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(Dance music)

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I hadn't really met any gay
people,

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I only knew - you know -
society's reaction to gay
people.

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And I hadn't had much

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Experience with alcohol, and so
I wasn't, like, going to go out
and have two or three drinks,

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And so it was a little
nerve-wracking.

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And especially you walk in
there,

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If you're new meat in town, you
know,

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Everyone's looking. It's like
they haven't figured out how
weird you are yet,

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And so you're very popular.

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The new meat thing refers to,
they haven't figured out your
flaws yet.

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You haven't had a conversation
where you've embarrassed
yourself yet.

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And so you're new meat, you're
not - to use the word virgin -
but

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You're kind of untouched.
Because we were in the closet
back then,

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We behaved more poorly.

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I mean, because nobody knew what
we were doing - we were in the
closet.

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So, some of the things we did in
the closet were

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Probably not things that we
would do today.

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Having sex in public - like,
outdoors in public,

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Or having sex in your cars, or
having sex in the bars.

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Those things were more prevalent
in our community

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I don't know, sometimes

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I'd probably be embarrassed to
say some of the things we did.

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We were still - you know -
having to deal with all the
stress of

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Not being able to tell your
mother that you're gay.

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And not being able to tell your
boss that you're gay.

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And deal with your teachers. I
was in a class

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In my first year of college- it
was called Sex Roles in Modern
Society.

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And, you know, someone said, “I
think gay is horrid, and blah
blah blah."

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And the teacher said, “There
might be a gay person in this
class."

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“Hopefully they have the courage
to speak up.” I didn't.

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I didn't have the courage to
speak up, because I'd already
heard

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What his opinion was on gays,
and I really didn't want to go
there,

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So it was - even though it was
the mid-70s,

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We were still very much in the
closet.

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In '74, I moved down to teach

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In a small town near Des Moines,
and

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My fraternity brother, who had
become my partner at that time,
joined me also.

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We would come into the bars
regularly,

40
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And the biggest problem we had
was - other than

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Gary and some other people that
we met - they were really
inclusive,

42
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They wouldn't allow people from
outside town into their groups.

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And so it wasn't until

44
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Some college graduates from Iowa
State -

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They had a Halloween party, and
it just blew

46
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Everyone's minds. Everyone had
fantastic costumes.

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And everybody mixed for the
first time

48
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And it was never the same after
that.

49
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Well, I always had certain guys
that were kind of

50
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Interesting to me, but there was
no approaching them,

51
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And there wouldn't bet be any
way to make any contact.

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Instead, I actually dated girls.
I was in a fraternity.

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My date became the fraternity
White Rose Queen,

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And it was all kind of crazy.

55
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When I actually - I started
going to a counselor because I
knew I had a problem.

56
00:04:01,741 --> 00:04:03,543
And I didn't know how to get out
of it.

57
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So when I asked her to meet me,
and go for this walk.

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I think she thought I was gonna
pop the question.

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And instead I told her I was
gay.

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And I was devastated, she was
devastated.

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It was a pretty emotional
experience overall.

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But it set me on a new path.

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And that path was explore the
world, find out who I was.

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And it's amazing how it all came
together in a gay life that must
me here in this chair right now.

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When I was 16, I had a mustache
.

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And I was able to get into
places

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Even at 15 I had a mustache.

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And so I could get into the
bookstores, even though you were
supposed to be 16.

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I looked 16.

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At 17, I had people coming to me
to buy their liquor for them
because I

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Looked old enough and nobody
ever questioned it.

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Des Moines had more dirty
bookstores

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Than Chicago had.

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Bible thumpers really need a
place to release.

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These were adult bookstores.

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It would be dirty, it would be
sleazy.

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There would be someone sitting
behind a desk,

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Usually elevated, and of course
they were checking

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IDs, and making sure that
everybody was 16 and over.

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There were at any given time,
were usually about

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Four different bookstores open.
And so you could go

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From one store to another to
another, and check out

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Who was out and about.

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Gay people didn't have the
social outlet, so

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We only had the bookstore back
then.

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Now we have other social
outlets, so we don't need to go
to the Lion's Den.

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It was one of the first times
that we could go in and

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Buy gay pornography. Wow.

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And a lot of us had some pretty
good collections back in the
day.

