Audio Interview, Margaret Mary Lau, February 24, 2012

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

So you were in Rochester at the very beginning of Dignity.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And it wasn't Dignity Integrity, yet.

It was just Dignity.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Dignity.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what precipitated your

getting in touch, say, with Tom Oddo, who was--

MARGARET MARY LAU: He was a priest in Boston

who either had started Dignity or who was involved with it.

And his name I got out of a book, I believe,

called Homosexual, My Neighbor.

Or is that-- that might have been-- no.

I can see the cover of it.

The Lord is my Shepherd and Knows I'm Gay.

One of the other two had a blue cover, a blue jacket on it.

And I had been coming out of the closet.

I came out of the closet and then jumped back in because

of, you know, my religious background.

I said, no, this isn't right.

And prayerfully, and through reading this book,

I came to understand and came to realize that I

was made the way I was made.

And that it was quote "OK."

And that was because I was hearing it

from priestly people in this book.

And I wrote to Father Tom Oddo in Boylston Street

in Massachusetts, and sent me back a letter.

And I had expressed more information about Dignity

because either I knew about Dignity then

or I expressed, you know, more information from him

from a religious background, from a religious standpoint.

I didn't have any pertinent questions or anything for him

personally at the time, but I wanted to know more.

And I wanted-- and he kind of shepherded me

with his brief letter back to me.

But probably, then he introduced me and said,

there is a chapter forming, or there may be a chapter forming,

and they have given me Kevin Scahill's address and telephone

number.

And that's maybe how we got involved.

I don't actually remember.

(Bailey laughs)

No.

But I'm almost certain that I met Kevin at his house

on Latham street.

Almost certain that that's where he invited me over

and we chatted.

EVELYN BAILEY: And this took place

after Kevin had been to this conference?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

Yes, he had been, I believe, in '74 to Boston.

'74 or early '75.

Went to Boston to a Dignity conference

or met with Tom Oddo.

And I believe it was Tom that he met with, but made a commitment

to whoever was the director at the time,

that he would come back to Rochester

and form a local group, a local chapter of Dignity.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you have any recollection

of why Kevin made that commitment

or why it was important to him to do that?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Kevin was an openly gay guy.

He must have been nineteen or twenty at the time,

somewhere in that neck of the woods.

EVELYN BAILEY: Young.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Which means he had graduated from Bishop

Carty and I don't know whether he was out at school or not,

I couldn't say that anymore, I don't know.

But he was, you know, what I'm going to call on fire.

He was saying to his church, I am here, I'm a child of God,

and we have to organize and tell the church that.

We need our church to shepherd us,

we need the nurturance that we've grown up with,

that we stayed in parochial school

for, that we go to our churches for.

But we're being told at church that we're

sinful and wrong and bad, and unacceptable to God as we are.

And so I'm certain that that was probably his motivation.

EVELYN BAILEY: And yours, as well?

MARGARET MARY LAU: I was looking for--

I had done a lot of spiritual soul-searching.

And very simplistically, I felt through what

I had learned throughout my life about being

gay or lesbian or homosexual, those words

that you didn't even say, that to practice anything

outside the marriage was wrong.

And I found myself after a three and a half year

very bad marriage, my homosexuality was evolving.

I mean, it was coming to the fore.

I understood that I was different from the time I

could understand anything when it was about three and a half.

And so I was coming from the place of having been married,

going through a divorce, having had

some very powerful spiritual times with my creator,

and actually coming to the point of saying, you know?

If this is me and it's all selfish,

and I'm doing it maybe because it's taboo and it's exciting,

or there's something in me that, you know, is not what you want,

Lord.

I give it to you, I won't ever be involved

in the gay lifestyle at all.

I won't seek out a female partner.

And it was shortly after that that I was reading this book

and I had gone to a Catholic mass, I was at mass.

And during the prayers of the intercession,

the priest at the altar said something about minorities

and included a sexual minority.

I don't know whether to use those terms,

but it was very clear to me that that's what it was.

You know, I raised my head from my prayerful stance

and started to cry.

And I thought, ah-ha, I'm home, I'm home, again.

My priest, he wasn't actually my home parish,

but my priest on the altar was telling me God loves me,

and that it was OK to be loved as I was.

