Audio Interview, Tom Petrillo and Bill Reamy, March 15, 2012

BILL REAMY: Well you had said that homosexuality was listed

as a personality disorder in the DSM-III,

but it was actually listed as a personality disorder

in the DSM-II--

EVELYN BAILEY: Two.

BILL REAMY: --before that.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BILL REAMY: By the time the DSM-III

came around, homosexuality had been de-medicalized,

and so homosexuality was no longer a diagnosis.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BILL REAMY: This occurred in 1973.

But in its place, there was a diagnosis

of egodystonic homosexuality, which is just--

TOM PETRILLO: Translation please.

BILL REAMY: Which is--

Egodystonic-- Ego dash dystonic D-Y-S-T-O-N-I-C.

Egodystonic means you don't like it.

It means it doesn't clash with who you think you are.

So egodystonic homosexuality meant that you were gay,

but you were uncomfortable with it.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BILL REAMY: I remember early on when

I was working at a particular center, a counselor diagnosing

someone as having egodystonic homosexuality.

I talked with the guy, and there was nothing egodystonic

about it, and I said that.

He may be gay, but it's not egodystonic.

He's very, very comfortable with it.

I can tell you a little bit of the--

KEVIN INDOVINO: Can I just back up for a second?

BILL REAMY: Oh, sure.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Were you a psychologist, psychiatrist?

BILL REAMY: I am a psychiatrist.

I graduated from medical school in 1972.

I did an internship in Richmond, Virginia

at the medical college of Virginia, from '72 until '73.

I originally thought I was going to be

a surgeon like my big brother, but then I did my psychiatry

rotation and I got hooked.

And then I came up to the frozen north here

in '73 to do my residency at Strong,

and I thought I was going to go back down south again,

but I stayed.

KEVIN INDOVINO: OK good.

BILL REAMY: So it was right around the time I came up here

that homosexuality was removed as a diagnosis.

By the way, egodystonic homosexuality

is no longer a diagnosis.

By the time DSM-III-R came around, which I have a copy of,

I threw out my DSM-III, it was egodystonic homosexuality

was under other sexual disorders.

not otherwise specified.

It was under sexual disorders.

So one examination of that is being gay,

but not being comfortable with it.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BILL REAMY: No one even thinks about that

anymore except the diehards.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

Do you do recall, by any chance, when

you were first a resident at Strong, much talk

about this disorder?

I mean--

BILL REAMY: I was thinking about that,

and I would say that my times as a resident I

saw less in the way of discrimination

as just kind of neglect.

Just not really talking about it at all.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

BILL REAMY: I can tell you an experience

I had in coming to Rochester and my residency.

When I was in Richmond, Virginia,

I had a dysfunctional relationship,

as they say these days.

And the guy was pretty angry at me.

And I had been accepted for my residency up here,

and he called up here and he claimed that a patient of mine

had committed suicide-- that I caused a patient of mine

to commit suicide.

As a matter of fact, I did have a gay patient down in Richmond

who committed suicide.

And I was pretty upset about it.

And he told them that I was gay.

So they asked me to come up here, and I talked with them,

and I said, "No I didn't cause anyone to commit suicide,

but I am gay."

And they said, "That's great, come join us

for your residency, but just don't

talk about it because there are people here

who wouldn't understand."

So that's how I started out.

The message was, don't talk about things.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

OK.

BILL REAMY: By the way, the chairman

of the Department of Psychiatry in Richmond

said, "If for some reason, things don't work out,

you're perfectly welcome down here."

He was very, very supportive of me.

When I was a resident, I remember

one of the patients I had was a female to male transsexual.

And I guess I handled it pretty well,

and actually we presented this person--

no did we?

We might have presented the person at Grand Prouds.

I think so.

| don't know everyone else seemed

to be kind of thrown by this, as if this

was a big stressful thing.

And I remember my supervisor just

thinking it was so great that I was able to handle it.

Now I was always a very shy person

and I wasn't great for presenting and all like that.

I guess I came through it pretty well.

Oh, go ahead.

EVELYN BAILEY: In our kind of research in this,

we have, in the very early days of the Alliance,

the Alliance actually began at the University

of Rochester with the Gay Liberation Front, in 1970.

BILL REAMY: That's right.

Uh-huh.

EVELYN BAILEY: The question that arises in my own mind

is, we have looked--

and this is in reference to legal matters as well--

John Noble, whom I think you know,

put us on to the Bertillon Files down in the city archives.

