KRJY Announcer 0:03 St Louis are pre-recorded. Joy 96 FM, John Hilgeman 0:19 Good morning. This is John Hilgeman for Lambda Reports, a program by and for the lesbian and gay community in the St Louis area. Today I'm going to share some thoughts from the keynote address I gave at this year's Lesbian and Gay Pridefest. John Hilgeman 0:35 My people, who are they? They are the queers, the fairies, the clowns in tall hats, the queens, the Marys, the ones who chase fats, the homos, the Lesbos, the faggots qflame, the machos, the butches, the dykes who drive cranes, the leathers and the ladies and gents in leather and lace, the athletes who leap, who play ball and who race, the butchers, the bakers, the priests and the nuns, the artists, the Hoosiers. Out of 10, we are one. John Hilgeman 1:06 My buddy, Patrick Leonard liked this poem. I'm dedicating my remarks today to him, to Tony, Van, Sebastian, Dale, David, Mike, Rob, Jim, Ron, and the dozens of friends and acquaintances I've lost to AIDS and to those among us still fighting the disease. John Hilgeman 1:21 AIDS is one of the latest crises in our community, weakening and killing thousands from all walks of life. Our response, and that of our friends, to this epidemic has been unprecedented in recent history. It is a response of courage and love. EFA, Act Up, the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the NAMES project, and hosts of other service organizations, creations of our community, have mobilized to fight AIDS, And we can find inspiration in the stories of countless members of our community and friends of our community, of lovers and spouses, family members and friends. John Hilgeman 2:06 Stanzas from a War Zone John Hilgeman 2:10 Death trudges its bloody feet across our freshly laundered lives. It strikes at one and then another of our friends and splatters us with grief. Stunned and angered by the apathy of eyeless politicians and dogma smitten saints, by empty ads that say to call a number, by naked bigotry and fear and by AIDS itself. We see our loved ones slip away, and death scything, undeterred. Our energies depleted, unable to make connections with those close to us not touched by this disease, we cling to one another for support and drain each other dry, then turn on one another in anger and frustration.But in our better moments, we gaze into the eyes of those we love whose bodies bear the weight of AIDS and watch the Phoenix soar to yet new heights. And all our pain and anger matters not when we have felt and seen and heard the souls of those we love. Then those of us with AIDS and those without lock arms together, steeled for war and face to face with Holocaust itself, we boldly move against the foe. John Hilgeman 3:19 AIDS has intensified attacks from our enemies, but it has also brought our existence and our love to the attention of millions, and has shown our human face. AIDS has also challenged us to change our sexual behavior radically. That isn't always an easy thing to do, but if we love ourselves and others enough to want to survive, we'll play safe. Or, as Romanowski and Phillips put it more colorfully in one of their songs, "Don't use your penis for a brain." John Hilgeman 3:54 AIDS is only one of the challenges we have had to face over the centuries. The Roman Empire, in its decline, passed laws against us. Church and state branded us during the Inquisition as heretics and burned gay men at the stake, like the wooden faggots that were added to the flames to make the fires hotter. And how many of the women burned alive as witches were really women whose lesbianism made them threatening? Hitler sent a quarter million of us to death in prison camps and gas chambers. In Iran, we're given a choice of how we want to be executed. In the Soviet Union, police let youth gangs attack and kill us. In the US as gay bashings increase, legislators whose salaries are paid by our taxes, tell lies about us, and religious fundamentalists of all stripes use their interpretations of Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon, to justify their bigotry. These are only a few examples of the challenges we as a people have had to face. Plus we have to face sexism, racism, ageism, exploitation and numberless other problems in our community as well. And yet face these problems and challenges, we do with cunning and courage, and we continue to survive and even thrive as a people. John Hilgeman 5:13 Why do people hate us so much? Why are they so afraid? Maybe one of the reasons is that those who hate us the most actually hate themselves. Ode to a Homophobe. I am your shadow, your underbelly, your most hidden fantasy, your secret shame, your unspeakable thought I am your astounding terror. You try to fashion me into a joke, into a hate-filled hiss and blow me away like the words formed by your mouth, but I stick in your throat, and you gag. You attempt to rip me out of your body and mind. You search me out, pelt me with excrement, beat me with fists and chains, and I am all the while, deeply embedded in your own flesh. I nibble at your womanhood/manhood myth like rats nibbling at cheese. I am the sum of your most hated enemies, more loathsome than those you call nigger, commie, atheist, kike, whore. To you, I have no past, no religion, no morality, no family, no face, no name. To you, I am Satan incarnate, seducer of your children, corrupter of the young, destroyer of the family, cancer of the nation, thorn in the flesh. I am homosexual. John Hilgeman 6:36 Maybe another reason people are so afraid is that we challenge their world view and are often the people on the cutting edge of social change. We are the artists and poets who challenge society's myths. We are the members of Act Up who challenge the health care system. We are the visionaries and spiritual leaders who interpret the meaning of life. We are leaders in the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and when the story is told, probably the liberation movements in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Latin America, and China, as well. We are society's healers and mediators who won't be forced into roles. We are the bold women, the compassionate men, the healthcare professionals and musicians. Neither solely female nor solely male, we show the qualities of both and by our very selves, we let others in our society know that by being truly themselves, they can be more than the roles they were trained to be. John Hilgeman 7:34 To people who base their lives and their worlds on rigid ideas of right and wrong, of male and female, to people whose