LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Chat |
by Fay Jacobs |
Talking with Kate Clinton
Letters Feature Editor Fay Jacobs communicated with humorist and author Kate Clinton this week and asked her some questions to share with Letters readers. Fay: Hi Kate, inquiring minds in Rehoboth Beach (and DC, Philly, Baltimore, and environs) want to hear from you about June Pride...and hey it's the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall. Can you tell us your thoughts on this anniversary? Kate: Time flies when you're having fun trying to get your civil rights. Fay: Do you think we are doing a good enough job teaching our young gay people about our history? After all, most gay kids are raised by straight parents (but that's starting to change, thank goodness), who probably aren't passing gay history along.... Kate: I don't think anyone does a good enough job teaching historyhave you ever watched Jaywalking on Jay Leno's show?but there are a lot more gay historians digging up gay history. Problem is they have to tweet it in 140 characters or lesse.g. "Supreme Court Don't Ask Don't Tell June 2009 Chickenshits." Fay: LOL. What's your itinerary for Pride fests this month? Kate: I was just in Orlando for Gay Days, will be in Boston next weekend and will be at the New York Dyke March on June 27 sauntering with my sisters. Fay: While I had intended to stick to Stonewall for this article, I have to ask you about the status of Don't Ask, Don't Tell...you blogged a bit about it. Can you share your thoughts with our Letters readers? Kate: 68% of the American people think DADT should be overturned. I don't think it's altruisticthey know we are going to need all the soldiers we can muster. See my VLOG "Dear Michelle." Fay: Here in Delaware we're a bit behind the curve on gay equality issues. Right now, we are holding our breath to see if we can get a simple anti-discrimination law passed in this state. We have lots of allies in the fight, but several powerful stubborn legislators. What do you think should be the first priority for equality nationally? Kate: You are already doing itfederal equality will come incrementally through states. State equality comes through communities passing anti-discrimination laws, anti-bullying laws, etc. Don't hold your breath! Exhale while you volunteer. Fay: Good advice (exhale). How's the new book going? It's hilarious, by the way. Are you doing some signings and touring? Kate: I love reading from it. It's called I Told You Somake sure they have it in Rehoboth. If the bookstore has it, and you don't like the placement, get a stack and put it on the Dads and Grads table. Thanks for any bookstore guerilla tactics. There's an audio CD of my favorite piecesread by moi! Fay: Ha! I'm going right over to Lambda Rising and put both of our new books on the Dads and Grads table! Enjoy your Pride travels and love from Rehoboth Beach. Kate Clinton is the author of the new book I Told You So and Fay Jacobs has just edited and published The 35th Anniversary Edition of The Latecomer by Sarah Aldridge, which contains an essay by comic Clinton. Forty Years Later by Kate Clinton On an early morning flight from Orlando, after appearing at the 19th Annual Gay Days at Disneyworld, I was "sirred" twice by a cab driver and flight attendant. All before 7 a.m. I would have thought the brand new faux leopard Croc flats I was sporting would have thrown them off. Or that the "Gay Day" banners everywhere would have heightened their threat levels to rainbow. Usually I find mistaken identification an embarrassment or irritant. In past years I would correct quickly with "That's M'am not Sir," and then try to lessen their discomfort. But this 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I wear the gaffe as a badge of pride. I stare them down. Even if they seem remorseful, I don't help them through their moment. In solidarity with the unsung butch lesbians who were with the fags and drag queens at the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, I have been doing my own version of butching it up. It used to be hard to find a NY gay person of a certain age who did not claim to have been at the Stonewall Riots. I am a New Yorker of that certain age, but I most certainly was not at the Stonewall Riots. In 1969 I had just graduated from a small Jesuit college in upstate New York. I was a member of the Gay Resistance. I was trying not to come out. Because of that resistance, I could not and then would not hear the news of gay liberation spreading upstate from Greenwich Village. Though pre-internet, the Stonewall message quickly reached upstate gays in the anti-Vietnam war, women's liberation and civil rights movement. Before long even my little town in upstate New York had out gay activists organizing, educating and agitating. And they had the best parties. At one I met a brilliant lesbian Political Science professor, fired from her tenured job because of her anti-war activism. Hesitantly, I invited her and her partner over for dinner in the apartment that by then I "shared with a teacher friend". On the apartment tour, before I could point out my bedroom, she gleefully yelled to her partner, "Here's the fake bedroom!" Perhaps it was my cinder block bed with the Indian bedspread that tipped her off. With my don't ask, don't tell cover blown by my out and outrageous new lesbian friends, I slowly began to come out. First to my girlfriend at the time, to more friends and then to family. Finally, to make up for lost time, I just grabbed a microphone and have yapped about it for twenty-eight years. Of course there had been gays and lesbian activists in the 1950s and early 60s: The Mattachine Society, The Daughters of Bilitis, The Society of Individual Rights, the North American Homophile Organization. I am in awe of their courage. The rage and outrage of the Stonewall Inn fags, butch dykes and drag queens, who had finally had enough, kicked the courage of early gay activists to another level of visibility. Back in the day, only 25% of my generation came out before the age of eighteen. It was 31% in the generation after me. Today 57% come out before the age of eighteen. Our challenge today is certainly to transform gay visibility into LGBT action. The reaction to Prop Hates promises a new generation of rage and outrage that will pass trans-inclusive ENDA, overturn DOMA, abolish Don't Ask Don't Tell, and enact federal marriage equality. But just as Stonewall and the gay liberation movement came from anti-war, women's liberation and civil rights activism, we will only succeed if we reinsert ourselves into those activisms. To pass ENDA we must be part of the labor. To overturn DADT we must work for peace. To repeal DOMA and attain marriage equality we must work with women and people of color. Think of it as Stonewall rebooted. It's a size fourteen and a half stiletto. Today in honor of my butch forebears, I'm wearing only two items of women's clothing. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 19, No. 07 June 19, 2009 |