Homosexuals were easily blackmailed to be spies or become comrades or communists. For fear that we would somehow be exposed. So, all of that in the 1950s and 60s, two of long and bitter struggle to become almost firstclass american citizens today. The story of this change in the hearts and minds of america played itself out over about 65 years. To tell the story i interviewed more than 150 people. I went to archives over the country. I i finally ended up using about 20 archives. What i wanted to do here, i wanted to present the historical back. I wanted to present figures, but even more than that i wanted to look at the individuals who created those facts. The individuals who are behind the figures. To give you an example of the kind of thing i do, and, i discuss how in the 1950s homosexuals and all of us were called home a strolls whether we are lesbian, gay, or transgender or those who call themselves queer today. We are all considered mentally ill. I then zoom in on a story of a woman i interview, her name was sally, she was kicked out of college because she had a relationship with another woman. Her roommate found out, told the dean of students that she was having a lesbian affair. Sallys expulsion made her parents force her to go to a cycle therapist. The psychotherapist said she was not cooperating, she really needed to be put into a residential facility where she would get psychotherapy seven days per week. So they were not poor but they had to put a second mortgage on their home to send her to a residential facility. A Rehab Facility it was called. There, she still refused to promise that she would stop being a lesbian, so they so they sent her to a private Mental Hospital. The Mental Hospital she was given electro shock treatment. Even with electroshock treatment she refused to say that she was no longer a lesbian. She was threatened to be sent to the state Mental Hospital and she heard in the state Mental Hospital home is sexuals were treated by lobotomy. Obviously that scared the hell out of her so she said oh yes, i yes, i am changed. I am heterosexual. Im okay. Finally she was release, she was home and she was to go to a psychoanalyst, she did that for a number of years. I interviewed her about four months before her death in 2012. She died at the age of 76, still a lesbian she told me. [applause]. So that is the kind of storytelling that i try to do throughout the book. Whether i talk about Movement Leaders or the perception of homophobia on every day people, i really wanted to get behind the fact and give personal glimpses into peoples lives. I am going to read from two sections, the sections i chose have to do with subjects that have been very much in the news recently. The first is the service of gays and lesbians in the military. The military has, on paper, long been on welcoming to gays and lesbians. Except for when there theres a war going on. During world war ii, although homosexuals were not supposed to serve, they generally were not question. When people were questioned they were those who said they were homosexuals in the suspicion once they wanted to get out of military service. So they were really scrutinize. For the most part, gay men and lesbians were not serving. As soon as the war was over there was a huge witchhunt to kick homosexuals out of the military. The same thing. The same thing happened during the vietnam war. Gays and lesbians served quite openly the people i interviewed told me. As soon as the vietnam war was over there was a big push to get gays and lesbians out of the service. Im going to read one section in which i talk about the first out to gay person in the military and said yes, i am a homosexual and i want to remain in the military, and i think my record warrants remaining in the military. I called the section, the good soldier. As a boy growing up, in the 1950s on Charleston Air force base in south carolina, redheaded and beanpole they had a recurring reverie. The Civil War Soldier of the battles of gettysburg he did not question the racism around him, not even during the years when blacks began fighting for their civil rights. If black people showed up in the white housing area where he lived, the sergeant, father and rest of the family who grab the rocks and confederate flags and chase the intruders out. On saturday night he and other white teams from Charleston Air force base would ride a bus with the negro parts of town shouting out the windows, two, four, four, six, eight, we dont want to integrate. At 19 he followed in his fathers footsteps and enlisted in the air force. Twelve years later in 1975, now a sergeant now as sergeant himself he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine he was told the the Blue Air Force cap and which was pinned his many military decorations. They on the picture was the declaration i am a homosexual. He was the first openly gay person to be on the cover. How he got there was his transformation from stonethrowing young biggest to his blasts of a right. After three tours of duty in vietnam he volunteered to teach courses in the air force base relations program. It had been created in 1971 after a threeday race riot at the air force base instigated by people who were like he had once been. For four years, he was the talk of the classroom about equality, and justice. It began to dawn on him that gays needed to fight for rights just as other minorities had to. One day he asked his class which do you think is the most i processed Minority Group in america. His students guess black, hispanic, native american, he wrote on the board homosexual. It had taken him a long time to arrive at this point. Just a few years earlier he joined the search of the latter day saints hoping mormonism would somehow help exercise the homosexual feelings which had troubled him since he was 12 years old. His fears about those feelings have been reinforced by his political but continue to tilt right. He he runs described his fathers being so conservative that he made genghis khan look like jesse jackson. The apple did