worldview is static and unchanging and whose power is based on the status quo and the suppression of others, we pose a tremendous threat. If homophobia were just an enemy outside of us, we could recognize and deal with it much more easily, but it is a part of our own psyche fed to us with our mother's milk. A chapter on lesbian and gay youth suicides from a 1989 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services addresses the consequences of homophobia. It says that gay and lesbian youths are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other youths, and may comprise up to 30% of completed suicides annually. Gay youths are often mistreated by their families, peers and churches, and are at a greater risk of turning to drugs and alcohol to handle the pressures. A large percentage of runaways are gay youths, leading into leaving intolerable situations. On the streets they often become involved in prostitution and drugs, and are at high risk for contracting AIDS and other diseases. The root of the problem of a gay youth suicide says the report is a society that discriminates against and stigmatizes homosexuals, while failing to recognize that a substantial number of its youth has a gay or lesbian orientation. John Hilgeman 8:59 To this, I add that sexism and homophobia are two of the forms of emotional sexual abuse that are promoted, sanctioned and legislated by family, school, church and state alike. None of this is news to us. We know all too well from our own experience the tremendous difficulty of growing up lesbian or gay, and the extensive restrictions placed on our liberties because of other people's ideas of God, nature and social order. Those of us who have survived the pain of growing up gay have a unique role to play in making the world a safer and healthier place for our lesbian and gay youth to grow up. A couple months ago, a friend of mine went to see Long Time Companion, the movie about the effects of AIDS on the gay community in New York. When the lights in the theater went down, the movie went on, and gay characters began appearing and interacting on the scene, a straight couple sitting next to him began making fun of the characters. My friend, and angry as hell, turned to them and went off on them, telling them to shut up or leave. His voice is loud. People in the row in front heard him turned around and went off on a couple as well. They shut up and sat quietly through the rest of the movie. I can only imagine what they had to say to each other on their way home. John Hilgeman 10:21 More and more of us are refusing to sit back and take garbage from our detractors, and as a result, a lot of positive things are happening. St Louis City has a bias crimes ordinance that includes sexual orientation because gay activists were involved. People from across the state have been lobbying the legislature to have sexual orientation included in a hate crimes bill, and to have the criminalization of private lesbian and gay sex between consenting adults repealed. A national hate crimes bill includes sexual orientation, and the Justice Department is now gathering statistics through a hotline on crimes against us. An openly gay St Louis man ran for state representative, and even though he lost, he paved the way for gay candidates in the future. Lesbian and gay people and their friends in the St Louis area are writing and signing letters to local papers and are appearing on the radio and TV. We have newspapers and bookstores, billboards, restaurants and bars, radio shows and church groups and our celebration of gay pride at Pridefest gets larger each year. John Hilgeman 11:28 More and more of us are refusing to take abuse and violence sitting down. And why should we? We are a people with a long and glorious history that includes the philosophers Socrates and Plato and the poet Sappho and her female lovers on the island of Lesbos, a history that includes the green garbed fairies who populated the British Isles and parts of Europe, and the Celtic Queen Boudicca, who led her armies against the Romans. It includes the Amazons of Northwest Africa, the Native American shamans and the medieval nuns and monks who wrote love poems to their same-sex lovers. And is it so far fetched to think that a Jewish carpenter who never married, hung around with a bunch of men, and treated women as equals was one of us as well? Our history includes those who composed some of the early Mesopotamian and Greek myths, and our history includes countless millions of other people from all races, nations, characters and walks of life throughout human history. Why should we passively accept violence and abuse we are, as Desiderata says, children of the universe, we have a right to be here, no less than the trees and the stars. We are citizens of the world and citizens of this country. We have as much a right to be true to ourselves, to love whom we choose, and to be safe in our persons and dwellings as Jesse Helms and Jean Dixon, Phyllis, Schlafly and John O'Connor. John Hilgeman 12:54 And as shocking as it might seem to some, our very homosexuality is a treasure, a gift, not only to us as individuals, but to our world as well. What would the world be without our art and our culture, our compassion and strength, our love and spirituality and magic, our androgyny and celebration, our courage and tenacity, our vulnerability and color. Even if by some perverse magic, all gay people were to be eliminated from the face of the earth tonight, the straight couples of the world would unwittingly begin to produce a new generation of gay people in the morning. Nature itself demands our existence. Each morning, noon and night, I say, O God, I thank you that I'm gay. You breathed me forth from Earth and womb and set me on a road strewn with challenge, pain, joy and rain, my life and loves, Your gift to me. The stuff of which I made, a mixture of sunlight and of shade, of tempered steel, fertile earth, flowering bush and roaring stream, the songs I hear, complex and clear, crisp and queer, their sounds and words, the notes of birds and rustling trees, of rushing winds, buzzing bees, of women, men and boys and girls, and music from beyond this world, the same things I see in Earth and tree and Hill and sky and young man's eye, the things I smell, the fragrance of a flower, incense in an hour of prayer, the foods I taste, the flesh I touch, all fill my senses over much and nudge me into ecstasy. Some call my love unnatural. Yet you and I together smile. We know the secret all the while, all things Transcribed by https://otter.ai