Transcripts

Resources:

Katie Hays Interview clip 1:

“At Galileo we say we seek spiritual refugees. We name spiritual refuges as any for whom church has become boring, irrelevant, exclusive, or even painful. Then we specify even further by saying millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000, that don’t find a place in the traditional church and especially those who are LGBT people and those that love them.”

 

Personal Journeys:

Sharon Herrera interview clip 3

“My community- I didn’t know if it was LGBTQ friendly growing up. Now, when I became aware of who I was – that I was a lesbian- it seemed to be, to be not so friendly and that was because society- I’m 52 so my generation, back then, you- if you looked like a lesbian you were picked on.. or if you were in sports or you know… I had a friend named Freddy who always had a pink backpack and lipstick and he got picked on a lot. So, uh, it was fearful. So I was, I was always scared when I was realizing who I really was. Uh, as far as my family, they didn’t know and I wasn’t about to tell them. It was a Latina family, Latino family, catholic and we just- you didn’t have anyone to talk to back then; counselors weren’t available, teachers. Maybe you knew all the coaches were gay but, you know, nobody really comfortable enough to talk to.”

 

Social Pressures:

David Henderson interview clip 6:

“Um, I was-I was kind of the band fag and the choir queer at LD Bell, and uh, you know, you tried.. First off, if you realized you were gay in that area you tried to change because everyone told you “you can change”, and that was.. And you know.. I see.. Dakota is behind the camera and she’s shaking her head right now like “you gotta be kidding me”. No Dakota, I’m not shitting you that’s really the way life was in even in the 70’s and 80’s and for a good part of the 90’s- and still in certain parts of the deep south here in the United States. This gravy train doesn’t happen overnight. Um, but here I was trying to fit in like any kid wants to. Some.. I see this now, some kids facing this dilemma go down a destructive path, and some manage to find something proactive to grab on to, and fortunately I managed to do that.”

David Henderson interview clip 7:

“And I remember going to the biology section bathroom one day, and was sitting in the stall, and looking at things that were written on the stall, and there was my name and my phone number… and from the looks of things and other things written on that stall wall, it had been up there for three years. And I remember my heart sank and that and I realized that for my entire high school career, my name and phone number had been up there- for a good time or for a blow job call this number and talk to David. Now, my father’s name was David too, and it really was our phone number, and it would explain why we got some many prank calls and messages on our answering machine for years. I remember, we would toilet paper houses on the weekends after football games and all, but I came home once and instead of toilet paper, someone had taken gasoline and spelled “queer” into our front yard in the grass. And my job every Saturday morning was to mow the grass. So I go out and from Friday night to Saturday morning the grass, where the gasoline had touched it, had died and spelled “queer” all across the front yard. And I remember being mortified: what’s going to happen? What will my parents think? What will the neighbors think? So, I had gas to fill up the lawn mower and I just spread it over the rest of the yard because I had to hide that word that was something you could not be called and show your face. So, that’s where I came from and that’s the kind of oppression that a lot of us in the 60’s, and 70’s, and early 80’s faced.”

Sharon Herrera Clip 4:

“Uh, my community- I didn’t know if it was LBGT friendly growing up. Now, when I became aware of who I was—that I was a lesbian—it seemed to me, to be not so friendly. It was because society–now I’m fifty-two years old–my generation back then, if you looked like a lesbian you were picked on, or you were in sports, or, or you know, I had a friend named Freddie—who had a pink backpack and lipstick—and he got picked on a lot. So, uh, it was fearful. I was-I was always fearful— I was scared when I was realizing who I was. Uh, as far as my family, they didn’t know, and I wasn’t about to tell them. I was [part] of a Latina family—catholic—and we just didn’t talk about it back then. You didn’t have anyone to talk to back then. Counselors weren’t available, teachers weren’t available.”

