>> It is October 24, 2014.
This is Anne Graham and Heather Oswald,
archivist with the Kennesaw State University Archives.
We're interviewing David Nebecker in
the studios of the Audio Video Technology Services at
Kennesaw State University as part of
the museums Archives and Rear Books Oral History Project.
So, David, can you talk about your move from Georgia?
>> In 1998, I was in Atlanta, still living with John.
John and I, our relationship had
started to change and evolve by that point.
And so we were still living together,
but we were living more as roommates at that point.
He had started dating someone that we both knew,
which I was completely comfortable with.
And I had started getting used to
the idea of for the first time as an adult, being single.
And I had just gone through
a really tough battle
with losing my nephew through the court system.
And it was very painful to be here in Atlanta and
and not have him as part of my family, living with me.
And at that point,
I thought it was just a good chance
to make a move. I had been visiting.
I had a close friend,
Dan zeno who lived here in Cobb County,
and he had been transferred to
Chicago some years earlier.
And so I would travel up there.
And the first time I went to Chicago.
It was a strange situation where
you you're driving you come to the airport,
and I was excited to see him,
and we're driving down the expressway.
And the skyline was like the Wizard of Oz.
And I fell in
love with the city the minute I saw that skyline.
And that's all I really talked about.
The next few years was plotting that move to Chicago.
John had no interest in moving to Chicago.
He had lived in Indiana and just hated the cold.
And so as a teacher,
since I was teaching at this point,
I started spending my summers up there.
And so I would go up to Chicago
and I always tried
to find a friend of a friend to couch surf,
just rent a couch for the summer.
And they were never nice places.
I remember one summer,
there was a guy, friend of
a friend, and I didn't know him,
and he offered me his couch for the summer,
I don't know who does that kind of stuff,
even in these small studio or one bedroom places.
And he had a one bedroom place,
and it was right up against the L tracks.
And in Chicago, trains are elevated.
And so the train literally
is driving by your window every few minutes.
And I thought that sounds interesting, and it is cheap.
And so I'm like, yeah, I'll do that.
And so, you know, spent this summer.
And this was the most memorable of all those summers.
And I'd spend my days at different museums
doing research and preparing for my upcoming school year,
and the lessons that I'd be teaching
the students and living in
this one bedroom with a stranger sleeping in the bedroom
and me sleeping on the sofa every few minutes,
all of the walls shaking and
the pictures on the walls shaking.
And I couldn't hear the TV for a few minutes.
It was really an interesting experience.
But I still loved it.
Even though it was crazy and so
different from how I was living here in
Atlanta, it felt right.
And so at that point,
I packed everything up.
I had a little Volkswagen Cabrio
convertible at the time and talked to John.
And I found I'd been recruited by
a company out of Kansas City.
I had worked my way through college with Corning labs
and that's how I paid to attend here at Kennesaw.
And one of my co-workers had been
recruited by this start up
out of Kansas City called Cerner.
And Cerner was on the cutting edge
of hospital information systems
and putting all the medical records
online and that being seamless.
And they were looking for people who
understood laboratory systems and
how things work in hospital labs,
and so forth, and also could deal with people.
She had told them about me and they
really wanted me to join the company.
And I said I'll only
join the company if you'll let me live in Chicago.
And they said, okay,
we'll let you live in Chicago,
but you realize that you have to travel every week.
And so for the first year,
I lived in Chicago on the weekends
and Sunday night through Thursday night,
I was in a different city living.
I got a chance to live all over the country for a while.
My first assignment through Cerner was in Fargo.
And it was at Lenox Mall,
and it was Christmas.
I think it was either the day after sale or it was
Christmas Eve and I was getting last minute pieces.
And I knew that an assignment was going to be coming up.
And I get the phone call,
and they said, we have your assignment.
We found the hospital that you're going to be
working at and I said, "Where is it?
I'm very excited about this." And they said, "Fargo."
And I said, "Really, where is it going to be?"
And they said, "No, really, it's Fargo."
And so I thought,
I'm at Lenox. Let me see what I can find.
And so they didn't have anything that in my mind,
I would be wearing in Fargo for a winter.
And so I think I am going to Burlington or something.
And so I showed up in Fargo
and stereotypical Fargo winter clothes,
which was the huge Russianesque hat and the big fur,
pelt dog collard coat and everything.
And it just looked like a fool.
They thought I was making fun of them.
And after we got past that,
it was really a great experience.
I can say that I've lived through Fargo winter now.
And then I lived in Hays,
Kansas for a while,
which is in the middle of the prairie and Kansas City,
of course, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
And so I really got to see some
interesting places around the country.
But I got tired of traveling.
That was tough being on the road
and I didn't feel like I could really
connect with people in Chicago.
And so I found another company that was
Dean Foods and they were
impressed with my resume and
asked if I'd be interested and join there.
I did and then they put me on the road again.
So now I'm back
on the road and I'm traveling to all the dairies around
the country and they're not in
much larger places than I was in before,
but I got to see a whole new set
of small towns in the country.
And I stayed with them for a couple of years.
And really, I stayed with Dean Foods until 2004,
or in 2004 is when I got a call from Lee one day at work.
He was my partner who I had met in 2000 and he said,
the mayor of San Francisco
is letting gays and lesbians get married.
He said, you want to go to San Francisco and get married.
So I thought, well, how romantic is that?
And so, of course, we flew out to
San Francisco and we can talk about that in a moment.
But when I came back to Dean Foods
from my marriage certificate,
and I planted it down in human resources and said,
I'd like to sign Lee up for spousal benefits.
They didn't seem to agree on that happening,
and that caused a bit of a controversy.
And I ended up having to fight that.
And we came to a separation agreement
that required me to stay silent on
the subject because I had produced a lot
of media coverage that they didn't want,
and there were protest in Dallas,
which was where the corporate headquarters was.
And then we had our own protest
in Chicago against Dean Foods,
not allowing us to have spousal benefits.
And so then when
my year of forced silence was about to end,
they had made the
public announcement that they were going to be
extending spousal benefits to all their employees.
So in the end, I felt that everything worked out fine.
And it allowed me to move on and prepare
for my new life and starting a family.
>> So you talked
about [inaudible] what grades did you teach?
>> When I graduated from Georgia State,
the first position that I took and I
graduated in December which
is a tough time for a teacher to get a role,
but I was as a male in early childhood which is
the elementary grades and
also I had graduated top of my class.
We didn't really have class rankings,
but based on my GPA and
six consecutive quarters of Dean's list I
figured out where I fell and so
it was easy for me to find a position and I
was hired immediately in the middle of the year with
the school called Humphreys Elementary which is on
the south side of Atlanta and the teacher
had for lack of better words,
had abandoned her role there and so
the children just had subs for quite a long time I
guess before I arrived and
it was a tough position coming into a classroom where
the children really did not have
any set schedule or structure in the classroom and they
had challenges at home as well and I think
it was a tough role for
a new teacher to find themselves in,
but I made the best of it
and learned as much as I could from that role.
But I also quickly realized that I couldn't stay
there and be happy as a teacher.
There was just too many challenges
for someone fresh out of
college and so I started looking around at my options,
and there was another school that
had a position opened up in Buckhead,
Sarah Smith and it's behind Phipps Plaza.
And I later found out that they said
they had 150 resume applicants or something,
some of crazy number for this one position,
but it was a very well regarded school
and just it clicked.
The interview went wonderfully and the principal offered
me a position there and I absolutely loved that school.
The environment was just perfect.
I was able to be somewhat out at work
and I love the position
there as a teacher and probably had I stayed in Atlanta,
I would have stayed at Sarah Smith for
some time just because it was so comfortable,
but like I said I really needed to get out and move on.
>> So can you talk about
your relationship with Lee your fellow partner?
>> Yeah. So Lee and
I were both happy single men in Chicago.
He had just left Boston and moved to Chicago,
and of course I had moved up to Chicago from
Atlanta and it was just by chance that we met each other.
