979 00:57:14.402 --> 00:57:21.567 - Bullwinkles had just opened, but it was time for the Halloween party. And for some reason, they usually 00:57:21.567 --> 00:57:28.456 - held it, I think, in the Frangipani room. That was unavailable, and Alumni Hall was unavailable. So 00:57:28.456 --> 00:57:35.482 - they got real Charlotte Zillow, and they were like, could we possibly do it in a county building? And 00:57:35.482 --> 00:57:42.440 - she suggested the library. And they actually asked me to play at that party. And I don't know if you 00:57:42.440 --> 00:57:43.198 - know this, 00:57:43.458 --> 00:57:50.488 - But the original entrance to the building was this way. And you walked in and there was a huge foyer 00:57:50.488 --> 00:57:58.145 - and circular staircases on both sides. And they set me up on a little table underneath one of the stairwells. 00:57:58.145 --> 00:58:05.385 - And people were going back into the main library to participate and talk. And then they wanted to dance 00:58:05.385 --> 00:58:10.814 - and came back out to the foyer area. So I had been playing for maybe an hour. 00:58:11.138 --> 00:58:19.720 - And a guy that I actually knew was up on the stairwell and he had an epileptic seizure and fell off 00:58:19.720 --> 00:58:28.473 - of the stairs onto the table with all the musical equipment. They came, the EMTs came and he ended up 00:58:28.473 --> 00:58:37.141 - being fine. He wasn't injured at all. Unfortunately, one of the turntables was very injured. The arm 00:58:37.141 --> 00:58:40.574 - was like sticking up the air like that. 00:58:40.770 --> 00:58:49.706 - But the rest of the night, I just played them one turn table and people were fine with it. But anyway, 00:58:49.706 --> 00:58:58.815 - I just wanted to bring that up to mention that the parties that he was talking about actually took place 00:58:58.815 --> 00:59:07.838 - in this building. Thank you. Do I have any other hand in the audience? National Women's Music Festival. 00:59:13.762 --> 00:59:20.384 - So the first time I ever came to Bloomington was actually for the National Music Festival in 1985. I 00:59:20.384 --> 00:59:27.071 - won't tell you the story about how I ended up here, but I was a student at Purdue. I was a veterinary 00:59:27.071 --> 00:59:33.693 - student at Purdue. And I met my wife here that weekend. Well, I'd met her before, but we kind of got 00:59:33.693 --> 00:59:40.446 - together that weekend. And a few years later, we got together a little bit more permanently than that. 00:59:40.770 --> 00:59:50.304 - But that was my first introduction to Bloomington, and it just felt like safe place, and it was a place 00:59:50.304 --> 00:59:59.929 - that I could move to once I got out of school. I'm not really telling, I hopefully am not telling anyone 00:59:59.929 --> 01:00:09.187 - something they don't know, but for all the laudatory things we say about Bloomington in the past and 01:00:09.187 --> 01:00:10.654 - in the present, 01:00:10.978 --> 01:00:22.999 - bubble you all live in and I still admire has been pierced. And most specifically, most recently, as 01:00:22.999 --> 01:00:35.021 - hopefully you all know, with the Kinsey Institute. I would guess that some of you are not aware that 01:00:35.021 --> 01:00:40.734 - the Student Center, when it was first proposed, 01:00:42.402 --> 01:00:53.797 - Republican troglodytes in the legislature at the time said, you cannot use state money to have a center 01:00:53.797 --> 01:01:04.863 - for homosexuals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it has been, though it's in a building owned 01:01:04.863 --> 01:01:12.094 - by the university, it has been privately funded for the most part 01:01:12.642 --> 01:01:30.454 - all of those years. And now, the Kinsey Institute has been forced to do the same thing. Right, right, 01:01:30.454 --> 01:01:39.710 - exactly. At the risk of hitting on my soapbox again, 01:01:41.474 --> 01:01:53.859 - If there's anyone in this room who, good hearted and as intelligent as you might be, are under the delusion 01:01:53.859 --> 01:02:05.670 - that we are not in danger, let me apprise you that we are. They want to erase us from history. I don't 01:02:05.670 --> 01:02:10.142 - expect concentration camps, et cetera. 01:02:10.274 --> 01:02:26.156 - But you can do a hell of a lot of damage without that. And we need to be fighting for our lives again. 01:02:26.156 --> 01:02:35.870 - And I hope if you have a few extra pennies, you will help keep 01:02:37.986 --> 01:02:49.348 - Kenzie Institute open, you'll help keep the culture center open. You will contribute to a plan, I understand, 01:02:49.348 --> 01:02:59.884 - of a possible off-campus independent center. And in addition to thanking Annabel and Holly, I want to 01:02:59.884 --> 01:03:07.838 - thank each of you for coming and for Donna for participating too. Thank you. 01:03:08.770 --> 01:03:17.550 - Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. And please do leave me your name so I can crack you down and 01:03:17.550 --> 01:03:26.588 - interview you. Take care. Have a good night. Real quick, hi everyone. My name's Daniel. I'm the director 01:03:26.588 --> 01:03:35.454 - here. We have some thank you cards because we really appreciate your time and what you've done for us. 01:03:35.650 --> 01:03:42.903 - So there's one for each of you, and we have flowers on the table for each of you. And Annabelle, we 01:03:42.903 --> 01:03:50.157 - have some for you, because of all your hard work and hosting. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so 01:03:50.157 --> 01:03:57.048 - much for putting this on, for supporting us. Absolutely. Wonderful. Are you still working with 01:03:57.048 --> 01:04:05.534 - the Commission? Yes. Yes. The Human Rights Commission. Right. Right. We could still take your discrimination claims. 01:04:05.858 --> 01:04:22.526 - Yes, she's a volunteer here, but her job is working with the people who fought through its many iterations. 01:04:35.906 --> 01:04:47.175 - But as an activist for 50-some years, one of the things that I learned, pleasantly surprised, 01:04:47.175 --> 01:04:59.643 - is by being out, by being yourselves, if nothing else, you may now know how many people you touch. They 01:04:59.643 --> 01:05:05.278 - might not be able to be out themselves as you. 01:05:05.634 --> 01:05:19.478 - but to see you and surviving and laughing as well as weeping, et cetera. So self affirmation is really 01:05:19.478 --> 01:05:33.188 - something that it has an energy of itself. So keep doing that. We need it again now more than we have 01:05:33.188 --> 01:05:35.070 - even when BGA 01:05:35.234 --> 01:05:45.392 - was here, and what's the bar that's so popular on Kirkwood? You all know that this is not a fruit stand 01:05:45.392 --> 01:05:55.160 - story. What is the bar? Don't worry. Oh, Nix. Oh, Nix? Yes, Nix. In 1971, Nix put up, because there 01:05:55.160 --> 01:06:04.830 - were so many gays going there, they recognized him, they put up a sign, this is not a fruit stand. 01:06:06.338 --> 01:06:16.591 - What was then Bloomington Gay Liberation Front picketed them, leafleted, exposed their bigotry, and 01:06:16.591 --> 01:06:22.846 - the sign came down. I wasn't here then, so I can't remember.