 

Religious Pressure:

Sharon Herrera interview clip 1:

“Which, you know, in-in.. like I said, I was born catholic, I was told I was going to be going to hell by a catholic priest and you know, that lead to my suicide attempt at 16: uh, no where to turn. You know, you’re desperately- you know, you hear about people praying for change, wanting to change, God to change me- I want to be normal. That does go through.. well it went through my head- I can only tell you what I went through. And my knees were sore from being on the ground praying all the time. But I remember that I had chosen drain-o cause we didn’t have drugs in the house or a gun, and drain-o had that little skeleton face- the little x x on it- and so I said “okay, this is gunna work.” So I had the cup of drain-o in one hand and the bible in the other, because in the bible I was always looking for the word homosexual and what it meant. Of course, you know, it wasn’t good. And that’s, you know, that was how I was going to take my life cause I just couldn’t.. I just couldn’t go on and be ridiculed or made fun of or not accepted anymore as a human being. So that’s how I was going to take my life at 16 so.. and that’s the whole reason that, you know, years later, I started this organization, LGBTQ saves.”

Steffan Coy:

“So I’m a Christian, a gay Christian. And to hear them talk about how you’re going to hell because you’re gay, it really makes me mad because as a Christian I know that’s not true. And it just kind of makes me believe that they have a really perverted religion, I guess”

 

 

Challenges and Change:

Sharon Herrera interview clip 2:

Now, these kids? Now a days? They blow me away.. They give me so much hope that this world is getting better because they’re so brave. And my job, I feel, is I have to educate them- educate them about our history, educate them about our federal laws, so they can-they can use their voice because I always tell them, your voice is your power but you have to know what your saying and you have to know how far we have come up the-up the, you know, ranks and stuff like that.”

David Henderson interview clip 9:

“What got us here? Why could- how could this happen to begin with? And what are we going to do to move beyond it and move forward? And how can we measurably do that and check off as we go and monitor how that’s transpiring because we were talking about changing a culture that allowed it to occur. You don’t do that by flipping a switch or grabbing a megaphone- that’s work. It’s very time consuming.”

Pride and Marriage:

Justin Prieto Interview clip:

“It’s honestly a huge surprise for me! I’m use to the Houston Pride where it’s a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of people. But it’s nice to come here and see a smaller but more tightly knit group of people here for LBGTQ rights, liberties, and pride in general.”

Chris Gorrie interview clip 1:

The protestors.. I’ve seen both sides of them. When you see a protestor- I’ve been to Dallas pride so I was a civilian then. When you see those protestors you get mad but then.. I’ve learned two things: you don’t argue politics and you don’t argue religion cause you’re not going to change anyone’s mind. After I have my little moment of mad, and my friend yells at them from across the street, you kind of walk off and you feel sorry for them. If you want to make a sign like that’s a waste of your time and money- don’t bring your three year old kid to hold a sign, I feel like they know what they’re talking about.  As a police officer, actually this last pride, there is a pride festival that happens right after the parade. We were told, because last year they sued the city and won so we were told this year they have they have first amendment rights. We couldn’t keep them out of the park area, we couldn’t tell them that they couldn’t hand out their information or speak to anybody. So what he had was, they stayed on the side walk for the most part- there was some people that walked around the park, but a lot of the protestors stayed on the sidewalk holding their signs and spewing their religious dogma. What I do remember from that was that, I told anybody who, on my side of the community that was engaging them in harsh verbal language, I kind of pulled them aside and said “don’t feed the wild animals”. If they have no confrontation then you let the wind out of their sails and they might go away. There was one cute, cute, cute moment- and forgive the three cute’s but- where a late teens group of LGBT kids- maybe 20- sat in front of them. Initially it was just kind of this sit in where they were trying to get a reaction out of the protestors, and the protestors started saying stuff about how Jesus doesn’t love them or whatever. Their response was they sang “Jesus Loves Me”. Which I thought was really cute, and I wish I had recorded it but I didn’t have my phone on me at the time- I think I put it away in case I had to fight someone. To speak to protestors, I think they are going to slowly die off it’s just going to take about 20 years. Let them make their opinion- it’s the wrong opinion but everybody has one.