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Until they came out with movies,
and then we started getting our
movies.

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There would be a curtain.

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To the back area, and the back
area would then be lined with
booths.

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With doors on them. And of
course it was

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One person per booth, which -
you know - always

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Got fudged a little bit.

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The rooms were 4x4 rooms. The
screen was on the back of the
door, and

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It used quarters. You would take
quarters in.

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But if you failed to keep the
projector running, they could
come around

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And bang on the door so you
would drop another quarter in.

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Sometimes the screen would be
covered with phone numbers.

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I did meet somebody one time
with a phone number off the back
of the door.

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The glory hole varied in size.
One particular

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Glory hole was 3 feet by 3 feet,

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Meaning that you could crawl
from one booth to the other.

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You could pretty much come onto
anybody in the bookstores back
then.

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It was just a place to hook and
meet someone

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And have some casual sex, and
then

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Go on with your life.

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When my name and number - unless
I thought they were very
attractive -

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And they were really good at
sex.

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So one night, I'd given that to
two people.

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So months later, after I came
out to my parents,

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Which didn't really go all that
well, but they didn't kick me
out of the house.

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They didn't stop talking to me.
They just went into a
depression.

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And I really didn't know how to
help them.

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One of these guys calls me, and

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I said we were gonna meet and go
to Lake Okoboji for the weekend.

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And I said, “Don't come early.

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Because I'll be working until
5.”

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Well, he must've heard me say
come early, because he arrived
early.

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So I get home and my mother
says, “There was this guy

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That came for you.” I said,
“Yeah, we're going up to Lake
Okoboji

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For the weekend.” And then she
says, totally unprompted,

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“Boy, he was really handsome."

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And I thought, well, what do you
think?

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The problem with me was, I'd
given my name to two people that
night

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And I didn't know which one this
guy was.

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All I knew was he was good
looking, he was good in the
sack.

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So that worked out pretty well.
But not even that -

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I showered, I cleaned up, and as
I'm walking through he kitchen
to go through the front door,

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She whispers, “He's really good
looking.”

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And so I think that was her way
of saying, “I'm OK."

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“I'm OK with you being gay."

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And it kind of gets to me now
because that was her way of
saying,

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“I'm accepting you.”

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It was casual - you were just
having casual sex. You knew that
thirty minutes form now

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You were going to be going about
your business.

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about us.

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It's because we didn't have to

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worry about how we looked in

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front of straight people,

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because they didn't want to know

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We were in the closet, which was
where they wanted us.

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It sounds very degrading, but

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It would be not uncommon for me
to have a

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Couple of casual encounters and
then go to work bartending,

147
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And then have somebody waiting
for me at 2 o'clock in the
morning when I got off.

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That would actually be a normal
Saturday night.

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That's kind of when you were in
the closet,

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That's what you were able to do.
You didn't have to have

151
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Long-term relationships. You
could - we also

152
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Didn't have quite the jealousies

153
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We were pretty casual about it.

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People that graduated high
school in the mid-sixties

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They turned around and got
married because they thought
they were

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Going to screw their life up if
they lived a gay lifestyle

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What they didn't quite realize
is that straight people screw
their lives up just as easily

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And they usually drag some kids
along with it.

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My second boyfriend, he was
married when I met him.

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He got a divorce and she wanted
to sue me

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For alienation of affection,
which obviously didn't work,

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But yeah, there were a lot of
people that

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Didn't get married, but there
was a much higher percentage of

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Gay men that got married. It was
a time period where I think

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Gay people had a lot of self
hatred.

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Gays tended to be more
conservative.

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We wanted to belong.

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We wanted to be like people -
like everybody else.

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And as time went on, we learned
we were just fine

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Being who we were. We didn't
need to be like everybody else

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The big thing that happened in
Iowa, of course, was in '78 when
Anita Bryant came here.

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When Anita Bryant came to sing a
concert at Vets Auditorium,

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She always had a press
conference before

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She starts out like she always
does, with her crusade

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Called “Save the Children”

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Because this bitch was trying to
smear us and turn us into

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A bunch of wild creatures.

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Anita - she sold the whole
nation on the idea

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That gay people are out to
recruit your children

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Into the gay lifestyle.

