Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: So when I think of you know my father who
Speaker 2: you know? He was from bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and he
Speaker 2: enlisted in the army when he was seventeen. For him,
Speaker 2: World War Two was the I think the dominant shaping
Speaker 2: experience of his life. It was what shaped him. And
Speaker 2: for my generation, AIDS was our war, and we when
Speaker 2: we were in it, that's how we thought of it.
Speaker 2: We were in a war. I remember getting arrested blockading
Speaker 2: in the White House one year on World Aide's Day.
Speaker 2: We just sat down in front of the White House,
Speaker 2: gates blockaded. We were all handcuffed, putting buses taken away.
Speaker 2: We were just felt like, oh, this is part of
Speaker 2: our job as warriors.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Richard Burns, the board chair
Speaker 1: of the American LGBTQ Plus Museum, opening in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: It will be the official home for the nation's vast
Speaker 1: queer history. We'll learn how Richard survived some of the
Speaker 1: bleakest moments of that history and why it became important
Speaker 1: to him to preserve it. From my Heart podcasts, I'm
Speaker 1: Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved. As
Speaker 1: a journalist, I report on shame and how it impacts people,
Speaker 1: and over and over again. What people tell me is
Speaker 1: that the root of shame is isolation. Not just the
Speaker 1: feeling of being alone, but the feeling of being lonely.
Speaker 1: I relate to that a lot. Growing up. I don't
Speaker 1: remember even a single person who was gay, And what
Speaker 1: I was told about gay people from my church and
Speaker 1: from the kids in my middle school health class was
Speaker 1: that gay people were weak, they died of AIDS, and
Speaker 1: they went to Hell. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: stayed in the closet for so long was because I
Speaker 1: didn't want that to be me. But when I came
Speaker 1: out my senior year of college, I watched the movie
Speaker 1: Milk for the first time years after it came out.
Speaker 1: It's about Harvey Milk, the trail blazing gay activists in
Speaker 1: the seventies, and I remember being astounded. He was strong
Speaker 1: and magnetic and successful things I never associated with being gay,
Speaker 1: and watching that movie gave me an image of how
Speaker 1: fulfilling my life could be one day. My next guest,
Speaker 1: Richard Burns, is passionate about putting more of those images
Speaker 1: of queer strength in front of young people. He's the
Speaker 1: board chair of the American LGBTQ Plus Museum, which will
Speaker 1: open in New York in twenty twenty seven, and he
Speaker 1: spent a lifetime in activism making queer history. But similar
Speaker 1: to me, he didn't have very many role models growing
Speaker 1: up either. So Richard, let's take it back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning. When was the first moment that you knew
Speaker 1: you were gay? Well?
Speaker 2: I was born in nineteen fifty five in Stuvensant Town
Speaker 2: here in New York City, right above the Lower East Side,
Speaker 2: and when I was probably six or seven, my earliest
Speaker 2: memories are of being attracted to men. And at that age,
Speaker 2: Westerns were very popular on TV, like Fury and things
Speaker 2: like that. Also at the same time, Star Trek, Mission
Speaker 2: Impossible TV shows that's where handsome men were, and that
Speaker 2: awoke a consciousness in me of being attracted to men,
Speaker 2: and I remember there was a singer named Ricky Nelson
Speaker 2: who was on a TV show.
Speaker 1: Very Handsome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I remember having a big crush on Ricky
Speaker 2: Nelson and mentioning it to my father, and you know,
Speaker 2: I remember him being carfed and just saying, well, you know,
Speaker 2: boys don't say that about other boys. And it was
Speaker 2: like a revelation to me, like, oh my god, I
Speaker 2: have exposed myself in a way that I made sure
Speaker 2: not to do again for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Did you have any role models growing up?
Speaker 2: I remember as an undergraduate at Hamilton College in upstate
Speaker 2: New York, when Leonard Mattlevich was on the cover of
Speaker 2: Time magazine.
Speaker 1: And for the listeners who don't know who that is.