I had been out with
some friends and we had had a dinner party,
and one of them was a Bartender had
a leather bar in town and so he said you know what,
why don't you guys I'll meet back at the bar later on
and hang out with me while
I work and I thought, that sounds like fun.
But I had some downtime
before things would start getting going at the bar
and so there was
a little a little neighborhood bar called
Big Chicks that was across the street
from his condo and
I thought well, let's go over there and hang out.
I'm not much of a drinker, so when I go to a bar,
it's usually just coke and things like that.
I just people watch and
so I get to Big Chicks and it's just packed it
could be and and I look across
the bar and there's this really tall.
Later I found xix foot six blonde
guy that looks like Prince William, and I'm like,
I think my jaw just hit the floor
and so being a very shy person of course there
was no way I was going to approach him and so
I studied him from afar and all that and thought well,
maybe I can make eye contact with them or something
and that wasn't working
and so it was like 200 people
there and he gets up and leaves and I'm like,
I beat myself up in my mind
and I walk over and I just sit down in his stool
and soak and all of a sudden I hear someone say,
I think you stole my stool and look up and it's him,
and I said I'm sorry.
So we started talking and it was just great.
And so then he says well,
I want to go to another bar because he had just
happened to find a parking space.
He was driving by the bar and he
just happened to find a parking space and
pulled off just to
check it out 'cause he had never been there before.
And he's like well,
I wasn't going to stay here,
do you want to go with me and we'll
go to another place and so
I said sure, yeah.
I thought this is
the guy that I wanted to meet and here he is,
and he's talking to me and so I get into his car
and I think we got out of the parking lot and he's like,
let's just skip the bars,
and so I'm like I've game for
that and so we went back to my place
and the next morning
we joke about this now because he's well,
let's go out for brunch,
and so we go to brunch and I'm looking across
and still processing what's happening.
It's just not something that I do a lot,
but then I'm like what is his name.
I didn't even know this guy's name and I thought,
how am I going to find out his name without looking
crazy and there was no way at that point,
and so finally I just said what is your name,
and of course he started cracking
up and told me and we learned that we
both loved Frank Sinatra music and
politics and there were
just so many connections that came out
of that brunch that we started dating,
but because we were both happily
single we didn't want to go too fast.
So we would only see each other x number of times a week
and we had a very strict
because we didn't want to push things.
So after about a year,
we decided that we were moving together and we
did that and then we lived in my place.
By then I had rehabbed a condo on
Lakeshore Drive and he moved in with me in
this tiny one bedroom overlooking Lake Michigan
and that wasn't enough room for me in a six foot six guy
and so then we found a three bedroom that
overlooked the Halstead Street which
is across the street from
side tracks and we were in the thick
of gay culture in Chicago.
And it was fun.
We had a great time in those early years in Chicago,
but we both wanted to start a family and so slowly we
plotted to settle down
and start that new journey together.
>> And so how have you been in Chicago?
>> I hadn't been there for very long,
because I was traveling.
So I really by the time I met Lee,
I had started Deans like month or so before that.
And before that, I was only there on the weekends.
So I would say that I really felt like I was
full time in Chicago
just for a month or two and the same with him.
So it's just all by chance
that we connected the way we did.
And the fact that we were still
together is just amazing and great.
>> So I'm going to ask you
a typical question. Talk about your children.
>> That's so open ended.
So we started looking at different ways.
I guess I have to take a step
back before we start talking about the children.
I have to talk about my in laws first.
Because I come from a family with a sister,
of course, and she's had four kids.
So my parents they're fine with grandkids.
They've had them already.
But Lee was an only child,
and he came out to them and
it was tough because they processed that
differently than my parents did because they
also mourned the loss of having grandchildren,
and that was tough for them.
But once they get past all of that,
they became full fledged supporters
of Lee and the Gay Rights movement.
And so they ended
up founding a chapter of
P flag in their hometown in Michigan.
And when I first met them,
and finally left we were only maybe two weeks
in to dating when he said,
I have to go out to my parents. Do you want to ride?
So I knew I'd hooked him at that point.
He was taking me to Michigan to see his parents.
I was a little nervous about it though, but I get there.
And he had warned me about his parents.
And so I thought, well, what am I in for.
And I get there and his dad's Cadillac,
because they're outside of Detroit,
so you have to drive American cars.
The tag was Gayson,
and that was his Michigan tag for his car.
And he could not have been a prouder father.
And he took every opportunity to talk
about the plight of
gays and lesbians and how unfair our lives were.
And so I was just stunned at what I had stumbled into.
And they were just wonderful,
we've just hit it off so well.
And so they would take us places and
get us to do things in Michigan, HRC dinners there.
And all the gay stuff that they were
involved in and they required us to participate.
And Rosie O'Donnell was doing cruises then,
she was in a relationship with a lady named Kelly.
And Kelly had started a cruise business,
a travel business aimed at LGBT families,
and Mike and Jan,
my in laws had started going on
these cruises for gay families.
And there's tons of families with kids,
and they would take over a whole cruiseship.
So it's thousands of people,
and it was just magical for them.
And they would come back from
a cruise and they would just
talk and talk and talk about their experiences.
And so finally,
they talked us into going on.
And so we did and
we just fell in love with the whole idea.
And we both had wanted kids and that was one
of the things that attracted us to each other too.
But to be surrounded by LGBT families
and all different families who had adopted,
who had gone through the foster system,
who had become blended families,
and who had gone through surrogacy.
And so then we started thinking,
well, how are we going to start our family.
And that took probably,
I would say a year of
research on whether we're
going to go the international route,
and we had a lot of different choices.
And we pretty much decided at that point that
we were going to go through
Guatemala because we had
friends who had done that and we met on the ship,
And the doors of
different countries were closing quickly,
and Guatemala was still an option.
But that door closed right before we were ready.
As we were getting ready to start the process,
the door was closing,
and we just didn't want to take the risk
of start trying to start a family,
and then our hearts being broken by
not getting the child that we wanted.
So my mother had been a foster child,
and so I was familiar with,
the pain that she had experienced as a foster child.
She told me, just sad stories about,
Christmases and, the loss of true stability in family.
And so I thought,
let's explore that option.
And so we started looking around and we came in touch
with agency in Oak Park, Illinois called Hephzibah.
And there was a director
there over family services named Devita Williams.
And she and I just hit off really well.
She was a lesbian
and she really helped us through that process of
becoming a foster family and know
what to expect with children who've gone
through the system and all the things
that they faced and how to
handle that and to make them feel safe again.
And so we had to take classes to
get licensed and we took off our classes.
And they had interviews and said,
what type of child would you, ideally like?
And so, we were thinking.
We want a baby,
and preferably Caucasian because we felt like,
they're already coming to two dad family,
which is one thing
that's going to be very different and do we
want now to mix ethnicities in there as well?
Is that going to be another thing
that they're going to have to deal with?
So we're trying to look at what's
going to be easiest for the child?
So we had figured,
baby, Caucasian, that's going to be easy.
We'll do just one, we'll be fine.
And of course, that's
what pretty much everyone was looking for.
And she's like, it's going to take years,
so be prepared to wait.
And we're like, that's okay. We'll wait.
And so we're running
a computer forensics company at this point.
And I was working out
at the front desk as the receptionist,
answering phone calls, doing office work,
and keeping the office running.
And so I get a call one day.
We still had a little bit of house inspections to
go through before we finally got
our certificate for foster.
It's just start fostering.
But I get a call, and it's Hephzibah they said,
I know you've got
still another visit for us to inspect your house,
but I think we have
two children for you is what she said.
And I'm like, what do you mean two children?
And so,
I was so floored
because I wasn't expecting this phone call.
And she said, well,
we don't know a lot about them because they're
just being transferred over to us.
But she said they're three and four.
And I wrote I was
writing all this down because I was like,
I cannot forget all this because I told all this stuff.
And she had their names and she gave me their names,
and she said, three and
four years old and she said they've been in five homes.
And I thought, five homes,
what's happened to these children?
What's caused this to happen?
