Original subtitles

(electronic music)

I label myself as a bisexual woman.

I label myself as a trans female.

I picture myself as a heterosexual female.

What, in sexual orientation?

I never really liked labels, but I guess you can say

I guess I fall within the lines of bisexual.

If I had to, I would say bisexual.

I'm attracted mostly to men though.

Pansexual, queer.

I label myself as a spiritual, grounded person

that like just, I don't know, I guess that's it.

You know, I'm gay, and.

(dramatic music)

I'm technically straight, but my boyfriend,

he's transgendered, so, I just have to accept that.

How do I label myself?

I identify as as straight female,

but I'd say that I'm blessed to be

a gay man born in a female body.

So, one of the lucky ones.

I'm a gay man, yeah.

I guess I label myself as a straight man.

At the base of like your human existence,

I think that everyone is pansexual.

I feel like you can't really help who you're attracted to.

And I think you should just embrace that.

(techno music)

It's so interesting to watch the outrage

at how radical people are, and the insistence

on labels and names and rights,

and where we fit in the world.

It makes sense just to accept people the way they are.

And not to try to find a label for them.

Labels have become exceedingly

important for my generation.

When a lot of queer identities were labeled,

it was society labeling us.

And now, we're claiming ownership of the language

we use to differentiate between gender identity

and biological sex, and how those things intersect.

Except of friends who I'd known before,

I never felt the need to declare myself as anything.

I'm transgender gender-nonconforming.

And I have a female sort of mind.

The traditional female,

so I have an attraction for straight men.

That's all I've ever dated.

I'm not happy about labels.

I mean, I accept them.

I accept however you want to call yourself.

I would certainly call myself gay now, lesbian.

But I was not always, even though I was always

attracted to women, I was very much attracted to men.

I didn't change teams till I was 30.

And I resisted labeling myself

for a long time, especially publicly.

I love my label. (laughs)

I am a lesbian, I am a gold star lesbian.

I personally have no problem with labels,

if you want to give them to yourself.

I have a problem with other people labeling other people.

But especially as long as other people use

my label against me, then I will use it proudly.

I've always been a lesbian.

And I'm like on the spectrum way, way, there.

There's nothing in the middle.

I'm on, you know, a little bit more towards

the spectrum of not wanting a label.

I've always felt that way about,

why should we need to be labeled?

But that's in a perfect world.

I am Tobly McSmith, I identify as a trans male.

Again, okay.

Should I?

Should I turn around, like, oh, hey?

You want me to do it again?

Mark.

You know, I probably realized I was attracted to women

before I realized that I really was innerly male.

You know, I think that was the first feeling.

As a kid I was always misgendered and seen as male.

And when that happened, I always thought

I was kind of getting caught, and so it was exciting.

But also I felt really guilty.

There's all these possibilities when you're young,

and you're like, I could be this,

I could be that, I could be anything.

And then as you get to know yourself more,

and trust yourself more, and go, actually,

this is the truth about me, I need to do this.

I want this.

I like this, actually.

And so now, there's been this shift

where gender's on the table, and people understand

that there are more than just two options, male and female.

We're all on the spectrum.

And to think that the spectrum just is a three part spectrum

or a two part spectrum is a misnomer.

We're fluid, we bounce back and forth.

I don't like labels, because we can put people in a box.

It means we no longer need to listen to them,

because they are transgender, or they are gay,

they are conservative, they're liberal, they're progressive,

whatever word you want to toss out there.

There are all these different labels

that people try to fit people in a category.

And we're learning as a globe that we are not identifiable.

We're not puttable in that category.

And sometimes people who fall between

fall through those cracks, and they can't find

the identity that they desire.

When you try to tell someone that they

are something that they're not, it can be so damaging.

People get depressed, people get suicidal.

So I guess when you think about kids

and teens and young adults, they are so fluid in everything.

And they've been exposed to so much already in their life

that they're not really fazed by it all.

My daughter and her group of friends,

you know, I think she has as many gay, lesbian,

trans friends as she does straight friends.

And I don't even think many of her

generation identify as straight.

I don't really love labels all that much.

I just love people.

I'm more of just a people person.

I happen to love women, that's who I am.

Well, I love a woman.

I don't love multiple women.

I love multiple women, but in a different.

I love her.

Okay, let's start over.

It's okay honey, I get it.

It's all right, that's okay.

But I just, you know, I think labels

can create silos for people.

And you know, we're who we are.

I love you if you're transgender or if you're.

I just call myself gay, you know.

You can call me a lesbian, you can call me gay.

I don't care, I'm just Madonna, and I love Robin.

And for me, if a label works for you to use,

then it's great.

But I just don't like it all that much.

I get asked both from within the LGBT community,

and outside the LGBT community, my sexual orientation.

Which really is nobody's business but my own.

I understand the confusion.

I have a great business partner, who I love dearly.

I just have no, I've never had that sexual desire.

I'm 100% gay.

I've never been with a woman.

Yeah, it's just never happened.

I think when I was really young, as a teenager,

I was too shy to even experiment.

But I knew what I was, I knew I liked guys when I was,

as long as I can remember, like,

nine, 10, 11, 12 years old.

So, someone like me dating someone

who is gay, it doesn't work.

Because we're looking for different things.

I'm looking for what my dad is to my mom.

You know, because that's the type of male

that I would prefer to have in my life.

And those are the types I've always dated.

So, I started to date women in college.

And I never, it was very tough,

'cause I don't identify, I never did, as a lesbian.

But I very much loved to date women.

And I went through several relationships,

and they all kind of ended.

And I didn't have the ability to be in a solid relationship

'cause I wasn't solidly who I was yet.

But it's interesting how everybody,

almost to the person, wants to know

where you're at on the spectrum,

and where you fall within that community,

and within that group of people.

I use the term queer to describe myself

in terms of sexuality because it leaves room

for my gender being not male and not female.

Like, if I say I'm gay, most people

would think, oh, that's a man.

If I say I'm a lesbian, people would think,

oh, that person's a woman.

Being gay is wrapped up in being queer.

But being queer also kind of causes to pause

and think about intersections between

gender identity and sexual orientation.

I treat individuals and couples

in all realms of sexuality.

Some about disfunction, some about gender.

Nature versus nurture, as a clinician,

I can tell you it's really about biology.

And it really has to do with how you move

and groove your biology in your social world.

But again, most of the time you can fight it,

but you have to be really true to who you are.

Because your biology will lead you there.

Intersexed is really what a lot of people called

hermaphrodism or hermaphrodite.

Now, the big thing about both sexes

is you have your male, you have your female.

But you have this wide scope in between

of people that are born, you know,

in between this situation.

It's not always male, female, black or white.

I mean there's a plethora of that middle gray area.

We are born who we are sexually.

And sexuality is on a continuum.

Where you are on the spectrum, the continuum of gay,

bisexual, and straight has to do mostly with genetics.

I have been confused to be transgender.

Some people have said to me, we heard you were once a man.

I've heard people say to me, you know,

I understand that you're going through a sex change,

why would you want to become a man.

You know, we heard you were a lesbian.

And what I try to explain to people is if this is what

you want to know from me, you should probably

get to know me better as a person or an individual first.

And then let's talk as we go along,

instead of hitting me with that.

There's a great example that I have from college,

and that's a fraternity brother.

He never met a gay person, ever.

It certainly wasn't a part of his growing up,

that's a fair way to say it.

Not something he saw and experienced.

And not something he really accepted.

And he admits that.

He says, I was a, I was a total homophobe.

And as a result of how our relationship started,

he had no choice but to get to know me.

Because that's how the process went with the fraternity.