So in a sense, I had kind of given it to the Lord and said,

if you don't want this, I absolutely don't want it,

I'm here for you, I'm your child and I want

to do what you want me to do.

And he kind of gave it back to me.

Gave me back my life, in a sense, and said, no, it's not--

in a sense, he said, honey, I made you, I made you

and I love you.

Let's go from here.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so then, you--

MARGARET MARY LAU: Then I read this book

and got in touch with Tom Oddo.

And I don't think it was Nugent.

I don't think it was Father Nugent.

I'm pretty sure it was Father Tom Oddo.

And through that, so that probably got me in contact with

Kevin Scahill, because he was, at that time,

this was '73, four, somewhere--

Chronology is not a strong point with me, there.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

So when you met with Kevin.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: Had he begun to form?

MARGARET MARY LAU: He had put feelers out

for interest in the community, I think, or was planning to.

Well, I've just seen the document that said,

you know, there's certain interest in our community,

and my name is on it.

You know?

But I may have signed it, you know,

as a matter of sitting in this living room

before we went out to different places

to ask eight people if they were interested.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how did all of that get--

how did you find the place?

How did you come up with the place to go and meet?

And do you remember?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Kevin did most of that legwork.

And he got in touch with--

Boardman Street-- Whitey LeBlanc.

And Whitey had a lot of other contacts.

And I think out of that, he said--

and I don't know either whether Kevin just went to Father John

Robbins at Nazareth, he was a chaplain at Nazareth's College

at the time, as a Basilian.

And I don't know how he got John's name,

it may have been from a gathering that the first kind

of board meeting with Whitey LeBlanc and other people who

were interested at Whitey's house.

Don't really know.

EVELYN BAILEY: But contact was made with John Robbins.

And what was John's role in this?

MARGARET MARY LAU: To be a chaplain to us, to nurture us.

And he was not governed because he was a Basilian,

he was not governed by any of the dictums or the rules

that the bishop would have put his priests up the diocese.

He wasn't a diocesan priest, so he was not

under the rules and regs, so to say,

or confines of the bishops saying he

couldn't, you know, he couldn't do this

or he shouldn't do this.

Or he absolutely can't say mass or whatever.

He had no-- geographically he was within the area,

but because he was he was under his order, Basilian orders,

confines.

EVELYN BAILEY: When and where was, in a sense,

the first organized meeting of Dignity?

Do you remember?

Not date-wise, but--

MARGARET MARY LAU: No, I'm thinking.

For all intents and purposes, it was Kevin

and I sitting in his living room and maybe with Howard Cohen.

I'm not sure unless Howard came later.

A couple of other people.

I don't know why I'm remembering Howard,

except that when we, you know, gathered,

there were like three or four of us once in a while

before things took off.

Although there may have not been any formal-- you know,

this is the first meeting of Dignity.

If you were talking to Kevin, he would--

he may say, the first meeting that he considers

a meeting of Dignity happened at Whitey LeBlanc's house

when he was just putting feelers out and getting

a sense of what's going on in the community,

in the gay community.

What's going on, how do I, you know, get someone

to shepherd us?

And whoever else was at that meeting,

may have had it-- he may consider

that the first meeting, per se.

As far as I'm concerned, it was Kevin and I and maybe one

other person.

But a lot of times, you know, in the afternoon,

Kevin and I'd say, well, I'm going to draft a letter,

or I'm going to do this and that,

and, you know, we should take it here and take it there.

And I'm going to call father so-and-so

and I'm going to get a hold of, you know.

And he, had some contacts going.

He was--

And so, formally, I have no recollection

of the early, early times.

We may have had a formal meeting after that, after we

had our first mass, actually.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where was that?

MARGARET MARY LAU: That was at St. Patrick's Church,

which was on the corner of Brown street and--

I don't, maybe even Plymouth.

It was on the street behind Kodak offices, State Street.

And actually, if you were to be standing at the Kodak offices

State Street in the back, it was kitty corner.

It was a church.

And it was a Hispanic mission church

in that, if anyone was to hold the mass there,

it had to be done in Spanish, except if we get permission

from the church council to do it in English or another language.

EVELYN BAILEY: So was the first DI mass in Spanish?