Speaker 2: He was an openly gay serviceman in the US military.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think he was expelled, but he was
Speaker 2: like he came out as a proud gay man, and
Speaker 2: he was a news sensation and being on the cover
Speaker 2: of Time magazine that meant something in those days. So
Speaker 2: he was a major news figure at that time. And
Speaker 2: I remember grabbing the magazine in the school library and
Speaker 2: it was a reflection back to me that we existed,
Speaker 2: that I existed, and that you know, at that time,
Speaker 2: each queer kid, lesbian, gay, whatever, you thought you were
Speaker 2: the only one. You didn't know there were gay people
Speaker 2: who led adult lives, happy lives, constructive lives. And so
Speaker 2: if you think you're the only one and you don't
Speaker 2: see a pathway to a future, it can fill you
Speaker 2: with despair. So seeing the mirror of a gay man
Speaker 2: on the cover of Time magazine was like, Oh, there
Speaker 2: is someone out there. Even if he's being kicked out
Speaker 2: of the military, he's alive. He's a grown up.
Speaker 1: And when did you actually end up coming out.
Speaker 2: I came out my sophomore year at Hamilton College, which
Speaker 2: was probably late seventy four early nineteen seventy five. Before
Speaker 2: coming out, i'd really struggled with I didn't see a
Speaker 2: future for myself. I didn't care about my academics. I
Speaker 2: was just in despair. And once I came out that
Speaker 2: really changed and I was much more filled with energy
Speaker 2: and possibility.
Speaker 1: What was the very first time that you felt a
Speaker 1: sense of queer community.
Speaker 2: I think initially in college with some of the other
Speaker 2: gay and lesbian kids.
Speaker 1: How did you find them?
Speaker 2: Well, one day I was this is really what helped
Speaker 2: me come out. I was going into one of the
Speaker 2: dining halls, and there was an eight and a half
Speaker 2: by eleventh sign hanging on a wall the entrance to
Speaker 2: the dining hall. All it says was Sapho, the words
Speaker 2: Sapho and seven thirty pm in a room in one
Speaker 2: of the dorms, a meeting room. And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, Sapho is a lesbian poet. Maybe this is
Speaker 2: a lesbian writers group, or maybe it's a gay student union,
Speaker 2: and so I thought, I'm going to go. I was
Speaker 2: super nervous, and I walked into the little meeting room
Speaker 2: and indeed it was a lesbian and gay caucus, if
Speaker 2: you will. And again there were more lesbians and maybe
Speaker 2: it's like you guys, oh yeah, very much so. But
Speaker 2: it was very exciting. It made me feel exuberant and excited,
Speaker 2: and you know, just bouncing up in the air, excited.
Speaker 1: And after college you kind of jump right into what
Speaker 1: is now a decorated career of LGBT justice, But back
Speaker 1: in those days that wasn't very popular to go into
Speaker 1: queer work. In the late seventies, you start working at
Speaker 1: the queer paper of Record is what we know of
Speaker 1: it now, the Gay Community News. What had inspired you
Speaker 1: to kind of go from college to LGBT activism.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, in hindsight, again, I was very lucky.
Speaker 2: By the time. I was a junior or senior, and
Speaker 2: I had a younger friend, a young woman a couple
Speaker 2: of years behind me, who is from Boston, and she said,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a weekly newspaper in Boston called Gay
Speaker 2: Community News. And I thought, I'm going to write and
Speaker 2: get a copy of that, and I did so. The
Speaker 2: weekly newspaper began coming to the library and I would
Speaker 2: read it each week, and it said in the back
Speaker 2: it said it was produced by a collective and that
Speaker 2: people could join the collective. And I had a friend
Speaker 2: from high school who was going to divinity school at
Speaker 2: Harvard in Boston, and I thought, I could move to Boston,
Speaker 2: become a waiter and start volunteering at this newspaper, and
Speaker 2: I can live with my friend from high school, Peggy,
Speaker 2: And so I sort of did so. Three bedroom, one
Speaker 2: bathroom apartment. I remember the rent in nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 2: was two hundred and twenty five.
Speaker 1: Don't even tell me.
Speaker 2: Each bedroom was seventy five dollars. I started volunteering at GCN,
Speaker 2: which was indeed a collective and ultimately got a job
Speaker 2: as the office manager, and then later I became the
Speaker 2: managing editor in nineteen seventy one. I mean, there were
Speaker 2: like I remember Harvey Milk calling up yelling at our
Speaker 2: news editor on the phone, and we didn't It's not
Speaker 2: like you. We didn't identify as a journalists. We identified
Speaker 2: as gay activists, and we viewed the newspaper sort of
Speaker 2: as a weapon of gay liberation, as an organizing tool.