The Bertillon Files are the police records

from 1930 to 1960.

One of the members of our committee, Todd Gustavson,

is an attorney.

And he has shared with us that he

has a friend who was arrested in a gay bar for loitering.

TOM PETRILLO: When we get to talking to me,

I can tell you plenty of stories like that--

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

TOM PETRILLO: --from the early sixties.

EVELYN BAILEY: Prior, we also have looked at WE.

Do you know WE is?

WE was the police record sheet.

It was like a local National Enquirer.

And it was sold at--

TOM PETRILLO: I'd forgotten that, yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: --downtown at the bookstore, the main--

TOM PETRILLO: Like the--

KEVIN INDOVINO: World News.

TOM PETRILLO: World News.

World Wide News.

BILL REAMY: World Wide News.

EVELYN BAILEY: World Wide News.

And there is some reference in the early sixties

to homosexuals becoming involved in criminal behavior.

Wife, two lesbians getting upset,

and the police having to come, and so forth.

But in the Bertillon Files, we never

saw anything in terms of homosexual behavior

being a cause for arrest.

And it brought to my mind, did the police

pick up people, and bring them say to Strong,

to the psychiatric unit there?

Thinking, well this is a mental disorder,

and should we bring them to the hospital versus arrest them?

BILL REAMY: I never saw anything of that,

either when I was working on the psychiatric floor,

or when I was doing the midnight shift

in the psychiatric emergency department.

I did not see anything like that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Then there were many mentions

of arrests for loitering.

TOM PETRILLO: Yes, that was the key thing.

I don't want to interrupt your train of thought.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

Go ahead.

TOM PETRILLO: I graduated from law school

in '65, and the first two years I

was working for the city of Rochester

in its law department.

And one of the things we did at that time,

it doesn't sound-- it didn't make sense then,

it didn't make sense now, thinking back.

We actually, even thought we were

the civil branch of the law department,

we gave training to some of the police recruits.

And I had the distinction of being

asked to do a couple of those classes.

And I very, very clearly remember

that, it was a two-day session.

And at the end of lunchtime on the first day,

we all just sat around, and there's

all these guys ready to go out the in the street

now, ready to go out in the street.

They were all talking about this raid

that had occurred here in one of the bars in the city,

and that there had been a lot of people picked up for loitering.

And they were having a great time, I wish I had been there.

I wish we had been on that one.

That would have been great.

That would have been super.

Now, have to understand at that time, being gay,

I had no idea, that was not even--

it didn't even occur to me, not on any conscious level, anyway.

But I did say to them, I said, "Well,

what's so funny about that?

I mean they weren't doing any harm, were they?"

And they said, "Yeah, but they're all perverts."

I mean that was the term.

If they use that once, they use it a hundred times.

"They're all perverts.

We got to get them off the streets."

KEVIN INDOVINO: This was in the late sixties, did you say?

TOM PETRILLO: '66 to '67.

Something like that.

Probably '67, early '67, something

like that, when a group of police recruits

were finishing up their training.

And I always thought about that, when later you

hear about the police running in gay people loitering.

And I'm thinking to myself, way back even

when they they were recruits, they had this in mind

that this was OK.

This was great to do.

And it was acceptable at that time.

Now, I don't remember what bar it was, or anything like that,

but I do remember that very distinctly.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

TOM PETRILLO: And then of course, two years later, I

went into private practice, and I was telling Bill

this this morning.

One of my very first clients was someone,

a young man who had worked for the city of Rochester.

That's how I met him in one of the city departments.

And he came to see me.

And he said, "I had been to my mother and father's lawyers,

one of the big law firms in town--"

I won't name the law firm "--one of the big law firms in town,

to do a will."

And he said, "They spent more time

telling me how I should go somewhere

to cure myself, and not embarrassing

my parents, than they did spending

telling me what I was thinking about and putting in my will."

He said, "Would you do a will for me?"

And I said, "Sure, I don't have any problems."

And worked with him, a very nice person, and worked with him.

And that really began my doing work for gay clients.

He told someone.

That was in '67, probably '67, no that

would have to be in '68, because I

had gone into private practice.

And over the years, I had developed

a lot of gay gay patients.

That was even before I was even, my life, was even on the radar.

That came in '78.

By the time I retired in '95, it was about 70 percent

gay clients.

