00:00:01.740 - 00:00:50.260

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I tell you, it doesn't seem to be normal. And when something's not normal, it doesn't function, right? Yeah, right. Yes. Yeah. Gay people are still fighting for something. They had a long time. You know,

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I don't like to see lust on the street any more than any straight person does. Think that's really fair to the straight people, you know, Here. I think that it's out of hand. Yeah, right. Oh, most of them. I think it's just a weakness. They're just

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willing to go along with something else. Are there some woman dropped them or getting bad time with her mom or some phony damn thing instead of getting standing up and being counted and getting rid of the damn disease? You know, take an aspirin for a headache.

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Well, ST wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mhm. Certainly all of us here in the Bay Area are aware of how well established and generally accepted are the members of the gay community. Prevailing liberal attitudes have had a lot to do with that progress. But now there are

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members of the straight community who are challenging that progress, wondering if the gaze haven't gone too far if their behavior isn't a bit outrageous if they aren't taking over San Francisco. Indeed, gays have generated a great deal of political clout. If the gaze vote together, their

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vote could decide the next mayor of San Francisco. I'm Don Knapp, and this is People's Five and on this program will be looking at gay politics and lifestyle and later on in the program. Remembering to old friends George Moscone and Harvey Milk. I heard somebody say

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the other day that about 50,000 gay people come to San Francisco every day, not particularly to live. But you have to keep in mind that some of those people are going to stay, and some of those people are gonna like what they saw and come back.

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What about the political movement of the gay community? Where is that going? He's going to the top in San Francisco. There's no doubt about it. And what does that mean? That means that they will eventually have more supervisors. City Hall probably eventually have a mayor. Um,

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what's that mean for the straight community? For the straight community? I guess for the people who can handle it, they'll probably have to move out. I feel that the only reason there is this great concern or interest about gazes because there's this feeling of being paranoid,

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feeling that gays are going to take over. The gays are going to create some sort of power structure here that's going to oversee or overtake the street population. It's ridiculous. They're gonna take over more positions and we'll just watch and see. That's about all What's that

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mean for people like you? Well, what can we do? I think this idea that gays are going to take over the city government. It's I think it's amusing when I hear that because they say when gay people walk down the street holding hands instead of taking

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that as a simple display of affection is this horrendous thing we're flaunting. We're throwing it in people's faces. That's nonsense. We're just doing what we want to do, what other people take for granted. But when we do it, it's flaunt. When we try and get into

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government, it's taking over. That's nonsense. So follow still, unless but cool. It's gonna be a star. Stop it, since homosexuality has been so repressed, not just culturally but individually that people respond when they come to this city. They go to an extreme because all of a

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sudden they're not really repressed, and they have a neighborhood and they have bars and they have bookstores and they have restaurants that are specifically gay. And so they go there and they see nothing but gay people and they go, I'm afraid and they go and they

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get Cruzi and they pick up and they do this and they do that and then they get over it. That is something we hurts me to see because I don't want the people that make a mockery out of themselves. You know, I like when things are

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done in a proper way, in a nice manner. But when they have those parades, I I feel offended myself. It's totally out of hair. It's immoral. People have lost their basic sense of values. They've lost their basis since they're just absolutely beliefs, especially in Castro. Talking

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about the gay community. I'm talking about the gay community, especially in cash, because I live right here. Yes, I'm gay. It offends me when I see two guys groping each other on the street, just like it would the guy and a girl groping each other on

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the street? I think it offends a lot of people because it's just blatant. Well, I think it's all our own business. I have gay friends. I can't see anything wrong. We have had some criticism that perhaps gay community is getting very self confident and very outrageousness

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behavior. What do you think about that? A lot of times I'm really envious, like Cruz by there, and it seems like they're having a real good time down there. And there are times when I I wish that I was gay just so I could take part

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in. I feel liberated. Yeah, in a sense, it seems like they have a real nice support network. I don't find it all personally offensive to me. I mean, I know a lot of people think it's, you know, it's really weird for them to deal with, but

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I find that it's adds a lot of life to the city and I think it's fine. You know, I think everyone's just having a good time on those streets and that those people should have a space to. I feel like we are people like everyone else.

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We have the same needs. We want safe streets, for example. We want clean streets, for example. We want a city government that works that meets people's needs. We want problems to be taken care of. We don't want anything exotic or special. Mhm. Yeah. Stop. So okay,

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Yeah. We are approximately 20% of the population of San Francisco, and as such, we deserve to be represented in the city government to the full extent that 20% of the population should be represent. We want our people on every commission. We want our people working in

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every segment of the government. We want gay and lesbian police officers. We want gay and lesbian police commissioners. We want gays and lesbians to be consulted and have decision making power and all of the decisions that affect the people of this city where gays going with

00:07:38.900 - 00:07:55.440

that political clout they're generating Well, I think, for a greater protection of just being able to be on the streets, it's, I know in the past I've been worried about walking on the street just to go to the store, and I feel that with City Hall

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pressure on the police department in particular may help us, and and the straits as well. To make the streets safer is the primary thing. The crime is bad here. What we need to do now and what we've been working on is getting involved in other issues

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that affect the entire community housing violent crime issues like that where these are issues that affect the entire city. But they also have a special effect on gay people. Violence in the streets affects everybody, especially affects seniors and women and gay people. And any gay person

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you talk to will tell you that while it may be safe to hold hands at 18th and Castro just two or three blocks away, it is not safe in the housing situation. Any renter in this city you talk to will tell you that this city has

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a housing crisis, but it particularly affects gay people because we're blamed for it were seen as this influx of white, upwardly mobile men who are displacing black families and Latino families. So it's very important for us to work on that issue so that the black families

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and Latino families who are suffering so much from the housing situation don't blame us and and try and make it clear that what we have in this city is a incredible housing crisis that nobody is dealing with. We've never done this before. Gay people have never,

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ever before come together to put together a community. Mm. Mhm. I think that we've made progress, but I remember very well a year ago walking in and seeing Harvey Milk's body and the blood all over the walls. I meet people who move here, and I hear

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their stories. I am aware of the fact that a good portion of my family still does not speak to me. Uh, I don't take anything for granted when we talk about gay activism, gay lifestyle, the gay scene in the Bay Area were usually thinking about men.

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There are tens of thousands of gay women here. What about them? Sure. Men don't hate women. I understand you need women. Men just hate meeting. Yes, really? No reason for them to hate us. There's also no reason why we really have to, uh, work together and

00:10:46.470 - 00:11:11.720

mingle together and existing groups together, except for intellectual reasons. But we really can't exist separate of one another. We all look like truck drivers, and, uh, you know that we are extremely butch with quarter inch air and walk around beating up on men. Dominant submissive Butch

00:11:11.720 - 00:11:29.420

Fem is the more common you know, terminology. I think that the analysis of that just goes further with gay people because of the necessity to analyze who where we are in terms of the society at large, Gay men are more obvious. They're more public. Um, they

00:11:29.430 - 00:11:49.310

have more assets. All of those kinds of differences are real. Women are more invisible, but it's very difficult, I think, for someone to be able to point out in a crowd, You know, there's a lesbian. There's one right there. I don't buy the stereotype, but a

00:11:49.310 - 00:12:09.000

lot of gay people do. It's just an exploration and experimentation. You know, let's play that role. It's acting, it's fantasy. It's stepping outside of yourself and being something else for a while and seeing what that's like. And, you know, it's a lot of fun. It's like

00:12:09.010 - 00:12:27.720

dress up and it's just too bad that people think that there's something wrong with that and don't let people just play it out. There's a lot of different gay lifestyles. I mean a lot. A stereotype of gay people is that we're sex crazed and that will

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attack you in the corner if you don't watch out, and particularly of men. And, you know, with that in mind, there's a fear. It's commercial, you know. Masters and Johnson came up with their study and they discovered that, you know, maybe 10 more gay people cared

00:12:47.500 - 00:13:07.060

more in their relationship than there are than straight people. And so there. Everybody's saying to gay people care more than that. And then there's always anonymous sex that you see and you know, But it's it's a commercialized kind of reflection for me. The choice of coming

00:13:07.060 - 00:13:24.080

out had to do with saying, Yes, you are attracted to women in and that not only is that okay, but that's something that's beauty, and I could have lived in the closet the rest of my life if I had chosen that this game in, It's been

00:13:24.080 - 00:13:41.870

set up that you've got to find Mr Perfect. You've got to find the better body. You've got to be with the one who drives a great car, and there's all sorts of things that you can brag about. And you can make that Palm Springs weekend women

00:13:41.880 - 00:13:55.770

are just in a different place. Which isn't to say that gay women or lesbian women don't go out till two o'clock in the morning to bars and all these places. But we can't set up a community that has 100 bars. We ain't got the money. Women

00:13:55.770 - 00:14:15.760

seem to buying together and stay together a lot more. We're just trying to have decent relationships in a society in which were extraordinarily controversial. I'm sort of on the radical fringes of even gay life, I think. What's that mean? Um okay, we're into S and M,

00:14:16.240 - 00:14:36.800

you know, And you know that's heavy. Yes. As you can see, does that mean some real pain or just play pain? Real pain, but only loving pain? If that makes I know it doesn't make sense. People that haven't gotten into it, that shocks me. Okay, I

00:14:36.800 - 00:14:55.750

didn't want to paint myself, but she is. And she complains, if you don't give her enough pain, it's too bad that society won't loosen up enough to, except that sort of blow out. And then, you know they will fall back into our patterns later on afterwards,

00:14:55.970 - 00:15:07.430

it's only had two people feel that they're being clamped down on so much. I think that they feel that they have to sort of throw things and face in society. But when I first told my therapist that I wasn't tested and it shocked her, too. But

00:15:07.430 - 00:15:24.250

seeing as how she knows me as a person, she tried to learn about it. And she's she says, Well, hurting yourself or anybody else go ahead and do. I would like to see all women with other women. That's a very egocentric thing on my part. But

00:15:25.340 - 00:15:47.160

lesbian women have more monogamous relationships than gay men, and that is a cultural phenomena. That's Barry and has nothing to do with the fact that the woman is a lesbian or she's straight. Mm. If you look at the rest of society, you find that there's one

00:15:47.160 - 00:16:00.560

out of every two marriages ending in divorce, and the figures, in fact, are going up very close to two out of three now, and I think that gay people can be just as stable in a relationship. Lesbian people can be just as stable in a relationship.

00:16:01.040 - 00:16:23.650

The guilt and the pressure from the outside us do still exist and not with everyone. That there's a lot there, then will continue to meet. Uh, sensitive counselors in gay council is still to help people. As I said, we're coming out. Process really never ends. They're

00:16:23.650 - 00:16:40.200

in touch with their feelings, their orientation, and they wanted sexual preference. And and that takes a lot of risk and a lot of courage. And to the degree that they can do that, given wherever their social environment is, if it's in San Francisco, tends to be

00:16:40.200 - 00:17:02.760

easier than it is in, you know, have a desire for an enduring relationship, someone that to spend the rest of my life with. And, you know, I have not found her. Yeah Mm. A year has passed and Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were gunned

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down in City Hall on November 27th. Candlelight march will be held to remember them. We're here at people's five. Also, remember, as we saw earlier in this half hour, an ongoing conflict between gays and straights continues. But perhaps the battle was most heated during the debates

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that raged over 1978 Prop. Six campaign an initiative that would have eliminated homosexual teachers from the classroom. Harvey Milk and John Briggs had their first head on meeting when Richard Hart introduced Briggs to Milk on People's Five, we are saying that a gay person should have

00:17:48.180 - 00:18:01.210

the right to say I am gay, that it is a part of society period in the classroom, in the classic classroom after classroom because it is a part of society but not in the classroom were because we don't allow prostitutes to do that in the classroom.

00:18:01.210 - 00:18:15.170

We allow these addicts, we don't allow thieves and we don't allow alcoholics. Why? Because that's considered to be immoral. What's wrong, man? Being women, we're just talking about morals, and you're lumping together different groups of people. Are you talking about what Christ said is moral? No,

00:18:15.170 - 00:18:27.980

I'm talking about what the standards of this society, and we don't who sets the standards people, the people there was. A constitution is set by the majority or minority by the majority. No, it's my minority. That's why I take two thirds. You see the Constitution and

00:18:27.980 - 00:18:43.360

censorship to protect the rights of the minority. The majority do not need a constitution. This gets into a allowing the constitution being governed by the majority, and therefore, in certain places you can disallow whites or blacks or Jews or emails from teaching if you allow the

00:18:43.360 - 00:19:01.210

majority to rule. And the whole concept behind democracy and the Constitution is to protect the rights of the minority, not the majority. Morality is that which is the prevailing customs of the people. In some societies, homosexuality is okay. But in this society, homosexuality is frowned upon.

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Why? Why, yes, I want to know where you're coming from because all the myths have been shattered. All the fears, all that in my mind, that's it. In your mind they have. And I'm wondering why. What is the real reason behind it all? The psychiatrists say

00:19:13.060 - 00:19:24.950

you're wrong. They were the ones who have studied. This is, you know, the American Psychiatric Association took a new poll. They didn't take a poll. It's people like you were saying that they are. That's where you're wrong. There are some who do, but the myths have

00:19:24.950 - 00:19:38.350

been shattered. Child molestation. What you're worried about is 95% of heterosexual problem using the parent child abuse mint heterosexual problem, rape is a heterosexual pride role model, and we know doesn't work because of his role model. And to be a lot of nuns running around out

00:19:38.360 - 00:19:50.860

there in schools. So we know all your arguments are based on fallacies. I want to know what the real reason behind it is. You know, Mr Dr Masters and Masters and Johnson said every person is born with a sex organ and what they do with it,

00:19:51.340 - 00:20:04.300

they learned what to do with it. So you've learned what you're doing, Harvey. By the age of six, by the age of six, you can't say every psychiatrist. And by the age of six, you couldn't prove that if your life depended on the American psychiatrists Psychiatric

00:20:04.310 - 00:20:16.810

society just took a whole new poll in June that people like you are ill and you're not to be true. You know it's not. They took us right in the car. I'd like you to get. Is that the Time Magazine article? Yes. I'm very happy. You

00:20:16.810 - 00:20:30.390

believe the Indian Time magazine. You believe it? Of course. Come on. Outside printed numbers don't lie to Richard Nixon. Never lied either. Of course not, of course. You believe that I believe Richard Nixon lied quite heavily. Let people do lie right, and you could be lying.

00:20:30.400 - 00:20:41.940

So could you. We know that you've been distorting the truth, the myths and everything else. And I want to know, Do you have a book coming out on this? How much money? And that lots of what I hope, right? Harvey Milk took the abuse that goes

00:20:41.940 - 00:20:56.780

with being both a visible political figure and a visible homosexual. He became the gay movements champion not too long ago in Asian Colonel and property in San Francisco. Not too long ago, we put Japanese Americans in jails. We had laws against Jews, against Irish against many,

00:20:56.780 - 00:21:09.000

many groups of people. And when we change those laws and judge people by the leaders instead of miss, we found that there were assets to society instead of detriments. And that's what's happening. Homosexuality. You find that the laws are being wiped away from the books because

00:21:09.000 - 00:21:22.270

they were unjust laws based on myths that have been destroyed. The Proposition 13 analogy here isn't that same list of people who is against Proposition 16 that you just mentioned the same people who 13 Evel younger was 4 13. Mike Curb was for 13. The L

00:21:22.270 - 00:21:37.120

A Times had no position. Oh, it was for the L A. Times with to it and ever younger had no position on every young people who cared What Michael Curb, Mike Curb thought Anyway, you don't care what Michael Karp thinks. You're a candidate for the I

00:21:37.120 - 00:21:49.450

didn't think right now he thinks this is wrong. I think about that much. What do you think? You think this much opinion? He's your can. But he's not my candidate. Is that you can? Do you like to see him elected? Sure, but he said he's dead

00:21:49.450 - 00:22:05.740

set against this. Well, screws. You know what? My opponents around and my candidate, I was my own candidate, right? And then I chose Chief Davis. Chief Davis says this is not needed. No, Chief Davis did not say that. Yes, he has to say. Where did Chief

00:22:05.740 - 00:22:21.140

Davis say anything about during the governor to race chief? Davis said that this was not needed. Okay, so today he changes his mind like that. I was his opponent. That's when I go back to it, because it's cheap politics. You're playing on the political fears of

00:22:21.140 - 00:22:46.120

people. It's political opportunism. One day your forward one day is against. How can you change your view on something so fundamental in that? Whether just because your candidate or not, a candidate George Mosconi took people's five back to his old neighborhood to Funston Playground, now renamed

00:22:46.120 - 00:23:04.660

in his memory, to talk about good sports and bad sports on the athletic playing field and in the world of politics. Occasionally someone I have found employing the low blow on the floor of the Senate by castigating an individual who happened to be at a low

00:23:04.660 - 00:23:20.330

point of his political career at that time. I think you saw it when people jumped on Wilbur Mills, for example, when he obviously fell out of public favor, and probably 2 to 3 weeks before the expose that caused him to fall into disfavor. They would curry

00:23:20.330 - 00:23:36.880

favor with Congressman Mills because he was chairman of Ways and Means. Occasionally you find it at the Board of Supervisors, somehow or other. Some members of the board find it necessary to to take me on for what appears to be no relevant reason. It doesn't attach

00:23:36.880 - 00:23:51.610

to the question before them. I don't mind that too much because I think that's kind of therapeutic. I think some idle words about someone who is not directly a colleague but is connected with that's a little therapeutic. I did that with Governor Reagan, and I see

00:23:51.610 - 00:24:06.950

where some of my colleagues are not doing that with Governor Brown, so that's not too bad. It's when it gets moved into action well beyond words and where it becomes a way of life. I think that you can call that person guilty of the low blow.

00:24:07.440 - 00:24:23.680

Mosconi was happy to be mayor of San Francisco and proud of the city. His city, San Francisco, is quote everybody's favorite city. I know that sounds like a mayor wherever I go, When I'm introduced as the mayor of San Francisco, people congregate around me not because

00:24:23.680 - 00:24:38.450

of me, but because they want to know about this city about which they read so much about which they've heard so much. And the television and movies that take place here, even if they don't characterizes properly, sometimes are still indicative of the fact that there's excitement

00:24:38.450 - 00:24:57.670

in San Francisco. It has a glamour of New York City, unfortunately not its problems. Each of us this week will recall our own fond or not so fond memories of the Mosconi and Milk days. People's Five just wanted to share some of its memories with you

00:25:05.340 - 00:25:05.550

Mhm.