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about gay equality. We talked about lesbian
Speaker 2: and gay liberation.
Speaker 1: Well, what did that term mean liberation to you as
Speaker 1: opposed to equality.
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly meant wanting a gay rights bill, but
Speaker 2: it didn't mean wanting gay marriage. It meant wanting to
Speaker 2: dismantle the nuclear family. Wow, it didn't mean wanting to
Speaker 2: join the military. It meant dismantling the military state. You know,
Speaker 2: we've all evolved or changed because I'm married gay now,
Speaker 2: But you know, it was a different approach that was
Speaker 2: very widespread among young people at that time, in the
Speaker 2: aftermath of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: We need a whole new society, a new order. Well,
Speaker 1: you participated in the nineteen seventy nine March on Washington
Speaker 1: for gay and lesbian rights. Tell me about that march
Speaker 1: and what was it for and what was your memory
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Well, in the nineteen seventies there was not really a
Speaker 2: truly national lesbian gay movement, was really regional movements. Remember
Speaker 2: this is before email or texts. It was before fax machines.
Speaker 2: Most people didn't have computers. If you had an electric typewriter,
Speaker 2: you were fancy. And long distance calls were hugely expensive
Speaker 2: and so different people. Some people credit Harvey Milk before
Speaker 2: he was killed, some people credit others. We're having the
Speaker 2: idea that we need a national march for lesbian gay
Speaker 2: liberation and equality. I was probably twenty three, and here
Speaker 2: I am in this friends meetinghouse where all these people
Speaker 2: fromund the country are yelling at each other. You have
Speaker 2: like the gay Democrats from San Diego and the radical
Speaker 2: black lesbians from New York City, the Salsa Soul sisters,
Speaker 2: and most of these people had never met. But we
Speaker 2: had to come together to hammer out what was the
Speaker 2: march going to before, what was it going to be called,
Speaker 2: and what was our list of demands? And so the
Speaker 2: march happened on October fourteenth in nineteen seventy nine and
Speaker 2: at the Gay Community News we did a special edition,
Speaker 2: a Guide to the March, And so my colleague Game
Speaker 2: Hoffman and I rented a small U haul truck was
Speaker 2: bright yellow, filled it up with all these newspapers, and
Speaker 2: we drove it to DC to drop all of these
Speaker 2: papers off. And all the gay bars in DC. So
Speaker 2: all the gay people coming in from around the country,
Speaker 2: where do they go to? Go to the gay bars
Speaker 2: or the feminist bookstores and get the guide to the march.
Speaker 2: But in any case, the march itself was very, very exciting.
Speaker 2: There had really never been a gathering of so many
Speaker 2: gay people together in the United States in one place.
Speaker 1: What did you all accomplish with the march?
Speaker 2: Well, the impact was all these regional movements were now
Speaker 2: the beginning of a national movement because all of these
Speaker 2: people now knew each other. They had gotten to know
Speaker 2: each other fighting and cooperating and collaborating to create this march.
Speaker 2: So there were relationships between leaders around the country in
Speaker 2: ways that hadn't existed before. You know how when you're young,
Speaker 2: you can feel invincible.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, when you're.
Speaker 2: Twenty two or twenty three, And I felt like I'm invincible.
Speaker 2: I'm gay and nobody's going to shut me up. But
Speaker 2: all my friends I wasn't like I was the only one.
Speaker 2: My friends were exactly the same.
Speaker 1: I want to skip ahead a little bit. When was
Speaker 1: your first time hearing about AIDS. Take me to that moment.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was probably around the time that
Speaker 2: the New York Times had the story about Grid gay
Speaker 2: related immuno deficiency. This is fall of eighty one. I
Speaker 2: was having a very active gay life in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: I mean we would go out to bars every night,
Speaker 2: hook up.
Speaker 1: It was you're talking about, like a sex list.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was great, and it was before AIDS. I
Speaker 2: remember sitting at dinner with some friends in San Francisco
Speaker 2: and there were all these theories about how you got
Speaker 2: AIDS because this is before the discovery of the HIV virus. Okay,
Speaker 2: like no one knew anything. And there was one theory that, like, well,
Speaker 2: if you have more than a thousand sex partners, your
Speaker 2: immune system could collapse. Where that came from, or an
Speaker 2: excessive use of poppers that could cause AIDS. I mean, no, people,
Speaker 2: you know, we all believe that I stopped using poppers.