So she gave me what little information they had.
But one of the things that really stuck in my mind
was the fact that in each of those homes,
they had been told that was their forever family.
And they were going to be adopted
and this is your new home,
and then that home would fall apart when it got too hard,
and then they would be ripped out and put somewhere else.
And I thought, that's just not fair for kids,
that age to be so broken by a system,
all these adults have failed them in their lives.
And it's funny because I still
have that paper with all those notes.
It was one of those things that I kept that and I looked
back at just how little information
I had about these two kids.
And this was a Wednesday.
And then I said, well, this is so much to take in.
And she said, well, we need to
know by Friday morning
because they need to be placed by Friday morning.
And I'm like, we
haven't even got our final inspection done.
We don't have bedroom set up yet,
and she said, we can get
the final inspection done if you're interested.
And so I quickly went to his office.
And my heart's racing and I tell him
this and we're looking at each other
like or their eyes as big as saucers,
like, what are we going to do about this?
And we both said, yes.
And so we called her back and we said, we'll do this.
We can do this. And at this point it's just fostering.
We're just fostering these children,
but they are open for adoption,
because it's clear at
this point they're not going to be able to
go back to their birth parents
because of the circumstances there.
And so, we didn't forget we
lived in uptown in Chicago at that point in a house,
and I sent out a mess email to my neighbors and I said,
we've got two kids that are coming.
We're not ready. And the whole neighborhood
got together and put their bedrooms together for us.
And we were bringing beds and,
childproofing, all the outlets.
We were doing everything, like crazy.
And I was so touched that
the neighborhood all helped us,
get ready for these two little kids.
And the morning they came,
we had a little banner on the front which I kept,
it just said, welcome home, Michael and Braden.
And they came in and they were so scared.
They've been through this routine
before and it has never turned out good.
So we kept everything really
calm and I took very few pictures.
I snuck a few pictures that day,
but I had been told try not
to make this too different for them because,
it's tough as it is without you,
trying to make it more than it is.
And so we had been told what their favorite snacks were.
We had all their favorite foods there in the house,
and they were very
surprised that we knew their favorite foods.
And it just was so nice,
but it was so scary at the same time.
They were scared, we were scared.
And it was tough.
It was really tough those
one of the first two years was tough.
And understandably because they had really
learned not to trust adults because there
was no adults that they could really ever depend on.
And we knew at that point,
it's going to take a long time
to build that trust back up.
So that's how the kids came to us.
>> Do you want to talk a little bit
about their life's again?
>> Yeah.
I said it was hard. And when
I say it was hard, it was really hard.
I remember, they were constantly
testing us what we discovered early on,
and this is what I talked to now with families who are
taking that same journey of
starting a family foster system.
They're going to test you to
see if you're really going to stick
by them and you're going to really
stick with them and be their parent.
And I would be driving down the road. I remember one day.
I was just exhausted at
how much energy they had
and everything that they would be doing,
acting up and acting out.
And so I'm already exhausted.
I'm driving home with them in the back seat,
and they started throwing their shoes at my head,
trying to hurt me.
And I just lost. I started crying.
I was just tired and I thought, here,
now I'm getting pelted with shoes on my head.
And so I pull over and start crying.
[LAUGHTER] Pure exhausted.
And they said,
what are you crying about you cry baby?
[LAUGHTER].
I thought, can I do this?
That was what I consider my lowest point.
So I called the agency,
and I'm like crying on the phone.
And they said,
they talked me back up to where I need to be.
And I really didn't have any help then.
They had always encouraged me to have respite
to someone to come in and just give me
a break once in a while.
So I finally accepted that and that really helped.
But I would not give up on these kids.
Le and I were determined to show
them that no matter what they did,
they were going to be with us.
And so we started regular life,
got them enrolled in school,
and settled in the neighborhood and routines.
But it wasn't until adoption day,
which is what they told me what happened,
but it wasn't until
the adoption day that they really trusted us,
that we weren't going to go anywhere.
And as that day approached,
Illinois requires that you wait two years.
You have to foster your children
two years before you can legally adopt them,
and we timed it so that we were able to
adopt them and have our court date the exact
same day as the day that they came to us.
So to the date two years later,
we went before the judge,
which is usually a very
simple ceremony and all that stuff,
but the new Beckers don't do anything simply.
So we had all of our friends.
We packed the courthouse with
friends and people from the agency
that we knew and
the principal from their school and their teachers came.
Everybody came just to
witness the creation of this family.
And the judge was stunned.
He just stopped the proceedings
and he talked about taking
a village and how touched he
was to see that this family had so much support.
And so he spoke about
that and he took the decree and he tapped each
of them on the heads and
pronounced us a family forever
and everything changed at that moment.
It was just like a big weight had been lifted off them,
and they knew they were stuck
with us as we say [LAUGHTER].
And so that's when it got much easier.
It's still challenging as a parent.
Our life did change.
We were at that point living like I said, in uptown,
we had left Boys Town,
which was where all the bars were,
because we didn't think that was a
great place to raise a good.
And we're in uptown.
But city life was hard with
two kids because I was the overprotective parent.
And so when they would go biking,
I wanted to be right beside them,
and I just felt like their lease was awfully short.
And the school was a challenge as well.
We had found the best school that we could,
and I had become very active
in the school and even set on the school board.
Which we call the LSC and won a slot on that.
And so we were extremely active in the school.
But it was still difficult to make it work in the city.
And so then we
started searching for communities outside of the city
that had an excellent school system would be
a community that we'd feel
comfortable in that we could still get into
the city because we're at heart city people,
and we decided to move to River forest.
And that's where we live today.
>> Do you want to talk about Brad letter for her essay?
>> Yeah. So you know we're in
River forest and it's a rigorous system in their schools.
And one of the requirements in
fourth grade is that the children learn
how to write a persuasive essay.
It's just one of the things that
every fourth grader has to do.
And so the time came for that process to start,
and it coincided about the same time
that the president's inauguration was taking place.
And I remember, for some reason,
it fell on a holiday or something.
But for some reason, she was
home watching the inauguration with me.
And we were sitting there watching it.
And he mentioned gays and lesbians being
allowed to marry who they love, whomever they love.
And she yelled out, Yes.
We had been to marriage rallies and things like
that because the issue was their.
But we had always
downplayed the issue because we didn't want the children
to feel unsafe and like their family
was not as good as another family.
And so we really always
down played the issue of marriage in our family.
They knew that we had had a wedding in
San Francisco in 2004.
And in their eyes,
as far as they're concerned, we were married.
But as the issue started gaining press,
they started wanting to know what that meant.
And so we would give them just as much information
as we felt they needed to know to answer their questions.
But at that moment,
I realized that this was something that was weighing
on her mind that she would have that reaction.
And so I asked her about
that and started listening to her thoughts.
And I was stunned at
ten years old that she had put any thought into it.
And I guess she really had listened
to the answers I'd given in
her questions before and everything. So I encouraged her.
I said, well, you know,
she keeps a journal, and I said well,
you should write some of this stuff down in
your journal and she did.
And I mentioned it to her teacher
and it became the basis
for what she did at school for a persuasive essay.
And so the teacher,
when it was all done,
she said, you need to really read your daughter's essay.
And she sent it home,
and I started crying.
And I know you might think I'm just crying all the time,
but it was so emotional
because I could not believe the words that she
had put down on paper from a perspective of a
10-year old and the title was why
my two dads should be allowed to get married.
And she wrote about her life as a foster child
and how she had been in
five different families and
she said they treated me horribly.
And they always promised
that they would keep me safe and they never did.
And then she goes on and talks about us and all of
our quirky qualities and all the things that we do to
make a family and make her feel safe.
And it was just but all from her perspective,
and it was just unbelievably touching.
And so I shared it with Lee, of course, immediately.
Anyway, so it started growing legs, I would say,
and people started seeing this.
And so then our local community paper
picked it up and they reprinted it and said,
gave her her little column that day in the paper.
