Episode Transcript
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Before we get started, a heads up. This
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episode contains strong language and mentions suicide.
0:35
It may not be appropriate for some
0:37
listeners. In
0:41
1978, Cleve Jones and his
0:43
circle of gay friends in San Francisco were
0:45
trying to solve a problem. About
0:48
how we need a symbol to unify
0:50
us. Across the country,
0:53
gay people were starting to recognize themselves
0:55
as part of a broader, politicized identity
0:57
group. And the movement was searching
0:59
for a visual marker to rally around. The
1:02
options that were out there were imperfect. There
1:07
was the lambda. The Greek letter L. What
1:10
the hell does that mean? Lesbians
1:12
had the labrys, a double-sided axe. Again,
1:16
kind of obscure. There
1:18
were intertwined gender symbols. Two
1:20
males or two females. Sounds
1:23
dreadfully binary now, doesn't it? There
1:25
was also the pink triangle. Today
1:28
it's synonymous with the AIDS activism of ACT
1:30
UP. But in the 70s, it
1:32
was known only as the symbol the Nazis
1:34
used to mark gay prisoners in concentration camps.
1:37
And I remember somebody once saying
1:40
to me, what's wrong with the
1:42
pink triangle? Hitler?
1:47
For a liberation movement to come together,
1:49
it does need what the pink triangle
1:52
offers. A shared history of oppression and
1:54
struggle, pain and loss. But
1:56
it also needs an affirming narrative of
1:58
belonging and joy. In
2:01
1978, the Year of the Briggs Initiative,
2:03
that's what the gay community was looking for
2:05
— a symbol of hope. In
2:08
San Francisco's Gay Freedom Day, a precursor
2:10
to what we now call pride was
2:13
the perfect opportunity to create something new.
2:16
So I began to have this idea that
2:18
we could have something to answer in the
2:20
pink triangle. Gilbert Baker,
2:22
who died in 2017, was helping lead
2:25
the decorations committee for Gay Freedom
2:27
Day. He was a drag queen
2:29
and a whiz with a sewing machine. This
2:31
audio is from a talk he gave in 2012. The
2:34
thing for me is I'm an artist. That
2:36
was always when activists came from years of
2:38
making gowns and dresses and leave
2:41
calling up, meaning a protest banner for some
2:43
march. He had long hair.
2:45
He was very dramatic. At
2:47
one point he said, I don't know if I
2:49
could ever really be close friends with anybody who's
2:51
never taken LSD. Gilbert's
2:54
co-chair on the decorations committee was a
2:56
garment dyer with a priceless 1970s name.
3:00
I was going around as Fairy Argyle
3:02
Rainbow because I loved rainbows so much.
3:08
Today Fairy Argyle Rainbow goes by
3:11
Lynn Segerblum. In 1978, she
3:14
was 22 years old and working for a
3:16
fashion designer. Gay Freedom Day
3:18
was a big opportunity for her, the
3:20
fabric dyer, and Gilbert, the master sewer
3:22
to show what they could do. Near
3:25
the end of the parade route that
3:27
day, marchers would walk through United Nations
3:29
Plaza where there were two 80-foot flagpoles
3:31
just begging to be gussied up. The
3:34
organizers, they said, want to do
3:36
something with the flagpoles? According
3:39
to Gilbert's memoir, the vision of a
3:41
rainbow came to him while tripping on
3:43
acid and dancing under a disco ball
3:45
with cleave. It's all
3:47
the colors. It's the
3:49
rainbow of humanity.
3:52
He said it's a beautiful freak of nature.
3:56
I like that. Lynn remembers
3:58
it differently. for
6:00
the stars. Lynn says it took
6:02
three people to load each flag into the bed
6:04
of a truck. They were so
6:07
big, no one was sure they would
6:09
actually flap. I was worried,
6:11
yes. I just thought, I see it in
6:13
my mind. Let's see if we can do
6:15
this. Hello?
6:19
Hi, Scoop, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay,
6:21
we're on the air. Yeah, it's coming over.
6:23
Can we go on the air?
6:25
Yes. Fuck
6:28
this and fuck that. Fuck Britain, fuck this
6:30
crap. Well that is the
6:32
Bay Area Committee Against the Briggs Initiative. They're
6:34
right in front of me. And the second
6:36
and third group in the parade was lesbian
6:39
teachers and gay teachers. They
6:42
were chatting out of the closet and into the school. The
6:46
slogan for Gay Freedom Day was, come
6:48
out with joy, speak out for justice.
6:51
An estimated 350,000 people
6:54
flooded into the streets, almost twice as
6:56
many as the year before, which was
6:58
already the biggest gay demonstration ever. I
7:01
think Briggs will probably win, but we're going to
7:03
try our dandruff and display every bit of energy
7:05
we have to counteract it. The
7:11
parade may have been the largest gathering in the
7:14
U.S. for any reason in the 1970s. People
7:17
came from all over to be surrounded
7:20
by their fellow gays, out in public,
7:22
admiring each other and demanding respect. Here
7:25
are our gay fathers. Some
7:28
really gorgeous men out here today.
7:33
The San Francisco Gay Freedom Day marching band
7:36
and twirling corps. Oh,
7:39
and are they twirling? Twirling up a storm.
7:45
The whole parade was a marvel. And
7:48
near the end of the route, when
7:50
all those marchers approached United Nations Plaza,
7:52
they saw something magical. Two
7:55
colossal rainbow creations flapping in
7:57
the wind. It
8:00
worked. Everybody was elated.
8:02
People were just smiling and like, oh my God.
8:06
Tens of thousands of people
8:08
just beaming and pointing so
8:11
blown away by it. What
8:17
do you think of the bridge? Uh. You're
8:20
two in the middle of it that's out. Wonderful,
8:23
wonderful. After
8:27
many years and a few design
8:29
tweaks, the rainbow flag, that beautiful
8:31
freak of nature, would become the
8:34
international symbol for the LGBTQ community.
8:37
But on this June day in 1978, it
8:40
was a vision of a better future. The
8:42
reason so many of the people at
8:44
Gay Freedom Day were working and fighting
8:47
and coming out to stop John Briggs.