MARGARET MARY LAU: It was not.

It was a late afternoon mass.

And there were twelve of us, thirteen of us, actually,

and father John Roberts.

EVELYN BAILEY: And it was in English?

MARGARET MARY LAU: In English and in the sanctuary.

We did not sit in the pews.

We all stood around the altar as if it was the Last Supper.

The metaphor was astounding, and the message was the same.

We are a pilgrim church, we are a pilgrim people,

we will go from here and will be persecuted,

but we will know that we are loved by our God.

EVELYN BAILEY: What did you think and what did you feel?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Wonderful.

I had always felt drawn to my church and to the liturgy.

And I went-- before--

after graduating from Catholic high school,

I went to Catholic college for a year.

And I feel like a lot of times I was the person who

was nudging people to get away from their secular activities

and get over to vespers or whatever

we were doing at college, or participate in the choir.

I guess, to use an old term, I wasn't a goody two-shoes,

but I felt drawn.

And-- but at home, just prior to dignity, I was attending mass

and it was the same old, same old.

And the same message of, you are a bad person,

was coming through, whether or not it was explicitly

spoken about or not.

I was-- nothing had changed from the time I was in kindergarten.

And so here, my feelings were, number one, I could be myself.

I was not in relationship at the time.

I could participate knowing that the priest who was there

accepted me with my label, with my pink triangle

on, if you will, and saying, you belong here, you belong here,

you belong to Christ, you always will belong to Christ.

And as his representative, he didn't

say this, but in my mind, as we all

were told, as we're going up Roman Catholic,

that he was the representative of Christ,

that he was the link, that he could be my confessor.

And here was that I was participating in the Eucharist

as a whole person.

It's that one little thing that is such a minute part of me.

And yet was the ruling factor in my life,

because it had been suppressed, it

had been unacceptable to walk down the street holding

the hand of the same-gender person,

you know, and dangerous, and certainly not happened,

you know, in the pew in the Catholic Church.

I couldn't be married, I couldn't choose a commitment

to a life partner and be respected by my church,

and be blessed.

And here I was being validated as the person that God made me.

EVELYN BAILEY: You said there were

thirteen or so at the first--

MARGARET MARY LAU: We looked around at each other

and said, hm, kind of like the Last Supper with the head

count.

(both laugh)

The irony was not lost on us, so to say.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how many men and women?

Do you remember?

MARGARET MARY LAU: (pause) There might

have been one other woman, but I think I was the only one.

That were, all the other--

they were all guys.

EVELYN BAILEY: So go forward from that.

And how long did you worship at St. Patrick's on Sunday?

MARGARET MARY LAU: It was a Sunday I believe.

I don't think it was a Saturday night

because I think they had Saturday night service there.

I'm pretty sure it was a Sunday evening.

And I'm not sure whether it was that service or one more that

we had at St. Patrick's.

And Bruce Hanson from St. Luke's said, we have all this area.

And we have had Catholic mass celebrated

for many, many years, and it's the only place outside Rome

where Catholic mass was said on a regular basis

in a non-Catholic church.

EVELYN BAILEY: This is--

MARGARET MARY LAU: St. Luke's Episcopal.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

MARGARET MARY LAU: They had a mass for the businessmen

of Rochester on weekly basis.

Pretty sure it was weekly.

And But it was the only place outside of Rome that it was

done on a regular-- it wasn't of--

and so there was precedent for us

to be there and be able to worship

within the confines of a building that didn't happen

to be a Roman Catholic church.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Did you move or did the group

go to St. Luke's because St. Patrick's

was no longer welcoming?

Or--

MARGARET MARY LAU: No.

Not at all.

We went because it was a better venue

and because Bruce Hanson extended, he had-- you know,

they had a church hall.

And I'm sure, you know, Bruce was thinking,

you know, maybe that we would gather more people,

it would be a more recognizable church, easier to get to.

That's certain.

But he welcomed us.

It was an invitation to come and look it over and say,

you know, we have offices here, you can have an office here,

and the congregation will welcome you.

EVELYN BAILEY: So Mimi, Lucy may have been there.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Mimi.

I doubt it.

I'm trying to think.

EVELYN BAILEY: That's all right.

