Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: I was coming out and living through the worst period
Speaker 2: of the AIDS epidemic, and then I happened to have
Speaker 2: a boyfriend at the time who was diagnosed HIV positive
Speaker 2: in eighty eight, and that was devastating. So I always
Speaker 2: equated it to my dad being this World War II
Speaker 2: veteran who got shot in the war and survived, and
Speaker 2: I just remember thinking, this is my own war. In fact,
Speaker 2: on my desk I have a little oh bit from
Speaker 2: someone who died at ninety one, just as a reminder like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is real, and that those memories and those people
Speaker 2: their lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't
Speaker 2: know that I was a historian. I didn't know that
Speaker 2: I was interested in history, but those events were important
Speaker 2: to me informing my understanding of memory being such a
Speaker 2: powerful tool by understanding the past.
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 Ken LUs Vader, a historic
Speaker 1: preservationist who co directs the groundbreaking NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
Speaker 1: We'll learn how living through the AIDS crisis inspired him
Speaker 1: to preserve queer history and how knowing our own history
Speaker 1: can have a profound impact on erasing the shame that
Speaker 1: many of us queer people carry. From My Heart Podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan and Solve and this is about he Loved Back.
Speaker 1: In our first episode, I interviewed a man named Martin
Speaker 1: who was actually at the Stonewall riots in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: He talked about how the night of the riot was
Speaker 1: a build up of rage toward the cops, anger for
Speaker 1: constantly being harassed. He recalled in vivid detail the queen
Speaker 1: who ripped a parking meter out of the ground in fury,
Speaker 1: and another who set the place on fire. I sort
Speaker 1: of knew the history of Stonewall before interviewing him, but
Speaker 1: not in this kind of detail. I'd been a stone
Speaker 1: Wall before but never really thought much of it. But
Speaker 1: I found myself there last fall for the first time
Speaker 1: since Martin's episode, and this time felt different. As I
Speaker 1: was leaving and walking to the subway, I looked back
Speaker 1: for a moment, and I got a rush. I didn't
Speaker 1: fully process the feeling in the moment, but looking back,
Speaker 1: what I felt was connection, feeling as though I was
Speaker 1: a part of something bigger than myself. I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: that what I was staring at was the same little
Speaker 1: two story RedBrick building with arches that Martin stared at
Speaker 1: fifty five years ago the night of the riot. The
Speaker 1: work of my next guest, Ken Lusbader aims to give
Speaker 1: that feeling of connection to queer people all around the country.
Speaker 1: He's the co director of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project,
Speaker 1: a website that has meticulously documented the play in New
Speaker 1: York City where queer history happened, dating back to the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. He and his team have identified nearly five
Speaker 1: hundred sites, and all of them have detailed information on
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. But as a child, Ken had no
Speaker 1: idea that preserving queer history would be part of his story.
Speaker 1: So why don't we start at the beginning. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to know what your aspirations were as a kid, and
Speaker 1: what your personality was like when you were younger too.
Speaker 2: Well, my aspirations as a kid, and my personality sort
Speaker 2: of were grounded in a nineteen sixties formation of the
Speaker 2: nuclear family post World War Two with that's when you
Speaker 2: grew up. Yeah, and my dad was a World War
Speaker 2: Two veteran. My mom at that point was a homemaker
Speaker 2: who had been a nurse. Both of them grew up
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn, and it was classic Jewish upbringing where I
Speaker 2: was like the best little boy. Every report card in
Speaker 2: you know, elementary school was a plus for conduct and
Speaker 2: you know, conscientiousness and things like that.
Speaker 1: Were you quiet as a child?
Speaker 2: I was obedient. I was well behaved. Everybody knew. Like
Speaker 2: the Lusbader boys, I have an older brother, where like
Speaker 2: the nice kids, you follow the roles. Oh yeah, yeah right,
Speaker 2: I mean, and if if I didn't, I would go
Speaker 2: home and tell my father and mother, like, oh, I'd
Speaker 2: tried a beer tonight for the first time. So I
Speaker 2: was very compliant. I didn't really know what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do because my father had this business that he
Speaker 2: started in nineteen fifty three. It was a chain of
Speaker 2: shoe stores in New York.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I was sort of anointed as the second son,
Speaker 2: not the first, the oldest, that the second to go
Speaker 2: into that family business, and I wanted to be a
Speaker 2: good kid.