Speaker 2: There was no science and you also have to remember,
Speaker 2: in the minds of the government and the media, the
Speaker 2: mainstream media and in corporate America, gay people were completely disposable.
Speaker 2: And the fact that as it emerged that AIDS affected
Speaker 2: intravenious drug users and gay men, there was a perception
Speaker 2: that like, well, maybe we're better off without those people,
Speaker 2: you know. I remember there was a state legislator in
Speaker 2: California who got a lot of press for calling for
Speaker 2: camps for people with AIDS, William Buckley in the New
Speaker 2: York Times. He was the editor of the National Review,
Speaker 2: and you know, one of the leaders of the right
Speaker 2: in America, the intellectual right. He in an essay and
Speaker 2: the Times said that people with age should be tattooed.
Speaker 1: And you remember how you felt when you read we were.
Speaker 2: So enraging, you know, And the fact that the Times
Speaker 2: would publish that shows you how what they thought of us.
Speaker 2: And remember newspapers and media have style guides, you know
Speaker 2: that reporters and editors follow, and the style guides at
Speaker 2: that time, for like the ap Associated Press, the Times,
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal, you were not allowed to say
Speaker 2: Jordan Comma a gay man. It would it literally was
Speaker 2: Jordan Comma, an avowed homosexual. That was in the style
Speaker 2: guide in that if you go back and look, that's
Speaker 2: how we were referred to. So we really were despicable
Speaker 2: and disposable, and the rage was really building.
Speaker 1: It's the mid eighties and AIDS has become the top
Speaker 1: priority for many gay rights groups. By this point, Richard
Speaker 1: was just entering his thirties. He had graduated from law
Speaker 1: school and made a career out of fighting for gay rights,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eighty six he was hired as the
Speaker 1: executive director of the New York City LGBT Community Center,
Speaker 1: a hugely important hub for AIDS. Organizing the center was
Speaker 1: so transformative because, for the first time, it brought together
Speaker 1: queer people and their ideas from all over the city
Speaker 1: in one dedicated space, and during the AIDS crisis, coming
Speaker 1: together was critical. Initially, Were you scared for yourself?
Speaker 2: Sure? Every time you got a cold, you thought, this
Speaker 2: is it. And I'm not kidding every gay man you knew,
Speaker 2: every friend you had you got a cold. Oh God,
Speaker 2: I wonder if this is it. And also there was
Speaker 2: no HIV test. I don't think I was actually tested
Speaker 2: for the first time, probably until early eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Do you remember your first friend that was impacted by
Speaker 1: AIDS the first time it felt like it was close
Speaker 1: to home.
Speaker 2: I was the chair of a board in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight that created a queer legal organization for New England.
Speaker 2: It's called GLAD Law. Now it was called Gay and
Speaker 2: Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. Steven Salibahar was the guy when
Speaker 2: AIDS happened who I asked if he would be the
Speaker 2: volunteer lawyer who would lead our AIDS law project. And
Speaker 2: so I worked with him a lot, and he was
Speaker 2: a smart lawyer. And my then boyfriend Tom, we used
Speaker 2: to go on vacation with Steve and his boyfriend Ralph,
Speaker 2: and I remember the first time he was hospitalized and
Speaker 2: I went with a friend to visit him and we
Speaker 2: had to put on gowns and masks to go into
Speaker 2: this isolation unit.
Speaker 1: This was the lawyer that you had hired to lead
Speaker 1: the volunteer He was leading the aidsty and ironically, and yes,
Speaker 1: it ultimately died well. In the mid eighties. You then
Speaker 1: go to head up the New York City LGBT Center. Right,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about what the role of
Speaker 1: the center was in the AIDS movement.
Speaker 2: By the time that I came from Boston in December
Speaker 2: December first, nineteen eighty six to be the executive director.
Speaker 2: You know, there were three staff at the center. And
Speaker 2: because of this is before the digital life. Everything was
Speaker 2: through flyers, phone chains and the mail, and the center
Speaker 2: published a monthly newsletter and calendar. And so you're organizing
Speaker 2: lesbian gay journalists of New York and you want to
Speaker 2: start attracting people, and so you book a room. We're
Speaker 2: going to put that in our calendar, and then we're
Speaker 2: going to mail that calendar for free to anyone who
Speaker 2: wants it. And by at some point in the nineties,
Speaker 2: there were like eighty thousand subscribers, and people would read
Speaker 2: about your meeting, and people that you didn't know and
Speaker 2: didn't know each other would come, and suddenly you would
Speaker 2: have an organization and a network. And so very quickly
Speaker 2: the number of queer organizations in New York multiplied dramatically.