And having to pledge and spend this amount of time together.

When we talk about that, that means the world to me.

Because that's a firsthand example of someone

who got to know who I am first,

before they got to know what I am.

(rap music) ♪ Russian roulette ♪

♪ But does it take ♪

♪ Can you relate ♪

♪ How much can you take ♪

I think the reason why homosexuality

is considered taboo in hip-hop is because they just

associate it with being soft and weak.

And with hip-hop, it's all about bravado,

strength, masculinity.

If you didn't really listen to the lyrics,

you would think, oh, this is just a regular song.

A little dance song.

And you would connect with it,

because it sounds good and it feels good.

But if you really listen to the lyrics,

I'm talking about how I'm attracted

to certain individuals, and how it was

for me coming out of the closet.

But it feels good, and that's what people

want at the end of the day.

They just want something that they can connect with.

I didn't have any struggles.

My mom just raised us that it was about

the individual and the soul.

And it just kind of stuck.

You know, that's just the way it was.

It was about the person, and if you didn't

like the person, it doesn't change anything.

If people get to know people, it all changes.

It's so scary when you don't know the people.

But the trans people that I've met

turn out to be nice, wonderful, productive,

taxpaying citizens who are born

with certain inalienable rights.

And among these are life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness.

So when North Carolina, Charlotte, the city of Charlotte,

passes a law to make their lives easier,

why does the Republican governor and Republican legislature

of the state of North Carolina

have to come in and stamp down on Charlotte and say, no, no,

you can't make these people's lives easier.

You can't show them any dignity or respect.

I don't use words like genderqueer or gay,

or whatever as identity, I use it

to just sort of describe this aspect of myself.

'Cause I feel like there's things about me

that say way more about myself as a person.

Like, I have two little cousins, and I'm like,

you know, the badass older cousin.

And if I said that to somebody,

that says way more about how I think

about things and what I care about.

As I got older, I made a point of not using

that label to identify myself,

because I would like to see other people's reactions

or interpretations to how we interact

with one another when we first meet.

Before they have that information.

(soothing music)

10 being completely gay,

and one being completely straight,

I would say like six or seven.

I don't know the number.

Like, the one to 10 seems very specific.

10 being very gay, I'm like an 11.5.

I, jeez, I don't know, I never thought of that.

Five, maybe?

I would say five, just because I've lived

with a woman for three years, and we were in a relationship.

I don't, I tend to vacillate back and forth.

It kind of depends on where I am.

I never really think about it.

- Eight. - Eight.

Yeah. - Yeah.

Cool. - I am attracted to girls,

and I think everyone is bisexual.

I just don't understand why it's a big deal.

Like an eight-ish, nine-ish, 10-ish.

I'm gonna say five.

But my stepbrother is also gay.

So my mom calls herself like a walking PFLAG advertisement.

That's why we know he's an eight,

'cause we've met his brother. - Yes, my brother's a 10.

For sure.

(soothing music)

You know, the process of coming out,

in a way, as wonderful as it is

that things are better for today's kids,

and it's totally wonderful and we wouldn't wanna change it,

there was something kind of amazing about being part

of this struggle, which is not over, we have a ways to go.

But the progress we've made, and to get

to see it happen has been great.

I knew for certain, I was about 14.

I had had my first girlfriend at 13.

And I thought, no. (laughs)

I mean, I don't think I ever was in.

For me, coming out was just a realization.

And I didn't know why I wasn't attracted

to the girls that my classmates were attracted to.

It didn't make any sense to me,

other than I wasn't attracted to them.

Around the third grade, I had my very first crush.

And it was my boy, so, I knew.

I mean, there were huge, massive, gut-wrenching crushes.

That were just more confusing and frustrating than anything.

As I grew up.

And then I started to feel like,

I started to get a clue about it.

And I was like, that's what this is.

This isn't normal.

I'm not like, I'm not like my friends.

I like my friends.

You know what I mean, or once in awhile,

I would like a certain person that was just like,

you know, too intense, too much, too, too something.

And I couldn't even name it.

It was just like this desire to be with that person.

And so that was frustrating.

But with my pending marriage, I was on a mission.

I was like I must know, I was really clear about it.

No, I have to have sex with a girl before I get married,

because I just have to make sure I'm not gay.

My mother had this great Lucite shoe

with a plastic front and a slingback.

And she was a 10 narrow, mind you.

So I was a man's size nine and a half.

So they were like my favorite shoe.

It was like Cinderella's shoe.

So growing up, I used to go downstairs and sneak

in the cedar closet and parade around in the Lucite shoes.

And my mother couldn't figure out how the plastic

had stretched out so much when she went

to wear them a couple of years later.

So I just said, oh, must be the construction of the shoe,

mom, I guess they were inexpensive.

Having a conversation about

my sexuality was never a big deal.

I don't even remember the conversation

I had with my father, to be honest with you.

It was like so nonchalant.

We were probably in the car,

and his response was probably, okay.

I did not come out of the closet until I was 40 years old.

That was about nine years ago.

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest.

And stayed there for college.

And I don't think I honestly really had any idea

who or what I was until sometime in law school.

It was something that kind of dawned on me slowly.

And with a lot of resistance.

And I resisted it kicking and screaming.

And it was only when I became a partner

at my firm and relocated here, that something about

the change of scenery or something just snapped,

and said, that's it, you can't keep going on like this.

I did come out to my mom, it was Easter weekend,

about almost 30 years ago I think.

And I called my mother up, and I was living with a man,

who was about 19 years older than me.

And we were together for a few years,

and I wanted my mom to know, so I told her I was gay.

And I was like really worked up over it, about telling her.

And what I was thinking about was like my mother

thinking about me having sex with another man.

That's what actually was going through my mind.

So I was able to tell my mom,

and she was pretty awesome about it.

She said, she was awesome, and she wasn't awesome.

So the first thing she said was, I always knew you were gay.

And I was like, oh really, well,

why didn't you tell me like 10 years ago,

if you knew I was gay.

But then the other thing she said to me was,

let's not tell your father.

I was so scared to come out to him.

And then my mother, I was always a mama's boy.

So I wasn't too nervous about telling her.

I knew she would be a little more understanding.

And then I finally told my father.

And he didn't really understand where I was coming from.

He didn't want to believe it.

And then my mother, she eventually came around,

and she accepted it, and she got a chance to meet Richard.

And I think that's what really brought

both of my parents in.

They said, okay, he is an older white guy,

but he's actually a nice guy.

He's very likable.

And they just want me to be happy.

And they saw that he made me happy,

and so, they just jumped on board with that.

I said mom, dad, I have something to tell you.

And my dad says, well what is it?

And I said, well, it has to do with my sexuality.

And my dad says to me, do you know what you are?

And I said, well, I'm gay.

And he says, well I kind of figured that.

And then my mom looked right at me,

and sighed with relief, and says, oh, thank God,

I thought you had cancer or something.

(laughs) No, true story, I mean, oh, you're only gay.

But I will say this.

A couple of my friends stopped talking to me

because I didn't tell them that I was gay.

And I told them I couldn't tell them

because I was just so scared of how they would react.

Think about it, you're in high school,

and you tell your friends that you're gay.

They might look at you and just disown you.

So, I told them, and a couple of them

just stopped talking to me.

It's unfortunate, because we were

best friends for so many years.

And then this one little thing just turned them off.

If you meet someone and you fall in love with them,

why would you let anything stop you from love?

And that's really what it comes down to.

Regardless of the race, regardless of the religion,

regardless of the gender.

Why are you gonna stop yourself and prevent yourself

from feeling love, when you're afraid of the party parts.