And before we knew it,
the essay had caught
the attention of a national group out of
Washington and they were working
on marriage equality for
the upcoming Supreme Court cases.
And they said,
this is a perspective that we haven't seen yet.
And they said, we'd like to fly you out to Washington DC.
We were stunned. Lee couldn't
go because of client commitments.
So he and Michael stayed behind.
But Mike and Jean,
his parents, who were active in P flag,
Braden and myself flew out to DC
and held a press conference
with these former congressman and
women and leaders in
the movement on educating
the public on why we should
receive marriage equality across the country.
And she's sitting there talking with
congressmen and she went and visited
our senator's office and had a meeting with the staff.
And I was just floored.
It was just almost amazing that here this 10-year old is
walking the halls of Congress for her family.
And I was so stunned thinking
about where she started in life,
not feeling like she had a voice and
didn't have any control over her own life.
And then here at 10,
not only does she have control of her life,
but she's taking control of
her family and standing up for us.
And I was just in awe over what was happening.
And it was such a great thing for
her to experience, I think.
So we got back to Illinois
and we were getting ready to fight for
the marriage equality bill to be passed in Illinois.
And so we were asked to go down to
Springfield and talk to
some people who were on the fence and all,
so we went down there.
And I think it
was 20 representatives that she met face-to-face with,
and she would sit down in their office.
And she would present her essay,
and she's just very straight.
She didn't know any other way to do it.
She'd just say, I'd like you to support marriage equality
and they would try to go around,
well, my constituents don't really support,
and she said, but why?
And then they would try to go at everything and
she'd say, I don't understand.
Because from her perspective, it's just common sense.
This is a family. These are my parents.
I think my parents should be married.
I'd like my parents to be married.
And why don't you think that they should?
And I would crack up in my head,
looking at them trying to explain their positions to her.
And I think that it really made
them really examine what
the heart of this issue was about.
And so it was funny because they all,
for some reason, felt like they
had to give her something.
So she ended up at the end of the day
with I don't even know how many stuffed animals.
I was carrying them. She was carrying.
We had so many stuffed animals that they were giving her.
And she named all of them,
and some of them she named after
the rep that she had met that day,
and it was just a great experience for her.
So we went back and of course,
her paper had been tied to
the Supreme Court case for Prop 8.
So when that decision was handed down,
her knowing that each justice had
read her essay was very empowering to her.
And then the attorneys that had been representing
the plaintiffs in each of the cases as they make it to
the appellate courts, they'd always call.
They'd actually email us and they would say,
can you give us an update on your family because we'd
like to continue to add
your story to the amicus briefs.
And so we'd give them
an update with what was going on
the family and let them know how the
kids were doing and all that.
And I think it just gave that different
perspective in the case.
And so I've kept all of this in
her little memory box because I think one day,
she's going to look back and just be amazed that she's
played this little role in such an important case.
So it's all been really fascinating.
She did end up getting to act as
a page on the floor for the House Reps
in Illinois and then even
sat in their chair one day and got to cast a vote.
They had all just rallied around her.
And there's a little article in one of the papers
that says page for a day and shows her sitting there,
looking very in charge of everything at the desk.
So it was just a great experience for her.
>> How did your family celebrate
when they realized [inaudible]?
>> Well, at first
when we got a message that they were going to vote on it,
we raced down to Springfield because we
wanted her to witness and Michael,
of course, I don't want to not include him.
He was active as well, but him being younger,
he was active in different ways than Braden.
But as a family, all of us went
down to Springfield to watch them vote on it,
and the speaker of the House gave us
box seats overlooking the podium to see this.
And so we got there and
we were ushered with other activists that had
been working hard on the issue into
these private seats and we waited and waited.
And it was an all day. We have little kids.
And so it was a long time and they were so patient.
And I remember my son,
they called a vote, and we didn't
know when the vote was going to be called.
We just knew it was supposed to
be called that day because
it was the last day of the session.
And I remember it really stuck,
but every time that they would do a vote,
he would say, is it our turn next?
And I'd say, yet be patient.
It's coming. And he was eight years old and frustrated
and wanted to to be done
with all of this and just
kept saying, is it our turn next?
And then people started
whispering around the chamber
that it wasn't going to be called,
that they didn't have enough votes.
And they said, well,
let's get the families out of here.
This is not something they need to experience.
And we said, no, this is part of democracy,
so we're going to see this through.
And we sat there and the sponsor of the bill,
who's a friend of ours, he gets up,
Greg Harris, and tears are in his eyes.
And he's looking up at all of us. And he loses it.
He's just so devastated that
he's brought us down there to experience
this and he knows he can't deliver.
Because the caucus just
started unraveling for all the pressure.
And he said, I can't.
He gives a really elaborate speech.
And when we all realized what was happening,
we all stood up.
And we started chanting,
call the vote, call the vote.
And it just was shocking to
the chambers to have this reasoning.
And they're trying to calm us down,
and we're all just saying, call the vote, call the vote.
Because we felt like with the pressure of all of us
there that maybe that one last vote would show up.
And it didn't.
And so we were back in the streets,
talking about how much
of an injustice this was to our families,
that we couldn't secure those rights.
And it wasn't until the next session
that it finally got passed.
And of course, we celebrated then.
And the first thing I think that
the kids were really excited about was
not so much the idea
of protections in social security and all that stuff,
but what they were going to wear at the wedding.
And so we started playing
that out and we're members of Unity Temple,
which is a historic Unitarian Universalist Church
in Oak Park.
And that's where we attend church.
And so it was natural for us to have our ceremony there.
And so we started planning our wedding,
which was in June of this year.
>> Do you need something?
>> I need a tissue.
>> All right. Am I shiny?
>> No. So [OVERLAPPING] [LAUGHTER]
but can you talk about getting raised in San Francisco?
>> Yeah. You know,
like I said, Lee had called me that morning.
So it was all quite a surprise and
we boarded early bird flight out the next morning.
This would have been February 18,
I think of 2004.
Flew to San Francisco,
got there and immediately went straight to City Hall,
and there's a long line
a long line stretching around the block because you know,
this is the only place in the country that
Gays and Lesbians are allowed to get married.
And it was just so just so fun. We're in line.
We had our suits on because,
you know, of course, you get married,
suits best and there
were all sorts of couples from all over the place,
mostly San Francisco in California,
and we waited patiently
and as we're waiting on this long line,
it's slowly moving, you know,
people would just come up.
They would offer us drinks.
I remember this one little old Asian lady
came up just handing us a little rose,
and, you know, just such gestures of
kindness shown by the people of San Francisco,
that was just very touching.
And then there was
this this flower shop even came up at one point,
and handed me a bouquet, a real, like,
wedding bouquet and you know,
I was stunned by this.
You know, rose is one thing but a bouquet and he said,
he said, we've been getting calls
from all over the country,
people wanting to be part of this,
and they're paying for bouquet for
the couples and ours said with love from Seattle.
We kept it. I keep everything
and so I had my little bouquet and we're in line,
and it's getting later in the day and we're keeping it.
We're still outside at this point.
And, you know,
they come out and they try to give
up dates and all that stuff
and we're probably five, five way.
And they come out and they said, we're closing down.
There's no more room inside,
and we know you know how long this is going to take.
And we thought, oh, my gosh,
we came all the way out here, all this way,
and we waited all this time,
and it's not going to happen.
And the couples all around us.
This was representative Duffy's assistant who came out.
And representative Duffy was
the supervisor Duffy in San Francisco,
was the supervisor who
held the seat that Harvey Milk held over the Castro.
So his assistant came out and apologized
that we weren't going to be
able to get married that day and
all the couples around us said,
you have to take these guys.
They're from Chicago.
They came all the way here.
You have to let them in,
and they did and so we were so touched by that.
You know, these strangers
that we had just met that morning
put their selves aside and let us go ahead.
And so they whisk us away, and actually,
he ended up taking us straight up
to supervisor Duffy's office.
And we met with him and which was just for as a gay man
to talk to the supervisor who held
Harvey Milks seat and to be in that office,
you know, where such tragedy had
happened and everything with the killing of Harvey Milk.