BILL REAMY: If I can just latch into what you're saying,

I think it's also known that gay people, for a long while,

have not had equal access to mental health services, just

because they were afraid of discrimination,

or just couldn't find someone they were comfortable talking

to--

EVELYN BAILEY: Well your comment about the comment

that the head of psychiatry made to you

when you came to Rochester.

"Just don't talk about it."

The silence that encased the gay community,

I think I would like you to talk a little bit

about the difficulties that that presented in people's lives.

And not revealing any one person, or particular client,

but to talk about the environment in the sixties,

and in the seventies, medically profession-wise,

and also just in general.

BILL REAMY: As someone trying to learn psychiatry,

I really had no one to discuss this with,

or to go to for guidance.

I really felt awkward dealing with gay patients

myself, because I didn't know how I was supposed to act,

or how much I was supposed to disclose.

Actually, my feeling of isolation

led me to, when I was back down in Washington DC,

to call up Frank Kameny.

Are you familiar with the name?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BILL REAMY: It was probably '76.

I was feeling very alone, and I actually said, "Could I

come over and talk?"

And I said, "I've been trying to get a support group going

for psychiatrists, and I'm not able to do that.

Do you know of any group?"

And he put me in contact with--

told me about a group that was getting

started through the American Psychiatric Association.

So I went to my first meeting was in Toronto in 1977.

There had actually been people would get together informally

at bars prior to that, they referred to it as the Gay PA.

But this was a group that the next year

became formalized as what is now known as the Association of Gay

and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

And I've been--

TOM PETRILLO: You were one of the charter members,

if I recall?

BILL REAMY: I'm a charter member.

TOM PETRILLO: You were treated as one of the charter members.

BILL REAMY: Kind of marginalized now because I'm old,

but I've been a member since then.

Go ahead.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Clarify something for me.

When you were seeking out some sort

of support group for psychiatrists,

did you mean for gay psychiatrists or psychiatrists

in general?

BILL REAMY: Gay psychiatrists.

As a gay psychiatrist, I had no guidance.

I did not--

I felt very much alone-- and I did not know how to--

TOM PETRILLO: No colleagues to discuss things with.

BILL REAMY: Yeah no colleagues, to discuss things with.

TOM PETRILLO: I'm sure there were

some other gay psychiatrists around but--

BILL REAMY: Never got anything going in Rochester.

TOM PETRILLO: I know.

You had difficulty with that, I had

difficulty trying to get the gay lawyers together way back then.

It was impossible.

BILL REAMY: I mean, the other gay psychiatrists in Rochester

don't belong to the AGLP either.

TOM PETRILLO: It's still a--

BILL REAMY: Yeah.

Frank Kameny was one of the people who was instrumental,

by the way, in getting the APA to change the diagnosis.

I don't know how much you know of the history,

but here's something I printed off

about how he helped disrupt the APA meeting in San

Francisco in 1971.

KEVIN INDOVINO: How do you spell his last name?

Do you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Kameny?

K-A-M-E-N-Y.

TOM PETRILLO: OK.

So who was he, for my benefit?

BILL REAMY: OK, Frank Kameny--

TOM PETRILLO: (unintelligible)

BILL REAMY: --was an astronomer, a PhD astronomer,

who was employed by the federal government,

and then he was fired by the civil service administration

for being gay.

He finally got an apology fifty-two or fifty-three years

later.

EVELYN BAILEY: Um-hm.

BILL REAMY: He founded the Washington Mattachine Society.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

BILL REAMY: He worked with Barbara Gittings.

I met both of them.

The AGLP gave them awards.

I finally got a chance to thank Dr. Kameny.

EVELYN BAILEY: And the Mattachine Society, you see,

was identified as a communist group.

TOM PETRILLO: I heard that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Which really made J. Edgar Hoover's job

a little more overwhelming because they were so many.

I mean, every city, after Stonewall, within two years,

four hundred Gay Liberation Front groups

came into existence.

Many of them offshoots of the Mattachine Society groups

within those communities, because that group

had as a major plank, equality and justice for all.

And they were not discriminatory in terms of whether it

was gay, Hispanic, black.

It didn't matter.

So the seeds of liberation were really

fermenting in the Mattachine Society long before Stonewall.

BILL REAMY: Right, right.

EVELYN BAILEY: And once that happened,

gay men and women latched onto that as an already existing

group, and then branched off.