These are party parts.

It's a relationship.

And again, that's the way my mom raised me.

So again, the coming out thing wasn't a big issue.

It was, oh, this is my girlfriend, okay.

I was married for about 10 years,

when I realized that, that I was gay.

And that I needed to get out of the marriage

and be who I really was.

It was tough.

My children were young, I have three children.

And,

it was a long hard battle.

Gotta get laid before this wedding.

Which was still like eight, nine months away.

So,

I saw her sitting at the bar, I was like,

do you want to go skiing, you know.

And so that began this little romance

without sex and without, you know, anything.

And after work, we would just talk

on the phone till three in the morning.

And she had to work at eight in the morning.

So we had this mad love affair on the phone.

And finally, one night, she goes, come over.

The day I came out to my parents, my dad gave me a choice.

He said that I could basically be under house arrest

and quit work, give up my car, or I could take

whatever I could carry, and I could leave that night.

And I chose to leave.

And he gave me a broken laundry basket,

and I put as many clothes as I could fit,

my school books, and my Les Miserables CD,

the first CD I ever bought.

And piled into my Plymouth Reliant K car.

And I named her Ethel.

And left.

I didn't have a plan.

I walked into her dark apartment.

And, you know, there was a light on in her bedroom.

And I went in there, and she was like,

laying in bed, I think she was just like,

either naked, or wearing just underwear

or something like that, and I was just like, you know.

And I was like, I got naked and got in bed with her.

And then she like rolled on top of me,

and I'll just never forget, like,

the first thing in noticed was like her tiny little frame.

You know, like, because she's a girl.

And I had had sex with a boy at that time.

So, her tiny little shoulders like on mine,

her little tiny freckled shoulders were just

so ridiculously gorgeous to me,

and I just finally like, you know, it's such a cliche,

but I understood what the big deal about sex was.

I understood why I was born, why I was alive.

I understood that God had meant her for me.

I did come out to my parents.

You know, I was raised in a Catholic Italian family.

And my dad screamed at me and threw all my clothes

on the bed, and then asked me what I wanted for dinner.

So it was just another night at the house.

There was a little bit of hiding that had to happen then.

But I didn't do too much of that.

I just went to the bars and all of that.

And I tended to be involved more in movements

where people were trying to make change.

So I was more surrounded with people who were like-minded.

One out of 2,000 people are born this way, both sexes.

I believe myself that there is much more to me.

It's just something that doctors believe.

You know, I don't even think they've touched

the surface of this and don't want to.

I was able to make my decision, luckily,

because my parents, they weren't in a high-income bracket,

so the funds weren't there to get me treated

right then and there as the doctors would call it.

And the other thing is,

I come from out in the middle of nowhere.

Let's say that.

And it was more of a shush and get it

out the door type of thing.

After my first few months of college, I was home,

I was driving around with my mom, running errands,

and she asked me if I'd met anybody interesting.

And she was strangely keeping things very gender-neutral.

And I remember saying to her, yeah,

there's a few interesting people.

And she said, is there anyone you want

to date or bring home?

And I said, there might be one or two out there.

And she looks at me and she says,

I just want you to be happy.

And I want you to bring home a nice girl, or a nice guy.

Coming out was a shit show.

I don't know if I can say that, but it was a shit show.

And I came out in college, not even that long ago.

But when I came out, marriage was not legal.

So, now, it's a big difference.

And I think it makes a difference to kids.

And for me, I came out in the context

of a sorority, actually.

And it was a very conservative situation.

And I was dating a fellow sister.

And it was really bad.

It was not a pleasant environment to come out in.

When it came to college, I was my own person.

I was on my own, I was living with roommates

and had people that I knew and that I appreciated

from the day I started in college.

And those were people who were just open about everything.

They didn't have a problem with someone saying

they were interested in a guy if they were a guy.

They didn't have that hangup that some people did.

And I found that fascinating, so I explored it.

And I would ask friends, what do you think of that guy,

'cause I think he's very handsome.

And they'd say, oh, well, I think he's

handsome too, you should date him.

I was pushed out of the closet, or I came out.

And then I left, and I traveled for nine months.

And then I came back to New York.

And I was ready to hit the ground running.

And be as gay as possible.

And that is exactly what I've done.

And so everything that I do is gay now.

My work, my whole world.

You know, I think we all want to kind of control

how we appear to other people.

And to have to transition and to have to let go of that,

and let people make their own decisions about you

and possibly talk about you, and judge you,

and become uncomfortable when you go into their bathroom,

it's really, letting go of all that was extremely difficult.

But also super freeing once it happened.

Finally, I was exactly right where I was supposed to be.

It was like, thank God this is gonna happen.

And it did, and I was like, I love you.

And I can never leave you.

And I married her, and I'm still married to her.

That's what happened when I finally got laid.

I was like, okay, don't go, don't ever leave.

The most important thing to me

is that I waited till I was 34.

And everything happens when it's supposed to,

but there is no reason to wait to be who you are.

I have been wearing dress-up clothes

for as long as I can remember.

I got my first dress-up box when I was four, I think.

Because they had one at my preschool,

and that was where I enjoyed spending all of my time.

So then I got one at home.

And eventually it turned into a costume closet.

And now it's just my wardrobe.

You know, I see kids sort of trying on what they may be,

in a space that's a lot more open

and a lot less condemning than the one I was in.

In this process of transitioning, I feel like

the first couple years it is about refinding who you are,

and really falling in love with who I am.

And that's something I have never been.

Growing up, it was very, I just didn't feel comfortable.

I didn't like who I was.

I thought I was a late bloomer.

I always thought, eventually I'm gonna want to,

I just don't want to yet.

Like when my friends started wearing bras in sixth grade,

and I was like, yeah, I don't want to,

but I'm sure I will want to, but I just don't want to yet.

And when they started carrying purses,

I was like, nope, I don't wanna carry a purse.

But I'm sure at some point I'm gonna want to carry a purse,

it's just like I'm a late bloomer.

That's what I thought.

A lot of the men I looked up to growing up

were gay directors, gay choreographers,

and people that to me seemed really cool.

And I loved being a little bit different and edgy.

And I was.

So I kind of, I was hoping I was gay.

And it turned out I was gay.

In the gay community there's different types.

And you have your flighty types,

or you know, flamboyant types.

But I was more like, carried myself like the girls

that I knew, just like a regular girl.

So I was often confused to be one of the girls.

And I thought, see, I'm being me.

And so when I was about nine,

I chopped off my hair and I said I'm a boy named Felix.

And so for awhile I went by that name,

and I went by male pronouns whenever I could.

But still, that wasn't quite right.

It was just more right for me at that time, I guess.

My body doesn't match who I am.

It's matching more, externally.

But there are (sighs) certain steps I need

to go through to complete this process.

To get further along in the transition.

It makes relationships a little hard.

RuPaul has this saying that we're all

born naked and the rest is drag.

I think everyone is in drag all the time, pretty much,

even if you're not conscious of it.

Naked, I'm not who I want to be.

And I don't know

how to be with somebody like that.

I had, I had one encounter with someone

who knew me before I transitioned.

And it was awkward.

It was awkward, not so much for her, but for me.

I kind of got up the following morning,

just feeling like a guy.

And I just felt like I'd taken such a step backwards.

The hardest part of transitioning

was letting go of what people thought of me.

'Cause really it's none of my business

what they think of me.

People, even when they read me as transgender,

especially when I open my mouth,

they tend to accept me at face value.

And a year ago they didn't.

A year ago I got weird looks.

And I got people hurling, you know, pejoratives at me.