Speaker 1: So what was the moment that you knew you were gay?
Speaker 1: What was that moment for you?
Speaker 2: Under ten? I knew something was different that I was
Speaker 2: very happy with the mail babysitter who came over to
Speaker 2: babysit one night, And I remember specifically, at ten, my
Speaker 2: mom took me to an off Broadway production of Mantle
Speaker 2: of La Mancha in the East Village and I remember
Speaker 2: tracking the course boys guys and picking one that was
Speaker 2: to me the best looking and most handsome, and I
Speaker 2: remember he had to cut off sort of top, and
Speaker 2: just looking at him and being so excited every time
Speaker 2: he came back on the stage.
Speaker 1: What was the moment when you sort of pieced together
Speaker 1: what it would mean to be gay in the world.
Speaker 2: My parents had a subscription to the Public Theater as
Speaker 2: well as many other theater companies in the city, and
Speaker 2: my mom had heard about this play that was previewing
Speaker 2: at the Public called I'll Never Forget her saying it's
Speaker 2: called the line or the chorus. She didn't really have
Speaker 2: the word or the title correctly. So we drove into
Speaker 2: the city and we went to the show at the
Speaker 2: Newman theater, and I remember my parents sitting probably five
Speaker 2: or six rows behind me, and I was probably in
Speaker 2: the fifth row alone, and I think this I was
Speaker 2: fourteen at the time, and the show was exhilarating and
Speaker 2: the show was remarkable, and in the show, I remember
Speaker 2: specifically the character of Mark, who stood stage right wore
Speaker 2: a tank top, and I could never forget like looking
Speaker 2: at him and sort of tracking him through that show, saying, Oh,
Speaker 2: my god, he's the most adorable guy in the world,
Speaker 2: and how old were you? Fourteen? And I remembered him
Speaker 2: as a character dealing with his homosexuality throughout the sort
Speaker 2: of snippets of dialogue he has, and I remember his
Speaker 2: monologue and where he talked about performing m Oh my god,
Speaker 2: performing at the Jewel Box review and his parents I'm
Speaker 2: going to pick him up or I should say, send
Speaker 2: them off, and his father telling him, telling the manager
Speaker 2: to like take care of my son, And realizing that,
Speaker 2: you know, here's my dad and mom, you know, five
Speaker 2: or six rows behind me, and knowing that I was
Speaker 2: having a unique experience as a gay boy that was
Speaker 2: very different from the experience of my parents seeing that show,
Speaker 2: and then not knowing that I was having this experience
Speaker 2: seeing this kid like struggling with his homosexuality and struggling
Speaker 2: with his sort of performance in the Jewel Box review
Speaker 2: and having a father say that, And I remember that
Speaker 2: I individuated from my fan family in a sense, and
Speaker 2: I separated from my family like physically yeah, and just
Speaker 2: emotionally that I had like this is my story, this
Speaker 2: is I'm going to have to deal with this growing up.
Speaker 2: You know, what's my future conversation going to be with
Speaker 2: my family when I come out?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: So it was such a private personal moment, and it's
Speaker 2: interesting to tell that story sort of verbalize it here
Speaker 2: because I don't know where that emotion comes from, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty years later.
Speaker 1: And that's what art, I think sometimes does, like kind
Speaker 1: of brings out things in us that we're not even
Speaker 1: sure are there. Sometimes I wonder what it was like
Speaker 1: for you to come out in the nineteen seventies or
Speaker 1: the eighties. When when did you end up coming out?
Speaker 1: And what's that story?