Speaker 2: Because you think, how was Gayman's Health Crisis founded, Well,
Speaker 2: it was founded in Larry Kramer's living room by people
Speaker 2: who Larry invited that he knew into his living room.
Speaker 2: Suddenly you had a mechanism whereby you could meet in
Speaker 2: a meeting room at the Center and attract all these
Speaker 2: people who didn't know you and didn't know one another,
Speaker 2: but liked your idea.
Speaker 1: This was radical in terms of expanding queer.
Speaker 2: Networks and organizing and building a movement. So and this
Speaker 2: would be everything from gay opera lovers, lesbian motorcycle riders,
Speaker 2: gay softball or volleyball, bridge clubs. But it was also
Speaker 2: how South Asian lesbian and gays got organized SALGA and
Speaker 2: then decided to fight to march in the India Day Parade.
Speaker 2: You know, all those people didn't know each other, but
Speaker 2: you had a great idea. You put it in the
Speaker 2: calendar and people came together.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the founding of act UP, because that,
Speaker 1: for listeners, act UP was the incredibly effective organization that
Speaker 1: was pushing the government to find effective AIDS treatments, and
Speaker 1: it was founded at the Center while you were the
Speaker 1: executive director. So tell us that story.
Speaker 2: The first cultural program of the Center was the program
Speaker 2: that still exists today. It's called Second Tuesdays, and on
Speaker 2: the second Tuesday of the month, a figure would be
Speaker 2: invited to come speak, like John Waters or Audrey Lord,
Speaker 2: or you could have written a novel or written a
Speaker 2: Broadway play and you would come and we would charge
Speaker 2: like three bucks in an auditorium and people would come
Speaker 2: in and hear you talk. And in early nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: the person running Second Tuesdays had invited Nora Ephron, the
Speaker 2: writer and filmmaker, to be the speaker. A lot of
Speaker 2: the rom coms, the old rom coms, like with Diane Keaton,
Speaker 2: she wrote, those who directed them and famous New Yorker
Speaker 2: She got sick, got a cold, and canceled a couple
Speaker 2: of days in advance, and so Diane Leo, who was
Speaker 2: running the program, scrambled and called up Larry Kramer.
Speaker 1: Larry Kramer was an American playwright deeply embedded in the
Speaker 1: response to AIDS, and in the early eighties he co
Speaker 1: founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis, one of the very
Speaker 1: first organizations to respond to AIDS. But later he grew
Speaker 1: fed up and furious at the indifference of the government
Speaker 1: to what he described as a plague. Play forty million
Speaker 1: infected people. He is a fucking plague, And on March tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, he gave a fiery speech at the
Speaker 1: LGBT Community City Center calling for more to be done.
Speaker 1: Two days later, he co founded act Up, a political
Speaker 1: organization dedicated to bulldozing any policy, any person, or any
Speaker 1: power structure that got in the way of ending AIDS.
Speaker 1: Act UP was defined by its angry, confrontational protests that
Speaker 1: were very successful in shifting the nation's health policies and
Speaker 1: pushing for life saving treatments. Richard was there when it
Speaker 1: was founded.
Speaker 2: So on the first floor auditorium on the second Tuesday
Speaker 2: of the month in the spring of eighty seven, he
Speaker 2: comes and gives this very powerful speech, very angry speech
Speaker 2: to the gay people in the room, like you're killing yourselves,
Speaker 2: that we weren't fighting, that we were just passively dying,
Speaker 2: not demanding, not fighting for who we are. And he
Speaker 2: really got people charged up. So people said, well, we
Speaker 2: need to come back next week. And someone ran upstairs
Speaker 2: to Robert Woodworth, who was the person in charge of
Speaker 2: the scheduling, and said, can we come back next Tuesday?
Speaker 2: And Robert said, well, no, Tuesday's booked, but you can
Speaker 2: have Monday. And so that's why I act Up met
Speaker 2: every Monday night at like seven o'clock or something. And
Speaker 2: so they met in the first floor auditorium and act
Speaker 2: Up really exploded, and suddenly activists from around the country
Speaker 2: went and created act UP chapters in Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Provincetown, Richard.
