Audio Interview, Larry Fine, March 21, 1973
- LARRY FINE: I think there are homosexual traditions
- of the type that you mentioned, of having a wider perspective
- and maybe feeling more sympathy for minorities,
- having a greater impetus for social change,
- even if just unconsciously you are aware of your homosexuality
- as being that impetus.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I would say there are probably
- certain historical and social conditions that this occurs in.
- Otherwise, I think there's a good deal of evidence
- that homosexuals tend to be quite conservative.
- LARRY FINE: That's true also, being
- afraid of having that known, and even
- being conservative to make up for what
- they see as something immoral.
- That's been documented recently too
- in studies that have been done.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it.
- LARRY FINE: But there are also, I think, homosexual traditions
- in the types of lifestyles that gay people have adopted coping
- with being homosexual in a heterosexual society,
- lifestyles that have included a lot of different kinds of what
- you might call family arrangements,
- including living with one other person of the same sex,
- or maybe not living with them, but having
- an ongoing relationship.
- For instance, there's been a lot of talk about the fact
- that J. Edgar Hoover may have been gay
- and had a relationship with someone
- who was a close aide of his.
- And apparently, they were seen together constantly,
- every day for forty years, or something of this.
- And there's a lot of speculation that they might be gay.
- That's one way of coping with it.
- Hopefully--
- BRUCE JEWELL: He would be a more conservative--
- LARRY FINE: Yes, (Chuckles) definitely.
- There are other types of living arrangements
- that there may have been.
- For instance, somebody attaching themselves
- to a heterosexual couple with children
- and helping to raise those children.
- Or a number of men or women living together
- in some kind of communal arrangement.
- I think, for many, the celibate life, or the supposedly
- celibate life, of the priest--
- there are many gay men I know who
- have gone into the priesthood, because this
- is one way of coping with their being gay.
- From what I've heard, the priesthood
- is not all that celibate, but a matter for speculation.
- But there are many different kinds of lifestyles
- that people have adopted.
- Some of them were ones that were maybe very oppressive
- and maybe are not lifestyles that
- would have to be adopted now or in the future.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Of course, I can think
- of some heterosexual bachelors I know whose roommates are males.
- And this seems to be an appropriate living
- standard-- an appropriate way for them to live.
- But they are heterosexual.
- LARRY FINE: Sure.
- That's not generally considered part
- of the heterosexual tradition, because it's much rarer.
- But that's true.
- There are all these other types of traditions that people
- don't talk about all that much.
- What I'm concerned most with is that, as a counselor,
- people are not aware of the different options that
- are open to them, as far as lifestyles.
- And there aren't very good models, adequate models,
- that are written about and seen openly.
- Homosexual couples are not generally
- seen openly around town, say, holding hands,
- or it's known that they're gay and living together,
- or just all the various kinds of things
- that go into a relationship and things
- that are very visible in the heterosexual world and not
- in the homosexual world.
- So there's a lack of models to pattern
- or to give oneself ideas about how it's possible to live.
- And I think it's very important to unearth
- a lot of the traditions and a lot of the positive kinds
- of lifestyles and positive aspects
- about being gay that can give people models to follow.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I think without question,
- this is a field not only of great value,
- but one which is virtually unexplored.
- It was not permissible to consider
- positive aspects of the gay life on a public level
- until very recently.
- Well, it would've been considered
- absolutely outrageous.
- In fact, even now, to say anything positive
- about homosexuality can often lead one
- to be accused of proselytizing--
- LARRY FINE: Exactly.
- BRUCE JEWELL: --or something.
- And it's completely overlooked that, for a lifetime,
- one has heterosexual models, mores, standards, beliefs--
- LARRY FINE: We've been proselytized by heterosexuals
- for many years.
- BRUCE JEWELL: And more to the point, it didn't change us.
- So it's dubious that some positive things
- said about homosexuality are really
- going to create homosexuals.
- LARRY FINE: That's true.
- It was a very valid point in a recent court trial.
- There were some positive things about having homosexual models
- brought up by a psychologist who testified in that trial.
- A teacher who was openly gay in a school was fired.
- And it was brought up that the class he was teaching
- was not entirely heterosexual.
- There were some homosexual students in there
- who needed models, and that the presence of this teacher
- would actually help them better adjust and probably wouldn't
- have much effect on anybody else,
- except to increase their tolerance.
- So it's true that we need to have many more positive things
- about gay lifestyle brought up.
- It is a very scary thing for a lot of conservative people
- to hear the positive aspects of it.
- Like you said, they say you're proselytizing, and all that.
- But we need to go ahead and do it anyway.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What kind of counseling
- are you doing right now?
- LARRY FINE: Most of the counseling
- I do is through the gay rap line at the University of Nebraska
- at Lincoln.
- It's a student organization funded crisis line,
- you might say.
- And we get a lot of calls.
- I'd say, seventy-five to a hundred calls a month.
- A lot of them are pranks and hang-up calls.
- But a lot of them are very serious.
- And sometimes after speaking for a while on the phone,
- we might make an appointment to meet the person in person
- at some kind of a neutral spot to talk further.
- Sometimes a face-to-face meeting can be really a very valuable
- thing.
- There are a lot of different types of people that call.
- Some are just--
- BRUCE JEWELL: What kinds of problems
- do you most frequently meet?
- LARRY FINE: I'd say, one of the most common ones
- is a married man who's in his forties--
- just to give an example.
- It might be thirties, forties, fifties--
- who has recently-- or maybe even long ago,
- but has just recently gotten up the guts to call--
- has discovered or admitted to himself that he's gay,
- or has a certain amount of homosexual feelings
- or bisexual, whatever, and doesn't quite
- know what to do with it, whether this means
- he should divorce his wife and find someone of the same sex,
- or stay with his wife and have encounters on the side,
- or whatever.