And it doesn't happen anymore.

And I think part of it is that I am at peace with who I am.

And I think people see that.

And there's something about

that that makes them comfortable.

When I started to have my own sexual awakenings,

I considered myself very much bisexual

and dated men, dated women.

And when I really pursued the gay side of who I am,

I wanted to be proud of that.

So that's why I was conflicted as an actor.

To say, wait a second, if I'm putting myself,

if I'm choosing to be in the public eye,

why do I have to hide a major part of who I am?

I didn't know I was wrestling with my sexuality.

But I was.

You know, because I was dating girls,

but I was sleeping with guys.

And I was hurting girls, and you know, pissing off guys.

And it was like not working.

It still took a period of time to get

more well-adjusted in my own skin.

I dated a ton.

And learned a lot about what worked and what didn't work.

First of all, I think I knew I was,

I always knew that I was gay.

But I did grow up in a time when

being gay was, a repressive era.

People were being institutionalized, losing their jobs.

All sorts of terrible things were happening.

So I never really thought that I could

live a happy life as a gay man.

I am 19, I'll be 20 in a couple weeks.

A lot of people I know are very confident,

and that's awesome.

For me it's been confusing.

I got married to a woman.

But by 1981, I had decided that I could live

a happy life as a gay man, and that's who I was,

and I had to be authentic to that.

And I always thought that I had

sort of like gotten over it, or you know,

'cause I had a lot of shame around it,

but then, maybe, you know, five years ago,

it started to creep back up.

And so I thought, you know, wait a minute,

this never went away, I just pushed it away.

And so I was walking down the street,

the sun was behind me, I'm deep in thought,

I'm looking down, and I see my shadow.

And the shadow was that of a woman.

And I'm like, wow.

That's pretty cool.

It was neat because I'm not used

to being caught off guard by that.

I've been so aware every single moment.

When I cross-dressed when I was younger,

and during my transition now.

And it feels like a step forward,

that this isn't the biggest thing in my life.

When I'm in drag, I do have an alternate persona.

I got by Amber Alert.

Though I don't like identify as Amber,

I've gotten to a point where Amber

will borrow clothes from Harry,

and Harry will sometimes borrow clothes from Amber.

So, the line is very blurry.

But I'm in drag all the time.

Yeah, totally.

My first song that I ever made was called Regular Person.

♪ I'm just a regular person ♪

♪ Regular person ♪

♪ Yes a regular person ♪

And in that song, I'm just talking about

how gay people are regular people at the end of the day.

There's nothing different about us.

We love the same way.

We bleed the same way.

And I'm very proud of it, because that's the first

song that I made where I was actually

being my true authentic self.

I'm one of the fortunate ones,

because my art and music has taken me there.

So when you weigh out the difficulties of being intersexed,

I'm blessed, and I look at the good

things in my life, rather than the bad things.

It's a total package.

I'm just very fortunate that I've,

I'm fortunate to be the person that I am.

I'm in Fun Home, right.

This play is about a person who masked,

a person who hid, a person who lied with his persona

and used other people as props.

It's about soothsaying.

It's about saying deal with it.

You know, this is actually my body.

This is actually my identity, and I have,

I have no rage about it.

And I have no apology about it.

I just have me.

(uplifting music)

The qualities that I look for,

the biggest quality is a sense of humor.

My biggest quality I want in somebody

is them to just be genuine with me.

I think somebody that shares

the same values at this point.

Honesty. (laughs)

Someone who's genuine, someone who's honest.

Someone that's genuine.

Everything will fall into place

once you have that genuine person.

I find that I'm always the one that kind of provides

the security and the safety in a relationship.

And I'm looking for a little bit

more of a complement to myself now.

Basically somebody that can love me the same as,

but if not more than I love them.

Someone who loves me for me.

Someone who understands who I am.

I want them to be artistic.

If you can keep me entertained

for a little bit, I'll enjoy that.

I want them to be self-sufficient.

Caring, loving, kind.

I want them to be compassionate

and considerate and adventurous.

Someone that you would probably do anything for.

Within reason, legally I guess.

For love for the right person,

there's nothing I wouldn't do.

My type of guy?

I dated everything.

You need to take care of someone,

someone needs to take care of you.

It's all about that companionship.

And it helps if the direction and the goals are the same.

Finding the common ground.

I like guys who are more like artistic.

And they're into music and movies,

preferably rock from the '70s and '80s,

that's my kind of music, so.

We met kind of on a dare from my friend Joey

at Show Tune Tuesdays at the Loading Zone in St. Louis.

We were talking about what type of guys we liked.

And I was like, I don't really have a type.

And I look down, and in comes this sort of Roman god,

wearing this really tight gray shirt.

So I go down there, and I just

kind of bump into him on purpose.

And he turns around, I'm like,

oh, I'm sorry, did I get anything on you?

And he's just like, hey, what's your name?

You know, and he was just so cool.

And we started making out within like 30 seconds.

Pretty much.

Yeah, and we've been together ever since, 15 years later.

I think that there's a terrible stereotype

that gay people are not monogamous,

that that's part of their sexuality.

And as a sex therapist, I can tell you that is not true.

There are many, many similarities

between gay couples and straight couples.

Their problems are kind of universal.

Their problems are usually the same thing

that every couple deals with.

- We're married. - We're married.

Two and a half years, is it?

Well, it'd be three years in July.

- July. - So however that plays out.

July 2013.

In 1975, we, I was a part of something called,

and that's when it was called gay liberation,

and it was like a big rainbow flag, like gay liberation.

And we were a part of something called

the Hawaii Marriage Initiative.

Which was so funny to me, because we had so far to go.

And then that's what we started out with.

It was so pie in the sky.

Like we thought it would never happen.

And now that it's happened, and gay marriage is legal,

which is hilarious to me that it would even.

Who cares, how is it anybody's business?

That's my biggest question.

Is what do you care?

If you consider yourself a straight person,

and somebody that you don't know loves somebody else

and wants to get married, how is what somebody's doing

across town or across the nation, or in another state

or another country getting married,

how is it any of your goddamn business?

When I started doing matrimonial law,

all I did was straight, heterosexual divorces.

'Cause that's all we had.

Then people started getting married in other states,

same-sex couples in Massachusetts, in Connecticut,

people got married in Toronto.

So the New York courts, even though we would not

marry you here in New York, we would still divorce you.

So I started having same-sex couples

come to me for their divorce.

And I started getting known as one

of the few attorneys who did this.

And it's interesting, because if you would Google

New York City gay attorney, I would be in the top three.

But for the last years, if you would just Google

New York City lesbian attorney,

I am the number one lesbian in New York City.

And my mother and my wife would be so proud to know that.

That when they click on lesbian attorney,

my picture shows up.

We first met because the world,

the universe, God, karma, chi, magic,

whatever you want to call it, aligned our stars.

We met on OK Cupid.

I'll let you start with that. (laughs)

Well, so it's a long and twisted story.

We met on Twitter.

And we started vid chatting, and we fell in love.

Neither of us was looking for. - No.

I was in a 28 year relationship.

- I was 28. - She was 28.

So needless to say, it was not something we had planned.

It took some maturation there, going through a period

of my own adolescence, so to speak.

Before I finally settled down a little bit,

and I had a much better sense of where I wanted to end up.

And that also included being perfectly content to be alone,

as opposed to with the wrong person.

So, Mark came along, and it was

just undeniable that he was my soulmate.

The reason why people tend to look at us differently

is because he's a lot older than I am.

He's about 35 years my senior.

And he's white on top of that.

And so it just doesn't look balanced.