not fall far from the tree. Leonard had even toyed with joining the far right society so he settled for registering as a republican and voting for barry goldwater, an adamant opponent of the welfare state, soviet union, and labor union. His patriotism assumed the same for what he called the loony left and its criticisms of the United States. He liked to save america, america, we are truly better than the average bear, because he grew up as a military brat he knew well the military attitude toward queers. He would never hug or put his arms around anyone other than family until he was 30. But in 1973 he channeled to hear about a nightclub from one of his students in a Race Relations class. He said he wandered in not knowing it was a homosexual hangout. He dared go look. Once inside he acknowledged himself what he had long suppressed, a Million Pounds just left my soul he said. His first homosexual experience. He then wrote an article in air force times that startled him. Homosexuals in uniform was called and it mentioned doctor frank as founder way back in 1961 of an organization that was fighting for gay rights in washington d. C. He had never heard of such an organization, he had never heard of the stonewall riot. He wanted to talk to them. He called a longdistance operator asking for an operator expecting her to say there is no listing, but there was. Doctor franklin, he was not sure what to say. He say he was teaching a Race Relations class. He. He asked him if he knew what he might use in his classes to show that homosexuals to suffer prejudice. It took him almost two weeks to muster the courage to make the call. They talked for an hour. He mentioned he was working with aclu military lawyers, they are helping gay men and lesbians who had been thrown out of the military get a dishonorable discharge is upgraded to honorable. But in the aclu they would like to do more. They were looking for an ideal case, someone who had a perfect military record, wanted to stay in the service, was willing to publicly declare, i am a homosexual. He didnt exactly tell anybody during the phone conversation but before they hung up he did nervously say, well i think i know an individual who might but the bill. But he had been a lifer in the air force, he really believed in service to his country, what would he do with himself himself if he were kicked out . He had been teaching about justice and equality for so long that he believed in that too. He believed in her rowing gestures. After four months of wayne he called and said i am the guy i am talking about, i am ready. Frank, by now an old hand at fighting the military on behalf of gays and lesbians poured over lenders record. When other young men were running off to canada to avoid getting drafted and sent to vietnam, mac low pitch enlisted. He asked to be sent there three times because that is where my nation needs me he said. He hoped to pay a modest role in threading democracy. Mac low pitch was wounded by a landmine as he was preparing to assemble a frontline radar. After he recovered he asked to be sent to the front again. He got a purple heart for his once, a bronze star for braving viacom sniper fire, in order to fix crucial air force equipment and a slew of other decorations. He had been in the service for 12 years and not one complaint of any kind against him. His credentials were great. Frank invited him to his home in d. C. Where they could talk. I would i would like you to meet someone he said. Michael fitch was on assignment at the time at the air force base, it was a sixhour drive around trip but he said he would be there. The person they wanted him to meet with a married heterosexual, david. And aclu attorney. David had been a judge advocate in the air force to for people getting kicked out of the military. Now he is devoting himself for helping vietnam vets get upgrades on less than honorable discharges which not only robbed them of veteran benefits but also settled them with a lifetime stigma. He thought it was tight time to tackle these homosexual issues. Of course, the student see me and he understands this is the ideal case. He instructs them to write a letter to his superiors saying i am a homosexual, and i want to stay in the service. That is was followed immediately by a move to discharge him, he was kicked out of the military. The aclu and other lawyers join the case and took it first to military court, the military court upheld the decision to dismiss him from the military. They took it to the federal court but by now is 1978, he won in federal court. The federal Court Ordered the military to reinstate him. Rather than reinstate him, the military decided they would offer him a huge sum of money. In todays money it was the equivalent of three quarters of a million dollars. So he decided if he had gone back into the military they would find another reason to kick him out, he took the three quarters of a million dollar. But the case remained on record, that a homosexual could sue to be reinstated in the military and when. The number of subsequent cases followed. Federal courts in those cases to said there is no connection between the persons homosexuality and his or her ability to serve in the military, the military must accept those people back in. The military are resisted. Im sure you all know this story of dont ask, dont tell. It was a compromise, a miserable compromise, of course the witchhunt did not stop with dont ask, dont tell. And finally when that was repealed after a very long struggle, 40 years after his struggle with the military and gays and lesbians can now serve openly in the military. The other section im going to read from is about a remarkable woman by the name of edie windsor. She was a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case in 2013 to repeal start part of the defense of marriage act. That was the act that was passed in 1996 that said, even if a state recognize a samesex marriage, federal government has no obligation to recognize that marriage. So the defensive marriage act also said that