8:50
Not just to escape the bad stuff, but
8:52
to get more of the good stuff, more days
8:54
like this one. This
9:00
is Slow Burn, Gaze Against Briggs. I'm
9:02
your host, Christina Kottirucci. Just
9:05
four months after the first gay rainbow
9:07
flags flew over San Francisco, all
9:10
of California would decide what kinds of
9:12
lives gay people deserved to live. Activists
9:15
on both sides of the Briggs Initiative were
9:17
honing their pitches and fanning out across the
9:20
state to make their cases to voters. As
9:23
Election Day approached, they'd find themselves
9:25
locked in a heated public debate,
9:27
with one side preying on fear,
9:29
and the other campaigning for empathy. Common
9:32
sense, of course, tells people that
9:34
homosexuality is a most repulsive lifestyle.
9:37
It is not only repulsive, it's
9:39
immoral. Stop
9:41
and think how weak his argument
9:43
is for heterosexuality if the senator thinks
9:46
that one gay teacher can
9:48
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Despite the massive turnout for Gay Freedom Day.
11:24
Despite all the grassroots organizing, and despite
11:26
the droves of gay people coming out
11:28
to everyone they met, the
11:30
reality was that John Briggs' gay teacher
11:32
ban still looked certain to win. In
11:36
early 1978, polls showed that
11:38
70% of Californians
11:40
supported Proposition 6, and
11:42
gay activists like Cleve Jones didn't think they
11:45
had much of a chance to turn those
11:47
numbers around. The general
11:49
feeling was that we just had to keep engaging
11:51
in battle after battle that we would lose. But
11:54
every time we had this battle, there were
11:56
more stories, there were more editorials, there was
11:59
more exposure. Even if they
12:01
lost the battle against Briggs, this was the
12:03
time to show the state and the country
12:05
who they really were. Everybody
12:07
would understand that, yes, these
12:10
people exist. There's rather a
12:12
lot of them. And
12:15
they probably live on our block, go
12:17
to our church, work in our workplace,
12:19
or in our family. These
12:22
people, gay people, weren't confined to
12:24
the growing gabrehoods in San Francisco
12:26
and Los Angeles. When it's
12:28
all done and the dust settles, people need
12:30
to know we live in Modesto. People need
12:33
to know we live in Bakersfield. At
12:36
the ballot box in November, the votes coming
12:38
from inland California would be worth just as
12:41
much as those from the coast. So Cleve
12:43
joined an effort to help gay people in
12:45
small towns fight the Briggs Initiative on their
12:47
own turf. The general scenario
12:49
was I would take a gray-out bus
12:52
out to California's Great Central Valley. Oh, and
12:55
I would always dress very, very carefully.
12:58
Really toned it down. I would wear,
13:00
you know, slacks
13:02
and a nice shirt, no
13:05
political buttons. I'd
13:07
cut my hair by then. I didn't have the long
13:09
hair. It was still wonderful. When
13:13
Cleve got to one of those small towns, he'd
13:15
go looking for people, closeted or not, who might
13:17
be willing to organize against Briggs. Then
13:20
he'd set up a meeting in a diner or a coffee
13:22
shop and he'd bring an envelope
13:24
of cash. And there
13:26
would be three, four, five very
13:30
nervous people glancing
13:33
over their shoulders, speaking
13:35
very softly. But
13:38
we would say, here's a
13:41
thousand dollars and here's how
13:43
you get a
13:45
postcard printed. Or if you
13:47
can find just one person who's
13:49
willing to sign a letter to
13:51
the editor for your community newspaper.
13:54
Cleve found these conversations
13:56
incredibly moving. Unlike his
13:59
crew of outgays, in San Francisco, many
14:01
of these people stood to lose everything
14:03
if they came out. It
14:05
definitely made me smarter and more
14:07
compassionate to really understand the risk
14:10
that these folks were taking. While
14:16
Cleve did his outreach, another San Francisco
14:18
activist was on her own mission in
14:20
the Central Valley. Her name
14:22
was Amber Hollabaugh. Oh
14:25
my God, that woman, what a force. She
14:27
was tough, she was gritty, she was working class. I'm
14:30
proud of it. I only
14:32
went to high school and I never went to college,
14:34
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I
14:37
was really, boy, don't fuck with me.
14:39
I am not apologetic. Amber
14:42
died in 2023, right before we started
14:44
making this show. The audio
14:46
you're hearing is from a 2004 oral history. If
14:49
you started from nothing, the good part of that is you
14:51
don't have a hell of a lot to lose. Amber
14:55
was a high femme lesbian and a
14:58
Marxist. She had bleach blonde hair and
15:00
loved her jewelry. I'm devastated
15:02
that I never got to meet her, because
15:05
everyone who knew Amber told me
15:07
that her ingenuity and passion were
15:09
essential to their movement. In a
15:12
world so controlled by really brilliant
15:14
intellectual men who were profoundly sexist,
15:18
if you have any tendency to give up, you
15:21
haven't got a shot in hell. In
15:24
1978, Amber started driving her
15:27
van all over rural California, to places
15:29
like the one where she'd grown up.
15:32
When I went back to all these working class
15:34
towns and I had to
15:36
begin talking to women who were
15:38
never parts of the political movements
15:40
that had sent me there about
15:43
why they were living the lives they were
15:45
living, it really humbled me.
15:48
She would just arrive and try
15:50
to refute the lies that they
15:53
were being told. The activist
15:55
and professor Ruth Mahaney was Amber's roommate
15:57
for a time. She says
15:59
that Amber would start out by looking for
16:01
one friendly person. Anybody that had
16:03
a no on six bumper
16:06
sticker, she would follow
16:08
them and make them stop. She
16:11
would like jump out of her
16:13
van and say, hi, I'm
16:15
a lesbian and I want to talk to you. Like
16:19
Cleve, Amber convened small meetings to
16:21
strategize against Prop 6, but
16:23
she also went a step further. She
16:26
would end up debating somebody
16:29
in the school gymnasium
16:31
and the whole town would come. Often
16:34
it was a minister. And
16:36
I had to learn how to make an
16:38
argument. And there's nothing like
16:41
evangelical religious,
16:43
I mean, if you listen to the
16:45
way that they move an audience and
16:48
if you debate those people, you
16:52
better be able to step up to the plate. One
16:55
of Amber's debate opponents was a Baptist
16:57
pastor named Royal Blue. And
17:00
his approach was truly horrifying.