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Feeding on the old idea that, of
course, gay people don't
reproduce,

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And so they have to recruit
children into the gay lifestyle

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00:12:28,581 --> 00:12:33,686
Or we'll run out of gay people.
That's actually the argument
that they used.

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She used it in Miami-Dade

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When they got gay rights passed
there - civil rights there.

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And she actually got the Date
County people to rescind it.

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She got all of the evangelicals
all upset that your children are
going to be taught by gay people

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And all kinds of things, and
they rescinded it.

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Well then she went on to Topeka,
Kansas - where, believe it or
not they had it and they
rescinded it.

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They went to Eugene, Oregon -
they rescinded it there.

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00:13:00,580 --> 00:13:05,752
They went to St. Paul, Minnesota
- they rescinded it there. She
was on a real roll here.

192
00:13:05,752 --> 00:13:09,756
Well, believe it or not, Des
Moines didn't even have such a
thing, but she still was gonna
mention it.

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00:13:09,756 --> 00:13:13,760
So the says she loves the
homosexual - of course she
didn't use the G Word -

194
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Because that would be too kind
to gay people.

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00:13:17,764 --> 00:13:21,768
The homosexuals. But she just
wishes they would just stop
talking.

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00:13:21,768 --> 00:13:25,772
And if that sounds a little
familiar, it's because

197
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It's exactly the same thing
they're saying now.

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00:13:29,776 --> 00:13:31,711
Here we are, nearly over 50
years later,

199
00:13:31,711 --> 00:13:34,714
And they're saying the same
thing again. On a crusade across
the nation

200
00:13:34,714 --> 00:13:41,754
And try to do away with the
homosexuals, then we certainly
would have done it on June the
8th, after one of the most

201
00:13:41,754 --> 00:13:45,758
Overwhelming victories A guy
from St. Paul, from an anarchist
group,

202
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Actually came down with two
friends of his

203
00:13:47,794 --> 00:13:54,333
And he had entered the building,
and proceeded to the front of
the room and threw a pie in her
face

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Can't imagine -

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I guess the room of people that
were there just went silent.

206
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Nobody went “Ah!” Or anything
like that. And then to a place
with Norfolk

207
00:14:06,412 --> 00:14:10,416
Virginia, and were met with
protests and all kinds of
problems, and

208
00:14:12,819 --> 00:14:18,424
It just went silent. But the
cameras kept right on

209
00:14:18,424 --> 00:14:20,326
Rolling, so it was all on film.

210
00:14:20,326 --> 00:14:25,798
And she's wiping the pie away
from her

211
00:14:25,798 --> 00:14:29,769
Face, and she says, “Well at
least it's a fruit pie.”

212
00:14:30,436 --> 00:14:33,840
It turns out it was banana
cream, my favorite pie.

213
00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:37,844
I cheered when I read that she
got a pie

214
00:14:37,844 --> 00:14:41,848
In her face, because I just
hated her vehemently .

215
00:14:41,848 --> 00:14:45,818
It made national news, that

216
00:14:45,818 --> 00:14:49,822
Anita Bryant met her match in
little Des Moines, Iowa

217
00:14:49,822 --> 00:14:53,826
And something we are - to this
day - very proud of.

218
00:14:53,826 --> 00:14:56,629
That we started the decline of

219
00:14:56,629 --> 00:15:00,666
Anita Bryant's movement against
us.

220
00:15:01,901 --> 00:15:04,570
So after this went national,

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00:15:04,570 --> 00:15:08,541
The gay community in San
Francisco were having banana
cream pie parties.

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00:15:09,909 --> 00:15:13,913
I mean  Now Anita, let's pray.
That's all right.

223
00:15:13,913 --> 00:15:17,917
Father, we want to thank you for
the

224
00:15:17,917 --> 00:15:21,888
Opportunity of coming to Des
Moines, and Father we want to
ask that you forgive him.

225
00:15:21,888 --> 00:15:25,892
And that we love him, and that
we're praying for him.

226
00:15:25,892 --> 00:15:30,763
To be delivered from his deviant
lifestyle, Father.

227
00:15:32,498 --> 00:15:35,935
We're just as plain as everybody
else.

228
00:15:35,935 --> 00:15:39,939
We just happen to have sex with
our same gender.