the constitution would not have to be honored in this case. A couple married in one state and went to another state that didnt recognize samesex marriage, that that they would not be obliged to recognize it. There have been attempts in the Lgbt Community for years, even in the 1970s to challenge the prohibition on samesex marriage. It was in 1990s when it would actually permit samesex marriage, that is when states began asking the defense of marriage act and then finally the federal government did. The section that i want to read from my call for the Supreme Court of the United States heres a love story. In the early 1960s, they were still smoking Italian Restaurant in Greenwich Village was where upscale lesbians went for dinner on friday night. When the fire came over to say hello where ed sat, they were introduced. They had a lot in common, both smart dressers, Silver Screen glamorous, windsor, platinum blonde, high breasted, fuchsia polished nails, both were also jewish, quickwitted and ambitious. Windsor had been married to a man for less than a year before she realized she preferred women and parted with her husband on friendly terms. In 1955 she five she went back to school at nyu where she got an ma in applied mathematics. She became a pioneer in the new computer industry working for ibm as one of the rare Woman Program developers. She aspired to escape a master dam when hitlers invasion of astor dam was eminent had been kicked out of Sarah Lawrence as an undergraduate by being caught kissing a woman. Now she was getting a phd in psychology from delphi university. Spier and windsor also had in common that they love to dance. We immediately just swooped, they would like to say when they member their first meeting and how they dance so long and hard that first night that edie windsor wore a hole in her stocking. They were each involved with someone else at the time so after that meeting it they cite other at occasional parties. Their partners would be buttoning coats ready to go home, but spier and windsor would seek each other out for one last irresistible dance together. In 1965 both happen to be single again. When windsor heard that spire, but never quite left windsors mind would be spending the weekend at the hamptons, she got herself invited to the home of friends whom she knew spier would visit. Spier came by when the friends were out, is your dance card for she asked . It is now she answered and all that afternoon they made love. Two years later spier, always a romantic got down on her knees and propose to windsor. Windsor said yes before spier could finish the poetic proposal. Samesex couples could not get married anywhere 1957 but spier wanted to buy her a diamond engagement. How can i wear it at ibm she asked . She got along fine with her coworkers but always turn down their invitation such as going for weekend wine tastings, because she didnt dare bring spier. An Engagement Ring would prompt questions she knew she cannot honestly answer in an era of people lost jobs if they found out they are gay or lesbian. So instead of a ring she gave her a diamond brooch which she wore. Even 45 years later when her picture was appearing in newspapers and magazines all over the globe. Spier was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1977. She was 45 years old, the disease was progressive. For she needed a cane to walk, to keynes, then keynes, then she was confined to a wheelchair. Finally she became paraplegic. Through it all she continue to work as a psychotherapist seeing seeing clients at the eighth floor apartment, on lower fifth avenue where she lived. In the last years of her life she required oxygen to breathe and slings to get in and out of bed. She and windsor could not make that sickness and in health bow legally, they made it anyway to each other when it became mostly in sickness windsor cant took early retirement at ibm to be able to minister fulltime to her partner. But even in sickness they did not stop dancing. The two of them twirling in the motorized wheelchair. Windsor like to remember that they were never on the dance floor together when they didnt scream out to each other above the music, i love you. Spiers multiple sclerosis became, located by heart disease. In 2007 she was told by her dr. She probably had less than one year to live. She was 75 years old but what she wanted in 1967, she still wanted. When the dr. Let the examination room after breaking the news, spier turned to windsor and ask, do ask, do you still want to get married . Windsor did very much. They attended the meeting of the Human Rights Campaign at new york lgbt center and during the q a she asked when the organization would seriously start pushing for marriage. The speaker told her it was on the agenda for the future. I am 77 years old windsor shouted, i cant wait. Samesex marriage was legal in massachusetts but that didnt do spier and windsor much good because massachusetts had a residency requirement. To move move their household and all of their equipment that spier needed to stay alive and she was facing imminent death, it would have been impossible. Marriage was also legal in canada, all that was required there before you could get a license with a one day visa. Spier and windsor knew what they must do. Six friends, two best men and for best women women agreed to do it with them. On may 22, 2007 they flew to toronto on tryon toronto to dismantle putting together her wheelchair which cannot be driven onto the small plane. The two men carried her to her seat on the plane and once landed, carried her off the plane to her reassembled wheelchair. Spiers, still, still handsome woman sitting tall in her wheelchair and windsor perched on the arm of the chair decked out in pearls so beautiful, still platinum blonde hair thanks to clairol now. Their merit by the first openly gay judge, harvey. Windsor inspires head agree that they wanted to make the ceremonious tradition as possible. They wanted to say, with this weight ring, i the wed. When spier was to say it or arm had to be lifted