So it's funny, we'll go to the supermarket together,

and he'll have an item in his hand,

I'll have an item in my hand.

So we're in line, and the cashier

always assumes that we're not together.

So she'll ring up Richard's stuff,

and then she'll think that she's done.

And I'll say oh no, you can ring this up too.

And she's like, oh I'm sorry, you guys are together?

And it just trips me out.

Initially, I used to get annoyed at it,

because a lot of people just assume that,

oh, he must be the sugar daddy.

Maybe the younger guy is using him for his money.

Or using him for whatever.

So people just have that misconceived idea.

I don't know where they get it from.

They just assume that these people

can't possibly love each other.

And that's far from the truth.

We only had one person react funny to that.

We spent a summer in Martha's Vinyard.

- We were at the hairdresser. - We were at the hairdresser,

and Liron was waiting for me.

And the woman said. - Well she said, your mother

or whoever got a really nice haircut.

And I said, while actually she's my partner.

And I guess she didn't realize she was doing it out loud,

she said, oh my God. (women laugh)

And I burst out laughing.

And then she all of a sudden went, oh my God.

And I said don't worry, it's actually one of the most

honest responses I've ever gotten.

I kept saying to myself that I need to take it slow.

I need to

really make sure that I'm going to be with the right person.

Because I decided in my mind that I would rather be

with the right person instead of with the person

I might divorce some day.

Same-sex couples have waited so long to get married.

And now the fact that they've got married,

and for their spouse to have an affair

is a complete and utter betrayal.

That people often, more often than not, can't get over.

And that leads to a divorce.

I believe in love.

But it's just, it doesn't always work out.

A lot of the guys I dated, they ended up marrying

the first girl they met after me.

Just about every one of them.

Just about every one of them.

And it made me feel less, because, okay,

they love me, but I'm not enough?

That's hard, when you don't feel like you're enough

to please the person that you're with.

My father, God rest his soul, would say if there's a man

out there who's an asshole, you can find him.

And sort of that has really remained true.

Does that sound pathetic?

(laughs)

We had a case recently where a married couple,

it was a heterosexual couple.

The man transitioned to a woman,

and then they ultimately got divorced.

They had a dog, Paco.

A little Yorkie.

And we handled a custody case over Paco.

My client argued that the dog would not recognize

the transgendered partner, and therefore it would not

be in the dog's best interest to be

with the transgendered partner.

I advised her not to put forth that argument in court.

Because she was hurt, she was angry.

The man that she married transitioned to a woman.

She felt betrayed.

She wanted to use the dog to hurt her ex.

I got her the dog on different grounds.

I hired a flash mob, 16 dancers.

On the big day, we were all going to brunch

down near the Gansevoort Plaza there.

I totally surprised him, and you will see the surprise,

but the whole time I kept standing and thinking,

surely he knows what's going on, right.

And, it was about all I could do to just keep a poker face.

(upbeat music)

It went very well.

It did go fairly well.

Well, I've been together with my partner for about

14 years now believe it or not.

We've been together 11 years.

We're not married.

Do you want to talk about that?

(women laugh)

He is my family.

And what he's done for me,

the way he's forgiven me and supported me,

you know, in all my ups and downs, that is family.

And it's nice to know at least

at some point in life I got it.

You know, I'm 41 now, and I really get it now.

But, better late than never.

I mean, in a perfect world, yes,

I'd love to be in a relationship, and I'd love to do that.

But I don't think I'm ready for that yet.

And because I've hidden this for so long,

and because I was ashamed for so long,

it is hard for me to comprehend someone loving me.

I need to get further along down the road up here, and,

(laughs) here.

I have a great partner in my life.

I think we all struggle for that one true person.

And I have found that person.

And it's taken a long time, because of my situation

to get somebody that was, you know, truthful and honest,

and was open enough to understand people are different.

And no matter how different people are,

everybody wants to be loved.

I don't know that it was ever a conscious decision

to start supporting gay rights.

But I knew a lot of gay people growing up in the theater.

And my sister's actually gay.

But I knew that she was gay before

she knew that she was gay.

And she's never been an activist.

It's so interesting because there are a lot

of gay people that just aren't gay activists,

which is interesting to me.

Well, when I first started working at NYU 35 years ago,

the law school student government was putting together

the very first ever Law and the Fight for Gay Rights

conference that the kids were doing.

And it was supported by the administration,

but it was, financially, and sort of speaking out

of the side of the mouth we support it.

But,

there were people who really didn't

think it was a great idea.

And really didn't necessarily want NYU Law School,

no matter how liberal their reputation was,

to be putting out there to talk about issues.

I mean, you've gotta remember the sodomy laws

were still different, very different.

And it was six months out from being considered a disorder.

I mean, I could be out, I came to New York

at that time to be out, and I was out at work.

But it's apples and oranges to think about then versus now.

Having gay marriage taken away, to me,

could be done in the blink of an eye.

What's happened now in America, the polarization of,

we're living in two separate countries.

And if the country that is very, very anti-gay,

anti-choice, anti-women wins,

we're in for a huge, huge backlash.

I'm Andrew Tobias, please call me Andy.

And I write books, magazine articles,

but mostly ask people for money for the Democrats.

I've been treasurer of the Democratic

National Committee for the last 17 years.

We've been going forward beautifully.

Can we go backward, sure.

I don't think it's gonna happen in the US,

because it's hard to close people's

hearts and minds once they've been open.

But it's not hard to change laws and to overturn,

you know, the election coming up, as we're talking,

will determine the character of the Supreme Court.

Either far more right wing than it is now,

or far more progressive than it is now

for the next 20 or 30 years.

I mean, look at Roe v. Wade.

It's systematically been chipped away at.

If it's not completely been taken away,

it's basically been made moot for so many people.

So many women.

The problem with the doctors nowadays,

they're given a license to become God.

And they make the decision there, at the hospital.

So, if genitalia is not what it's supposed to look like,

if it's deformed or, as they call it,

mutilation of this is what happens.

They decide the sex.

And that's how there is so much confusion

of when it comes to intersex.

There's many intersex people out there

that are given a bill of rights

to believe they were one way, but as they grow older,

they don't understand at first

that they're supposed to be another way.

And a lot of the doctors still believe that it's okay

for them to make this decision.

I believe the intersex community is,

that's the big thing they fight for.

Don't do anything, leave it alone.

Some people just want to be left that way.

Others might want to make their decision later on, as I did.

We were at a rally for the center in West Hollywood.

And we were standing there with friends.

And at just that right moment, we were holding hands,

in front of the LGBT thing, announcing thing.

You know, we can now marry.

And all of a sudden this swarm of photographers

came running at us. - Right here.

And zeroed in on our hands.

Like, (imitates camera sounds)

by the tons, just oh, oh, oh, oh, thanks for noticing

that I want a picture of that kind of a thing.

We ended up on the cover of the LA times.

Yeah, there's a group called Queer Nation.

I was one of the first people to join it.

It was a spinoff of a group called

ACT UP that I was active in.

And I had a boyfriend at the time.

Our thing was that he would put his hand in my hip pocket.

We wouldn't hold hands on the street.

But he would put his hand in my hip pocket.

I will tell you that we did that as much

as a public display of affection

as we did to be rebellious, as a political statement.

And it got a lot of looks.

I mean, the idea of two guys walking down the street

with a hand in a pocket, or holding hands in 1990, in 1991

was vastly different than it is today.

On the campus at NYU, it was vastly different.

It was not the norm, if you will.

It was not even easy.

I got to go to China.

And I told the vice president of China,

and a good chunk of the leadership of the Communist Party

that I was one of the three openly gay officers

of the Democratic National Committee.