Speaker 1: At that time, the center was also the host of
Speaker 1: many funerals aid funerals. And I think that you have
Speaker 1: such a unique point of view as the leader of
Speaker 1: the center. On the one hand, you are watching act
Speaker 1: UP meet success with their actions and their demands. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you're literally seeing how people are still
Speaker 1: continuing to die. I wonder what that felt like for you,
Speaker 1: kind of to be in the middle of those two worlds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're right. The whole experience of multiple laws
Speaker 2: dramatically impacted our community. There were other people who you know,
Speaker 2: in the nineties, late eighties, early nineties, who I would
Speaker 2: visit in the hospital for like a last visit and
Speaker 2: maybe in hospice or are just in the hospital, and
Speaker 2: they would ask me. They would say, will you please
Speaker 2: speak at my memorial? And sometimes these requests would come
Speaker 2: from people that I didn't know well, but because of
Speaker 2: my job as the head of the LGBT Center in
Speaker 2: New York, I realized they were asking me not just
Speaker 2: to speak about them, but to make a angry memorial
Speaker 2: talk about aids and who they were in our queer movement.
Speaker 2: Multiple people asked me in it, and it took me
Speaker 2: a minute to realize, this is what they want. They
Speaker 2: want their family and the world to know that they
Speaker 2: had lives as activists and that they were killed, if
Speaker 2: you will, by the indifference and hatred against us.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty heavy for a young person to take on.
Speaker 1: What were some of your responsibilities.
Speaker 2: Even though, for example, I was not a caregiver primary
Speaker 2: caregiver for anyone. Everybody was pulled into sort of some
Speaker 2: degree of community. Karen and a guy named Ken Dawson,
Speaker 2: really major leader in New York Square community in the eighties,
Speaker 2: and he was sick and dying. I remember being asked
Speaker 2: to go spend an evening with him so his boyfriend
Speaker 2: could have the night off. And he was going blind
Speaker 2: and so I was to read him as mail. And
Speaker 2: before his boyfriend left, he said, oh, you know, you
Speaker 2: need to change the IV drip and I was terrified.
Speaker 2: I'd never changed an IV drip and I was like,
Speaker 2: I was thinking, like, what if there's an air bubble
Speaker 2: and I do it wrong, I could harm him. And
Speaker 2: the boyfriend showed me how to do it and then left,
Speaker 2: and you know, obviously it was under tremendous strain and
Speaker 2: stress of caring for Ken, but that experience was very common,
Speaker 2: like you'd be doing that also in a workplace like
Speaker 2: the center at that time, where people on the staff
Speaker 2: get sick and die, people on the board get sick
Speaker 2: and die. So in a workplace suddenly there people are crying,
Speaker 2: like in ways that might not work out in a
Speaker 2: workplace today, then it was. It was normal. So when
Speaker 2: I think of you know, my father who you know,
Speaker 2: he was from Bayridge, Brooklyn, and he enlisted in the
Speaker 2: Army when he was seventeen. For him, World War Two
Speaker 2: was the I think the dominant shaping experience of his life.
Speaker 2: It was what shaped him. And for my generation, AIDS
Speaker 2: was our war, and we when we were in it,
Speaker 2: that's how we thought of it.
Speaker 1: You could argue that New York City was ground zero
Speaker 1: of the AIDS crisis in the eighties and nineties, and
Speaker 1: you could also argue that the LGBT Community Center was
Speaker 1: ground zero for New York's AIDS crisis. And during this time,
Speaker 1: Richard was the executive director of the center. He witnessed
Speaker 1: how the community was nearly destroyed by AIDS, but also
Speaker 1: how it came together to survive. And in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: he played a major role in making sure that the
Speaker 1: people who were lost to AIDS would never be forgotten.
Speaker 1: You were very involved in the New York City AIDS memorial,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what got you involved in that? And
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about it too.
Speaker 2: So around twenty twelve, these two then young guys, they
Speaker 2: had each read a book called and the Band Played
Speaker 2: On about AIDS in San Francisco, Randy Shild's book, And
Speaker 2: as Chris tells the story, they both realized they knew
Speaker 2: nothing about AIDS. They were young gay men and they
Speaker 2: just knew nothing. No one had taught them told them,
Speaker 2: and they were shocked. They both had urban planning backgrounds,
Speaker 2: and Saint Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village had gone bankrupt
Speaker 2: at Catholic Hospital and.
