Charles Koehler  0:02  
Good morning. I'm Charles Koehler and this is Lambda Reports, a program by and for the St. Louis lesbian and gay community. Our guest today is Bill Cordes, a native St. Louis and who has been a prominent figure in the St. Louis community for many years. Bill has been a publisher, a sponsor of Growing American Youth, which is a support group for gays and lesbian youth, and was one of the founders of the current Gay and Lesbian Hotline. He's also the owner and manager of Our World Too, a bookstore serving the gay and lesbian community. Bill's returning again to take a look at the events surrounding Stonewall and some of the people who influenced lesbian and gay history. We'll also be talking about Pride Fest month. Bill as we begin, Gay Pride Month. What is the purpose of Gay Pride celebrations?

Bill Cordes  1:02  
I think the chief purpose is so that gay people can feel good about themselves. A lot of people have trouble with the word pride. I look at it myself as meaning we have nothing to be ashamed of. We have a lot to to feel good about. And the celebrations point out to me many of the things that we have to feel good about. Great,

Charles Koehler  1:25  
great, can you give us some examples of some of the things that are in the way of pride.

Bill Cordes  1:34  
Gay people have contributed a great deal to the world throughout history. Many, many prominent authors, many politicians, although they were not openly so throughout history have been gay, and many scientific developments and things like that have come from the gay community. If you look at the current AIDS crisis, you'll see that some of the first work in bringing the crisis to public knowledge. Some of the leading work and how to deal with these patients was done by the gay community.

Charles Koehler  2:14  
What sort of national figures do you feel have had the greatest public impact on the progress for civil rights for gays and lesbians?

Bill Cordes  2:25  
There's been a lot but I would say probably in the political arena, Harvey Milk who was assassinated in office for being gay, Elaine Noble who these two people were, were probably the two first openly elected gay and lesbian people in the country. In the sports world, David Kopay was the first major athlete to come out and start dispelling some of the stereotypes. He was a major football player, he was running back. In, say, many of our authors, people like Rita Mae Brown, Malcolm Boyd, who were popular authors across the board, not just known in the gay community. I think all of these people have influenced us, as well as many, many others.

Charles Koehler  3:11  
You mentioned Harvey Milk, and he's cited by many people as being one of the preeminent gay political activists. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about him for our listeners that aren't as familiar with the story behind Harvey knock.

Bill Cordes  3:33  
Harvey Milk, was born in New York, he moved to California to San Francisco specifically and opened a camera store. He became the center of quite a number of people who were working for gay rights; he used his camera store as kind of a headquarters for some of the early rights movements in the San Francisco area. He began to have political aspirations and was encouraged by many of the people who supported him to run for office, he ran for the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco and lost, he ran another time and lost. About that time, San Francisco changed the method that they were using for electing supervisors. And rather than having at large elections, they started electing supervisors from particular districts. The district that Harvey represented or wanted to represent was a district that was a mixed district that had a great many of gay and lesbian people living in it. And he won the election very easily. While he was on the board of supervisors, he worked for not just gay rights, but the rights of all individuals and he was a person who believed very strongly that unless all people are free, nobody is and he was a very popular man, both in the gay and and in the non gay communities.

Charles Koehler  5:00  
Could you tell us a little bit about the the incident that led to his assassination?

Bill Cordes  5:07  
There was another man on the board who was elected at the same time Harvey was. His name was Dan White. Dan White was a former police officer and a former fireman. He was elected from a very conservative district, and he was the only person on the board that that Harvey Milk had had a lot of run ins with. Dan was was pretty much considered an ultra conservative. At one point, Dan White decided that he could no longer be a part of the Board of Supervisors, because everybody was always citing with Harvey Milk or with Mayor Moscone, who was also very liberal. He went in and turned in his resignation to Mayor Moscone. He then had second thoughts about it and went back and said, No, I'm not resigning. But by that time wherever Moscone had someone else in mind, and said, I have accepted your resignation, you are no longer part of the Board. At some point after that, Dan White, loaded again, put extra ammunition in his pocket, went through a basement window of City Hall to avoid metal detectors, went into the mayor's office and shot the mayor and then walked down the hall to Harvey Milk office and shot Harvey Milk. Dan was later given a sentence based on manslaughter, based on the fact that he was temporarily insane from having too much sugar in his body from junk food. It was called the Twinkie Defense, because he eaten a lot of Twinkies that day. That particular court decision in which he was not given a sentence for first degree murder, but rather a much reduced sentence caused a near riot in San Francisco. Actually I shouldn't say near riot, police cars were overturned and burned. City Hall was attacked. There was a lot of bad feelings about what had come out of the court that day.

Charles Koehler  7:09  
And some of the feeling in the community was that he was given that Dan White was given a reduced sentence because he had shot a gay person as opposed to straight person.