Katie Hays Interview Clip 2:

“Oh my gosh, fantastic! I mean I don’t have to go to California and drive to Oklahoma to marry people I love and that amazing. We had attended a lot of rallies in support of that. We’ve been to Dallas and Fort Worth and made a lot of noise about that. What I think is so great about that is so many discriminatory practices are going to come to the courts and one by one now those things are going to fall like dominoes because once you have a Supreme Court ruling that makes that kind of discrimination illegal at that level. The discrimination will continue but they are just going to fall one after another and I think I think it’s not going to take a lot more noise and agitation and activist work. I could be naïve about that but once the ruling comes then the legal prescient is set so that will just come in turn. What that does not do though is that a Supreme Court ruling does not change the heart of people. There no amount of Legislation that’s going to change that. So why I’m happy for the legal prescient mean in terms of rights and in terms of job equality and housing equality and all that kind of stuff for my friends. It just remains the hardest thing of all to change the hearts of people. So just like civil rights legislation with people of color you can legislate prejudice out of the system, I mean not perfectly, we still have so much to do in that area, but you can’t legislate out of people’s hearts. It’s [part of the battle just not the whole thing.”

 

 

 

 

Coming out:

Joe Burns interview clip 1:

“Times certainly change. And I think that’s kind of the over-arching thing to get. So many people feel like.. when I talk to people who are in these coming out experiences, they’re locked into the sense that whatever the sentiment is today is going to be the sentiment always and they don’t look forward to the time that things will change- either with they’re parents, with their friends, with their fraternity or sorority brothers and sisters, with their whatever. And certainly, not only will the times change, but the perspectives of the people that they maybe are afraid to come out to will change too.”

Joel Burns interview clip 2:

“I think, and I’ve said this before, coming out is a life-long process, it’s not a one-time deal and then you’re finished forever. Coming out is something you do on almost a daily basis sometimes its not even what your intention is. I mean, someone will look at your wedding ring and say, “Oh, where’s your wife?” and you say, “Well I don’t have a wife, I have a husband.” You have to make the choice- okay this is some passing person on an airplane who I may never see again or probably will never see again, or at a grocery store or whatever. So okay, do I invest the time to delve down into the story for something that’s not all that relevant but might actually kind of change their awareness or preconceived notion of what a 46-year-old guy wearing a wedding ring is. So it’s kind of the constant question of coming out.”

David Henderson interview clip 8:

“It’s funny, I remember when I first accepted myself… I was driving back from Dallas, I lived in Hurst, and I was on loop 12 driving back fairly late at night, and my mind was wandering. I drove the entire loop 12 until the sun came up the next day- and of course my parents were like, “where the hell were you?” I can’t remember what I told them, but I’ll never forget that for some reason that particular night after this party of a bunch of church people that I knew, it was just on my mind that I needed to accept the fact that I was gay. And, I’m driving on this highway in the middle of the night and there was hardly a soul on there and, you know, you get this tunnel vision thing going about, you know, what’s going on in my life, who am I? I think I’m about 16 or 17 at the time, and I remember just saying out loud- I hit the steering wheel with my palm and I just said, “face it David, you’re gay.” And just saying those words out loud, even though there was no one in the car or on the highway but me, was this enormous relief- it was like having a blood flush through my entire body, um, because the drive to not be that person was so strong that to finally own it for myself was huge and really empowering. Now, when you’re 17 and feeling empowered, if you have an environment that encourages that- great! But I was still in an environment that did not.”

 

 

 

HIV/AIDS:

Carol West interview clip 1:

“Right when I got into it was when AIDS sort of hit and you know… it was a- it was a tough time in history because we didn’t know what caused it. We didn’t know what it was and you would go to hospitals and the nurses were afraid. They were- It was a panic to the extent they would put trays- food trays- outside the door, and I don’t think it was homophobia, I don’t think it was meanness, it was fear. And I think that’s something we haven’t seen as much until the Ebola crisis or something like that. But, uh, there would be a group of us who would show up at meal time and we would take the trays in and sit and I’d hold people’s hand and talk to them and I knew it couldn’t be spread by touch because I knew if it could I would have it. Because I would go in and I’d hold hands and people would say “nobody has touched me except for medical reasons for two weeks”. And back then it was a different type disease once you were diagnosed and once you found out that you had it [snaps fingers] you better get your things in order because you only had a few months.