I can ask Mimi.

MARGARET MARY LAU: There you go.

EVELYN BAILEY: I'm sure.

I'll make sure--

MARGARET MARY LAU: Unless she was.

She was in a brown--

tan, brown suit.

But that might be wrong, too.

(both laugh)

Goodness.

Goodness.

Goodness.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you went to St. Luke's?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And besides Father

Robbins, were there other religious men

or women who became involved?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

Are we-- did you get me out?

OK.

Sister Claude Loeb, actually Sister Dorothy,

but she was sister Claude Loeb, L-O-E-B.

known by her sisters as sister Dorothy.

A religious sister of Mercy.

Became involved-- I believe, John Robbins asked her.

I'm not sure.

Or Kevin was given the name.

Not certain who gave him the name.

It may have been Monsignor George Cocuzzi.

And I don't know when his involvement began.

My sense is his involvement was later.

And he was vicar for Urban Ministries at the time.

EVELYN BAILEY: But in any event--

MARGARET MARY LAU: For the Rochester diocese.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

MARGARET MARY LAU: In any event?

EVELYN BAILEY: Sister Claude began--

MARGARET MARY LAU: very, very soon--

EVELYN BAILEY: --to come to the liturgies.

And What was her position?

I mean, you had John Robbins, priest.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Right.

She was--

EVELYN BAILEY: Or what was she tasked with doing?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Well, in a sense, they were co-chaplains.

She obviously could not celebrate mass.

And she felt drawn to the issue of justice and compassion.

I could write--

I could talk for hours about Claude

and her nurturance and her unconditional love.

It's interesting that at this stage in my life,

at this distance from that, and my recollection,

and if I were to eulogize her, I would probably

liken her to Mother Teresa.

We were dying.

And Catholics, in a sense, were laying in the streets.

There were people that, after we started Dignity and Integrity,

that came and told us weepingly, men in their seventies

who had not been in church in fifty years

because they didn't feel welcome.

And they were home.

And Claude was our Mother Teresa.

She was the one who would take you, no matter what you look

like, no matter what anybody else said

about you or about your lifestyle,

or where you came from, or what had battered you

throughout your life.

She held you in her arms and said, I am the church

and I love you.

And that's it.

It's as simple as that.

As simple as Mother Teresa was.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

MARGARET MARY LAU: I can bring--

I do this for Christ and I do it because Christ would do it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.

When-- do you happen to know if her order,

the Sisters of Mercy, were they supportive of her involvement?

MARGARET MARY LAU: I don't know that.

I know that they were not not-supportive.

Cloud was a registered nurse and she

had worked in Storefront, down on Joseph Avenue, Clinton

Avenue area.

In what was then, the inner city on the East side.

And worked during the riots, just

after the riots of the race riots in the '60s.

And worked with battered women.

She-- so that her order was allowing

nuns to branch off from strictly a teaching position

within the parochial schools, to doing missional type

work with the underprivileged, the under-served.

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: So social justice.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was kind of the umbrella of her involvement,

probably.

MARGARET MARY LAU: It probably, as far

as her order was concerned, yes.

As far as she was concerned.

And it was love.

It was love.

It was the understanding of injustice and the understanding

that these are the children we taught in our schools.

These are the children that we nurtured.

We, as an order of teaching nuns,

who brought these children from their parents

and promised to bring them up in the life of Christ.

And now we've abandoned them.

I'm not trying to put words in Claude's, you know,

but in a sense, from my own standpoint,

I've actually had mercy nuns until I was in high school.

You know-- we were raised by them.

Our religious-- our faith was to be

nurtured by them, which it was.

And yet, I'm sure Claude saw at that point,

well, what do we do now?

What do we do now that we understand more about--

And all of a sudden, you know, people

are coming out of closet, and so homosexuality is no longer

a term that no one has ever heard before

or understands as anything.

It was, you know, very, very, closeted.

It was a closeted word.

You know, and everything was below the radar.

And now it was coming to the fore.

And there were organizations like Dignity

who were springing up here and there.

And priests and others, like Kevin Scahill, were saying,

I'm a Catholic and you're telling me

that I'm committing moral sin and that I'm

going to be excommunicated if I don't stop?