There are nine of us, so a third of us are openly LGBT.

How many of your officers in China are openly gay?

You know, so I came out to China.

I still have North Korea to go.

And you know, lots of other places.

The thing about labeling yourself as a lesbian,

even if you are attracted to men or whatever,

I think it's a political statement still.

My main label in life has always been feminist.

That's the most important thing to me.

And I realized it's not attached to any sexuality,

or anything sexual, but that is so

secondary to me than being a feminist.

Because I think the feminist label enables

everything else to have freedom and breathe.

I'm a feminist, so part of of my feminist journey

was to identify all oppressed groups, all injustice,

all unfairness, all inequality.

And homosexuality certainly fit into that.

I label myself as a lesbian.

But part of that label is definitely a political label.

Part of it is obviously a sexual label.

But most of it is where I stand in terms

of feminism and equality, and loving other women.

My oldest, when he turned 19, he actually came out.

And,

I was thrilled.

It was, to me, I was just so happy to have

my son come out at 19, and not at 41 like me.

And not have to go through all the heartache,

and all the stuff that I went through.

I had a very interesting childhood.

I have no memory of my parents together.

No memories where I wasn't going between two homes.

And my dad is also gay, was also gay.

And my dad was with his partner for 25 years.

And he's doing very well.

I think having a mother who's gay

made it a little easier for him.

I found out in high school, after I came out.

And in conversations with friends of my dad's that,

when I was younger, he said to many people

that my only wish is that my son doesn't turn out like me.

My son actually came out when he was about 14.

I knew he was gay long before that.

I think he probably did too.

I knew it back when we lived in Pennsylvania.

That's one of the main reasons I moved to New York.

Was so that he would have some place

that was a little more open, so that he would

be more accepted and not be picked on.

Times are different now.

I think it was just a fear.

It was a fear that maybe we were living, or what school

I was going to, or what kids were around at the time,

would they pick on me, would I be bullied ever.

You know, just,

what would my experience be as a young gay person.

It worked out very well for the most part.

He went to high school in a small town.

And there were other gays there.

What the young 'uns tell me is that labels are fluid now.

They also tell me that they can't remember

a time that they weren't out.

I mean, I have friends who are parents to kids

who are five and six years old who just assume

that their young boys are gay, or their girls are lesbian,

or you know, possibly even trans.

I mean, it's just, parenting is a different animal now.

And I'm lucky, because where I work seems

to be populated with a lot of people

who were nurtured in that way these days.

Then when he moved to San Francisco,

he got into a serious relationship.

They get along very well.

In fact, they were married today.

They have a wonderful marriage, he's a wonderful son-in-law.

He had a beautiful wedding, as wonderful wedding.

A church wedding.

I was there.

The Franciscan people are wonderful.

They have no problems with gay people.

They just accept them totally.

My parents are great.

I feel very lucky.

They live in Austin, and everything about their lives

kind of forces them to accept it.

It's so different when it's your kid that does it.

And it's still hard to go back,

because they have a lot of trouble with my new name.

They have a lot of trouble with the gender.

My parents are getting to know someone very new.

And it's taking time.

You know, 'cause they knew me from the beginning.

Once puberty hit, it was like,

now you're gonna wear makeup, and you're gonna,

you know, take after your mom.

My mom is a country music singer.

I really didn't even get the fact that I just

was a different kind of person.

You know, I just thought, well, I look like her, sort of.

I look kind of more like my dad.

But I look like my mom too.

And you know, if I put on a dress and I stand there

in front of a microphone at the county fair,

I'd feel like an alien.

I just don't feel right.

I also watched Bewitched.

And I always wished that I had her powers.

The (chimes tinkle) twinkle,

I can't even do it, but the way she crinkles her nose.

Because I thought it would be so cool

to transform myself into a girl.

And spend an hour, spend however long I could as a girl.

And then I could twitch my nose, again, I won't do it,

and no one would ever know I'd made the change.

This process that I'm going through now,

I was going through when I was 10 years old, 12 years old.

And I see all these different moments,

where I look backwards, and I go, oh my God, look at that.

Like, that, there's definitely a path to where I got to now.

I never doubted my parents' love for me.

And they made that very clear.

And so I always felt supported and I felt safe.

And a lot of kids don't.

So I felt very lucky growing up to have that support.

You have to be open, you have to be.

If you don't, you'll lose your child.

You'll lose him.

(uplifting music)

Am I in love right now?

Not necessarily. - Yes.

- Not currently, no. - Currently, right?

Yes, I am.

I am so in love right now.

- Yeah. - Valentine's Day's coming up.

But, yeah, I am not in love with anybody at the moment.

Me and my husband have been married for 32 years.

I'm getting over two relationships right now.

I love him so much.

He just, I mean, just thinking about him can make me cry.

I don't believe in relationships.

Probably never will.

And am I in love right now?

I am, with my partner for 21 years.

I would really love to think that I was able

to fall in love with somebody, regardless of how

I labeled myself or how they labeled themselves.

Married four years ago.

I met him on the street, and I just asked him out.

I see love as for everything.

And not just like in terms of relationship.

I think I look for a very strong,

complementary friendship.

Like a partnership where you can grow

and support each other.

I think that I'm attracted to a soul.

I would like to think that if I fell in love with a man,

I would be comfortable enough with myself

to say I fell in love with this person, that's it.

It's about the connection, the love, you know.

Like, how we are together.

That's all that really matters.

Most pain that people feel around their gender

identification or around their sexual

pleasure identification has to do with not being

able to be the biologic person that they are.

And I find these are the people that will come to therapy,

because they're in terrible pain.

His dad was not okay with it, when he first found out.

And he, he called me one night and said,

you know, I'm really, I'm not okay with this.

And I said, well, you really need to be okay with this.

You know, whether you like it or not.

You really need to accept that this is who your son is.

And I said, you know what,

a lot of kids his age, especially boys,

commit suicide because they're not accepted.

Especially by their parents.

So I said, you better find a way to be okay with it.

I don't understand a parent

who can turn their back on a child,

once they find out they're gay.

I can't understand a parent who can't sense it.

Who doesn't see it, recognize it.

And I just can't imagine what a child

must go through when their parent rejects them.

I just can't fathom what that must be like.

I started drinking and doing lots of drugs,

and became very destructive, and I did try to kill myself.

I just tried to end it, 'cause I kept doing things

that I didn't love about myself,

and just kept really separating from who I was.

And then I sobered up, I'm seven years sober.

And then transitioned.

And I feel like I'm in a time in my life

where I'm figuring out who I am,

and falling in love with myself.

And doing respectable acts to myself.

So that that love can be there a little more.

I have an identical twin brother.

And today, I would say he's one of my greatest allies

when it comes to begin gay and being an activist.

And being exactly who I am.

But growing up, he was one of my biggest bullies.

I see character flaws in him

that make me wonder about myself.

And I think growing up then,

when he knew that I was gay, he saw something

maybe in himself, or was afraid that there might

be something that was different and not okay with himself.

And that became antagonistic.

I'm very concerned about the high rate

of homelessness among the LGBT population.

40% of the youth homeless are LGBT.

We're hardly 40% of the population.

My work at the Los Angeles LGBT Center is super cool.

We're the biggest LGBT organization on the planet.

And we save homeless youth, and we have housing

for homeless youth and seniors.

And we have all kinds of programs, and transgender programs.

And it's an amazing place,

it's almost a $90 million organization.

And we're about to build a huge campus

where we can house more people who need,

get them off the streets.

And we have, of all the homeless youth on the street

at any night in Los Angeles, 40% are gay or LGBT.