229
00:15:39,939 --> 00:15:41,874
We had our own signals, you
know.

230
00:15:41,874 --> 00:15:47,180
Like if you're sitting in a
bathroom stall, tapping your
foot

231
00:15:47,180 --> 00:15:50,917
And then kind of bring your foot
a little closer to the other
side,

232
00:15:50,917 --> 00:15:54,887
And if you got stomped on, you
knew you fucked up.

233
00:15:55,955 --> 00:15:59,959
Margo Frankel was a county park

234
00:15:59,959 --> 00:16:04,063
On the northern edge of Des
Moines

235
00:16:04,063 --> 00:16:08,067
On Second Avenue.

236
00:16:10,436 --> 00:16:13,406
It had trails that went off
through it,

237
00:16:13,406 --> 00:16:17,877
And it kind of became a spot
where gay people

238
00:16:17,877 --> 00:16:20,646
Would travel the trails and hook
up.

239
00:16:20,646 --> 00:16:26,085
Gay people had few places to
meet people, so that's one of
the places that they did,

240
00:16:26,819 --> 00:16:32,058
Well, it became a problem with
the general public

241
00:16:32,058 --> 00:16:34,327
If they were using a trail and
all of a sudden

242
00:16:34,327 --> 00:16:40,066
Run across, you know, two guys
going at it - it became a
problem.

243
00:16:40,066 --> 00:16:42,902
This is back

244
00:16:42,902 --> 00:16:48,007
Remember when I said the only
place we could meet people was
through a hole in the wall?

245
00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:50,643
This was kind of a carry on of

246
00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:50,643
that.

247
00:16:50,643 --> 00:16:55,248
How do you meet other gay people
when we're not out and about?

248
00:16:56,015 --> 00:16:57,850
You know?

249
00:16:57,850 --> 00:17:00,453
And this was part of that time
period.

250
00:17:00,453 --> 00:17:05,625
What happened was the Damron
Guide came out, it lists places

251
00:17:05,625 --> 00:17:10,329
That have cruising areas, gay
bars, gay restaurants, gay
hotels, any place

252
00:17:10,329 --> 00:17:13,633
Where you would be safe being
gay.

253
00:17:13,633 --> 00:17:17,603
So that, you know, you wouldn't
be arrested or something like
that.

254
00:17:17,603 --> 00:17:22,008
And Margo Frankel Park was
listed as a place that was
cruising.

255
00:17:22,008 --> 00:17:25,978
There were two sides to it.
There was the big side,

256
00:17:26,312 --> 00:17:30,283
It had playground equipment, it
had bathrooms - the bathrooms
were cruise-y -

257
00:17:30,683 --> 00:17:34,787
But it was also big and open,
and that's generally where

258
00:17:34,787 --> 00:17:37,223
If there were straight people in
the park, they were over there.

259
00:17:37,223 --> 00:17:42,028
Then there was the back side,
which just had a little shelter
house and the bathroom,

260
00:17:42,461 --> 00:17:48,134
And they connected. You walked
down into the woods and the two

261
00:17:42,461 --> 00:17:48,134
sides were connected.

262
00:17:48,134 --> 00:17:51,137
That way. But you go to one side

263
00:17:51,137 --> 00:17:54,307
And try to pick someone up, and
then you'd

264
00:17:54,307 --> 00:17:58,244
Drive around to the other side.
It was - you know -

265
00:17:58,511 --> 00:18:02,648
It was one of those things where
you didn't have to say any
words.

266
00:18:02,648 --> 00:18:06,585
You'd get eye contact if they
were acceptable,

267
00:18:07,186 --> 00:18:10,990
Then you went off to the corner,
you went into the bathroom,

268
00:18:10,990 --> 00:18:14,393
Into the woods, or something
like that.

269
00:18:14,393 --> 00:18:19,165
Well one of my famous lines,
because I like to cut through
the crap,

270
00:18:19,432 --> 00:18:23,736
Is buy somebody a drink, hey -
want to fuck? Let's go.

271
00:18:23,736 --> 00:18:26,238
It worked. It worked.

272
00:18:26,238 --> 00:18:30,209
Now if you do it, someone would
slap you in the face.