Kind of thing.

And Claude and others were saying, these are our children,

this is wrong.

We don't stop nurturing, we don't stop

growing them in their faith.

Whether or not the church continues

to believe that their life involvement

with their chosen other is sinful or not, doesn't matter.

We need to--

EVELYN BAILEY: Provide for them.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yeah.

We need to be there.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

When did Integrity enter into the--

MARGARET MARY LAU: Very soon.

After, probably--

EVELYN BAILEY: Within the first year?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Within the end of the first year

or the beginning of the second year of our being at St.

Luke's.

Or from the time that Dignity started, which was September,

I believe.

And so it was probably the end of the next year

that we talked about the joining of the two groups as official.

We were a mixed group once we went to St. Luke's

because Bruce Hanson, he had folks

that he knew from his congregation, maybe,

and in other places.

And, you know, who had come in maybe for counseling

or whatever.

And I don't know where, and they were participating.

And we were getting the word out at that point about Dignity

forming.

We were getting it out to the bars and the beds

and through word of mouth.

And especially people like Whitey LeBlanc

who had many social contacts just

throughout his work and his--

just socially, his friends.

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: I know there were announcements

in the calendar of the Empty Closet about meetings,

DI meetings.

What was Walt Szymanski involved in that first year?

Or--

MARGARET MARY LAU: I don't know.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you remember Walt?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Oh, gosh, yes.

He was another one of our chaplains.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

MARGARET MARY LAU: I don't know when he came--

EVELYN BAILEY: Into the--

OK.

Was he-- he was an Episcopalian priest at that point.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: He had been Catholic.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

And then gone to Catholic seminary,

if I believe correctly.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

MARGARET MARY LAU: It's all coming back to me now.

Woo.

Dust off the pages up there in my head.

Yes, he had gone to Catholic seminary.

And I don't know why he changed to Episcopal.

I don't know.

I don't recall yet.

I would probably go, a-ha, yes.

if someone told me, oh, yes, Bruce or Walt.

EVELYN BAILEY: So were there--

MARGARET MARY LAU: It may have been because he

was wanting to get married.

I'm not certain.

He didn't feel the call to celibacy or chastity.

EVELYN BAILEY: So were there three--

I should say four.

There was John Robbins, Bruce Hanson, Walt Szymanski

and Claude.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: In terms of religious--

MARGARET MARY LAU: Chaplainsy.

EVELYN BAILEY: Quote, unquote, "representatives" of faiths,

or however you want to put that, that really were

the foundational pieces in DI.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was integrity--

Well, let me put it another way.

Did you experience any--

or what was your experience of coming together at St. Luke's?

Was it positive?

Were people upset from that parish that you were there?

Were they--

MARGARET MARY LAU: No, they were totally welcoming.

According to what I assume.

We didn't-- I did not meet with anyone from the congregation.

But Kevin may have with Bruce.

I don't know that.

But they were totally behind it from their parish council--

I don't know what they call it, their parish council,

was totally supportive of it.

Totally.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how long were you involved with DI?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Myself?

ten, twelve years.

I think it was around '85 or '86.

EVELYN BAILEY: And from the beginning to when you left,

tell me something about the group that gathered.

Was there an increase in number?

Were the people who were coming older, younger?

Were they men, women?

MARGARET MARY LAU: The majority were men.

The majority were baby boomers and above.

Some were younger.

Some were in their late teens, early twenties, like Kevin was.

A lot of that has to do, I think,

because at that time and place, young teenage--

gay youth were not recognized at all.

They were still closeted like we all

had been until we became twenty-one.

Although Kevin was out before that.

But Kevin was an extraordinarily courageous fellow.

You had-- for every one Kevin, you

had forty or fifty, I'm sure, closeted gay youth.

And so we didn't have gay youth, per se.

So the majority were baby boomers and older.

I would say the median age probably

was thirty at that point.

I myself was twenty-four, twenty-five.

And then it grew exponentially.

It grew because the word was out.

And like I said, the minute I heard the word in that mass,

I was there, I was there.

I went back to that same church every Saturday

for that mass and that priest, whether he

said it again didn't matter because I knew he understood,

he understood who I was.

And anyway, our services were probably

attended by thirty people.