And mostly because they've been thrown out of their houses.

So it's not easy.

There's a lot of family discord that comes about.

And people used to hide these things in the past,

now it's all out in the open.

Today, I think we have a new set of issues.

Because things are more out in the open.

So, you know, I see a lot, I work with a lot

of transgender people, I see the struggles that they have,

not getting beaten up on the street at night.

I think probably when we weren't talking about it as much,

people could hide a little bit more.

I love that we can talk about it.

I love that people have role models now,

and people they can go to.

And that's very positive.

It's just that now we have to figure out

how to keep people safer.

Which has been really interesting,

getting friend requests on Facebook,

especially of young girls saying, we don't have role models,

we don't have anyone that represents us.

And I have a lot of questions.

And one recently friended me and said, can I talk to you?

And I said, yes.

And she said, I will when I feel safe.

I said, I understand that, honey,

and just know that it's always safe with me.

You can ask me anything.

And she said, I think I'm gay

but I don't know, and I'm scared.

And I said, don't be scared, it's okay.

And maybe, you know, as you're young, as you learn,

maybe you're not, maybe you're bisexual.

Maybe you are, it's okay, whichever.

I come to find out her fear was she lives in Dubai.

Where it's illegal to be gay.

And to be able to say something out loud,

or even in just a message was a big deal for her.

When I first had a word for what I was,

I was probably 11 years old.

I was in the bathroom, listening to Madonna,

and I saw myself in the mirror, and I said, I'm gay.

Like, and in that moment, it was relief,

but it was also kind of devastating,

because the narrative in the Ozarks, where I grew up,

was basically if you were gay,

you would get AIDS and you would die.

And in that moment, I accepted that as my fate.

I think people in that era were too afraid

to admit to be gay or admit to have interest

in same-gender relationships because AIDS

was associated with same-gender relationships.

And that meant that they didn't want people to fear them.

I didn't know that I could be married

and have a goal for later in life.

- And have children. - Have children.

I gave up on all of that.

And when I got out of the Ozarks,

and I started opening my eyes, and then I had

points of reference, and I saw gay couples

that were together 20, 30 years, they had kids,

they were living the American dream.

There's a kid somewhere right now

in the middle of the country who doesn't know

a grownup person who says that they're, identifies as gay.

The many ways that I have seen

the entertainment industry help that exact cause,

and really break down barriers,

you know, open people's eyes by,

for lack of a better word, normalizing,

you know, really blur and make things more fluid.

I think that America's moved forward really

because culturally, gay became in the zeitgeist.

It became acceptable.

And suddenly, you were seeing people on television

that were gay, that were lesbian.

Now you're seeing transgender, which is so great,

and you've seen that change the politics.

Well I always admired people like Ellen and Roseanne,

and people who were doing those shows

that nobody was doing at the time,

who were introducing characters in a way that felt like

this is a family, this is a normal family, you know.

And so for me, in the corporate world,

or other worlds where I needed to come out, in a way,

it felt a little bit safer for me,

because those things were happening in the media.

So going back to role models, sometimes those were people

that I looked up to to go thank you for,

you know, having two women kiss, or having two men kiss.

It never, ever would have happened without things

like Will and Grace, you know what I mean, L Word.

Things like that were really helpful.

Even going back to the '70s, there was a soap opera that,

I forgot, it was, a gay man was on it.

I think Billy Crystal played the gay guy.

And that started changing the society and culture,

because you know, you see somebody on TV,

and you feel like they're your friend.

So if that person is gay or lesbian,

or black or Hispanic, or something other than what you are,

it definitely moves you in a place of knowledge, of safety.

If you feel something, and you are something,

and you don't see it anywhere else,

then you feel lost and alone.

I met and became acquainted with all these actors,

these different celebrities, who were completely

closeted in their public lives.

And, I kind of was learning that that might be the way

for the LGBT community to keep certain things private,

as one builds their own brand as who this public persona is,

yet they have to hide parts of who they are.

And I was very much conflicted by that.

I was still coming to terms with my sexuality.

I met up with a producer by the name of Allen Parker,

and when I finally told him that I was gay,

and that this older white gentleman is my partner,

he said, that's great, now we can make music.

You can put that into your music.

Nowadays, I don't hide it, it's part of me.

And it's part of what I bring to the table.

And I never thought about that.

I was always scared, because as a rapper,

they always say that, you know,

there's no room for homosexuality.

And Allen was telling me no, do it, go against the grain.

Let's push some boundaries.

You know, I hope that kids will sort of see

that there's different avenues to take

a lot sooner than I was able to.

Those kids that probably have gay people around them,

but they are too scared to come out, or oppressed,

or whatever they're going through,

they see the people on TV and in movies,

and that's why I think it's so important

for anybody who has any kind of fluidity

in their sexuality to say it.

Because you're literally saving a life.

Literally saving lives.

Any sports fans here tonight?

(audience cheers)

Well, I'm a big old raging queer,

and I don't know anything about sports.

(audience laughs)

I tend to be kind of a PG-rated comic.

I'm not really.

I think the most compliments I've gotten

actually are from straight people.

Not really the gay people, because I kind of do it

in that more like a Will and Grace type of, I think, tone,

you know, where it wasn't anything

gross or offensive, or anything like that.

'Cause I've seen some gay standup comics that are like,

(laughs) people are like,

we don't get what he was just saying.

You know, so I kind of want to.

(laughs) What's rimming? (cymbals clash)

Like what is that, you know?

(laughs) You know what I mean,

the straight people are like.

I've played gay roles, and usually when I play roles

that aren't specifically gay, I've played things

that are gangster, like kind of Italian.

Joe Pesci-ish type things.

But they don't really have a sexuality, you know.

I've never played, like, a husband.

I've never played, I mean I'm willing to do it.

But sometimes I say to myself, will they buy it.

I remember when Ellen DeGeneres was first

on the cover of Time magazine.

Yup, I'm gay.

It was huge national news.

They were gonna boycott her show.

It was so controversial.

By now, everybody loves Ellen.

And everybody knows that Anderson Cooper is gay.

And everybody knows that, you know,

it's just so not a thing anymore for gays and lesbians.

That will happen, I hope, for trans people as well.

Because we're not quite there yet

with trans folks, but we're getting there.

There is no idea of what a queer person

should look like in the media.

There are a couple examples, but a lot

of those people are like, gay or lesbian.

Or like you have Caitlyn Jenner,

who's very much so like this beautiful,

but very normative version of a trans woman.

You know, and that's not to diminish

how important she is in the media.

But it's also to say like, other people are out here.

And we are very different from that, and that's important.

The right now part of me wants to say yes,

we've come a long way, but then the watch the news,

pick up the paper part of me wants to go no.

And I want to scream there are kids

still killing themselves, there are kids

jumping out of windows, there are kids

that are being turned away by their families.

There are kids that are hurting themselves,

there are kids that are being hurt.

What are kids today experiencing

if they're growing up in Mississippi

or in parts of the Middle East,

or various places.

It's probably just about as bad

as it was when I was growing up.

I believe that it only gets better.

But we can't forget that there's a lot of places

in this big country of ours.

And every small community is different.

When you go to different places.

It's a struggle, it's always

going to be a struggle, I think.

But, in large parts of America,

in Europe and South Africa, and other parts

of the world, it's night and day.

And I'm no expert on what it's like to be a 14 year old now.

But I sure remember what it was like when I was 14.

And it was completely lonely, and I thought that I had

this horrible, horrible, horrible thing wrong with me,

and I couldn't talk to anybody about it

and never did, until I was 22.