273
00:18:30,209 --> 00:18:33,846
Very romantic, you know.

274
00:18:33,846 --> 00:18:38,718
I knew all about Margo Frankel
Park. I never participated in
any of that

275
00:18:38,718 --> 00:18:41,087
Myself, but I had friends who
did.

276
00:18:41,087 --> 00:18:46,192
I had to bail somebody out once,
as a matter of fact, over that.

277
00:18:46,192 --> 00:18:50,129
We had a deputy

278
00:18:50,129 --> 00:18:53,766
I think from the Polk County
Sherriff's office who had

279
00:18:54,867 --> 00:18:58,804
Taken on this mission of
cleaning

280
00:18:58,804 --> 00:19:01,273
Up Margo Frankel Woods.

281
00:19:01,273 --> 00:19:07,613
Somehow, someway, somewhere,
Channel 13 news announced that

282
00:19:07,613 --> 00:19:11,484
And so I think that kind of
alerted the police

283
00:19:11,484 --> 00:19:13,486
Department that that was going
on.

284
00:19:13,486 --> 00:19:19,725
I can't put any of that - I have
no evidence of that, but I think
that's what was happening.

285
00:19:20,259 --> 00:19:23,729
So there was a raid,

286
00:19:23,729 --> 00:19:26,799
And what it was is it was
entrapment.

287
00:19:26,799 --> 00:19:30,736
They were trapping people into -
you know, they were bringing out

288
00:19:31,237 --> 00:19:35,174
Beautiful young men and trying
to get them

289
00:19:35,174 --> 00:19:36,909
To have sex with somebody,

290
00:19:37,276 --> 00:19:42,648
So they would have cameras
around and they would take
pictures of it, then they would
arrest you, take you

291
00:19:42,648 --> 00:19:46,986
Down to the police station where
they would keep you

292
00:19:46,986 --> 00:19:50,956
There until they let you go,
once you posted bond.

293
00:19:51,323 --> 00:19:54,593
And if you got a good lawyer,
you generally

294
00:19:54,593 --> 00:19:58,664
Got it expunged from the record
after so long.

295
00:19:58,664 --> 00:20:01,267
But there was a big article on
the front page.

296
00:20:01,267 --> 00:20:05,204
It was listed, “Beware of Bears
in the Woods.”

297
00:20:06,639 --> 00:20:10,342
And that was to tell people that
the police were watching,

298
00:20:10,342 --> 00:20:12,778
And it was an article about
Margo Frankel Park.

299
00:20:12,778 --> 00:20:17,283
But later on, there was a place
at Cherry Creek also, near
Saylorville,

300
00:20:17,283 --> 00:20:21,220
And there was some - it became a
meeting place, I guess.

301
00:20:22,188 --> 00:20:26,058
And there were a bunch of people
arrested there, and those names
were put in the paper.

302
00:20:26,058 --> 00:20:29,228
And some of those people lost
their jobs.

303
00:20:29,228 --> 00:20:32,298
People took advantage of gay
people back then.

304
00:20:32,298 --> 00:20:37,470
My first apartment I had when I
came back from Vietnam,

305
00:20:39,705 --> 00:20:43,309
I was robbed in. I'd met
somebody, brought him home,

306
00:20:43,309 --> 00:20:48,214
And they went to the kitchen and
pulled out a knife and robbed
me.

307
00:20:48,214 --> 00:20:52,218
I called the police

308
00:20:52,218 --> 00:20:55,054
Right away, and they came and
they kind of looked at me funny

309
00:20:55,054 --> 00:20:59,925
And I just looked at them, and I
says, “Yes, I'm gay, and I want
their ass in jail."

310
00:21:00,226 --> 00:21:02,561
And two days later, they were in
jail.

311
00:21:02,561 --> 00:21:07,099
But a lot of times people would
do that with gay people and

312
00:21:07,099 --> 00:21:10,503
They weren't reported.

313
00:21:10,503 --> 00:21:14,507
It's because people didn't want
to be outed.

314
00:21:20,279 --> 00:21:23,115
A teacher actually

315
00:21:23,115 --> 00:21:25,518
Was driving through, saw two
young men,

316
00:21:25,518 --> 00:21:30,222
Brought them back to his home,
and that night they murdered
him.