And there's just so much history in that building.
It was just amazing to us.
And so they took us to
the Rotunda area and that's where we had our wedding.
And of course, our family wasn't able to be there.
So we had them on cell phone
and they got to listen to the ceremony.
And then we were whisked
downstairs to get the certificate,
and a poker band had showed up,
I forgot about this part.
So we danced. You know,
all of these people who were getting married
or dancing and singing,
and it was just and all the clerks were so thrilled.
It was just such a wonderful, wonderful experience.
And as we left,
we went back to the hotel that we had rented
a little place in the Castro a little Victorian yacht.
I never will forget and we took photos of
this because it was just so poignant.
We get there and as we're looking out,
this huge rainbow came out
across the city and we thought,
how perfect has this day turned out?
This is the way it would end.
We had to snap all those photos because it
just didn't seem real.
And so that's how our first wedding took place.
Now I will say that after that,
we came back and his parents threw us
a reception so the family could participate.
We held it in a banquet hall right outside of Detroit
and it was about
as typical of wedding reception as you could have.
We had my family come up and Les family,
and we probably had about 150 guests.
We had a friend of ours
who was a priest is a priest with a Catholic church who
blessed us and it was
magical having all of our family
with us celebrating the start
of our journey officially together.
>> Just to clarify was this
before or after Britain and Michael.
>> This was before. Yeah, four.
They came to us in zero seven.
They came to us August 10,2007.
So this was before.
>> It was just such a perfect experience,
when it was later struck down. How did that feel?
>> Well, you know,
we didn't ask me about the honeymoon.
Well, I'll throw that in there.
So we went to Mali
because that's where a couple should go,
I think on their honeymoon and had
a wonderful Hawaiian honeymoon and
toured all the falls and took the road to
Hana and all the things that you could
do on Maui, we did.
And got back and you know,
there was discussion on what
was going to happen with those license.
We knew that it was on shaky legal grounds,
and so sure enough,
one day in the mail comes
very nicely written letter
from the City of San Francisco, I think it was.
We kept this as well,
and notifying us that
our marriage had been nullified because
of ruling by the California Supreme Court.
And they would be glad to refund
our fees or if we would like,
we could donate our fees to the fund to
help secure marriage equality rights,
which is what we chose to do.
You know, so legally we
really didn't have any legal standing
anyway in Illinois at that time.
We knew that the minute we had left San Francisco,
that it was a piece of paper in the eyes of Illinois.
It gave us maybe something that we could fight with,
which is what I did with Dean Foods.
But, you know, it
wasn't it still wasn't being treated the
same as any other marriage certificate
by a heterosexual couple.
We knew that was going to be the case,
and it would still be a long journey for us.
>> So we've talked a lot over the last two days
about the relationship over the years.
Can you speak a little to how they've
affected you and how you've developed as a person?
That's a really easy question. What are your thoughts on?
>> Wow.
I've had two major relationships
in my life as an adult.
It was John, which I met as a teenager.
I was 17 when we met.
And then, of course, Lee,
whom I'm currently in a relationship with.
Those were the two main relationships.
John 11 years, Lee I've been together for 14 years.
And then that small window between when
I was happily single, I dated.
I wouldn't say I dated a lot,
but I did date.
And they all happened to be
German nationals for some reason,
and I happened to marry a new Becker,
which is German as
well because I don't know what that means.
But I did manage
to maintain good friendships
with all of them, which I think is great.
I've taken away something from each of them.
But honestly, the two Lee
and John would be the ones that I think helped shape me.
I met John at a time
when I was learning who I was as a person,
and really, I didn't think very much of myself.
I didn't have anyone really in
my life to tell me that I was worth anything.
And then I was capable of being anybody
and I really think I was just a lost kid,
and I don't know what I would
have become or if I would have
really amounted to much without him in my life.
Not only was he a great partner,
but he gave me the ability to believe in myself,
and that's a huge gift to give somebody.
And I talked with them recently
about that because we've remained friends.
We grew apart, as I understand and got to
know myself and learned what I wanted in life,
it didn't always necessarily
fit with what John wanted in life.
He already was 11 years older than myself,
and I think he had already been down
that journey and decided that
this is where he wanted to be in life,
and my journey was taking a turn.
And we were both realizing that,
I think with the loss of Cody,
and everything, it just made
my decision that much easier.
But he seems to think I think he's right that
the relationship probably wouldn't have lasted even
if the incident with Cody had never occurred,
that I just had really gotten to the point
where I was a very different person and then I was at 17.
And we both recognize that now.
So I credit him with making me
the person I am in that
he showed me that I could do whatever I wanted in life,
and he supported me through that.
And those were the tough times.
Those were the times when we would go days eating
this macaroni and cheese with cut-up sausages.
We still joke with them about
this because we didn't have any money.
It was tough times with me attending school
here and working in
the laboratory and his job and living in Smyrna,
we just didn't have much.
And it was tough and I'm just so thankful
that I had him part of my life at that time.
And then, of course, when I met Lee,
it was a different situation.
I was confident enough to move across the country
and I really didn't
want a relationship at that I was quite happy single.
So when I met Lee,
it felt different because I wanted to be with
him because I loved him and, attracted to him.
And it wasn't that I needed
him to make me feel better or anything like that.
And so it was a different situation.
And I think that it has fallen into
an interesting place in
that when people ask about our relationship,
or our friends when they look at how we live,
they describe it as the typical
1950s housewife and husband.
If you want to try to put us into those weird buckets.
Lee started and founded the company
Forensicon which is a computer forensics company,
and anyone who does a start-up,
it takes many hours
and you're really pouring
your whole life into the small business.
And that's why I put
my career on hold
because we wanted to start a family together,
and that meant that,
especially with two kids who had
come from a background where they needed
something extra to make them feel safe and secure
and meet their needs
and bring them to where they need to be today,
they needed someone who's going to be
home all the time and
dedicate their life to them and it's worked.
And it's probably unconventional today in many ways,
but I do the PTA stuff and room parent,
and I was cookie dad for
the Girl Scouts and
I try to make decent home-cooked meals.
And he works many hours
and he comes home and he's tired and he
doesn't get to spend as many hours
as you'd like with the kids,
and that's our life right now.
But it's hopefully going to
change where he'll be able to be at home more.
And I think at some point when
the kids get older and everything,
I'll resume my career.
But right now, it's just making them
feel safe and at ease at home.
And I want to
be able to look back on these moments which are
just really precious and
enjoy it as long as I can, I guess.
>> Can you talk a little bit about how
the AIDS epidemic has impacted your life,
especially with your work with the mains project clothe.
>> It's something that I probably haven't dealt
with much over the years.
In preparing to discuss all of this with you guys,
I reflect on my journey through life.
I started putting together,
like all of the organizations I
belonged to and I had helped found
all the demonstrations we had participated in
and I sat down and I looked at all of this stuff,
and I was quite amazed at how many things we had done.
And it was pretty impressive,
I thought for myself.
And then the other night
before coming down to speak with you guys,
I woke up at 4:00 in the morning, I just woke up.
Which is not like me because I don't like waking up.
For some reason, I thought about all
of my friends that I lost during that time.
And it's like their names just kept rolling in my head,
names that I hadn't thought about in years.
As their names came into my mind,
I thought about the time spent with them,
and losing them.
And this happened at a very short window of time.
In the late '80s for me,
I was experiencing this
when I became involved with friends at
Atlanta and was friends
with people of an older generation,
and that was the generation that was really being
affected mostly by this disease.
And I started processing what that meant,
and I realized I had just buried it.
It was too painful to live through a period in your 20s
where you're having to take care of people
who are dying and there is
nothing you can do to save them.
And their families are abandoning them,
they're wasting away,
there's no treatments,
and people are afraid to touch you.
They're afraid to even
live in the house that you've lived in.
I just could not believe
thinking back at what that was like.
I think it was just so horrible and
painful and I couldn't
deal with it that I just close it off.