Speaker 2: You know, my sort of coming out story bridge to
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies to nineteen eighties. I again knew I
Speaker 2: was gay. I had a gay friend and we would
Speaker 2: connect in you know, ninth grade, intimately. That continued through college.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, right, that would I don't even
Speaker 2: know what we called it then, but I would say
Speaker 2: come over, and vice versa. I was having a dream
Speaker 2: of my high school friend and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I dreams tell the truth. I'm definitely gay. I have
Speaker 2: to grapple with that. And I think I was so
Speaker 2: concerned about disappointing people. And I also didn't have the
Speaker 2: vocabulary of how to talk about my feelings. While we
Speaker 2: were really close intimate family, talking about feelings was not
Speaker 2: like the you know, the sort of focus of how
Speaker 2: we communicated. You know, there was a there was a
Speaker 2: sort of a thread that wove that was woven through
Speaker 2: the family of like, don't disappoint anyone.
Speaker 1: And so what was it like to come out.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have an older brother who's also gay,
Speaker 2: and it's just the two of us. So he well
Speaker 2: had come out gay to my mom and dad early,
Speaker 2: a couple of years earlier. And because I was working
Speaker 2: in my family's business, I was in this conundrum, like
Speaker 2: how do I deal with this? How do I disappoint them?
Speaker 2: My dad asked me. I was driving to the bank
Speaker 2: on Queen's Boulevard and my father said to me, like,
Speaker 2: you know, your brother came out to me and I'm
Speaker 2: putting two and two together, like, you haven't really dated anyone.
Speaker 2: What's your story?
Speaker 1: Are you gay?
Speaker 2: And I thought I was driving him and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh god, here it goes yep. So he was wonderful
Speaker 2: and said, you know, I love you. Wow, And that's fine.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you were honest with me. But he quickly
Speaker 2: pivoted and said, how are we going to tell your
Speaker 2: mother this? So we waited and then we went out
Speaker 2: for dinner one night in a diner in Queen's Boulevard and.
Speaker 1: It was like an ally, oh yeah, he was great.
Speaker 2: He was really wonderful. Wow.
Speaker 1: So you study economics in college and then when you
Speaker 1: come home you join the family business. What is the
Speaker 1: story of how you go from being in the family business?
Speaker 1: So then sort of being interested in architectural preservation and history.
Speaker 2: Well, I went right into the family business. It was
Speaker 2: sort of what was on the roster for me to do.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a voice or even sort of the
Speaker 2: understanding of the expansiveness of my own mind to look
Speaker 2: at who am I as an individual and what are
Speaker 2: my interests to pursue. So I worked there for probably
Speaker 2: just under eight years, with the longing of like doing
Speaker 2: something else, but not knowing that I didn't know I
Speaker 2: was interested in history per se, but I always love buildings.
Speaker 2: I took an architectural history class in college. We were
Speaker 2: opening up stores, and I was always going to these
Speaker 2: buildings that were on downtown shopping streets in urban areas.
Speaker 2: So this was in Patterson, New Jersey. Have we still
Speaker 2: have the store there where I remember climbing around the
Speaker 2: building and going up to one of the upper floors
Speaker 2: that was only accessible through a roof hatch and finding
Speaker 2: receipts from the early twentieth century in this building of
Speaker 2: the Elbow Shop, and thinking, this is the wildest thing, Like,
Speaker 2: there's these receipts here, like and it tells you what
Speaker 2: was going on in that building. And I had no
Speaker 2: idea that that was called documentation, archival research and primary
Speaker 2: sources information in that there's a way to connect, you know,
Speaker 2: my curiosity with historic preservation.
Speaker 1: Around the time, can discover that spark of passion for preservation.
Speaker 1: He was also getting more involved in the gay community
Speaker 1: in New York City, making him anxious to explore a
Speaker 1: world beyond his family business.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, I met my now husband at
Speaker 2: a gay men's health crisis Safer Sex seminar and I
Speaker 2: went to volunteer. I think he went to meet up
Speaker 2: boyfriend and we're still together. However, meeting him was sort
Speaker 2: of a big eye opener and revelatory and that I
Speaker 2: again went from sort of a more meshed family of
Speaker 2: working in a family business to meeting this guy who
Speaker 2: was in the world more and who was out and
Speaker 2: clearly had an experience of more robust sexual experience than
Speaker 2: I did, and also was much more politicized, and he
Speaker 2: was my biggest booster of hearing who I was as
Speaker 2: a person. And I would say, well, in this family business,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to leave. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: what to do. I'm too old. I was just on
Speaker 2: the cusp of turning twenty six at the time, so
Speaker 2: it took a bunch of years. But with his support,
Speaker 2: I left the business, but without a plan.