Speaker 1: That was sort of where all a great many AID
Speaker 1: spatients which treated.
Speaker 2: It was the first AIDS ward in the city. And
Speaker 2: the old tool building of the hospital was physically backed
Speaker 2: up against the LGBT Center, like we shared a wall.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So Chris and Paul said, you know this, this building
Speaker 2: is being sold to developers and there's an opportunity for
Speaker 2: us to have an AIDS memorial. And there was a
Speaker 2: triangle of land that had been underground, a multi level
Speaker 2: basement underground with an underground tunnel from the hospital buildings,
Speaker 2: and so medical waste and people who had died bodies
Speaker 2: all came in underground trucked out from this triangle, and
Speaker 2: so Chris and Paul had the idea that, like, well,
Speaker 2: let's make this an AIDS memorial. So they came to
Speaker 2: see me for advice, and we began to meet and
Speaker 2: talk regularly about how to organize to make this happen.
Speaker 2: The architect who designed the World Trade Center memorial, he
Speaker 2: chaired the design competition. It opened on World Dad's Day,
Speaker 2: December first, twenty sixteen, and then the land was deeded
Speaker 2: over to the city and is now an official New
Speaker 2: York City park and produced tons and tons of cultural
Speaker 2: programming around AIDS.
Speaker 1: Richard, I want to ask about the American LGBTQ Museum,
Speaker 1: which you're the chair of. It's going to open in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven, the first of its kind. What is
Speaker 1: the museum about?
Speaker 2: You know, we began organizing around this museum of queer
Speaker 2: history in jail January of twenty seventeen. And there had
Speaker 2: been multiple efforts before then to create a national museum
Speaker 2: of Queer history, and you know they would falter and fail.
Speaker 2: But this will be the you know, the one that
Speaker 2: we hope will truly be our American museum. So we've
Speaker 2: been working on it for eight years. And it's not
Speaker 2: the kind of museum that's just going to have objects
Speaker 2: that you say, oh, isn't that interesting when Harvey Milk
Speaker 2: was alive. We very consciously want to be a school
Speaker 2: for rising generations of activists. We not only want to
Speaker 2: preserve our history celebrate it, but we want to look
Speaker 2: at what did our movement do wrong? How do we
Speaker 2: blow it? How can the next generation do better? If
Speaker 2: you think again of the idea of culture as a
Speaker 2: mirror who's been made invisible by our mainstream culture, who
Speaker 2: stories have not been told, and how can we tell
Speaker 2: them so that all of our queer people see themselves
Speaker 2: as part of a tribe that is set aside them
Speaker 2: is resilient and that will ultimately flourish.
Speaker 1: And even though this show is about queer history, it's
Speaker 1: really about passing things down from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1: And I wonder for you, what do you want young
Speaker 1: queer people to know about this history?
Speaker 2: During the AIDS epidemic, our people were dying and our
Speaker 2: government didn't care. Ronald Reagan laughed, ed kach Armeyer did nothing,
Speaker 2: and our queer people came together and fought and took
Speaker 2: care of our own and demanded more and got more
Speaker 2: and developed tremendous progress, more progress than I ever imagined
Speaker 2: would happen in my lifetime. And so what I hope
Speaker 2: younger people will take away from our career history is
Speaker 2: an understanding that not only have we been here before,
Speaker 2: but we're a resilient bunch of people who can get
Speaker 2: organized and fight back and win, and that it does
Speaker 2: take every one of us. Every one of us has
Speaker 2: an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to build our community
Speaker 2: and to take care of those who can't. And like
Speaker 2: I want every gay kid to know, that's their responsibility.
Speaker 2: It's not an option, you know, get off your ass
Speaker 2: and do it.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan and Solve This.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
Speaker 1: in to tell your story, email us at but We
Speaker 1: Loved at gmail dot com, or you can send me
Speaker 1: a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore gooin
Speaker 1: solve this. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast
Speaker 1: Network and iHeart Podcasts, but We Loved was originally developed
Speaker 1: with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff,
Speaker 1: and Christina Loranger. Our executive producers are me Maya Howard
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvil. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jay Bronson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode,
Speaker 1: leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.