And it didn't hit me until the other night,
what I had experienced.
And there's just too many names to go through.
And at the time, our community,
what we did to not forget
those people was we were putting together quilt panels.
Cleve Jones had founded the names project.
And people as their friends
were dying or their family members were dying,
they would they create a panel
that represented that person,
however, they wanted to be represented.
Sometimes the person as they
were getting ready to die would participate in that.
Sometimes it was just left as a way to
cope with the loss
to pull together pieces of their T-shirts,
I remember doing that stuff.
But political buttons or
whatever represented the person in that moment.
And then we'd chip it off.
The first march on Washington,
they decided to display this quilt that
had been pulled together
from panels all over the country.
And we're out on the mall in Washington and it's just,
I don't even know the words to describe it.
But to look across the mall,
which is normally green and full of people
and usually people enjoying a bright sunny day and
it's happy just to see
nothing but panels that you know each one of
those represents someone who died too
soon was just amazing.
So it was dead silent. I remember that.
I remember it was just so painful
that you could just hear
the birds chirping because you didn't want to talk.
And people who would just kneel down when they would
recognize a panel and just sit with it.
So it really brought it under perspective,
how much it was just devastating
our community and the lack
of help that we were getting from anywhere.
The government wasn't helping us.
Our president wouldn't even mention the word.
And families didn't want to talk about it.
It was just too shameful and people used it
as a weapon against us to
keep us from securing our rights.
And so we get back to Atlanta.
We're energized by all the people that we've met
and what we've seen in DC and we're working,
but at the same time,
we're just so mindful of all the people
that we're still losing from this illness.
So they decided to bring the quilt to
Atlanta Memorial Day weekend,
I think it was of 1988.
It was going to be at the World Congress Center,
Georgia World Congress Center.
So John and I volunteered and,
I thought I can do this.
And we get there.
We were asked were all white. I remember that.
And our job was just to hand out tissues
and try to offer some support to people who came in.
So we stood there and did our job.
And at the end of the day,
I was just so absolutely exhausted
by the grief in the place and
just everyone mourning and
releasing all that they had bent
up over the losses that we were experiencing.
And these panels meant so
much more because so many of them,
we knew these people that were
represented in these panels.
So it was really tough.
And my cousin,
he had a call one day,
and I had been out to the family for some time,
and I had a cousin,
Keith Davis, who was older than myself
and my family is very large on
both sides and tons of cousins.
And Keith was always a nice cousin,
but older than I was.
And he graduated from Pebblebrook.
He moved away and thought well that's fine.
That's what people do. And I get a call from him.
And he's living in
North Carolina and he comes out and he tells me,
he's gay and all that stuff.
And I thought well, that's great,
and we talk a little bit and all that
and I don't hear from him again for a while,
and next time I
hear from him, you're going to go some time.
And I had always wanted to visit him
because now I've got a gay cousin,
it's quite exciting all that stuff.
But it just never seemed to work out.
I thought, well, I'll see him at some point.
Next time I hear from him,
he's at Georgia Baptist Hospital.
I'm just stunned by this phone call now.
He tells me that he has AIDs.
I'm processing all of this and I said,
well, let me come up to see you
and and he doesn't want me to come up.
And we talk about that.
I'm still kind of young. I don't understand,
why don't he want me to be there.
And looking back, of course,
I get it now because I'd seen it so much.
He doesn't look like he did before.
He's wasted away.
He's seen the press and the way people are treating those
who are dying and
he just doesn't want to be remembered that way.
And so he had shut himself off from the whole family.
He blocked anyone from visiting his room.
We were not allowed to go visit him.
So I never got to see him before he died.
And it really affected me hard because I
really felt cheated that the family had been,
pretty supportive at that point of me and my coming out.
And I thought, had he
just tried to give
the family a chance we would have rallied around him.
And we would have helped him through this.
And I felt that he didn't give us
a chance and that hurts.
And I mourned the loss of a cousin who
really fully understood what I
was going through and got me.
And there wasn't going to be anybody else in
my family that was just like me.
So that was tough to lose that too.
So he's buried up here at
Windy Hill Road and 41 next to his parents.
He died at age 28.
So when I come back to Atlanta now,
I go to his grave, and I just sit with him.
And that's all I have.
>> Do you think that, coming out in
era of the AIDs epidemic in
any way influenced your coming
out process or changed in any way?
>> Say it again.
>> Sure. Do you think that
coming out in the in phase of the AIDs epidemic,
did that in any way influence the decision to come out.
Was there an extra layer of
fear about coming out as a gay man?
>> It didn't at the time because,
I came out in stages.
I had already come out to myself
practically at the age of five.
So I already knew who I was.
And then at 16,
I came out to the family,
which at that time,
we still didn't really know much
about what was happening.
And I remember writing at Pebblebrook High School,
and I was pretty out at this point.
I wrote a summary of a newspaper article.
My English teacher required us
to clip something out of the newspaper
and I used that every opportunity I could,
I wanted to talk about something gay.
And I had this up until recently,
and I wanted to donate it to the archives.
And it was one of those things that got
accidentally thrown away.
But I had cooked an article about a new gay cancer,
I think it was the way that they
were labeling it in the paper.
And I wrote about that.
And I was fascinated with it.
They were still trying to understand how
it was being transmitted and all that stuff.
I was curious about it all,
but there was just so little information.
And it wasn't happening
supposedly in Atlanta at the time.
And I wasn't really part of that community full anyway.
So I didn't really feel like it was affecting me.
It was something I was definitely wanting to learn about,
but I don't remember having a sense of fear yet.
I think it was just too early.
And I didn't make a connection,
I don't think any of us really knew what
we were facing at that point.
But realizing that I had written that,
it reminded me just how out there I was.
And one of the other papers I had found at the time too,
just touching on that subject was I
had done a critique of A Kiss of the Spider Woman,
I think was the name of the film,
which was a very gay
controversial film at the time, as well.
And I wrote a review about that too.
So at any opportunity,
I could write about something gay.
My teachers probably were just scratching
their head over what they were having to read.
And I wasn't even a very good writer,
so that was the sad part of it all.
But I don't think I fully understood the impact of
what HIV/AIDs meant to our community
until I met John and his generation,
which were all older and those were the guys really,
unfortunately, who were really most impacted by it.
And with friends Atlanta and those guys,
so many of them,
they had become infected before we even understood
what means there were to protect themselves.
So that was shocking to me.
And I was in a relationship with John,
in a monogamous relationship.
So again, I didn't feel like I
was personally going to catch the illness,
but it was so unfair and just so hard to be
that age and have to live through the loss
of so many of your friends.
Some of the guys, I found out later,
that I had hung out with from
my high school days in that group
of gay kids from Cobb County,
I had found out a couple of them had died.
But at that point,
I hadn't really been friends with them for some time.
So again, it was sad,
but it wasn't as close to me as
the friends that I was
experiencing on a day to day basis that was dying.
>> Looking back on the steps made by
the gay community in terms of rights and acknowledgement.
Are there things in your activism
that you would have done differently?
>> No, I can't think of anything.
I think that John
and I were an interesting place with activism
in that I felt that there were
two distinct camps of
activism that were occurring at the time.
You had your street activists,
which were act up in queer nation, primarily,
and then you had your suit and ties,
and they are the ones who donate money,
they would go to the dinners, HRCF dinners,
and work with in the mainstream at all.
And we felt comfortable in both of those communities,
and that caused some problems.
I think there were lots of trust issues with how to deal
with us because we didn't fit
comfortably in either of those boxes.
We were spilling over into both.
And so we were hosting people from
Act from New York and our homes,
and we were having Dianes with them,
where Diane would be where we
would literally go into the street.
And maybe we would want to really bring
attention to the issue of
HIV/AIDs at the time and the lack of funding
that we were receiving to help with this illness.
And we'd look for a busy intersection,
and we would die in the intersection and we
would just fall out and cause traffic jam,
anything to just get people to
stop and think about what was happening around them.