Speaker 1: And walk me through a little bit of that tension
Speaker 1: between leaving the family business.
Speaker 2: I came out to them probably and you know, I
Speaker 2: can't remember I had my boyfriend at the time, so
Speaker 2: you know, in the mid eighties probably, So that was
Speaker 2: one chunk of not following the Jewish child rules no grandchildren.
Speaker 2: And then when I was already established, just on the
Speaker 2: cusp of being twenty nine and had talked to them
Speaker 2: for a great deal of time saying I'm going to
Speaker 2: be leaving, I have to leave, my father was quite
Speaker 2: upset and you know, we represent one half of this
Speaker 2: family business and what does that mean? And you're disappointing him,
Speaker 2: you know, son of immigrants, as was my mom, and
Speaker 2: I was leaving without a job, without a you know,
Speaker 2: a vision, and to him it was just the you know,
Speaker 2: the ultimate of you know, taking advantage of sort of
Speaker 2: what he created and then abandoning him and leaving him
Speaker 2: with this business that he was probably sixty five at
Speaker 2: the time, Like what does he do now? How is
Speaker 2: this going to work going forward? So it was it
Speaker 2: was challenging, and I remember being told, you know, by
Speaker 2: my mother how disappointed my father was in me, And
Speaker 2: it was painful. And I never forget driving from Queenszelle
Speaker 2: over the Williamsburg Bridge the day I left, like, wow,
Speaker 2: I did this and I'm still in a whole person.
Speaker 1: And so basically you realize that disappointing my parents isn't
Speaker 1: going to be the end of the world exactly.
Speaker 2: I realized that the disappointment was so ingrained in me
Speaker 2: and not other people, that it was really my hurdle
Speaker 2: to get over.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, Ken got into Columbia University's prestigious
Speaker 1: master's program in historic preservation. By this point, he was
Speaker 1: proudly out and even decided to write his master's thesis
Speaker 1: on some of New York's gay history. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was one of the first academic arguments to be
Speaker 1: made for preserving gay history. It would go on to
Speaker 1: win his department's award at Columbia for Outstanding Thesis that year.
Speaker 1: But for Ken, there was something deeper that was driving
Speaker 1: him to want to preserve queer history. He was living
Speaker 1: through the AIDS crisis, an epidemic that threatened to wipe
Speaker 1: out the very existence of the gay community, and with
Speaker 1: that all the stories and memories of the community's vibrancy
Speaker 1: and strength and power. Faced with this urgency, Ken understood
Speaker 1: the importance of preserving queer history before it was gone.
Speaker 1: And so you get to Colombia and you decide in
Speaker 1: the early nineties to write your thesis on the preservation
Speaker 1: of gay history, basically gay historical sites. At the time,
Speaker 1: being gay is not very popular, and it's also at
Speaker 1: the height of the AIDS epidemics, so there's stigma from
Speaker 1: multiple different angles coming at the gay community. What was
Speaker 1: it like to write a thesis about something like preservation
Speaker 1: of gay history in those days?