Thirty to forty people regularly,

and sometimes Fifty to seventy people.

EVELYN BAILEY: When were they?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Sunday nights at five o'clock at St. Louis.

EVELYN BAILEY: And was it a Catholic service every week?

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yes.

For, I don't know how long.

And I really don't know when we agreed to have an Episcopal

service or Episcopal liturgy.

the last Sunday of the month or the fourth Sunday,

whatever we decided.

The Episcopalians in the group, and of course Bruce Hanson,

felt like there needed to be that nurturance

of that component of the group.

EVELYN BAILEY: In terms of the people who came, men, women,

you said predominantly men.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Predominantly men.

EVELYN BAILEY: Professional, blue collar,

or did you have a sense of that?

MARGARET MARY LAU: All.

There were white collar, there--

and my sense of that is, just from talking

and from my understanding from others, who did what

in their life, whether--

in the social circle that they stayed in outside of church.

However, many people came incognito.

Meaning, if you were an attorney,

or if you were an architect or someone,

in a socioeconomic sense, a place of responsibility

and recognition, that you might come in a pair of jeans

and a flannel shirt.

And be not known by someone who might see you across the street

at city hall the next day.

You came in the side entrance a lot.

We did use the front door.

But sometimes you came in the side entrance.

And that was down a long, you know, alleyway.

And so my sense of the breakdown of who

did what, it was a total mix.

There were people who were unemployed,

there were people who were of all strata of the--

what we'll call the gay experience.

Some express themselves in different--

many people express themselves in different ways, you know,

whether it was their manner or their--

I don't want to say this, I think it's evident in 2012

what I'm talking about.

But we had people, and I guess I look at it this way,

we had people at all levels of coming out of the closet

and accepting themselves.

And here was a place where you could be totally yourself.

Totally.

You could come in with green hair,

you could come in with, you know, an earring

if you were a fellow.

And in that sense, you watched people mature and be

able to say, golly, you know?

I felt like that was me.

And three years later, I don't need to express

myself that way, I'm OK.

No?

I don't--

It was as if, you know, as a gay person we were just--

we were encased in some sort of a cocoon, an iron cocoon

that we couldn't get out of.

And the only way that you could even think of emerging

was incognito, And in some other form or some other identity.

So that when you ask about, you know,

where we were socioeconomically or business-wise or

career-wise, there were people who

hadn't finished high school, and there were

folks at the top of the heat.

It was a big mix.

As I mentioned earlier, there were

people who had not been inside any church in fifty years.

Fifty, that's a lifetime.

That's actually two generations.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

MARGARET MARY LAU: And they may have even

been out in the community, in the gay community,

as such, you know, in whatever way.

Whether they just went to one another's homes

or whether they were doing--

they were going to the bars or they

were going out of town to be in a social gathering or at a bar.

They had not been in their church.

They had not participated in any of the sacraments

in that length of time.

And there was a whole spectrum in between there.

EVELYN BAILEY: If you were to look back at the twelve,

fourteen years that you were involved

with Dignity Integrity what would you say

was its greatest contribution to the gay community of Rochester?

MARGARET MARY LAU: (pause) Hope.

Because personally I feel that the churches, the organized

denominations of the world, have dictated our knowledge

about homosexuality as an entity,

and in error, that's an aside, they

have driven the cultures of the world

to shun anyone who expresses it in any way.

Through, and if someone, anyone, any group of people

of ordained Catholic people, or religious people,

said, let's look at this further,

I accept you as I'm sitting here sitting here with you.

I love you, God loves you.

God still loves you, no matter what

you think you are from all of the stuff

that we've told you in our denomination

and the other denominations and all the mainline churches

have told you.

You are good, You are good and holy.

You are royal priesthood.

You are in a state of grace.

Other than anything else that you've done,

your homosexuality does not remove your state of grace.

So stop worrying and be yourself.

They also educated us.

They brought us to the latest investigations and the latest

theology, the people who were looking at this issue

from a theological standpoint, who

were investigating the holy books of the religions.

And showing us that homosexuality

is a fact of life, that it was not necessarily

the knee-jerk reaction of so many years of theology.

