Also, the lives we're living,
the daily struggles and challenges, the laughter and tears, are
revolutionary. We're making a revolution, changing the world by
being our best selves, by coming out and building community, by
bringing who we are into the mainstream.
RH: Is there a better climate today, despite all the problems we
still face, than when you came out as a young woman?
TO: When I think about what it was like, even for somebody
living in a feminist counterculture, participating in the anti-war
movement...I was definitely in a very progressive world when I
came out, and yet I think about how scary it was, how isolated we
were, how fragmented the gay community was. Men and women
didn't talk to each other. I had almost no gay friends for the first
fifteen years that I was out of the closet. It was a very separatist
time in the 1970s and early '80s. That's why I wrote the book, I
wanted to show how far we've come since then.
RH: Do you feel that younger people who didn't live through that
take this new openness and freedom for granted?
TO: I don't think that's true for most people who are putting
their careers and lives together. Coming out and being out is still a
live issue. Even in a city like San Francisco, many people outside the
active gay subcultures are very much struggling with coming out. It's
always an individual process, and always ongoing. It's a lifetime
commitment.
Everybody comes out at their own pace, and we have to be patient
with those whose pace is different from our own, especially after
we've made our decision to come out. I often meet people who don't
have a sense of history, particularly about social change movements,
and they don't understand how far we've come and have an
impatience. They want everybody to come out and be active right
away. They don't understand that social change is slow.
RH: Look at how long it's taken the gay male and lesbian camps to
come together as tentatively as they have, and how much progress
we still have to make in bringing bisexuals and transgendered people
fully into the community.
TO: The first step is autonomous organizing. The emergence of
the transgendered and bisexual movements is happening. It's always
a process. It's never going to be perfect...but overall we're making
tremendous progress in terms of diversity within the community.
People love to point out the isms and the schisms and the
differences. I just look at it the other way. I remember when there
was NO conversation across differences, NO understanding between
men and women in the community. None. We were living on
different planets. And that was twenty years ago, even just fifteen
years ago.
RH: You discuss in the book several run-ins with people who are
more than happy to point out your shortcomings as a leader in the
community.
TO: We're very quick to criticize each other, to grab onto
what's not happened right. We accent the negative all the time. I'm
over it. Quit whining, grow up, let's move forward.
RH: Speaking of moving forward, what can we expect from Clinton
in the second term, after the sometimes frustrating experiences of
the last four years?
TO: I think we can expect friendly Supreme Court
appointments, moderates who are socially liberal. That'll help us in
terms of the military issue, which is in the courts now.
I think we'll see ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act)
pass. One of the best things about the gay marriage debate is that it's
made ENDA look moderate. The marriage debate caused the right-
wing bloc to say, "We're not gay-bashers, we're not anti-
discrimination, we just don't believe that queers have the moral right
to marriage which is a sacred heterosexual institution." Fine. Draw
your line there, give us ENDA, give us non-discrimination. The Clinton
White House has lobbied heavily for this bill, and I would put money
on its passing in his second term.
On balance, I think Clinton moves us forward, but he's a political
person. He reads the polls and he responds to them.
RH: What's Clinton done that's especially helpful?
TO:The two things that we don't talk enough about that are
really moving forward under the Clinton administration are GLBT
youth issues and gay and lesbian community-based health centers.
Even apart from AIDS, there's been an recognition that gays and
lesbians are underserved minorities, that homophobia has been a
barrier to good healthcare. Now we see things like pilot programs to
create cancer awareness in lesbian communities. The teen suicide
study from 1989 that showed gay teens were 2-3 times more likely
to attempt suicide is being updated. This is 'real life' stuff that
doesn't necessarily make headlines, and the administration's been
very supportive.
Things are better under Clinton than they were under Bush or
Reagan for damn sure. And it boils down to the fact that his inclusion
and tolerance of us, even at a token level, opens up a political space
for us to move forward and build our movement. We cannot
underestimate that.
RH: How much will the simultaneous creation of that political
space and a support framework for queer teens help the movement?
TO: It's immeasurable. The schools are so important because
the right wing is starting to target them, and the battle will probably
be fought over the next few years in the public schools over curricula
for sex education and AIDS education or even just tolerance of open
visibility for GLBT youth without fear of harrassment or
queerbashing. School programs like Project 10 in LA or Minneapolis'
Out for Equity will make such a difference five, ten, twenty years
down the line. This is so vital. The earlier the self-esteem, the earlier
the coming out, the earlier the sense of connectedness to the
community, the more resources we have in building our movement,
the more wonderful people we have who aren't filled with self-
loathing, who are out of the closet, proud, and able to be their best
selves.
RH: Getting over self-loathing is a critical first step in learning to
get along with other types of queer people.
TO: That's the thing about identity politics -- I think it's really
a developmental stage, and then when you feel good about yourself,
you're more comfortable in more places with people who are
different. The more yourself you are, the more capable you are of
participating in a community and giving back to it.
RH: What's ahead for you after this tour is over?
TO: I'd like to write another book eventually. I'm in the
middle of putting together an outline for something that's more of a
memoir. It scares the hell out of me sometimes, but I'd like the
challenge of writing more of my own story than I have in this book.
RH: Has it been difficult balancing your personal queer life with
your activist queer life?
TO: I got better and better at it, though when one is an
executive director of an organization, you really have no life other
than your job. If you didn't have a partner going into it, it's very
unlikely that you'll find one. It would be the rare job at the executive
level that attracts my attention from now on, because they gobble up
so much of one's life.
When I was an executive director and a full-time professional
activist, I learned more and more how to struggle against the
compulsiveness that can set in and keep you at the office more than
you really need to be. I saw the damage that it did to one's personal
life, but also the spiritual or psychic burnout that it creates. I was
pretty burnt out after GLTF, and having the time to reflect and
meditate during the writing of this book was a deeply personal
healing experience. As I've gotten older and gone into recovery, I've
acquired a new balance of values in my life, a new recognition of
what matters, and this book helped to focus that.
RH: You actually go into some detail near the end of the book
about how recovery movements have been a spiritual boon to many
queers.
TO:Well, there are a lot of queers with drug and alcohol
problems, probably because we were forced to live in bars, which
were our only social space up until about twenty-five years ago, but
also because of the pressures of homophobia. My own story, that of a
person with a drug or alcohol problem who has found recovery to be
spiritually resuscitating as well as physically healing, is not unique.
RH: Maybe, in addition to the addict recovery angle, these
movements provide spiritual solace to people often ostracized by the
religious communities in which they grew up.
TO: My favorite part of the book is that section in the last
chapter on spirituality. Look at how many gays and lesbians are
going back to churches and synagogues, or worshipping in their own
way with their own notions of what a divine force is or a higher
power...that's the cutting edge of where we are, trying to reinfuse our
political activism with the profound lessons of what values really
matter. Values that we've learned working against AIDS, and
working together across gender, class and race lines.
RH: Earlier, you mentioned identity politics as a stage. Maybe this
is what comes next, a recognition of what's beyond identity.
TO: You find empathy. Gloria Steinem calls empathy "the
revolutionary emotion." You operate from the heart, a healing place,
a higher place, and you have a much better chance of keeping people
engaged than you will with anger, anger, anger. And it really makes
you find common ground with people who are very different from
you. That's the kind of movement that can save the world.
