Jim Andris, Facebook

GayTalk: St. Louis' First LGBTQ Radio Show (KADI)

In 2005, Colin Murphy, writing for the Vital Voice, published an article, KDHX: the station that brought our voice out of the closet.

GLBT radio started in the Gateway City when 88.1 KDHX FM, St. Louis Community Radio signed on the air on October 14, 1987 at 12:14 a.m.. Just two years later, in June 1989, "Coming Out of Hiding" made its debut on the same dial. It was primarily a queer music show featuring some interviews and news and ran through December 1998. During much of its run, it was hosted by Denise Hill and friends.

Murphy goes on to identify in sequence the 1994 show "Out and Open," "Lavender Limelight" in 2000, "OUTspoken" in 2002, and "Living Out Loud" in 2004. You can check out the full article which is reposted here.

I contacted Colin in 2005 to inform him that he missed the earlier KADI FM program "GayTalk" that ran from late Spring of 1979 to late Spring of 1980. It is the purpose of this article to establish the legitimacy of that claim.

Early in 1979 someone from KADI contacted Byron Davidson about the possibility of having a short, gay-themed show on the station. Byron discussed it with me, Jim Andris, and we decided we would offer to co-host the show by taking turns every other week. Byron was teaching philosophy and literature at Southwestern Illinois College, then Belleville Area College, and I was teaching philosophy of education at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Both of us were heavily involved at the time in both the gay community and in our teaching. Byron was especially involved with the Gay Hotline and I was President of the Gay Academic Union. The Hotline was orgainzed under the auspices of GAU.

To give you an idea of the programming content for GayTalk, I've included a rough draft of the programming schedule for the summer of 1979. We interviewed knowledgeable community leaders like Roy Birchard, Ray Lake, Jack Porter, and Bill Cordes. Also included were interviews with strong allies like Rosanda Richards and Adelaide Balaban. Over the year, we had book authors as guests. Two that come to mind are Carolyn Griffin, co-author of Beyond Acceptance and Don Clark, Loving Someone Gay.

Another feature is that sometimes Byron and I would offer a book review or a personal point of view on a topic. I've included the text for two of these, a book review of Arthur Evans' "Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture" and a story and opinion about whether the Bible condemns homosexuality. The program aired at 5:00 a.m. but we would occasionally hear from people who turned in. One person, Gil Fisher, after hearing the review of Arthur Evans book, called and invited me to lunch, and we became fast friends until his passing in 2009.

As the program progressed that year, it became more difficult to find new interviewees and fresh topics. When we asked the station if we could replay some of the more interesting interviews we had conducted, we were surprised and disappointed to find out that they regularly erased these interviews because the station had only a limited number of tapes.

In 1980, Byron became seriously ill and could not participate. (He was later cured of the problem.) My work schedule and responsibilities had increased and so in June of 1980, I decided that Byron and I would take a leave of absence.