Speaker 2: I got to Colombia in the fall of ninety one,
Speaker 2: and it was in this theory and practice class of
Speaker 2: historic preservation where we would talk about Irish American history
Speaker 2: and Irish history of the building of New York City
Speaker 2: and who the laborers were that built the buildings, who
Speaker 2: made the bricks, who worked in the buildings, the slave
Speaker 2: you know, quarters or the maids quarters and row houses
Speaker 2: and so forth. And it was blowing my mind open
Speaker 2: that preservation could talk about cultural, social, and historic moments
Speaker 2: in history. So that's what really prompted me to have
Speaker 2: a voice saying, well, what about gay and lesbian history,
Speaker 2: which was the terminology at that time. I didn't know
Speaker 2: anyone writing about this and doing any of this, so
Speaker 2: in some ways it was not fleek understood. When I
Speaker 2: put my thesis proposal together in ninety two, like what
Speaker 2: are you talking about most people think there was no
Speaker 2: gay history. There's Stonewall, but there's a rich queer past,
Speaker 2: you know, going back to in New York City, commented
Speaker 2: in City Hall Park, where men were cruising for men
Speaker 2: there up into Walt Whitman in the eighteen fifties through
Speaker 2: late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, Pansy craze in
Speaker 2: New York and so forth and so on. So people
Speaker 2: discount gay history as more recent. But if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for the people who were out and about living their lives,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't have led up to post World War II
Speaker 2: organizations such as the Managing Society the Data as a
Speaker 2: belitist that paved the way for the post Stonewall explosion
Speaker 2: of visibility and activism that caught fire across the country.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is you were one of the very
Speaker 1: first generations to recognize the value in all of that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel fortunate to be part of those first people
Speaker 2: that were saying historic preservation can be, for lack of
Speaker 2: a better word, exploited to tell LGBTQ history, and by
Speaker 2: looking at buildings, one can embed these stories and have
Speaker 2: a visceral connection to the past. That's very different than
Speaker 2: reading about history or reading about Walt Whitman living in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: You know, you can go to see his house where
Speaker 2: he lived for a year. You can see places in
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century in New York where there were
Speaker 2: you know, tea houses operated by you know, women who
Speaker 2: were in homosocial relationships, So that visceral connection is really important.
Speaker 2: You had asked the question about, you know, what was
Speaker 2: it like at Columbia, What was it like for me?
Speaker 2: I mean, for me leaving a family business that you know,
Speaker 2: was predicated on following all the rules. I go to
Speaker 2: graduate school and have to tell my parents, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: leaving graduate school, graduating, but I'm going to write my
Speaker 2: thesis on gay and lesbian history in Greenwich Village. And
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm going to do with that,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if I'm putting my future career
Speaker 2: in jeopardy by being so out and open about it.
Speaker 1: So that was a risk, and I was just gonna
Speaker 1: ask that. You know, this is the nineties, like I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's not popular to be gay, and in fact, it's
Speaker 1: perfectly legal to fire someone for their job for being gay.
Speaker 1: Were you nervous about putting your name on something that
Speaker 1: was so obviously and visibly and intentionally queer.
Speaker 2: I was nervous when I was writing it and when
Speaker 2: I was researching it and feeling that I was in
Speaker 2: this program that everybody knew I was gay. But I
Speaker 2: had the full support of so many professors, you know,
Speaker 2: at Columbia. And then I was also getting connected to
Speaker 2: a group in New York called Old GAD, the organization
Speaker 2: of Lesbian and Gay architects and Designers, and I connect
Speaker 2: with them, and then we put a map together in
Speaker 2: ninety four which is probably the first map of historic
Speaker 2: LGBT sites documented for New York City ever. Looking back,
Speaker 2: so I have to say being part of that community
Speaker 2: and being connected and feeling belonging to all GAD and
Speaker 2: these professionals who I'm still very connected with now having
Speaker 2: their support and awareness gave me pause. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: an interesting profession, historic preservation by happenstance. I don't know
Speaker 2: why has a disproportionate number of gay men working in it.
Speaker 2: So that was a shining moment of like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: you know I'm not alone here, and I have the
Speaker 2: support of these people, whether they're doing LGBTQ history or not.
Speaker 2: This is who I am. So I connected with those individuals,
Speaker 2: which was great.
Speaker 1: It strikes me ken that from the time you come
Speaker 1: out to the time that you focus your thesis on
Speaker 1: gay preservation of history, to then putting together this very
Speaker 1: groundbreaking map in ninety four of all these lgbt historic sites,
Speaker 1: it's not that much time in between. It's actually pretty
Speaker 1: short in the grand scheme of things, and you're moving
Speaker 1: quite quickly to document all of these different sites. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if there was an urgency of some kind
Speaker 1: that was driving this.
Speaker 2: So there was an urgency for me to leave the
Speaker 2: family business and figure out my next steps for a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons. One was, you know, I was twenty nine,
Speaker 2: thirty was looming, and I didn't want to sort of
Speaker 2: say I didn't make a move before my thirtieth birthday.