- Now the people who are this--
- BRUCE JEWELL: I've run across that.
- It's a very sad problem.
- And there isn't a great deal you can offer sometimes.
- LARRY FINE: Really, and so much depends
- on the particular circumstances.
- These people, they call up and they want advice.
- They want us to tell them what they should do.
- And that's not the role of a counselor
- If a person is happily married, enjoys their family life,
- it may not be a practical thing to change
- the lifestyle at this point.
- And I remember one time when I tried
- to put the person's situation in the perspective of,
- what if the person was heterosexually oriented
- and was interested in other women?
- Would he give up his happy home, his good marriage,
- to go running after other women?
- I think in that particular circumstance,
- that analogy was valid and helped the person a lot.
- In other circumstances, it's not so clear.
- The person may not have a very happy marriage.
- The person may very much want to change the lifestyle.
- There's maybe the problem of the person's job at that point.
- If a person is in his 40s, say, or 50s, and has a valid--
- not a valid-- has an important job,
- they may not want to change their lifestyle
- or be openly gay or be seen with any gay people for fear
- of losing their job.
- So there's so many things to consider.
- And like you said, in many cases, it's just very sad.
- And the best the person can do is to develop a few friendships
- so that they can at least talk about their feelings
- and have some people they can talk openly with.
- And that will often relieve enough of the frustration
- and the tension and the loneliness,
- that they can continue on their heterosexual lifestyle.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I find it very difficult,
- when I run into that situation, to encourage people
- in furtive sexual encounters.
- As a homosexual, I am angered by people who drop out--
- who come out at midnight to get their thrills and do
- their dirty little thing--
- (Both laugh)
- --and then return home.
- LARRY FINE: Unfortunately, with some people,
- there's no alternative but that, that they simply are not
- willing to risk a career.
- And that's about all that they can have.
- But I sometimes feel angry about it too.
- For one thing, the fear of coming out publicly,
- or even semi-publicly, is much greater than the actual danger.
- There certainly are dangers.
- But in most cases, it's not really very likely
- that the employer is the next day going
- to find out that the person is gay and fire them on the spot.
- Especially if the person's been a good worker
- and done their job well and in a good position,
- then chances of their being fired
- are not all that great, actually.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What other kinds of problems
- do you run across, particularly among younger people?
- LARRY FINE: We have a lot of calls from high school
- students.
- We run the ad for the gay rap line
- in The Lincoln Gazette, which is a local alternative,
- or underground paper.
- And several thousand copies are distributed
- at the high schools in Lincoln.
- So we get a lot of calls from high school students.
- And there's an added problem of the legal problems of dealing
- with people under eighteen.
- You have to be especially careful.
- If you meet them to talk with them, and the parents find out,
- they could accuse you of all sorts of things, whatever the--
- I've forgotten the legal terminology--
- but seducing a minor, or something
- of that kind of thing.
- And we've wanted to set up discussion groups
- for high school students.
- But again, there's this problem that if you don't
- have the parents' permission--
- and, of course, they're not going
- to go running to the parents for permission--
- it's a very great problem.
- The university counseling center,
- it has a community counseling center,
- it will not see anyone under eighteen.
- So we can't rely on them.
- Many groups have gotten around this
- by having a minister, for instance, have a discussion
- group in the context of a church.
- And the parents are not quite as angered by this
- if they find out.
- They feel that they're in better hands, at least.
- BRUCE JEWELL: It's very difficult
- to do anything about the isolation
- that high school students suffer.
- And most of them do.
- Most of the students I've met feel very isolated.
- LARRY FINE: High school is an isolating
- place, even for heterosexuals, I think, in many cases.
- They're just not places where you
- can explore different kinds of friendships,
- lifestyles, et cetera.
- There's so much peer pressure.
- It's terrible.
- And if all there is is a gay bar in the city--
- and there isn't even one in Lincoln,
- but there is one in Omaha--
- in Nebraska, if you're under eighteen,
- you can't go into the bar.
- The gay coffeehouse in Lincoln, we
- do let people down to the age of sixteen
- in, sometimes even under that if we know them.
- But there is a legal hassle.
- We don't want to put the age up to eighteen,
- because we know that the high school students have
- no other place to go.
- On the other hand, we're in a very sticky position
- if we're busted for having underage people in,
- or something happens and parents find out.
- You're right, there's very little
- that can be done, except to let the high school students find
- other high school students that they can associate with.
- A discussion group would be a very good thing
- where they could meet other high school students.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Larry, do you plan or foresee
- being able to use your degree in social services--
- gay social services-- and your experience
- in counseling for some years to come?
- Do you see it perhaps as a full-time occupation?
- LARRY FINE: I've thought of that.
- I thought that if I planned to go on with my education,
- I might get a masters in social work.
- I'm not sure about this because partly the financing
- of my education.
- And partly, I just don't like formal academic schooling
- very much.
- But I've had thoughts of starting, with other people
- in Lincoln, a gay community center or a social service
- center, as has been started in other places in the country.
- For instance, Los Angeles has a very big and active one
- and gets government grants.
- Now it may sound like a very romantic idea
- to decide to get one's masters and start a gay social service
- center.
- And I have to keep reminding myself that that will also
- involve writing proposals and hassling over money,
- and all that kind of stuff.
- It might be better for me just to start
- with an existing social service agency, having
- a specialized field of gay counseling, and after that,
- try to branch out, after I have more experience.
- I'm not really sure.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, you're certainly
- in a field that's wide open for innovation,
- and I wish you luck.
- LARRY FINE: Thank you very much, Bruce.