And that really incensed the other side.
When I say the other side,
the santai crowd because they felt
that level of street activism making people
get angry and think about it and pushing it in
their face that was
counterproductive to what they were doing.
And we disagreed.
We thought that we
always felt that you needed both sides.
You need the people who are going to reach them,
reach those that need that in your face moment,
but you also need to show a side
of your community that consider
the table and have the discussions
and reach those who aren't reached the other way.
And so we've always
looked at that as a two problem approach.
>> What are your perceptions current activism [inaudible]
>> It's interesting because I always wondered if we would
end up with that gay,
Martin Luther King figure in our movement.
And it became apparent at some point,
that wasn't the way our movement was going to be,
that we were just going to have a lot of
people who maybe started out in
the streets in low level areas
in their local communities and just work
their way up to a national scene.
And that's really the way
our movement has really worked, I think.
And it's been fine.
Sometimes I wish that Harvey Milk had
survived and I wonder
what it would have been like would he have been
able to meet the needs,
could he have addressed such a diverse group
as the gay community?
Because we are all very different from each other,
just so happens that what holds together is that we
love people of the same sex as their own.
But it's like hurting cats sometimes in our community.
I don't know that one leader can
really represent everyone.
But I'm really pleased with where we are.
I think it's all occurred very quickly.
I think that looking back
when John and I were so active here in Atlanta,
marriage rights weren't even on the table.
Certainly we felt that we needed marriage rights,
and we deserved those.
But there are so many things before.
At that point, we were even just trying to survive
literally with the AIDS crisis looming around us.
And so the idea of
asking for marriage rights was just so far down
the line that just I
didn't think I'd ever seen in my lifetime,
to be honest with you.
And and I think that
also and that was one of the things that
attracted me with Chicago is when I left
the South and realized that there
were some places in the country where
it wasn't a daily battle
just to secure basic rights.
They had already had,
they had repealed their Alimony Law in 1969,
the year after I was born.
And here I am in 1986,
screaming at our federal building
because the Supreme Court had upheld it here in Georgia.
I just felt that maybe
moving to Chicago not only for all the other reasons,
but that I could take a break from those basic battles,
and I think where I am
now with it is that we've gotten to a place in
some states and I'd like to
include Illinois as one of those states where
we've secured protection from
discrimination and employment and housing and
public accommodations and we've made our schools
very safe for our students who identify as LGBT.
And we've got adoption rights securely in place,
so our families are adequately protected.
And now we've secured marriage equality,
and I was thinking about this the other day,
we've checked all those boxes off.
Everything seems to be done.
There's more work of course to do to
fine tune it and to fully
become equal part in society but the big stuff is done.
And I think like the civil rights movement,
I think it's really important that those of us
who live in states where
those big items have been accomplished,
we've now got to help the other states
who aren't there yet.
It's imperative that we take
time to reach out to those in Atlanta,
Georgia, or Mississippi,
or the Dakotas and
help those communities secure
the rights that they deserve and I hope that,
that's where we are as
a collective community in
the United States right now that we can do that.
>> So you feel like that's
where activism is headed at the moment,
just ensuring that the entire nation security.
>> Absolutely. Without a doubt,
I think that things
are moving so fast with marriage equality.
I really fully think that within
a year that issue will be settled nationwide,
one way or the other, whether it's through
a Supreme Court decision that
will finally put the issue to rest.
Or whether the remaining
federal appeals courts will go ahead and
rule in favor of marriage equality
and it will be settled in that way.
It's going to be one of those two ways, though.
I would like to think that within a year that happens.
So then what's left is the issue around adoption rights.
And what I'm seeing personally is that
as states are dropping their marriage bans,
that the second natural step that's happening
quite quickly afterwards is that
they're allowing couples to fully start
families through adoption and fostering that
happened just recently in Utah without any fight.
So then what we're left with is making
our schools safer and that's
something I think that we're going to
be continuing to work on
across the country and hopefully at
federal level and securing
protections and employment to
public accommodations housing,
and I think that's going to
have to happen at a federal level.
I think we're close,
and I think that working across
the aisle and helping to continue to
elect people who understand
and get the importance of those issues
regardless of what party they belong to,
I think that we'll be pretty
close to securing that soon as well.
And then really what we're looking at next is,
what do we do with our seniors as they start to grow old?
How do we take care of those seniors who
are quite often in a different place than
seniors who are heterosexual and that most of them don't
have children that they
can look back and ask for a helping hand.
And what are we going to do as a community
to make sure that they're taken care
of and they get
the needs met that they have in their old age.
>> You just mentioned the diversity of the gay community.
But there's often the perception that
there's a monolithic gay community.
For instance, there's no one spokesperson obviously for
the heterosexual community and no one would expect that.
Can you talk a little bit more
about your perception of that?
>> You have to start over. I had to take some water.
That was way too much all of a sudden.
A drink after that. I don't even know.
>> She hits you with that.
>> I'm like, what was
her name in the White House press Corp that
was set in the front for all those years, Helen, are you?
>> I try.
>> You've got her [inaudible]
>> I'm on my way.
>> Let me listen.
>> You mentioned the diversity of the gay community.
However, there's often the perception that there's
a monolithic gay rights gay community.
Whereas on the other side,
no one would ever expect there to be
one spokesperson for the heterosexual community.
Can you talk a little bit more about
your perceptions of that and how that affects gay rights?
[LAUGHTER]
>> I don't even know where to go with this.
>> Anyway, we can settle this.
It's something that John
brought up that we found really interesting.
>> What did he say? Let me hear this
because we don't always agree on everything.
[LAUGHTER]
>> You definitely mentioned in discussing
how diverse the gay community is,
and he mentioned that people often think
of a gay community as one entity.
And I think his point essentially with that was
how it affects activism and the fact that you have
these incredibly diverse groups for different needs,
but it's all lumped under gay rights.
>> Yes, there's an issue there.
I just don't know how to even
approach it because
this is something that I'm struggling.
Are we taping now? Because we can talk about this.
I think I can be open and honest about this.
This is tough for me because I feel like
as our umbrella is expanding.
And when I was starting here at Kennesaw as an activist,
it was LG,
that was it, lesbian, gay.
And we would fight over
which came first, and a lot of times,
we always had to remember the L first
because we wanted to make
sure that the lesbians
felt that they really, truly were included.
And then the B came,
and so we start adding and it's been
interesting because I think with some in my generation,
things are changing so quickly within
the community and people are seeing
themselves through different lenses
and they're identified differently.
And then you have
sexual women minorities that feel a kinship to
the gay and lesbian community and feel that there's
many overlapping connections that they jump on with us.
And in many ways,
I think that's healthy,
but I think that it's hard for people,
at least in my generation to keep up with it.
Even here at Kennesaw before,
like I said, in '91,
we were just gay and lesbian or lesbian gay group,
and now it's the LGBTQI or IQ
and I don't even
know for sure if most people wouldn't
know what those represent.
And I question whether or not
that works in our community.
And if we don't really need to maybe
take a step back and educate ourselves a little bit,
I know I certainly do on how those
mesh together and what
the experiences are those people and their needs.
And even me saying those people,
it's something that I
think that we're going to have to reflect back on
ourselves and get comfortable
with and help pull them along.
It's a very complicated issue
right now and one that's not resolved in any way.
And I can think even with
the transgender community because
a lot of attention now is
being placed on issues
around sexual identity or gender identity
and those identify as
gender other than the one they reported.
And I think that there's just
so much that we still need to learn
together as a community to make everyone
feel part of the movement before
we can go out and collectively
help effect change on
a broader basis if that makes sense.
>> Excellent answer to my incredibly muddled question.
>> Well, and that was a muddled answer,
but it's something that I'm
still working on as a person. And I think that's healthy.
I think that we need to be at a point in
our community where it's okay to say I don't understand,
or I don't feel that I understand
your plight and help me understand.
I think that sometimes we're scared to do
that because we're going to
come across insensitive, or maybe uneducated.