Speaker 2: The other part was the AIDS epidemic and sort of
Speaker 2: being very aware of it and having friends who were
Speaker 2: passing away and dying or suffering, and knowing that life
Speaker 2: fleeting and life is precious. My now husband was diagnosed
Speaker 2: in eighty eight as HIV positive, so that put pressure
Speaker 2: on us as a couple to realize, Wow, we've got
Speaker 2: to make plans and we've got to make you know,
Speaker 2: opportunities for each other. And it was a time eighty eight,
Speaker 2: you know, the trajectory of people surviving was not really great.
Speaker 2: So consciously or unconsciously, those were the ingredients that prompted
Speaker 2: me to be sort of more political and understand that
Speaker 2: I needed to sort of take actions.
Speaker 1: You're basically saying that you would become aware, intimately aware
Speaker 1: with the fact that life is fleeting and when people die,
Speaker 1: oftentimes their history kind of dies with them, and here
Speaker 1: you are in the middle of all of this death.
Speaker 2: I was coming out through the worst period of the
Speaker 2: AIDS epidemic, and that was devastating. So I always equated
Speaker 2: it to my dad being this World War two veteran
Speaker 2: who got shot in the war and survived and talked
Speaker 2: about how awful war was and the loss of people
Speaker 2: that he knew and sort of what that meant to him.
Speaker 2: And I just remember thinking, you know, I didn't get
Speaker 2: drafted into Vietnam. This is my own war. And the
Speaker 2: loss of people. Reading the New York Times every day
Speaker 2: and seeing who's paid obituaries were there and dying was
Speaker 2: something I tracked. In fact, on my desk, I have
Speaker 2: a little oh bit from someone who died at ninety one,
Speaker 2: just as a reminder like, oh, this is real, this
Speaker 2: is impacting me, and those memories and those people their
Speaker 2: lives are going to be forgotten. So I didn't know
Speaker 2: that I was a historian. I didn't know that I
Speaker 2: was interested in history, but those events were important to
Speaker 2: me in forming my understanding of memory being such a
Speaker 2: powerful tool by understanding the past.
Speaker 1: After Ken graduated from Columbia in nineteen ninety three, he
Speaker 1: went on to serve in hugely important historic preservation projects,
Speaker 1: including the National Nine to eleven Memorial Museum and New
Speaker 1: York Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites program. But in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Ken returned to his passion of preserving queer history and
Speaker 1: co founded the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Today, it
Speaker 1: has almost five hundred sites identified, documenting the community's contributions
Speaker 1: to the arts, nightlife, business, government, healthcare, activism, and much more.
Speaker 1: Its purpose is to connect queer people with the sense
Speaker 1: of their own history and their own heritage. So tell
Speaker 1: me about the LGBT Historic Sites and your proudest accomplishment
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: So the NYCLGBT Historic Sites Project is an effort of
Speaker 2: myself and two other co founders that was launched officially
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen to document historic and cultural sites in
Speaker 2: the Five Bars of New York City. So I would
Speaker 2: say the proudest moment or the proudest achievement with the
Speaker 2: project is sustaining it for ten years as an official project,
Speaker 2: documenting almost five hundred sites to date, been making that
Speaker 2: invisible history visible, but really having people react to it
Speaker 2: and having people reduce their own isolation and shame by
Speaker 2: knowing that there's this past and that it's really helping
Speaker 2: people explore their own past and their own history. So
Speaker 2: by having our cultural map and keeping it unerased and
Speaker 2: making it visible, there's no way people can say you
Speaker 2: weren't here. I think Another part is, obviously Stonewall is
Speaker 2: so well recognized. So I was involved in the designation
Speaker 2: of the Stonewall National Monument, working with groups and advocates
Speaker 2: going down to DC. And why that was so important
Speaker 2: is memorializing that for American history by the federal government
Speaker 2: as a national park, as a national monument, and having
Speaker 2: people stand in front of Stonewall and know that that's
Speaker 2: what people saw. You're standing where other people stood on
Speaker 2: the night of the uprising. You're time traveling backwards and
Speaker 2: seeing what they saw as a building, as a street,
Speaker 2: as a configuration of streetscape. So you can understand the
Speaker 2: past better. It's not just ephemeral or nebulous. You're grounded
Speaker 2: in concrete reality and can connect with those elders who
Speaker 2: pushed back on police suppression, on entrapment, on societal construction
Speaker 2: of a police state that created a world where you
Speaker 2: could not live your full, rich life. And now you can,
Speaker 2: hopefully to a certain degree better than you did in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, and that that's going to inform how
Speaker 2: you sort of react to what's going to be pushback now.