Carol West interview clip 2:

“If you look at good that came for the LGBT community out of a horrendous, horrendous, uh, situation such as the AIDS crisis, it pulled us together in the metroplex. I saw a community come together and I saw, um, people started talking. It also brought the topic out of the closet: You started hearing about Aids, you started hearing about sexuality, you started hearing… Uh, people started realizing “Oh, my son is gay”, “my nephew is gay” and a lot of people would find out someone had AIDS at the same time they-they found out they were gay. And uh, it was just a difficult time but it was also a time of the GLBT community in the metroplex. Nobody was throwing fundraisers for us so we started throwing them. Nobody was providing, um, care teams. No one would give you a ride to the Doctor so the gay community, as it was what it was called back then which not we refer to it as the LGBTQ community, started pulling together and providing these things for one another, and more and more people came in. And uh, I think that, uh, you know, it’s talked about now. You turn on TV and you can’t miss.. uh, on the news, there’s always something. And it use to be just something horrible and now we have positive role models on shows and we are getting married. We’ve come a long way baby.

Carol West interview clip 3:

“I’d say, for the most part, unless they were in the medical field, most people did not realize what was going on, and how major this was. And um, it started off with these little purple lesions called Kaposi Sarcomas- little purple blotches. Now you don’t see that. And we didn’t have medication for it- and this was before AZT. AZT we thought was a big miracle drug because, uh, babies you know? Babies. You could put a mother on AZT and the baby, in probability, would not be born HIV positive. Uh, everybody wanted to hold the babies who had AIDS, but um, a lot of people didn’t want to deal with the real ugly side of it—the adults who got down to 88lbs.”

Raid of the Rainbow Lounge:

David Henderson interview clip 1:

“So December- early morning hours of Decem-June 28th, 2009, the Fort Worth PD with two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers came into the Rainbow Lounge extensively for what was referred to as a “routine bar check”. Now, there’s a whole process when the police come to see is the bar is operating according to the law. You greet the manager, shake their hand, say this is why I’m here, pull out your flashlight, check the license to make sure it’s up to date- that it’s hanging in the appropriate, public place. You might go behind the bar and make sure that the liquor being served is real liquor, that its not.. hasn’t been bamboozled, that bottles when they’re empty have the ID number scratched out and thrown in the trash appropriately- there’s a whole process you go through. None of this happened that night. The police held the doorman up against the wall so that he could not enter the bar and let anyone know they were there and then they rushed in with zip ties in their back pocket and started approaching patrons- this is a busy Saturday night or Sunday morning- approaching patrons, in a packed bar on the dance floor, in the VIP in the back of the bar, back through a patio area where a lot of people were congregated on a hot night outside, and would tap people on the shoulder from behind and as they turned around they would say, “you are publicly intoxicated you are under arrest! Hold your wrists out” and they would zip tie them. And all these people are starting to be dragged out one by one. One patron was hurt in his arm and I think maybe wrist; a minor injury. But another patron, Chad Gibson, was hurt pretty bad. He was pretty inebriated, but when he was taken down, he was taken down against a concrete floor and against a brick step that was next to it. And, taken with such force that it damaged his skull and he had a hematoma on the brain and he had to be taken to ICU at John Peter Smith hospital. He was there at least a week, maybe 10 days. We were furious, I actually wasn’t there that night but our cell phones- everyone in the community, you know- people started texting like crazy in the middle of the night. One or two people had taken some pictures of things that had happened with their cell phones. The people were mortified. Patrons were afraid to leave the bar. The police ad called for backup so now, instead of 5 or 6 vehicles- and they had brought a paddy wagon- instead of 5 or 6 vehicles, there were quite a few more because more police came when they called for backup. Things are out of hand, show up! The gays are out of hand! [Laughter] And it gets to be at 2 o’clock and the patrons were afraid to leave and the bar owner’s like “hey police what do I do? I’m supposed to have them out the door at 2 o’clock or I’m in violation of the law but they’re afraid to leave because all you guys are out there looking to arrest them.” It was a bit of a standoff- there were people jumping the fence from the patio in the back trying to escape, there were people scared to death that were in the closet- they were scared that their family would find out or they would find out from some picture in the newspaper and they would lose their job. There were all sorts of things going on because there are a lot of very closeted people here in Fort Worth- still are. That’s their call and we have to make it a safe space for them too. What the police and the TAVC didn’t realize is that they came to the Rainbow Lounge almost to the hour the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.”