17:02
Historian Lillian Faderman. He
17:05
was asked by the
17:07
audience what should be done about
17:09
gay people. And he actually
17:12
said, well, I think we
17:14
should find a humane way to
17:17
get rid of them all. That
17:19
is to exterminate them. Amber
17:22
looked around the room. She saw that
17:24
most of the audience was over 50, which
17:27
meant a lot of the men had probably served in
17:29
World War II. And she
17:31
said, many of you fought
17:34
against Hitler. And I think what you
17:36
fought against was precisely
17:39
that. Somebody who was
17:41
a fascist who
17:43
thought the genocide was the solution if
17:45
you didn't like another group.
17:48
And many people came up
17:50
to her afterward and apologized for
17:53
Royal Blue, said he's an embarrassment.
17:55
We don't feel that way at
17:58
all. Even though... some
18:00
people warmed to Amber, what she was
18:02
doing was risky. She
18:04
often slept in her van alone, and
18:07
Ruth says one night a group of teenagers
18:09
found her at a campground. She
18:11
woke up and they were like pounding on
18:14
the van and rocking it back and forth. She
18:16
was afraid they were going to tip it over.
18:19
But she just remained quiet and they
18:22
finally left. But she
18:24
said that night she was really terrifying. Amber
18:28
may have been scared, but she didn't stop.
18:31
She kept driving her van from town to town,
18:33
trying to meet people where they were and give
18:35
them an outlet for all the questions they didn't
18:37
know who else to ask. I
18:40
remember her saying at one point
18:42
somebody got up and was railing
18:44
about, you know, perversion and
18:47
horrible homosexuals and a
18:49
woman stood up and said, oh shut up
18:51
Henry. Now what I really want
18:53
to know is how do I talk to my
18:55
kids about sex? In
18:58
some places and in some families, the
19:00
Briggs Initiative had brought sex into the
19:02
open for the first time, and not
19:04
just straight sex. They
19:07
needed an honest discussion of these
19:09
issues and so she started
19:11
talking about it. Here's how we have
19:14
sex. She would talk to
19:16
them about that? Yeah, yeah. We
19:18
also don't have rights. You
19:20
know, we don't have the same rights that you have when
19:22
you fall in love with somebody. Amber
19:27
had a way of making gay life
19:29
and gay hardship legible to straight people
19:31
without pretending her life was the same
19:33
as theirs. And if a
19:36
simple conversation wasn't enough, she could always
19:38
pull out a visual aid. We somehow
19:40
fairly early decided that a good thing
19:42
to do would be to produce a
19:45
slideshow. Ruth Schoenbach was
19:47
a leader of the Lesbian School Workers,
19:49
an activist group. The slideshow
19:51
that Ruth and Amber used was called Don't
19:53
Let It Happen Here. It included 161
19:55
slides, an 11 page script, and a full-time and
20:00
excruciatingly detailed instructions. When
20:03
Ruth and I looked them over together, we started
20:05
at the very beginning. You don't
20:07
want me to read Plug in the Extension Court? Ha
20:10
ha ha! Ha ha ha! The
20:13
lesbian school workers presented their slideshow
20:16
at community centers, schools, all over
20:18
the place. There were
20:20
newspaper listings advertising it, and apparently
20:22
people would just show up for
20:25
a slideshow presentation that they read
20:27
about in a newspaper. What
20:30
they showed up for was a kind of
20:32
seminar on where the Briggs Initiative came from
20:34
and why it was dangerous. I
20:36
asked Ruth to read a bit of the script. A
20:38
fundamental part of Briggs's image of
20:41
the ideal family is
20:43
that sex roles are rigidly defined.
20:46
Because gays challenge these ideas, Briggs
20:48
uses gays as a scapegoat
20:50
for people's fears about the
20:52
changes in traditional family life.
20:56
The slideshow covered a lot of ground. There
20:59
was material about Japanese internment camps and
21:01
the KKK, photos of
21:03
neo-Nazis and abortion rights protestors,
21:06
and partway through, just before the presenter switched
21:08
out the carousel for the next set of
21:10
slides, she would play a song by the
21:13
folk singer, Bonnie Lockhart. Ruth,
21:16
bless her, agreed to sing it for me.
21:19
Well, they've got women prison
21:21
guards and I still ain't
21:23
satisfied. The next slide, a
21:26
closeup of a face behind bars. With
21:29
so many still behind bars
21:31
and I still ain't satisfied.
21:33
And now we see campaigns
21:36
of hate and
21:38
I still ain't satisfied. Photos
21:40
from a gay rights protest.
21:42
We love our kids. We
21:45
want our rights back. We'll
21:47
stop John Briggs. We're gonna
21:49
fight back. And I still
21:52
ain't. Whoa, they lied, I
21:54
still ain't. Whoa, they lied,
21:56
I still ain't. Whoa, they lied,
21:58
I still ain't. That still
22:01
ain't satisfied. Whoa, they're not.