Speaker 1: I wonder why you think it's important for young people
Speaker 1: to know their history. Ever since I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I mean, I always loved history, but I remember growing
Speaker 1: up there was always and there still is a connotation
Speaker 1: that it's boring, And I wonder why you think it's not.
Speaker 2: So you grow up as an LGBTQ kid in various
Speaker 2: forms with a level of shame because you're different. So
Speaker 2: by having that past explored and interrogated and put on
Speaker 2: view through buildings and resources and landscapes and street scapes.
Speaker 2: You're allowing people to understand they're part of a connective tissue.
Speaker 2: They're part of a community, they're part of a continuity,
Speaker 2: and they're part of an identity. And I think the
Speaker 2: word belonging comes up because you can look at our website,
Speaker 2: you can research sites, and you could feel that you
Speaker 2: belong to a history. You can belong to Stonewall, you
Speaker 2: can belong to where Charlotte Charlock lived in Brooklyn Heights.
Speaker 2: She came here in the nineteen forty issue, was one
Speaker 2: of the first three documented people to have gender reassignment
Speaker 2: surgery in nineteen twenty eight to nineteen thirty two in Berlin,
Speaker 2: and you could say, oh wow, that's really early for
Speaker 2: history of transistory, and not feel that you are paving
Speaker 2: the way on your own. You could really feel connected.
Speaker 1: For so many of us that grow up queer, we
Speaker 1: feel this sense of isolation and loneliness. And what you're
Speaker 1: saying is that history and historical sites in particular, they
Speaker 1: offer us the opposite of that, which is a grounding
Speaker 1: to something bigger than us, a connection.
Speaker 2: Again, knowing that there were people before you that live
Speaker 2: their authentic lives that buck the system that were count
Speaker 2: cultural counter to expectations of sexuality, gender expression, to employment.
Speaker 2: That allows people today to say I am not alone.
Speaker 2: So to me, it's not just about history, it's about
Speaker 2: social justice. It's about making sure people are connected and authentic,
Speaker 2: and also activists make sure people see what's going on
Speaker 2: and see what happened in the past, to make sure
Speaker 2: that their lives are reflected in the narrative.
Speaker 1: I want to end off our interview Ken talking about you.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of our story, you presented yourself as
Speaker 1: this kid who was really good at following rules, and
Speaker 1: by the end of it, I sort of am able
Speaker 1: to piece together that you couldn't possibly make any of
Speaker 1: this happen without breaking a lot of the rules and
Speaker 1: disappointing people along the way and shattering a lot of
Speaker 1: the expectations that people had of you, which is a
Speaker 1: journey I think so many queer people share, and I
Speaker 1: wonder what that sort of means to you and how
Speaker 1: history and historical preservation is kind of tied into that.
Speaker 2: Growing up I, as we discussed, you know, I was
Speaker 2: a very obedient kid. I didn't really have a voice
Speaker 2: to have an opinion, and I'm shocked today that I
Speaker 2: have this voice that's so public and passionate. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you here, I can't shut up. I'm
Speaker 2: pushing the boundaries of historic preservation and LGBTQ history, and wow,
Speaker 2: we're really paving the way for a movement of looking
Speaker 2: at LGBTQ history as a valuable asset and contribution to
Speaker 2: American history.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gounsolves. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
Speaker 1: to tell your story, email us at Butweloved at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can send me a message on
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok at your underscore Gonsolvis. We are a
Speaker 1: production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
Speaker 1: We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
Speaker 1: are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil. Original music
Speaker 1: by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis.
Speaker 1: If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and
Speaker 1: follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.