We'll take the Sodom and Gomorrah

story, in that it was not necessarily homosexuality,

but rather inhospitality.

And that was, in that day, tantamount to telling someone

not to draw them into your home, no matter who they were, they

were Bedouin, you know, world.

And inhospitality was a major--

the major sin, essentially.

And we did not know that.

We were not taught that.

We were not taught that in our religious upbringing

as Roman Catholics, anyway.

We were just taught Sodom and Gomorrah.

Couldn't even talked about what happened there.

But he destroyed it because people were so horrible

well somewhere somehow it always slipped out

that it was homosexuality.

Even if it was--

we were taught that even if God destroyed the city, so

to say, not because of inhospitality,

but the inhospitality was a rape, you know?

Rather than any kind of perversion of the norm.

They taught us-- we talked about norm and what norm was.

And we talked about Native Americans

and how the homosexual in that culture was revered,

it was generally the medicine man or the chief,

or the special person who had had gifts that were

different from the community.

And they set them aside and they supported them.

And they literally revered them, they were on a level,

they were wise.

And we had not known that.

We had never been taught that.

We were growing, we were the children again,

sitting in front of our teachers.

But those were the type of things

that were sought out by our chaplains and, you know,

brought to us either through them or through a national--

people around the country who would

come in and say, this is the latest and let me

tell you about this.

So there was hope.

And it was everything.

So the greatest contribution of Dignity,

it's great because the church represented the main prosecutor

or persecutor, both.

Because if-- they were in judgment,

they were the judges of whether or not

you are going to have eternal life.

Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: Which we all know is not true.

MARGARET MARY LAU: And so if you have

a doubt in your mind, no matter how natural you feel--

your person is, your personhood, being

a gay person or a lesbian.

No matter how accepting you are of yourself

for knowing that it is right, and seeing it

in your everyday life.

If you have that little twinge, or like that people who

hadn't been inside a church for many years,

figured they were totally--

they were lost.

This gave them a spark of hope

This gave the hope and it backed it up

with education and with love.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, thank you.

MARGARET MARY LAU: You're welcome.

It's interesting.

I had never thought--

I'd never thought of those things specifically the way

you focused me

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, I do want to go back

to one thing you said about Kevin say a little bit more

about the fire in him.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Okay

EVELYN BAILEY: What was it about Kevin Scahill that energized,

that brought people together, that created that environment

of, I'm home, it's OK, you are loved and you are cared for.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Kevin came with that.

Kevin was younger than I was and had a conviction about himself.

Kevin had that innate sense of, I'm OK, I am who I am.

He-- and I don't know whether youth

or the way he was brought up or his attitude you

know we went through the '60s and the '70s and '80s

and he was a child at the end of the '60s, if you will,

as far as his formative kind of years.

And he knew innately that he was OK.

And his church was telling him, you're not.

And his church was not only telling him that he was wrong,

but it was telling the entire world that every homosexual was

not OK.

And he was not going to let that stand.

It was injustice.

And he like me like all of the people who

walk through our doors, were crying to our church

and saying--

I think, this is my sense of Kevin,

that he would never verbalize, but he was--

I was crying for my nurturance, I

was crying for my church to embrace me.

He was demanding it.

(pause) There was a difference between us

in that sense because of my age and my upbringing,

and my home upbringing.

Now, wherever he came from, he had the power,

he had charisma, and very bright.

And could bring people to understanding

who did not understand homosexuality,

except on any level that they had seen.

They did not see it in the media.

It was not in the media then.

But what they were taught on the QT about people

in the '30s and '40s and '50s, the same way that--

and the medical community who considered it a, you know,

disorder, not a disorder, but a disease or maybe a mental

disorder up until '83 I think it was--

I don't know when that changed

--but you better shut it off because I lost it.

Where were we, we were?--

EVELYN BAILEY: Kevin.

MARGARET MARY LAU: Yeah, Kevin.

And the people that he would talk to

were the general public, were the people in our families,

were the people who were keeping us less than full human beings.

They were-- from the people who would write "faggot"

all over your house, to killing you, the whole gamut.

And he was able to intellectually bring them

to a point of understanding because he

was so bright and so driven.

And you know, the good Lord chose him

to start the eye in Rochester.

It was because of him that things got going.