22:03
That still ain't satisfied. We
22:05
ain't satisfied. All
22:15
these efforts to fight John Briggs were starting
22:18
to have an impact. Polls
22:20
taken in August 1978 showed
22:22
that around 60% of Californians
22:24
supported the Briggs Initiative, down from the
22:26
70% who'd favored it earlier
22:28
that year. But time was
22:31
running out, and one
22:33
of the state's most influential politicians was
22:35
about to weigh in. Ladies
22:38
and gentlemen, Ronald Reagan. Good
22:41
evening to all of you from California. We'll
22:52
be right back. You
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["The Brigs
24:17
of the Night"] Can
24:27
you describe for me your role in
24:29
the Briggs Initiative? Yeah, my
24:32
role in the Briggs Initiative was
24:34
having a law professor from Pepperdine
24:36
to kind of give some
24:39
legitimacy to the cause. In
24:41
the 1970s, Lagarde Smith was a prominent
24:44
public surrogate for John Briggs in the
24:46
campaign for Proposition 6. Any
24:49
teacher who is
24:51
actively promoting, advocating
24:54
the gay lifestyle,
24:57
that person probably is unfit to be
24:59
a teacher in a classroom. Lagarde
25:01
didn't just think that back then. He
25:04
told me he still holds those beliefs today. The
25:07
gay rights agenda, it was planned. You know, we
25:09
need to get into the military. We needed to
25:11
get into the schools. We need to get into
25:13
the churches. We need to get into the government.
25:15
We need to get into every crevice of society
25:17
that we possibly can to promote
25:20
the gay lifestyle, to make it legitimate.
25:24
It's interesting to hear you talk about, we
25:26
got to get into the military, got to get into schools. It's
25:29
kind of a corollary to what
25:31
Harvey Milk, as you know, the big activist on
25:33
the other side on this issue was saying, we
25:36
need to come out to show people we
25:38
are already in those places. Yeah, and when
25:40
you start to hear those things, then
25:43
you say, you mean they're in
25:46
the schools? They're already embedded
25:48
into that system. Then
25:51
we need to do something about that. Lagarde
25:53
had a much narrower interpretation of Proposition
25:56
6 than John Briggs did. He
25:58
thought gay teachers would only... be
26:00
fired if they willfully and wantonly
26:03
promoted homosexuality in the classroom. But
26:06
Lagarde didn't hesitate to make the case
26:08
for the Briggs Initiative in op-eds and
26:10
media appearances. He also
26:12
served as Briggs's wingman at a
26:14
crucial meeting with California's most powerful
26:16
Republican, Ronald Reagan. We're
26:19
Americans, and we have a rendezvous
26:21
with destiny. You
26:24
know, the door opens and you walk
26:26
in and there's this incredible man. I
26:29
mean, big, warm handshake like he'd known
26:31
me forever. Ronald Reagan
26:33
was the real deal. I mean, he even had a
26:35
presence that was just bigger
26:38
than the silver screen. No
26:40
people who have ever lived on this earth have
26:42
done more to advance the dignity of man than
26:45
the Americans living in this land today. Reagan
26:48
had recently served two terms as governor of
26:50
California, and he was looking like a strong
26:52
presidential contender for 1980. But
26:55
to this point, he hadn't said much in
26:57
public about gay rights. But Lagarde thought they'd have
26:59
no problem getting him on board with Prop
27:01
6. Reagan was
27:04
a conservative, and it would
27:06
be the natural fit
27:08
for him to back this proposition.
27:12
Forty-five years later, Lagarde can't quite
27:14
recollect the actual pitch they made
27:16
to Reagan. But he does remember
27:18
the former governor's signature jar of
27:20
jelly beans. And I quickly
27:22
pocketed some of those into my sport coat.
27:24
They probably melted in the pocket later. He
27:27
also recalls feeling a little embarrassed by the
27:30
guy he was there to support. Senator
27:32
Briggs, bless his heart, he
27:35
looked like a typical sleazy
27:37
politician, a used
27:39
car salesman. I just defamed
27:42
all used car salespeople, but it was just
27:44
kind of a queasy feel to be around
27:46
him. So
27:49
at one point, Lagarde pulled Reagan aside
27:51
for a private word. I
27:53
said, you know, governor,
27:56
I said, if this were
27:58
any other issue at all, any other issue.
28:00
I'd be tempted to say that politics makes
28:02
strange bedfellows. And he
28:04
just had this great hearty laugh. And
28:08
I'll never forget that part of it that I
28:10
made Reagan laugh. When
28:15
the meeting was over, LeGarde still wasn't
28:17
sure where the former California governor stood.
28:20
And he and John Briggs weren't the only
28:22
ones courting Reagan. I
28:24
said, I need 15 minutes
28:28
of the governor's time. Anti-Briggs
28:30
activist David Mixtner was watching the
28:32
opinion polls. And with a
28:34
little over two months until election day, the
28:36
numbers didn't look good. David
28:38
thought an endorsement from Reagan might be the only
28:41
thing that could put them over the top and
28:43
he had a potential way in. I
28:45
knew some men who
28:48
worked for Ronald Reagan who
28:50
were closeted, married and closeted
28:53
and Reagan advisors. How
28:56
did you know them? Party. You
28:59
just knew him from out and about. Out
29:01
and about. I knew one or two
29:03
of them as well as their wives did. Those
29:09
Republican friends of David's agreed
29:11
to a meeting. The
29:14
problem was they were terrified to be spotted
29:16
with him. It
29:19
wasn't just that David was an out gay man.
29:21
He was also a well-known Democrat.
29:24
So the Reagan crew asked to meet in
29:27
the Latino neighborhood of East Los Angeles at
29:29
a place where they thought no other Republicans
29:31
would go. Denny's
29:39
was the working class diner
29:42
basically. And
29:45
they were in the middle of summer, raincoats,
29:48
sunglasses and hats like
29:50
they were spies. When
29:53
they all sat down, David made his case for getting some
29:55
FaceTime with Reagan. How the community had
29:58
come together. that
30:00
we were so close and
30:03
what a heartbreaker it would be to get this far
30:05
and loose. They
30:07
said, well, we think you're smoking if
30:10
you think that the
30:12
governor is going to come out in your
30:14
side. I said,
30:16
probably am, but I want 15
30:18
minutes, guys. The
30:21
Reagan advisors came around. David
30:23
was thrilled. But he says other members
30:25
of his gay rights group were livid
30:27
that he was cozying up to a
30:29
notorious conservative. How could you meet
30:31
that man? Don't you know what he stands
30:33
for? You know, you of all
30:35
people giving him credibility. And
30:38
I said, look, I understand. I
30:40
didn't get clearance for this. And I
30:42
have no choice as a campaign person.
30:45
A couple of David's fellow activists said that even
30:48
though they didn't like what he was doing, if
30:50
he was going to lobby Reagan, he should at
30:52
least look the part. And they took me shopping.
30:54
So I got a new suit and a nice
30:56
tie and a white shirt. And
30:58
I always wore cowboy boots. And I said, I'm not
31:01
getting rid of the cowboy boots. David
31:05
went to the meeting with his business partner,
31:07
Peter Scott, and Ronald Reagan greeted them warmly.
31:10
Put his arm around me, said, come on in,
31:12
boys, have a seat. Offered
31:15
me jelly beans. I think I ate his
31:17
whole jar of jelly beans. I was so
31:19
nervous. Before he lost his nerve, David gave
31:21
the former governor his spiel, which had nothing
31:23
to do with gay rights. And
31:26
I said, well, you
31:28
know, governor, I'm worried about anarchy in
31:30
the classroom. Peter
31:33
found this. He said, if you look here
31:36
in this paragraph, it
31:38
says that if any child or
31:40
parent accuses a
31:42
teacher of being homosexual,
31:47
it is required law that they are put
31:49
on trial before a school
31:51
board. David painted
31:53
the picture. A student who's
31:55
failing a class threatens his teacher. I'm
32:00
telling the school board you're gay. So
32:02
kids would be able to terrorize
32:05
teachers and any sort
32:07
of discipline and structure
32:10
in the classroom would totally fly out the
32:12
window. Kids would run into
32:14
classroom. Reagan asked to see
32:16
the piece of paper they'd brought with the text of
32:18
the proposition. We pushed it over the
32:20
desk and he read it
32:23
and he said, those stupid fuckers. The
32:26
meeting lasted for 45 minutes, half
32:29
an hour longer than it was supposed to. And
32:32
as he's showing us out, I said, can I
32:34
ask you what you're gonna do? And
32:37
he said, no. I said,
32:39
well, thank you for your time. David
32:41
didn't know what to think. Had
32:43
he done the right thing or had he
32:45
debased himself for nothing? I
32:47
couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Had
32:50
I let my community down, had I let my
32:52
ego out of control.
32:59
In late September, with a month and a
33:01
half to go before the election, Ronald Reagan
33:03
took his stance on Prop 6. He
33:07
wrote, I don't approve of teaching a
33:09
so-called gay lifestyle in our schools. But
33:13
then he repeated David Mixner's argument.
33:16
He said that the Briggs Initiative
33:18
would give students the power to
33:20
trigger costly, reputation-trashing hearings. If
33:25
Prop 6 passed, Reagan wrote, innocent
33:27
lives could be ruined. About
33:32
1,800 people threw it on my desk,
33:34
called, arrived at the headquarters
33:36
to celebrate. I wanted
33:39
to cry. I was so relieved. We
33:42
sent it everywhere. And we
33:45
called all of our organizers and had
33:47
people go door to door in Orange
33:49
County and what we consider toss-up precincts,
33:52
saying we want you to know that Governor Reagan
33:54
is on our side. Question,
34:00
what do Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford,
34:03
Jimmy Carter and Mayor Pete Wilson
34:05
have in common? Answer, they
34:07
all urge you to vote no on six,
34:10
paid for by San Diego's Save Our Teachers.
34:13
For John Briggs, Reagan's statement felt
34:15
like a betrayal. I
34:17
cannot believe, and I will not believe that
34:19
Governor Reagan is in favor of public homosexual
34:21
school teachers teaching children in California.
34:23
I cannot believe the Hollywood crowd has
34:25
gotten Governor Reagan to move into that
34:27
position. I will only believe it when
34:30
Governor Reagan says I'm against parents and
34:33
I'm for homosexuals. I hear that,
34:35
then I'll believe it. Obviously,
34:38
Reagan never said anything like that.
34:41
But when it comes to his legacy
34:43
in gay America, his years-long silence on
34:45
AIDS speaks much louder than his statement
34:47
against Briggs. As president
34:49
in the 1980s, Reagan ignored the AIDS
34:52
crisis while tens of thousands of people
34:54
died. But in this
34:56
moment, with the first statewide referendum on
34:58
gay rights closing in, Reagan's
35:01
decision mattered. Here
35:03
he is in 1978, the
35:05
champion of the gay community, and I don't
35:07
know if he believed in it or if
35:09
he didn't. I don't know. Ron
35:13
Briggs knew his father had been desperate
35:15
for Reagan's support. But as
35:17
the vote drew closer, John Briggs did
35:19
get another endorsement. So I
35:22
get this letter, and on the
35:24
outside it said American Nazi Party.
35:27
With a swastika, I'm like, oh shit. This
35:29
is dear Senator Briggs, you know, we're
35:31
here to offer you our support, to
35:34
thwart the homosexual
35:37
stuff like that. News
35:40
of that letter eventually became public, and a
35:42
Nazi spokesman told a reporter, our storm
35:45
troop section is always ready to take
35:47
to the streets. I saw that
35:49
thing, oh my God, we're on the wrong side of
35:51
this thing. We certainly can't be with
35:53
the Nazis, man. The
35:55
Briggs campaign publicly disavowed the American
35:57
Nazi Party. gave
36:00
credence to an analogy gay activists
36:02
were already making. Gay leaders
36:04
here say the current backlash is reminiscent
36:07
of Nazi Germany. Let me
36:09
bring up the point that when Hitler
36:11
started, he started by banning Jewish teachers.
36:13
Yeah, but you see, Hitler had the
36:17
dictatorial power of doing what he wanted to do. I'm
36:20
submitting this to a democratic referendum
36:22
of the people to make that
36:24
decision. I'm not making that decision.
36:28
John Briggs didn't see himself as any kind
36:30
of villain. In his mind,
36:32
he was a man of uncommon bravery, fighting
36:34
against the odds for what he knew was
36:36
right. The real Nazis were
36:38
all the people who opposed Prop 6. I
36:41
feel that a great Holocaust is
36:43
occurring here in this country when nobody will stand
36:45
up and speak for children, but
36:48
everybody is willing to stand up and
36:50
speak for homosexuals. We'll
36:56
be back in a minute. My
37:21
team and I are putting out analysis of the
37:23
biggest cases just as quickly as we can bound
37:32
to our closets and fire up our
37:34
laptops to speak to you. From presidential
37:37
immunity to social media content regulation
37:39
to domestic abusers' gun rights, we
37:42
will be here unpacking the news for you. Listen
37:45
to Amicus wherever you get your podcasts. In
37:53
the final months of the anti-Briggs
37:56
campaign, Harvey Milk was an unflinching
37:58
champion for gay Californians. channeling
38:00
their anger and making a powerful case
38:02
for gay rights. The
38:04
time has come from all over
38:06
this country to people to say,
38:08
no more dreaming, the time has
38:10
come to awake. But
38:15
in private, Harvey was drained, struggling
38:18
to balance his responsibilities to his
38:20
district, the city, and the entire
38:23
gay community. Not a lot
38:25
of joy in those months. Harvey's
38:27
aide, Anne Cronenberg. So
38:29
we're at City Hall.
38:31
We're trying to do all these
38:33
great things. Harvey is burning the
38:36
candle at both ends. This
38:38
was really a hard period
38:40
of time. At this
38:42
point, Harvey was nationally known, but he
38:45
was barely making any money. His
38:47
car got repossessed. And when
38:49
the landlord for Castro Camera more than tripled his
38:51
rent, the unofficial mayor of Castro
38:53
Street had to relocate his shop a
38:55
couple of blocks away to Market Street.
38:58
He talked about that move in an interview with
39:00
a local documentary crew. How's
39:03
it feel to be moving out? Sad.
39:07
Five years. It was more
39:09
than just a camera store. It was kind of
39:11
like a place for people in the neighborhood to
39:13
come and to find out what's happening or to
39:15
get help. And I
39:17
think a lot of people are going to miss it. Then,
39:20
at the end of August, about two months
39:22
before the Briggs vote, things took
39:24
an even darker turn in Harvey's personal life.
39:27
My phone rang, and
39:29
I picked it up, and it was
39:31
Harvey. And he said, Jack
39:34
killed himself. Jack
39:37
Lira was Harvey's partner of more than a
39:39
year. When Harvey got home from work
39:41
on August 28, 1978, he
39:44
found Jack dead in a slew of
39:46
angry notes. And
39:49
it was this whole trail from the
39:51
front door that led back
39:54
through the apartment into
39:56
the back room. It
39:58
was like, oh my God, Harvey. We called the
40:00
police. He said, I just called you. Harvey
40:04
blamed himself. Jack had been
40:06
giving him a hard time about all the long
40:08
hours he'd been working. Jack had
40:10
actually called Anne multiple times that day,
40:12
begging her to pull Harvey out of
40:14
his Board of Supervisors meeting. But
40:17
Harvey couldn't leave. It's
40:20
impossible to say with certainty why
40:22
someone dies by suicide. But
40:24
suicidality was commonplace in gay communities in
40:26
the 1970s, and Jack
40:28
had tried to take his life twice before. His
40:31
father was reportedly abusive, and Anne
40:33
says his family was extremely homophobic.
40:37
In an interview with the San Francisco
40:39
Examiner after Jack's death, his father said,
40:42
he's my son and everything, but he didn't have
40:44
the guts to face reality. The
40:47
article ends with Harvey fighting back
40:49
tears, telling the reporter life
40:51
hasn't been exactly satisfying for Jack.
40:54
I mean, here he is campaigning
40:57
for hope, and
40:59
there's hope for young people.
41:01
And here his own lover
41:03
had no hope. I mean,
41:06
it weighed on him really heavily.
41:11
Harvey got a mountain of sympathy notes from
41:14
lesbians and gay men whose own partners had
41:16
died by suicide. Those
41:19
letters surely reminded him of exactly what
41:21
he was fighting for and maybe
41:23
convinced him that he couldn't afford to take a
41:25
break because the campaign was
41:27
nearing its final phase, and John
41:29
Briggs showed no signs of slowing
41:31
down. I believe
41:34
I'm appealing to common reasoning that
41:36
most adult people in this
41:38
society understand that homosexuals have
41:41
a proclivity for young boys.
41:44
Briggs was flooding the media in the fall of
41:46
1978. Wherever
41:48
you looked, there he was, airing
41:50
his views on television, on the
41:52
radio, and in a series of
41:54
high-profile public debates. He would
41:56
debate almost anyone so long as there was
41:58
a camera rolling. That meant
42:00
that taking him on became a whole
42:02
community effort. We needed to
42:04
win an election. I couldn't
42:06
stand there publicly spit on him, so I had
42:09
to do it verbally. That's
42:11
Larry Berner. You heard about him in our
42:13
second episode. He was the second grade teacher
42:15
that the Briggs campaign turned into a poster
42:18
boy for the homosexual menace. Now,
42:20
with election day creeping closer, Briggs came
42:23
to Larry's hometown in Sonoma County to
42:25
debate him in front of hundreds of
42:27
his neighbors. Up
42:30
on stage, Larry felt like he was standing
42:32
in for every gay person who would never
42:35
get the chance to tell John Briggs off.
42:38
That is why I and tens of thousands
42:40
of other lesbians and gay men are
42:43
risking our careers, our social
42:45
standing, and our personal
42:47
relationships to expose your campaign
42:49
of hate and contempt for our lives.
42:52
Briggs fired back. He said
42:55
that society had decided gay people weren't good
42:57
enough for the army or the institution of
42:59
marriage, so how could they be good enough
43:01
to teach America's children? Somebody
43:03
one time said, just give me a
43:05
generation of teaching children, and
43:08
I will have that country. And
43:10
that is what this issue is all about, is
43:12
children, and in which direction will they
43:14
be turned? You would have
43:16
any teacher dismissed because that teacher
43:19
stated the truth that many gay
43:21
people lead productive and fulfilled lives.
43:25
Larry told Briggs that his mind was in the
43:27
gutter. He said, the children at
43:29
my school are not obsessed with my sexuality
43:32
as you seem to be. After
43:35
the debate, an area radio show proved Larry's
43:38
point in an interview with the child of
43:40
a lesbian mother. How old are you,
43:42
Joel? Eight. Do
43:44
you think that it's going to matter to
43:46
you whether you're teachers are gay or not?
43:49
No, I don't think it matters if
43:51
my teacher's gay or not. How
43:54
come? Because I
43:56
just don't care. I'm only
43:58
a whole lot. gay
44:01
and straight-form be friends soon.
44:06
The debate between John Briggs and Larry
44:08
Burner in Sonoma County got plenty of
44:10
media coverage. But it was the
44:12
match-ups between Briggs and Harvey Milk that dominated
44:14
the final weeks of the campaign. After
44:17
circling each other for more than a year,
44:19
the two men were finally facing off, with
44:21
the fate of gay Californians hanging in the
44:23
balance. We
44:26
are saying that a gay person should have the
44:28
right to say, I am gay, that
44:30
it is a part of society, period. In
44:33
the classroom? In the classroom, in the classroom, in the classroom,
44:35
because it is a part of society. One
44:38
of the first Milk-Briggs debates was at
44:40
a fancy Italian restaurant. They sat awkwardly
44:42
at a small circular table with a
44:44
moderator between them. Their
44:47
conversation went far beyond gay
44:49
teachers, touching on biology, civics,
44:51
and sex. And
44:53
unlike the winning conservatives in Eugene,
44:55
Oregon, who had tempered their anti-gay
44:57
message to win over a more
45:00
liberal audience, Briggs was gunning for
45:02
maximum moral panic. We
45:04
don't allow prostitutes to do that in the classroom.
45:06
We don't allow thieves. We don't allow thieves. We
45:08
don't allow thieves. And we don't allow alcoholics. Why?
45:11
Because that's considered to be immoral. Are you talking about what
45:13
Christ said is moral? No, I'm talking
45:15
about what the standards of this society is. Who
45:17
sets the standards? The debate is
45:20
painful to listen to. There's
45:22
one person fighting to be seen as
45:24
fully human, trying to stop a new
45:26
law from devastating his community. And
45:29
another with a political agenda, trying to
45:31
advance his career. Children
45:33
learn by example. Children emulate.
45:35
People need heroes. The reason you wanted to be elected
45:37
to high office is so you can recruit and convert
45:39
every young adolescent woman. That was your own rule. I
45:42
read it in the newspaper. No, no. My
45:45
statement was, I'm a role model to the
45:47
young gay people, people who already establish themselves
45:49
as gay. Period. You're
45:51
the one who keeps bringing up this phony recruitment.
45:54
John Briggs was a shifty opponent and Harvey
45:57
Milk wasn't practiced in the art of debate.
46:00
Harvey had someone in his corner who knew
46:02
how to win any argument. His
46:04
partner in the anti-breaks campaign, Sally
46:06
Gearhart. She was a rhetoric
46:08
teacher. That was her craft. Sue
46:11
Englander was a member of the anti-breaks
46:13
group, Bocabi. Someone asked
46:16
Sally what she thought of Harvey as a
46:18
debater and she said, oh, he was such
46:20
an amateur. And that
46:22
she had to give
46:24
him points about how to
46:26
address the kinds of questions
46:28
that John Briggs would put
46:31
forward. A little more than
46:33
a week after the Italian restaurant debate, the
46:35
two men met again at a packed high
46:37
school gymnasium. And this time,
46:39
Harvey had an answer for the allegation
46:42
that gay teachers recruit their students into
46:44
homosexuality. I was born
46:46
a heterosexual parent. I
46:48
was taught by heterosexual teachers in
46:51
a fiercely heterosexual society. And
46:53
why am I homosexual? If I'm affected by
46:56
your mom, I should have been. I'm
46:59
not a heterosexual. And no offense meant. But
47:02
if teachers are going to affect you as
47:04
role models, there'd be a lot of nuns
47:06
running around the streets today. John
47:11
Briggs didn't seem to care that he was
47:13
getting owned in public. He loved the attention
47:16
and he thrived on conflict. His
47:18
son Ron remembers a trick his dad used to
47:20
play to throw his opponents off their game. When
47:23
you go on live TV or live
47:25
radio, the producer or
47:27
whoever the stage guy is, you'll go, three,
47:29
two, one with their fingers. And
47:32
when he got to two, dad would generally lean over and
47:34
say, hey, is
47:36
it true you really taken up the ass? The
47:41
campaign's climactic showdown came just a few
47:43
weeks before the vote. And
47:45
this time, Harvey wasn't taking on John Briggs
47:48
alone. And representing
47:50
the Bay Area Committee against the Briggs
47:52
Initiative, it's Sally Gearhart. Sally
47:55
and Sally knew a lot was riding on this
47:57
debate, which was held at a public television station.
48:00
It was their last big chance to
48:02
reach undecided voters. In an
48:04
interview a few years later, Sally said
48:06
that she and Harvey wanted to project
48:08
a conservative image. They decided
48:10
they would dress as, what they called,
48:12
Mama and Papa USA. So,
48:14
a half hour before we start to leave
48:16
for the television station, Harvey calls me and
48:18
says, I've lost my earrings,
48:20
dear, whatever shall I do? That
48:23
night, Sally and Harvey were up against
48:25
Briggs and his favorite pastor. And
48:27
Briggs made some wild arguments. At
48:31
one point, he conceded that heterosexual
48:33
teachers do molest children, but
48:35
he said that there were just too many
48:37
straight people to ban them all from public
48:40
education. The fact is, at
48:42
least 95% of the people
48:44
are heterosexual. If we took heterosexuals out and homosexuals
48:46
out, you know what? We'd have no teachers. We'd
48:48
have no teachers. No, just say. No, no, I
48:50
was saying that we cannot prevent child molestation, so
48:53
let's cut our odds down and take out the
48:55
homosexual group and keep in the
48:57
heterosexual group. While Harvey laughed at Briggs'
48:59
absurd logic, Sally was ready to pounce.
49:01
Keep in the heterosexual group. Why take
49:03
out the homosexual group? When more and
49:06
more is. More than, you know, overwhelmingly
49:08
it is true that it's the heterosexual
49:10
men, I might add, who are the
49:12
child legislatures. I believe that's a myth.
49:14
I've never seen... Oh, senators. The
49:17
FBI, the National Council on Family
49:19
Relations, the Santa Clara County Child
49:21
Sexual Abuse Treatment Center, and on
49:23
and on and on. The
49:26
fact that she mustered the facts
49:28
was incredibly important. She
49:31
came to that debate
49:33
prepared. John Briggs did
49:35
not. The
49:37
election was almost here, and the time
49:39
for arguments was over. Now
49:42
all that mattered was staying motivated and
49:44
getting out the vote. Today
49:47
I stand and say we as
49:49
human beings, if we are gay,
49:51
if we are transsexual, we stand
49:54
and say we need it. We
49:56
need it right now, right now.
50:00
Gay activists were doing everything they could
50:02
to win. But one leader
50:04
in Sonoma County told a reporter they
50:06
were also preparing to lose. We're
50:08
trying to set up some kind of crisis counseling
50:11
right now to prevent people
50:13
from becoming totally
50:16
depressed, suicidal.
50:19
I would also advise people who are
50:21
watching the election returns to not watch
50:24
them alone. For the people
50:26
who'd come out of the closet specifically
50:28
to fight the Briggs Initiative, especially teachers,
50:31
it felt like their whole lives were on the
50:33
ballot. But it wasn't just the gay teacher
50:35
band they were worried about. After
50:37
the failures in St. Paul, Wichita, and Eugene, it
50:42
was clear that this vote would signal the trajectory
50:44
of gay rights in America. If
50:46
Prop 6 passed, there was no telling
50:49
how far the anti-gay backlash would go. The
50:52
entire movement was at the top of the
50:54
ballot. The movement was at stake. And
50:57
now that the vote was here,
50:59
the potential consequences felt terrifyingly real.
51:03
Cleve Jones. Yeah, we
51:06
were afraid. I thought
51:08
there was the possibility that this was going
51:10
to be the beginning of a really
51:14
horrifying wave of repression. Harvey
51:18
and I had many late
51:20
night conversations about what we were going
51:22
to do when the tally was posted
51:24
on television and people knew we'd lost.
51:27
What was your plan? To
51:30
get them out of the neighborhood before they burned it
51:32
down. Next
51:46
time on Slow Burn. The
51:48
votes roll in and gay teachers await
51:50
their fate. I remember
51:52
one guy started to cry. And you
51:55
know, you put your whole soul into it. What
51:57
the fuck is wrong with California? And
52:02
an unthinkable act of violence shakes San
52:04
Francisco and the nation. You
52:07
know, one of the hardest things in this job
52:09
is to report news like this. We have just
52:11
gotten news across the wire, and reports are that
52:13
they have been killed. The
52:24
tension is building in San Francisco. With
52:26
the Briggs Initiative vote inching closer, the
52:28
future of gay rights hangs in the
52:30
balance. In the final two
52:32
episodes of Slow Burn, Gaze Against Briggs, we'll
52:35
revisit the seismic events of November 1978 and
52:37
May 1979. You'll
52:41
hear about the outcome of the Prop
52:43
6 vote, an unthinkable act of violence
52:45
at City Hall, and the queer community's
52:47
explosive response to a tragic miscarriage of
52:49
justice. You can listen to
52:52
episodes 6 and 7 of Slow Burn,
52:54
Gaze Against Briggs right now by subscribing
52:56
to Slate Plus. Join now
52:58
by clicking subscribe at the top of the
53:00
Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts, or
53:03
visit slate.com/Slow Burn Plus to
53:05
get access wherever you listen.
53:10
This season of Slow Burn was written and
53:12
produced by me, Christina Cottorucci. If
53:15
you or anyone you know are
53:17
in crisis, you can contact the
53:19
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline anytime. Just
53:22
dial 988 or visit 988lifeline.org. Slow
53:26
Burn is produced by Kelly Jones, Joel
53:29
Meyer, and Sophie Somergrad. Josh
53:31
Levine is the editorial director of Slow Burn.
53:34
Derek John is our executive producer. Susan
53:37
Matthews is Slate's executive editor. Merritt
53:40
Jacob is our senior technical director. We
53:42
had engineering help from Madeleine Ducharme. Our
53:45
theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado.
53:48
Ivy Lee Simones did the cover art,
53:50
which features an image of Silvana Nova from
53:53
a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and
53:55
the Too Much Graphics Collective. We
53:57
had production help from Emily Gaddick, Moniz
54:00
Edwards, Jude Joffe Block, Mike
54:02
Maines, Dave Clark-McCoy
54:04
at StudioPods Media, Jonathan
54:07
Davis, Jared Downing, Andrew
54:09
Frankel at Garden of Sound in Los Angeles,
54:12
and the Women's Audio Mission in San Francisco. Some
54:15
of the audio you heard in our
54:18
show comes courtesy of KSFO and the
54:20
Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society. Larry
54:23
Berner's oral history is from the
54:25
Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San
54:27
Francisco Public Library. Amber
54:29
Hollabaugh's oral history is from the Sophia
54:31
Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith
54:33
College Libraries. Special
54:36
thanks to Isaac Fellman at the
54:38
GLBT Historical Society, Lillian
54:40
Faderman, Rami Khalil, Fred Fijas,
54:43
Rachel Strom, and Deb Greenspan.
54:46
And to Slate's Evan Chung,
54:48
Madeleine Ducharm, June Thomas, Brian
54:50
Louder, Katie Shepherd, Beth
54:53
Brown, Katie Rayford, Caitlyn Schneider,
54:56
Alexandra Cole, Joshua Metcalf, Heidi
54:58
Strom-Moon, Hilary Frye, and Alicia
55:01
Montgomery, Slate's VP of Audio.
55:05
Thanks for listening.
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