by two of the best women so she could hold up the ring. Windsor slipped her finger through it. When they got back to new york, spier said happily, i can york, spier said happily, i can die now because it is completed. She died in their home on february 5, 2009. One week later, windsor had a heart attack. Windsor, called it a broken heart. So she recovered and her problems were far from over. New york still did not allow samesex marriages 72008 the 2000 the state had started recognizing those hat that had been performed elsewhere but the federal government did not. Not not long effort to her spier step windsor received an estate tax bill from the irs. As far as the federal law was concert, she had inherited from his buyer half the value of the apartment and the Little Cottage the two women had bought from the hamptons. To the federal government, she and spier, despite their 40 plus year history, despite their legal marriage, were no no more than strangers to each other. The estate tax bill was for 363,053. Windsor had no choice but to pay it. To do that she had to sell investment bonds which she counted on to see her through the rest of her life. After paying she figured she had enough left to live on for no more than four years. If she had been married to a man other than a woman, she would have to pay no estate taxes whatsoever. Not even if she met and married a month before she died. Justice kennedy deliver the majority opinion rights in to the equality into the coated singled out a subset of people to make the money will. It dispirited and injures those that the marriage laws sought to protect and what the decision meant not only with the samesex variate couples treated by the irs says heterosexual counterparts but also with Social Security and veterans survivors benefits to hold onto their homes when widowed and get green cards and eligible for over 1,000 benefits that only straight couples had enjoyed. But there was still the provision that said if samesex marriages performed in another state but that was finally lifted in the past june and now the samesex couples have the right to marry equally. Of us your in kentucky i will stop reading here. Who is aware that finally took the case . He now has a book out. I think the publishing date is october 5th. [inaudible] it actually began with the federal government and there was a witch hunt in washington d. C. Anyone that was suspected of homosexuality fire from government positions but it is beyond that government could anybody suspected homeless sexuality homeless sexuality to move beyond that to move to private employment and at that time one that would lead advertisers to say do you know, who your hiring and they offered to look into the background of the employees to find out if that prospective employer is of a sexual. At that time there was a magazine in 1954 with a moving article about the fact all of the writers friends were now unemployed because they were fired from their jobs. Is certainly applied to academia in a huge wave. I write about how there were which runs at universities cry was first a freshman. When i first started ucla all of us had to take a battery of tests tests, psychological tests and it was all vendor of questions that one question keeps popping up over and over that says Something Like have you ever kissed someone of the same sex . To have fantasies of people of the same sex . Sexual fantasies . Trying to find out if the freshmen was a homosexual. We knew to be answered no to every question. But i found out when i was doing research for another book what that was all about. Said the new students at ucla along with the associate dean had written an article published in a magazine called school in and society in 1954 and they said it was the job of the deans of students to ferrets out the homosexuals in the student body and make them go to a psychiatrist to change or if they refused then expel them from colleges and universities. The worst place to be an academic was florida because the Florida Legislature had funded and Investigative Committee that ended of doing nothing but that to ferret out the homosexuals among the faculty and student to the body and it went on for about eight years into the 60s so it was very dangerous to be gay and lesbian as listed or professor. Or as a student. Did you spend much time or come across the work of burger . Why did he take it upon himself . He was not alone. It was among psychotherapist with the 50s and 60s despite the fact in 1953 dr. Walker began a study that was quite remarkable. To do a study of heterosexual men to give all 60 of those the most important project to test if there was another test to cutout figures and then tell a story bills were the most important psychological test associate minister those test and then pared that accorded to iq and other factors of footage roll background and education then she asked these three leading experts to say which one was a heterosexual . It was no more than the statistics of chance but homosexuality was clearly not a diagnostic category. She published her work in the late 50s because of the education is the early american is a psychiatric ward bed Psychiatric Association that they had to look was going on if it was not a diagnostic category then what were they treating . They concluded it did not belong in the diagnostic statistical manual so by a stroke of the pen over night we were cheered. [laughter] the you can imagine it did not sit well with the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst there were many of them. That was a huge industry. Talk about the sexual revolution in the 80s and those pursuing a monogamous relationship. I think the sexual revolution in the 80s really wants the Lesbian Feminist in particular. I think the usual pattern before they could choose somebody and live happily ever after was serial monogamy to say that youve met someone on the first date you would kiss of the second date you would pull up the uhaul to her apartment in the that was it. There wasnt much to keep the relationship together then the two women will lead split but that sexual oh great revolution called into question that is part of the patriarchy that monogamy had to be smashed and very often experimented with this non monogamists terming pins that were popular at the time. The three female symbols lines signs speesix but just as all of america i was experimenting sexuality with lesbians now is an experiment with marriage. It is it is also said in the 80s any sort of a monogamous relationship with their wounded to escape from that type. One is robust a and comprehensive so one makes choices and how did you make those of which path to follow a and the second question comes as it was declassified as a psychiatric disorder is as if it was unfortunate if you were born gay or lesbian that there is still a president ial level that is more normalized . There is so many faces on the cutting faces on the cutting room pork that i felt so bad about. Nebulize i had to make huge cuts. I had a whole chapter on gays and lesbians in sports i had to cut that i rode it just about the time michael got into the nfl. I went all the way back to talk about the transsexual who played tennis and Billie Jean King the there realize that was not following the law even of how we got from their from where lgbt people would rise to the success so i had a huge chapter on religion and that stuck closely enough to the subject there is a lot of religion to fight the religious right to found their own churches there is still material of the media but the treatment of the cave fish and lesbians and for what i could not deploy. As far as the notion of the homosexuality. [inaudible] whenever a question anyone of his or her own life very rare they got to read there are today. People say i was born that way but others say it is a choice that i made free late bond dash really because it was best for me. Something to was a necessary political stance that was strategic and i discovered in i a was in seattle i was told by this guy regrate decision that he had ruled a woman could adopt a child so they had to mothers at a time when judges were not doing that. I said what make made you make that decision . He said people cannot help the good they are. They are born how they are they should not discover suffer discrimination i said you mean if they knew they were not born homosexual . And he said yes the next day i got in email from him that said he relief on about of our conversation and realized he was wrong just as People Choose their religion they should not be discriminated against religion they should not be discriminated against because they chose a for ruth sexual expression. But for many people or lgbt people and others believe it is the choice that they make did you have a book in mind . I have been interviewing for all of maya other books as well. This must be the 11th that focuses on the lgbt subject many focused a lot of lesbians. So i started to interview for my book and i kept the tapes where was reading this book i thought they would not be good but to my relief they were fine. So i used the early interviews i didnt interview in 1987, i interviewed barbara in 1987 she is no longer alive. But for this book in addition to those older interviews, i interviewed more than 150 new people. [inaudible] probably a woman that was born in may and then became a woman Christine Jorgensen jorgensen, the first famous case of a transsexual person, but that term was not used than. I came out 1956. I knew many men that were offended and met women who were masculine and we all call ourselves day. Transgendered was not a term. Then then were queens and the men were the women were a bunch but but we refined the concept more and more the term transgendered was not cleaned point until later but people felt that way long before they use that term those that were considered homosexual or gay in the earlier era always felt they were men trapped in womens bodies and to now we have become worse sophisticated it isnt simply blind for of of being homosexual. [inaudible] what did you find a jewish literature . I didnt look at the bible very much. But from being a pariah to be accepted when a wonderful organization was started in this area to be the death of liberal or protestant ministers from that time on was a burgeoning acceptance it is also true when of the first gate churches was founded in in the topology Community Church down in the 1968. It was awkward said it was the roman house of worship you are welcome here but start a gauge temple said they started that but more and more dead churches have wormed soon month so miraculously there has been profoundly deaf even in the churches said senator drugs. [inaudible] what do you think the threat of people who are gay who are out ted . I am opposed to our the most of the time that when deberg against the rights as of gay people and get nurturance they eggs for coming. [applause] one ashley ku. Researching the history of Artificial Intelligence so that compelled me to ruth come up with dat is in one of the characters programmers of computers and then working slightly for the margins and then those programs cruz that were gay into big knowledge for that reason. Now and mid the 20thcentury now to be stranger than marginal. Could you talk about the role of development you can do a better than i can. Snaky proposed the 1951 not wellknown but it is about the gender of the person sitting on their side. You could say it is intelligent to give them things to interact with. You can tell if it is a human or eight machine on the obverse side. 01 the other side. It is one that just as a person that youre talking to. People are very persuaded by this they think it is a sign of humanity. So what kind of conversation we think is deeply human, is an interesting question. Also conversational system that explores is a future of interface. The walk of around the town and city im living in right now, about half of the people walking down the streets are walking like this. Looking at the palm of their hand. That cannot be