David Henderson interview clip 2:

“Within a few weeks we finally met at City Council. You can find video of that online still- that was a very emotional meeting. One of the people from our founding group had been involved in politics and he had a button making machine and he made yellow buttons that all said Fairness Fort Worth on them. He made hundreds of them and we had 300 or 400 people show up at this city council meeting. The city council basically was having their “What the Fuck?” moment because all the gays in Tarrant County have showed up and filled not just the  the city council chamber room but two other anti-chambers on top of that where they had to pipe in the TV in the closed circuit of the meeting because there wasn’t enough space for everybody and this was an agenda that was going to last till one in the morning because they’ve been off for a couple of weeks and they weren’t going to allow us to speak until the very last item on the agenda. They thought “Oh let’s leave it there and the gays will go away. They won’t hang out till one in the morning.” Oh Hell…[laughter]”

David Henderson interview clip 3:

“You can imagine the city council wanted to make it go away because it was international news. And suddenly, they were getting phone calls from companies and conventions who had booked coming to Fort Worth saying “I’m not so sure Fort Worth is the welcoming city that y’all purported it to be when we signed on the dotted line. I’m not sure we should bring our convention to Fort Worth.” So suddenly it became about money and they wanted to fix this fast. Well the chief had to play out these investigations and there were three of them. So we created a space at Celebration Community Church where dozens of people that were there that night could come and testify what they saw and there was this enormous block of evidence that the chief had to sift through, um, and we supported him. Here was the deal, we supported him in front of the city council the next day but only on the condition that he started to dial back this “They tried to molest me in public” nonsense that seemed to lead every single article and once you keep saying that in print over and over and over again in the first paragraph it’s hard to erase that from people’s minds but he did agree and we were able to move forward from that point.”

David Henderson interview 4:

“One of the biggest ones that continues to pay huge dividends is that the city agreed that every single city employee in Fort Worth, all 6,400 of them, would undergo a 4 hour LGBT cultural competence class. They weren’t going to pay for it but we insisted it be done. We were going to make a seat change on how this cities staff viewed our community, and it was a chance for us to step in and make it happen. That meant that some of us were going to have to volunteer our butts off and it was going to be a 5-year project but we ended up doing it in three.”

David Henderson interview clip 5:

“And it really changed drastically, particularly within a few years, the way the city viewed cooperating with the LGBT community. And it’s paid dividends now in a ripple effect because we’ve been able to do the same thing in Arlington. Arlington paid us and the police department in Arlington after an incident there realized it was time to step up to the plate and they hired Fairness Fort Worth to come in and teach their police department a similar class. And as of- in the last year and a half we taught not just all the 840 police personal there but parks and rec called us and said “we need it too!” ‘cause they hired a transgender employee and realized they were behind. So, almost by accident within a year and a half we’ve taught half of the city of Arlington’s employees a similar 4-hour cultural competence class and there aren’t many cities in the country who even do that. If they do it’s just usually for their police and fire but we seem to be tackling the entire city employee staff which can make a difference in the way a community views one like ours that has been.. not given the time of day previously.”

Joel Burns interview clip 4:

“The Rainbow Lounge was a really unfortunate thing that a lot of people are scarred from. Chad Gibson has a permeant brain injury because of that experience and I would give anything for that not to be the case. Once it kind of settled into my head that you can’t take that away, you can’t make that un-happen, okay now what do we do? I think we, as a community, started a serious conversation around what do we want to be as Fort Worth? Are we an inclusive city? One that wants to grow and not be backwards and be able to attract employers that want to bring employees that feel safe here and not feel like they’re going to get beat up or thrown out of accommodations? And I think, ultimately, a vast majority said yes. So we passed the non-discrimination ordinance, we passed 19 of 20 recommendations out of the task force were implemented, and we began offering same sex partner benefits for city employees because before marriage equality happened, there was no way to share your pension, there was no way to share your health insurance, there was no way to do any of those things that married couples could prior to marriage equality. SO the city passed that so that gay and lesbian police officers and others- firefighters, city employees- could share those benefits with their partners.”