Bill Cordes  7:22  
Absolutely. If somebody had snuck in the basement of City Hall in any other city and shot the mayor and a member of the Board of Aldermen or Board of Supervisors, it was very easily a planned thing in there, there probably is no doubt that the sentence would have been different.

Charles Koehler  7:40  
One of the things that Harvey Milk really worked for is equality for all people gay or non gay. What what do you think that it will take before gays and lesbians are recognized as as equal members of the community at large?

Bill Cordes  7:57  
I think two things, number one, a lot of work. We have to first believe that we can make those changes. And then we have to believe that the system works and go out and make it work for us. I think the other thing is that we need to be visible. I hear an awful lot of people say Oh, but you know, the drag queens and everything are do a lot of damage to our community. Every community has people that set the stereotypes. In other communities, you have a visible good, quote unquote, section of the community to balance that in our section all the quote unquote good people are hiding. We need to be visible, we need to show people that we're out there and that we are a part of their community and that we work with them every day. And

Charles Koehler  8:43  
that, of course, is part of what the Gay Pride celebrations are all about. That's part of it. Yes.

Bill Cordes  8:49  
That's a big part of it.

Charles Koehler  8:50  
Okay. Can you give us an idea of how these celebrations have changed over the years, let's say locally from when they first started?

Bill Cordes  8:58  
Yeah, in St. Louis. We started about 10 years ago, and the first celebration was held on the campus of Washington University for celebration in St. Louis was held at Washington University. We had a few rooms, we had some workshops, and we had some films and that was pretty much it. There was there was local publicity in the gay press. And that's about about all there were no marches there. There were nothing like that. The following year. We decided I shouldn't say wait because I wasn't very much involved with the decision. There was a decision made on the part of a lesbian group called the Magnolia group. I'm unclear on the name but Magnolia was in it. To have a Walk for Charity. It was organized by a lesbian group. However, it was not to be known as a lesbian walk, but rather Walk for Charity. And the purpose was to raise money for are a lot of different charities around town. At the same time, a new committee had been formed for the purpose of celebrating gay and lesbian pride. They had a lot of other activities planned and decided to coordinate the dates so that the the Walk for Charity would would happen at the same time as Pride celebration, which happened to be in April that year. Either the following year or the year after, St. Louis decided to get in step with the timing that the rest of the nation was using, by celebrating the Stonewall riots at the end of June and coordinate our dates with with the dates that everybody else was celebrating. And each year, there's been a few more events, a few more things happen, more people involved. I think one of the most significant things that happens with the Pride celebrations is gay and lesbian people get together and communicate. We sit down, we plan we talk about our history. Representatives from all the various different groups around town get together. And I think there's a great deal of building of self confidence and self esteem in these plantings and a great deal of learning to communicate and building networks. Great,

Charles Koehler  11:14  
great. Can you give us an idea of what you'd like to see happen on June the 25th of this year at the pride fest.

Bill Cordes  11:22  
I'd like to see everybody come out and have a good time and learn something about their history and feel good about themselves and go home feeling gee, you know, maybe there's more I can be doing.

Charles Koehler  11:35  
And it sounds as though that this has been the sort of things that have occurred in the past years?

Bill Cordes  11:41  
I think so yeah, I think the mood of the crowd is has been very up very positive. After afterwards, I never hear anything, but how much fun people had. And I hear a lot of very good thought provoking statements about what people learned and and how they would like to carry it on. They don't always accomplish what they say they're going to, but I think we focus at that time. And that focus is good.

Charles Koehler  12:13  
Great. We've got about a minute left. I'm sure that many of our listeners have seen the billboard that is on highway 40, near Jefferson. And I was wondering if you could give us an idea of what sort of impact you feel that that might have on the celebration for this year.

Bill Cordes  12:33  
I think maybe the greatest impact will be among gay and lesbian people who start looking at and say, Gee, we've we've really arrived.

Charles Koehler  12:41  
Great, great. Well, that's about all the time we have for today, Bill. I'd like to to thank you for being our guest and sharing your views on the past and the future of gay and lesbian culture and history and the Pride celebrations. And speaking of which, this month is an opportunity for our listeners to participate in part of this culture. Since of course June is Pride Fest Month, and a complete listing of all events can be found in the 1989 Pride Fest Guide. It's free and available at Our World Too, Left Bank Books, and other businesses supporting the gay and lesbian community. We urge all of you, as Bill said, to show up at the Pride Fest activities and show your Pride. So make plans now to attend the Pride Fest picnic and parade on Sunday, June the 25th at Forest Park. We hope to see you there then. This has been Charles Koehler for Lambda Reports program by and for the St. Louis lesbian and gay community. Join us again next week and be a Lambda listener.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai