Video Interview, Tim Sally, December 14, 2012
- INTERVIEWER: Or do you have the question in your hand?
- TIM SALLY: I have that.
- INTERVIEWER: OK.
- TIM SALLY: I was raised Roman Catholic by my mother.
- Though by the time it came for my confirmation,
- I already knew on a basic level who I was,
- and that I was in conflict with church teaching.
- And I already had, somehow, the strength of character
- to say to myself, if this is what the Catholic
- Church believes, and this is who I am,
- I would be a hypocrite to get confirmed into this religion
- that I really don't believe in and that I had sort of lapsed
- from.
- And as I became a teenager, and my mother
- had less and less control over me to take me to church,
- I opted myself not to go to Mass.
- It wasn't until I got involved in DI
- that the religion and the spirituality
- had greater meaning for me, especially
- in light of Vatican II, which called for tolerance, and love,
- and respect, and a greater openness, particularly
- on issues of sexuality.
- So I really had great hopes, when I joined DI,
- that the church could change, and that I
- could be a small part of helping the church
- to change and to open up on the issue
- of human sexuality and gay rights, in particular.
- I became involved as a co-founder
- of AIDS Rochester in 1983, and that was a result
- of my involvement in DI.
- And there had been a gentleman who was born and raised
- in Rochester, and who later moved to New York City
- and contracted the AIDS virus, and then
- moved back to Rochester but was looking
- for local spiritual support.
- And his name was Dan Cappiello, and at the time,
- I visited him in the hospital, more
- as a show of friendship and support,
- because at that time to be a person diagnosed
- with HIV or AIDS, you were a social pariah.
- Nobody wanted to touch you.
- And I just wanted to express to Dan that he wasn't alone,
- and so we developed a good friendship out of that
- for the duration of his life.
- And in fact, after I moved to San Francisco,
- and the NAMES project evolved, I made a panel for the AIDS quilt
- in his memory.
- And so, that was very important motivation for me
- to be involved in the founding of AIDS Rochester.
- INTERVIEWER: When did you come out,
- and how old were you at that time?
- TIM SALLY: I came out probably in 1971.
- I was in my early years of high school, and--
- INTERVIEWER: Let's start back from the top.
- Because there's a bit (unintelligible).
- TIM SALLY: Yeah.
- INTERVIEWER: How old were you when you came out?
- TIM SALLY: I think I came out in 1971,
- and that came about as a result of two things.
- One was that there was a Life magazine
- story about the year in review in 1971,
- or 1970, something like that.
- And one of the articles was about homosexuals in revolt,
- and it was about the emergence of the gay liberation movement,
- as it was called back then.
- And I remember seeing pictures that, it just
- resonated with me.
- There was a picture of a wedding cake with two grooms
- and two brides on the top.
- There was a very dramatic photo of gay people
- in New York looking very angry with their fists
- clenched and raising them in the air.
- There was another photo of--
- I think it was taken in West Hollywood--
- of some cross-dressing guys, one of whom
- had this long, sort of like, ermine coat
- and a bouffant hairdo with a sweatshirt.
- And he had a beard, by the way, and he's smoking a cigarette.
- And he had a sweatshirt that had a raised
- fist with the words, gay liberation,
- written over the fist.
- And I was so struck by that that I--
- I was a model airplane maker when I was a child,
- and so I had lots of little bottles of paint.
- And I found a button that had belonged to my grandmother.
- It had a photo of General Douglas
- MacArthur on the button, and it stated, America's hero
- MacArthur.
- And I painted over that, and drew a fist,
- and wrote Gay LIB on it, and wore that button
- into high school.
- So that was very pivotal for me in realizing that there were
- other gay people out there.
- And one other striking photo from that issue
- also is a photo of Reverend Troy Perry from Metropolitan
- Community Church talking about how
- it was possible to be gay and Christian--
- that the two were not mutually exclusive,
- and that gave me a lot of motivation to come out.
- INTERVIEWER: Tim, I always ask this question
- of people who are activists.
- Is there anything in your character,
- in your experience, that caused you to be an activist, where
- other people are content to just let
- others do that kind of work.
- Why are you an activist?
- TIM SALLY: I would say that I'm an activist because I have
- always felt like I was outside of the mainstream
- and that I didn't necessarily accept the status quo for being
- valuable, in and of itself.
- And being outside of the mainstream,
- I think it's a natural reaction to question what you're told--
- what you're told is good for you,
- what you're told you should be, what you're told you should do.
- And the more you question things, the more it
- gives you a bigger perspective on the world
- and introduces you to other issues that could be related,
- other human rights issues--
- for example, women's rights, pro-choice when
- it comes to reproductive freedom, genital integrity
- rights for children, you know, fighting against circumcision
- of boys and girls.
- All of these things are interrelated.
- And I think I'm an activist because I
- was outside of the mainstream, and I
- was forced to question things.
- INTERVIEWER: In your experience, how old
- were you when you came out?
- TIM SALLY: Probably eleven--
- or well, when I came out to myself, probably--
- and identified myself as, this is me.
- I'm gay, 1971-- but it was just a couple of years
- later when I actually consummated my identity
- with another man.
- INTERVIEWER: In the process coming out
- and in the process of coming out,
- which is an ongoing process, were there people
- that inspired you--
- that somebody, either a writer, or politician, or some--
- maybe somebody who you knew personally.
- Who was inspiring to you for this?
- Who did you look to for--
- TIM SALLY: Well, I looked to many people for inspiration.
- When I joined DI, some of the most inspirational people to me
- were Cindy Birch and Margaret Mary Lau.
- They demonstrated what it meant to be true Christians,
- and love unconditionally, and love with such a sense of joy.
- And we became very, very close friends
- and are still in contact to this day.
- They showed me what it truly meant to love as a Christian
- and as a human being--
- Bill DeStevens as well, because he
- was kind of like the big brother I never had and demonstrated
- what it was like to have a conviction,
- and to stand strong in that, and to speak out for that.
- On the national level, of course,
- Harvey Milk was my hero.
- At the time, I was subscribing to the Advocate news magazine
- and keeping a close followup on what
- was happening around the country on gay rights issues,
- and of course a lot was happening in the 1970s,
- in San Francisco especially--
- in the later part of that decade when
- Harvey Milk became supervisor.
- And when he was assassinated with Mayor Moscone,
- I was devastated.
- It was, for me, like what it must
- have felt like for African-Americans when
- Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, or for Americans when John F
- Kennedy was assassinated.
- Milk, for me, was that hero, and his assassination just
- drove a stake through my heart.
- But it also energized me to do what
- I could to carry on his legacy locally in Rochester.
- Of course, I'm proud of my involvement in DI
- and being a co-founder of PFLAG and AIDS Rochester,
- but I think what I'm also proud of is
- that these organizations allowed me to hone my activist skills.
- And they also informed me about other human rights issues that
- involve sexuality and choice.
- An example of that is my twenty-year involvement
- in the genital integrity movement
- to protect children from being circumcised.
- I lived in San Francisco for almost twenty-five years
- until 2007 when I was compelled to move to Canada,
- where I live now, in Vancouver, with my German husband,
- because at the time, he was no longer
- able to live legally in the US.
- So it was a choice between my relationship and my country,
- and it was an easy choice to make.
- I first became aware of the PFLAG organization
- from my reading of the Advocate news
- magazine and reading about what other chapters around the US
- and internationally were doing, and I
- decided, in the late '70s, that Rochester could
- benefit by having a chapter.
- And I think there were attempts, prior to us,
- starting our chapter, but they kind of failed,
- and they disbanded.
- But it was through the efforts of myself and Pauline Giraldo,
- Margaret Mary's straight sister, and Horace Lethbridge,
- a local psychologist who was a member of DI--
- that we worked together to start a chapter of PFLAG,
- and we called it Families and Friends of Gays,
- because we wanted to be inclusive of other people who
- were not necessarily parents.
- And what motivated me to really move
- on that was not just knowing about PFLAG, but one
- of my volunteer duties that I took on in DI
- was to staff the DI office in St. Luke's Church.
- And it was very common to get phone messages on the answering
- machine from parents calling in and saying,
- I've just learned that my son is gay,
- or my daughter is a lesbian.
- And I don't know what to do with this information.
- I don't know where to go for support.
- And it told me that those kinds of calls were cries for help
- and that we needed such a chapter,
- so we did start a chapter, and it met monthly
- in St. Luke's Church.
- I found DI to be extremely different from mainstream
- religion, because in my experience,
- mainstream religion, at least in the Catholic church,
- was all about being somber, being polite, behaving
- yourself, genuflecting, getting up and down off your knees--
- which I guess was good practice for later.
- It was good practice for later in life.
- That's priceless.
- INTERVIEWER: What did you say about getting
- up and down on your knees?
- TIM SALLY: It was good practice for later in life.
- Oh, golly.
- INTERVIEWER: You really got into that.
- TIM SALLY: I really-- well, you know?
- It trained my knees well.
- We're not still filming, are we?
- Another aspect of my coming out was not just
- an intellectual coming out but actually
- the physical coming out.
- I was lucky enough, when I was in high school
- at East High School, to meet another gay person.
- His name was Judson.
- We still stay in contact to this day,
- and we became very good friends.
- We also became intimate, and eventually that relationship
- evolved into a full friendship.
- And he was the one who was responsible for telling me
- about Dignity Integrity and suggesting that maybe I
- would benefit from attending services there, where I could
- be part of a larger community.
- And I'm really, really grateful to Judson for that
- and for opening me up to the gay world, in a sense.
- INTERVIEWER: Tim, what happened in the sixth grade?
- TIM SALLY: Gosh, I remember this funny experience.
- Well, now it's funny, but back then it was kind of, like,
- devastating that we had had mandatory sex education
- classes.
- And they were all under the auspices of the science
- curriculum, and so we would go off and take our sex education
- classes, and then we'd come back to science class.
- And I remember my science teacher,
- at the time, Mr. Clark, who asked the class,
- so what did you learn?
- And I raised my hand, and I said, "I learned
- that I think you're sexy."
- And there were giggles in the classroom.
- And Mr. Clark maintained his composure,
- and he was very thoughtful.
- And he says, "Well, what does sexy mean to you, Tim?"
- And then I had to go into this damage-control mode
- and think, well, what does that mean?
- I just knew that I was attracted to him,
- but he approached it in a very respectful way
- and didn't freak out, and I think that was the right way
- to handle it.
- And so, I just look back at that as an amusing part of my life.
- I found DI to be profoundly different from mainstream
- religion, because in my experience
- growing up in the Catholic church,
- going to church was all about being quiet,
- keeping your hands folded, and just doing what you're told
- when you're supposed to do it.
- And that meant, you know, genuflecting,
- getting up and down off your knees,
- and crossing yourself, and all this other kind of stuff.
- DI was free, it was loving, it was accepting, it was joyous--
- a stark contrast to what I grew up
- with in the traditional Catholic church.
- It was all about, in DI, celebrating--
- celebrating who you are as a person,
- celebrating your spirituality, and celebrating your sexuality.
- And the two were not divorced as they are in the Catholic church
- even to this day.
- Before meeting Dan, my very first person with AIDS
- that I actually knew, and put a face to, and touch
- him, and shake his hand--
- AIDS, of course, registered with me,
- because it was splashed about the gay media
- and the mainstream media.
- At that time, I think it was called GRID, Gay-Related Immune
- Deficiency syndrome, and other people were calling it
- the Gay Cancer, because people weren't really sure
- what it was, and how it was being transmitted.
- And even though, in larger cities like New York, LA,
- and San Francisco, there was considerable fear
- about the disease, at the time in Rochester,
- my recollection was that there wasn't
- a lot of real deep concern about the disease.
- Because I think somehow a lot of us felt, living in Rochester,
- we were removed from the problem--
- that this was a problem of big city promiscuous gays,
- and that it couldn't possibly touch us in Rochester.
- And I think there was a lot of apathy at the time.
- INTERVIEWER: You talked about coming out to your mother,
- and there weren't necessarily a lot of other people
- to come out to, but that we, as gay people,
- do have to come out, and it is an ongoing process.
- Did you find that in your life-- that, ultimately, you
- were on the road coming out many times?
- Like, did you--
- TIM SALLY: Well, since I had a limited coming out
- experience with family, being that it was just my mother--
- I didn't really have a lot of friends to come out to--
- any close friends that I felt it was appropriate to do that
- with, so I kind of went from telling mom to being public,
- because shortly after coming out to my mother,
- I joined Dignity Integrity, and through that, I
- became active and motivated to speak out publicly.
- And so, I went onto Matt Rinadli's AM Rochester program
- with Sue Cowell to talk about the gay prom couple
- from Rhode Island, at that time, that had appeared on the Phil
- Donahue Show.
- And the purpose was to talk about the local gay community
- in Rochester and also talk about my involvement
- in Dignity Integrity, known at that time as DI.
- So it kind of went from a personal coming out to a public
- coming out in pretty short order,
- and ever since that time from publicly coming
- out, and writing letters to editors,
- appearing on television programs,
- speaking to city council, it pretty much
- became the rule of my life as being publicly out.
- INTERVIEWER: Were there any repercussions to initially
- coming out publicly?
- TIM SALLY: There were repercussions
- from coming out publicly.
- I remember, on several occasions,
- when I wrote letters to the local newspaper,
- either the Times Union or the Democrat and Chronicle,
- at the time, people who either supported my position
- or opposed it would look up my name
- and address in the telephone book and write to me.
- And I specifically remember a correspondence,
- that I carried on for probably close to a year--
- a very respectful conversation with a woman in Honeoye Falls,
- I believe, who was very concerned about my soul.
- And we had a very interesting letter-writing correspondence
- back and forth, which basically ended up
- in we agreed to disagree, but it was very respectful.
- On the other hand, I got some very nasty letters--
- some very--
- well, today, they would be called hate speech.
- These letters, particularly from one man in particular,
- that just use every foul word in the dictionary
- that he could find to describe what he thought of gay people.
- It's interesting that when my mother found out I was gay,
- it wasn't because I volunteered it to her
- and had it on my agenda and under my control.
- It just so happens that, because of my friendship with my friend
- in high school, Judson, a good friend of my mother's
- had noticed this friendship and thought
- that it was an unusually close friendship for two boys
- to have.
- And so, as I understand it, she had asked my mother
- if my mother thought I might be gay.
- And I don't know whether it had really ever crossed her mind.
- Perhaps, mother's intuition, it does,
- but she had never verbalized that to me until one time
- we were in the kitchen doing dishes.
- And just out of the blue she says, "Tim, are you gay?"
- And I was shocked, and I was like,
- OK, here is a moment of truth.
- What do I do?
- You know, do I cover it up until I'm ready,
- or do I just be honest with her?
- And I chose to just be honest with her.
- And she said, "Oh, OK."
- And that was kind of the end of it.
- And then later, questions started coming about gayness,
- and then soon after that I got involved
- in my first relationship, so she was
- able to view that relationship.
- So it was not a traumatic coming out for me.
- But since I'm an only child, and I only
- have my mother, coming out was kind
- of a limited experience for me.
- I didn't have a lot of friends that I could do that with,
- but, you know, my initial coming out with my mother
- was, I think, a very positive event.
- Initially, we were quite fortunate,
- with PFLAG, to start the group meetings with probably
- five or six sets of parents, and in some cases
- it was just the mother who came.
- In others, it was just the father, but in most cases
- it was both parents who came.
- And it was a time for people who had already gone
- through the coming out experience with their child
- and were comfortable with their child
- to be able to tell these new parents, who were just
- learning about their children, that it'll be OK.
- Give yourself time to learn and to understand,
- and that was really the major goal of PFLAG at the time--
- was purely to provide local emotional and friendship
- support for other parents, who were just
- taking on the news of their children's sexual orientation.
- It didn't really have a political agenda,
- but it definitely was a means to find support
- for local parents in the Rochester community.
- I think DI had a profound impact on the Rochester community,
- because it stood in stark contrast to those people who
- were saying that gays are sinners,
- and that you cannot be gay and Christian.
- And all of us in DI, whether we came
- from the Catholic tradition, or the Episcopal tradition--
- or we had a lot of members come who
- were Baptists, and Methodists, and so forth,
- because this was the only home that they
- had for a spiritual community as gay and lesbian people.
- Our witness to the Rochester community
- said, yes, we can be both gay and Christian,
- and there is nothing mutually exclusive about the two.
- Notice I gave a little-- oh, it's
- usually only after cannabis that I get this giddy.
- INTERVIEWER: Talking to me, Tim, how old were you
- when you realized you were gay?
- TIM SALLY: Well, I realized I was gay--
- although I didn't attach that word to it,
- I knew I was attracted to males probably when
- I was six or seven, and I recall watching television series
- of the day, where I was definitely
- very attracted to the male lead characters in the programs.
- And so, at that point, I knew who I was,
- but I didn't know what I was.
- My involvement in DI lasted from roughly 1976 to 1983,
- and those were very, very meaningful years for me
- because I got to be creative in terms
- of how to bring the social consciousness
- to other concerned people around the issue of gay equality.
- I know that one year, DI marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade
- in Rochester, so we could get public witness to who we were
- as gay and lesbian Christians.
- I organized a Day of Remembrance for gay and lesbian victims
- of the Holocaust that DI sponsored at St. Luke's Church.
- I helped start the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
- group, which at that time we decided to call
- Families and Friends of Gays.
- But I would staff information tables at the annual Gay Pride
- picnics and just allow myself to be creative with what
- I was passionate about--
- and that was social justice and human rights.
- INTERVIEWER: It's on the hour.
- I mean--
- TIM SALLY: My name is Tim Sally, and I
- was born in Rochester in 1956.
- I grew up, in my early years, on Hamilton Street,
- which I guess now is a gay, gentrified neighborhood--
- I think maybe part of the South Wedge, they call it.
- Later, I and my mother moved over
- to the east side of the city on Vermont Street
- and attended East High School, where I graduated in 1975.
- If I stop talking, that kind of--
- INTERVIEWER: You're going to give a little open set-up.
- OK.
- TIM SALLY: So here's some interesting letters
- that I got in response to my writing letters to the editor.
- They range all the way from a very polite Christian woman
- in Honeoye Falls--
- April 4, 1980, she says, in part, "there
- is no way that I can accept homosexuality
- as a legitimate alternate lifestyle.
- I do not have the right to judge you or any person,
- but I do have the right to judge a lifestyle that
- is an abomination to the Lord."
- OK, everybody's entitled to their opinion.
- And I got a letter here--
- March 23rd, I assume it was the same year--
- no signature on it other than the word disgusted.
- "Dear Tim Sally, or is it really Sally Tim.
- I really get fed up with the faggot population's
- constant attempt to rationalize the legitimacy
- of their homosexual activities.
- You queers use the word gay in such a way
- that it prostitutes the real meaning.
- What you should call yourselves are exactly what you are,
- male cocksuckers and asshole fuckers.
- There, that doesn't sound so goddamn sweet and innocent,
- does it?
- It's not.
- You fags have developed an accepted medical reputation
- for spreading some pretty bad diseases amongst yourselves
- after you suck some guy's dick after he has just
- stuck it in your shitty ass.
- Jesus, that is really sexually appealing.
- I'll tell you one thing.
- If I were a goddamn queer, I wouldn't
- be so fucking proud of it, as you professional faggots
- seem to be.
- It just happens to be the opinion of most normal people
- that the chief purposes of a prick is to piss through
- and to screw a female with, not to stick in some man's asshole
- or for another man to suck on.
- You can argue all you wish, the fact
- remains that queers are not normal people."
- I did get some supportive letters.
- This is August 6, 1980 from a gentleman by the name of Larry.
- And I won't say his last name, but he just
- says, "Greetings, the typist of this brief note
- is an educator, 45, single, who grew up in Rochester,
- but left when it's provincialism got to him.
- I now return to Rochester only to visit my folks,
- but I want you to know that I greatly appreciated your letter
- in the Rochester paper.
- It's great to know that there are
- aware human beings in the Rochester community."
- I left Rochester in 1983, because I
- was drawn to professional gay activism,
- and I chose San Francisco because that
- was one of the few places that had paying positions.
- And I eventually found a job there
- as office manager of the AIDS Health Project.
- INTERVIEWER: Very good.