And I think that those who are
trying to join us in this struggle for
equality need to also keep in mind that
it's important to educate with
kindness and not be so quick to assume that
someone's maybe being disrespectful or hurtful,
but maybe just take a moment to try to educate
and do that in a way that
will help bring them along with your cause.
>> You mentioned living in both Atlanta and Chicago.
Can you talk about how
the communities in two cities are different or alike?
>> That's something to think about for a second.
How they're different.
How's the North and South different?
I was amazed at how
much further along the gay community
is in the North versus
the South and how we're perceived
and how some of the things
that I take for granted up there,
I come down here and there's still issues.
An example, when I was
over at the student retention services,
room today, I asked about the window, and they said.
Well, we put film up so
that it's a two-way mirror situation,
so we can see out, but no one can see
in because we want people to feel comfortable.
I guess we don't think about that in Chicago.
Our gay center is all glass.
It's got a full two sides is nothing but glass walls.
So you can see everything
that's happening in the gay center.
So it's interesting,
I'm processing what that means.
And I get it,
I understand that people are in a journey
where they don't feel comfortable
yet and they're at a different place.
And I know there's
got to be people like that in Chicago as well.
But it's certainly looked at differently,
and then so I sometimes step back
and think about that when I come across little instances.
And then just with some of the things
that I've done in Chicago,
I'll give you an example with the school
the children attended in the city.
So they attended a school named Little Horse.
It's a public school school in Chicago.
It happens to be in Boys Town,
and that would be the equivalent here to say midtown,
maybe an elementary school that's straddling there.
So I sent the kids to school there as many in
town families were doing
and would do here as well in schools.
So what we started doing around
Gay Pride because we were a number of
gay families at the school,
we were looking for some way to get the children
involved in the issue around
diversity and celebrating pride for
who you are and being proud of who
you are and being proud of their community,
which includes many gays and lesbians.
So what we did was we had tons of
fabric and we had them cut up
in strips of all different colors.
And we set up a project
where all the elementary school kids
and there were 600 and some odd kids in
the school would tie
a color on the fence along the fence on the street.
And we had it set up so that
as they tied it depending on their color,
it created a huge rainbow flag.
And so when the wind would blow,
the fabric would just flit out into
the sidewalk and it just stunned the neighborhood.
They were so touched.
We had a little sign that talked
about how we celebrated all of
our families at Little Horse
and hoping that they enjoyed our display.
And I couldn't see that happening here.
I think that Atlanta is in a different place,
that if an elementary school supported their children
showing just a simple gesture like
that it just wouldn't be allowed, there'd be an uproar.
And so it's a little things like that that I
notice that are different.
The politics are somewhat the same.
I had alluded to the pride and how you get
entrenched the same people doing
the same job and doing things
way because of the way they've always been done.
And I think that's just a challenge
in general with movements.
And life in general,
people don't necessarily like change very
much and just helping that along.
And certainly, for Chicago,
we have the advantage of size
and just the sheer number
of people and where they come from,
and that it adds a different element to
what diversity means and the fact that we really do
have to learn to live with
people who are very different from ourselves.
And maybe that hasn't happened to
that same extent here in the South yet,
where you haven't had
large communities that have settled,
and I think that is happening here in Atlanta
more and more as the city continues to grow,
but there are still differences, as I mentioned.
>> In your observations,
how have perceptions of the community changed over time?
>> Perceptions.
As the AIDs epidemic,
it's become a manageable disease that people live with.
That has certainly been
taken out of the argument, I think.
When I look back at some of
the people who would protest
against us and their signage,
and it was always focused around us being diseased.
Thank God for AIDs and
us dying and you don't see that as much anymore.
I think people fully understand
that's not part of the argument
and that it was not something that was brought on to
against us and that it truly
does affect other populations as well.
And so they had to move on to other ways
to counter the movement that we have towards equality.
And so now,
the argument seems to be more around change.
Really let's not move forward with
marriage equality because marriage has
always been between a man and a woman,
and that should be enough.
Are the other argument being,
what's best for the children?
I think again,
as they see more families
and headed by two women or two men,
and those children are growing up.
And you just see
how wonderfully normal and wonderful kids are,
that argument falling to the wayside as well.
And I just think that as each individual person
continues to come out
and feel supported enough to do that.
And have those one on
one connections with their friends
and neighbors and all that, that really,
I think has been the biggest
plus in our community and changing hearts and minds.
And certainly, that's spilled over
into media in the ways we're
portrayed now versus the fact
that we weren't even betrayed at all hardly on TV.
Back in the early days,
and if we were,
it was usually, in a very negative light.
I mentioned as a kid,
images of gays or lesbians on TV.
I never remember seeing any lesbians on TV,
but the gay men that I saw were
always just over the top flamboyant,
and that's just such a small idea
of what a gay man can be.
Because we come in all different mannerisms,
shapes and sizes.
And but for me as a kid,
it was the [inaudible] and
there's something wrong with [inaudible].
They're great and I
can even identify on some level with that,
but it's not fair
to have that as the only image growing up.
And so I'm happy that today kids growing up,
whether they're questioning their sexual orientation
or maybe they're just straight kids,
but they at least get to see
that we're really no different than anyone else.
And that's been great.
>> So finally, David, is there anything we
haven't discussed today that you'd like to mention.
>> I really can't think of
anything that we've left off the table.
Can you guys? Is there anything
that you can think that we need to talk about?
>> [inaudible].
>> When I left Kinsal State College,
I think it was still called back in '92,
I never wanted to see this place again.
It it was such a painful experience.
I was so burn out by the experience.
And not just with my experience on campus,
but with Cobb County and all the stuff that
was happening in this county.
It became a place where we just didn't feel wanted,
welcomed, and we didn't care to be here.
And there were better places.
And that was tough for me because,
this is my home,
and I have always felt angry
that someone like myself who grew up
in Cobb County for people
to move into the county and then somehow tell me
that I don't belong here because my lifestyle doesn't
conform to their ideals of what
someone should be or who they should love.
I find incredibly insulting and it's bothered me,
especially during the top citizens coalitions
fight against the commissioners,
many of whom were not from this county for them to
tell me who grew up here that I didn't belong here.
I just could not believe the goal.
And so when I left,
I left never wanting to see this place again.
And it wasn't really until I realized
that people cared about what I had
done here that I gave the school any thought.
Because again, it was just too painful.
And I think I approached it with
some curiosity on what was happening here that suddenly,
they would have an interest in
what little involvement I had here on campus.
Of course, it was great for the ego as well,
I'm not going to lie to you there.
But when I got here,
I was just absolutely amazed.
I was amazed on so many different levels.
I was amazed at how large
the campus is now compared to the days when I was here.
And I was amazed
at the buildings and
the interesting architecture that
seems to be springing up.
And just the interest
and the community seems to have here
of building a true campus that's pleasant,
that's it's nice to be around and it
was just interesting visually stimulating.
And even like with the dorms,
everything seems to be nice and
a place that you want to be at.
And then there's the level of community.
When I was here before,
you would get out of your car,
go to class, get back in your car, and leave.
And there were very few of us who really wanted to
even attempt to build community on campus.
I know that there are still many students
here that are what
you'd consider maybe commuter
students that don't live on campus.
But you can't argue that there's no community here now.
It's just you see it everywhere you look,
you see people hanging out
and just enjoying each other's company,
and there's just so many different activities here to do,
and they're addressing the needs of
so many different micro communities within the school.
And they all seem to be co existing wonderfully,
and there's going to be
hiccups and there are going to be those moments where
you have to take a step back and examine biases
and incidents that may
happen with one community or other next.
But's part of, I think,
in education and learning
to live with people who are different from yourselves.
And Kinsale now is providing a space,
not just for gay lesbian,
transgender bisexual and
all the other sexual minority communities
to have safe space,
but they're providing an opportunity
for so many communities.
Not just to have their own safe space,
but to learn how to work with each other.
And I think that in of itself is
the most valuable piece of
education and learning that's
taking place on this campus right now.