And then I've been talking about it ever since.

I think it's just as hard

to be gay now, as a young person.

When I was growing, even though you might know you were gay,

you could hide that from your peers.

They just thought you were sort of like strange,

or an oddball, or weird,

but they didn't pinpoint you as gay.

Now, a lot of young kids, their peers know

that they are gay, maybe even before these kids

even have self-realization of it.

And so, they can't hide as well.

We also come from different generations.

So. - That's also true.

My generation was a lot less out there.

I guess out of necessity, and since I came

to it relatively late, you know, sort of,

well, 30 is kind of late.

It just took me awhile to be declarative about it.

You know, as a naive, high schooler

in the mid to late '60s, I look back and realized

a large portion of my friends were in the LGBT community.

And just weren't out.

It just wasn't comfortable at that time to be out.

The more I progressed into it,

when you get away from home, at an university,

then that comfort level to come out

and be who you are happened.

I work with a lot of gay students.

And I work with a lot of students

of all shapes, sizes and colors.

I work in the Dean's office, so we interface with folks,

I actually work with a lot of folks

who are high school students,

because I put together our admissions events.

That's kind of interesting.

Just because we have a four year institutional memory.

And I can tell you that the ones that are coming in now

are sort of vastly different than the ones who were there

coming in eight years ago, even four years ago.

Heather has Two Mommies came out about 20 years ago.

So, you gotta figure that now it's not so unusual

for us to see a college sophomore or college junior

who has two moms or two dads.

But the brilliant thing is now the 16

and 17 year olds who are coming in,

the ones who are just looking at colleges,

are coming with their boyfriend.

The guys are coming with the boyfriend.

And this is sanctioned by the parental units.

Last year, when we had an admitted students day,

and they were coming to look at the dorms and all that,

there was two guys holding hands,

and mom and dad were standing by,

and they were kind of looking like, are we gonna be able

to be separated from each other, it's so far.

Now, that is just change I can believe in.

You know, something that I never really ever thought about,

until I saw it happen right in front of my face.

And I also don't want to pretend like that's the norm yet.

And I will tell you that there were some,

just because I thought it was great

didn't mean that every other parent in that room

of 200 people thought it was great.

So that's important to know too.

It's been really gratifying and amazing

to see how the country has changed,

and how it goes from being the worst thing in the world

to being behind the president of the United States

on the dais as he's doing his second inaugural address,

talking about us and how we are important to America.

It's just amazing what's happened.

I participated in the Boy Scouts case,

which was a case that started in New Jersey,

where a young man who was gay wanted to be a scout leader,

and the Scouts would not allow it.

And the New Jersey Supreme Court

found in favor of James Dale, the young gay man.

But that was appealed to the US Supreme Court.

I also worked on that case.

And that was overturned.

And they did allow the Boy Scouts

to exclude gay individuals.

Of course now, flash forward two decades,

and the Boy Scouts has changed its position.

But not because of the law,

but because of society and societal pressure.

Yeah, I did a lot of speaking at gay rights rallies.

And then in the '80s of course we morphed

into working on the AIDS crisis.

I feel fortunate that I had my longest

relationship during the '80s

when I was in New York and it was the club scene.

And at that point, it was very reckless I think.

It was sort of we, you know, forearmed forewarned.

It was all about free spirit

and kind of just expressing ourselves as people.

I would definitely say the '80s was definitely

a time for just hedonism and free love and free expression

with a little bit of a reckless abandonment,

because I don't think we knew

what was really going on at that time.

High school was the time when it was,

you know, '88 through '91.

And it was the time when everyone talked about AIDS.

People talked about it with fear

and with trepidation, and with uncertainty.

Because people didn't really know.

I was always a reader.

And there wasn't much out there

for the young person to learn about these things,

other than what was in the news.

And the media would portray it as this horrible thing.

And it was a horrible disease to suffer from.

But the people that were suffering from it

were being ostracized and being

separated out from their community.

I know a lot of people that didn't get here.

Most of the people that I grew up with.

You know, they started dying.

Close friends, they died of AIDS.

I'm the last one left.

And I'm moving forward because of them.

I speak up, I speak out.

I work for GMHC, and I'm proud to be

on their board of directors.

And 50,000 new infections in the US last year,

that pisses me off.

So, that's why I do what I do.

Because it makes me angry that people

don't have the conversations they need.

And they won't support their kids,

whether it's coming out, whether it's having safe sex,

whether it's being whoever you want to be,

but be it in a safe space and know

that you have support, and someone to back you up.

The fact that kids don't have that, it pisses me off.

So I won't shut up, ever.

For the generation coming up, I think,

I really believe that they will have a better time

if they just go ahead and they accept who they are.

And basically stop allowing, you know,

the influence around them to make them feel less.

Because they deserve everything that anybody else deserves.

If you want to make this the norm, you gotta act normal.

It's okay for a straight couple to make out in public.

But we can't hold hands?

And the only way to make it a norm

is you gotta act normal, you gotta hold hands in public.

I think the millennials are so much more fluid.

They feel so accepted within their community

that they're comfortable being out.

They're comfortable how they identify sexually.

And I think because of that,

the need to know starts to go away.

I think that when you don't care, it doesn't matter.

And if you're accepted by your peers,

than it doesn't matter anymore.

And I think that's where things have to change.

Acceptance has to start in families.

Acceptance starts in the smallest nucleus

of our personal tribe.

And as that spreads out, then the need

to know just disappears.

When you deny a fundamental aspect of someone's

personality and identity, it can be so confusing.

So I think that's why it is important

to keep talking about gender.

In 50 years, terms like gay and lesbian

are gonna be considered archaic and out of date.

Younger people are much more fluid.

They're not defining themselves in that way.

Us pre-Stonewall people have to catch up

and learn what's going on and understand it.

I feel like the goal is to create a society

where a child can grow up in whatever body that they're in,

and go towards whatever it is

that they're attracted to and interested in,

without having to define that interest

as female or male, as a gender.

Like, we do pink and blue, colors don't have

a penis or a vagina, they don't have a gender.

Toys don't have a gender.

And sports or science or food or math or singing

doesn't have a gender, they just are what they are.

And we are so focused on giving everything

that a child is interested in a label

that then they have to decide what they are or aren't.

And my fantasy is that we someday create a culture

where you feel comfortable being 100% who you are.

When I was at Harvard, I thought I was

the only one like me that there was.

And then a couple years later,

I realized that the very popular resident tutor,

who had meals with us and kind of made sure

we didn't throw things out the window,

everybody wanted to be with this guy,

and he was so smart and so funny,

and he knew everything about government,

and I realized, oh my gosh,

he's looking at the same guys I am.

He's the same way I am.

There are two of us.

Not just one.

Of course, there were hundreds and hundreds

of guys like, you know, but.

Well, that guy, I wound up, about 40 years later,

attending, actually being a part of his wedding to a guy.

And his name is Barney Frank.

He went on to become chairman

of the House Financial Services Committee.

What an arc of history that is to go,

he was equally closeted, and we never talked

about it in college, because I wasn't gonna

talk to anybody about it.

But, it's great how the world has changed.

And there's room for lots of different shades.

Oh God, we had,

we had people in our neighborhood,

outside our neighborhood and school.

We had, in our families, we had so much hatred toward us.

And we had to fight all the time.

But we survived, and I'm like, okay,

if we can survive in such a difficult, difficult time,

when it seemed like everybody hated us,

I think this generation to come, come on, sweetie,

this is your time, and don't let anybody take that from you.

Because it's your time.

And you should embrace it and move forward, and be happy.

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♪ Just me and my TV ♪

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