So it was--

BILL REAMY: When the Mattachine Society picketed,

they did it in suits and ties, and dresses.

Women wore dresses.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

BILL REAMY: You know it was very appropriate back then.

EVELYN BAILEY: Because the Buffalo Niagara Frontier

Mattachine Society, Cornell University

were the speakers in October of 1970,

at the University of Rochester, that began the Gay Liberation

Front in Rochester.

And Bob Osborn, who was a physicist,

it's interesting because Kameny was a scientist.

TOM PETRILLO: (unintelligible)

EVELYN BAILEY: Osborn was a scientist.

And these people seemed to have the energy

to bring people together and create an organization.

BILL REAMY: He was kind of an irascible, prickly sort

of person.

He didn't show many warm fuzzies,

but he probably had a warm heart underneath.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

Yeah.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Interesting.

When you arrived here in Rochester,

outside of your professional life,

what were you finding in the community,

as far as the gay community goes?

Did you find it--

did you find it easy to find?

BILL REAMY: Well that's it.

How did you find the gay community?

No I didn't find it easy to find.

In a sense, I thought Rochester was

almost a little more conservative than Richmond,

Virginia was, if you can believe that.

And the only way to really find it

was eventually finding out where the gay bars were,

but I was a little scared to go to them even.

KEVIN INDOVINO: On a professional level

or a personal level?

BILL REAMY: Well, I was pretty shy back then.

On a personal level.

Yeah.

I'm not sure how I eventually met a few people, but I did.

And then once you meet some people, you meet others.

EVELYN BAILEY: May I ask where you and Tom met?

TOM PETRILLO: We met just about thirty-four years ago,

something like that.

Here in Rochester.

A friend of yours introduced us, I think.

BILL REAMY: A friend introduced us.

Yeah.

TOM PETRILLO: Yeah, we've been together thirty-four years,

I think we got married last July.

Oh, October first we got married.

EVELYN BAILEY: Congratulations.

TOM PETRILLO: Thank you.

BILL REAMY: Yeah, just to tell you

how much things have changed, on Wednesdays I consult now

to AIDS Care, and when I let them know

I was getting married, I got congratulations

from everyone, and a big card that everyone signed.

You know, it's just the opposite of the way things

were when I came to Rochester.

EVELYN BAILEY: Uh-huh.

In your practice, dealing with clients,

did you have a sense there was more and more serious

problems earlier than later?

I mean, I guess what I'm trying to get

at is, has the environment changed so that people are more

comfortable being who they are, and being gay today,

than they were forty years ago?

BILL REAMY: To some extent.

I mean there are still people who

were pretty closeted, pretty private.

Maybe not as much as there were way back then.

It's a little hard to tell, because I

know that there were patients who sought me out.

I didn't advertise myself as being gay,

but there was word of mouth.

As I used to say, it's not public knowledge,

but it's common knowledge.

So people sought me out, and they were

comfortable talking with me.

But I don't have the sense these days that--

I just closed down my private practice,

I just retired as of March first,

so I was trying to get my patients into other therapists.

I did not see that any of my gay patients

were adamant that they had to have a gay psychiatrist,

or a gay therapist.

So yeah, I guess the answer is yes.

There's a lot more comfort, now.

EVELYN BAILEY: Um-hm.

Um-hm.

Yeah.

BILL REAMY: I guess there is a lot more understanding

that straight people could be supportive now.

You know we bandied around the term, internalized homophobia,

but it is true that there is a lot of self-hate going on.

And because of that, people just couldn't assume that--

you were kind of caught in a bind.

You couldn't assume that a straight person would

be able to understand you or treat you with respect

because you hated yourself.

On the other hand, if you went to a gay therapist,

you didn't think that they were particularly good because they

gay and of course gay isn't very good.

I think some of that went on.

I also think that people ended up going to a bad therapist

just so they could be going to a gay therapist.

There was a time when anyone could call themselves

a psychotherapist.

You didn't necessarily have to have

any credentials about that.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah, I remember coming out in the 1980s,

late eighties, seemed like everybody was in therapy.

It seemed like to me that was the thing to do.

I never did, but maybe I should have, but I don't know.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well I went into therapy,

but not because I was gay.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But to his point,

it seemed like everybody was also

going to the same therapist.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, yes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: And I wouldn't want

to go to that guy if he knew everyone else, you know?

BILL REAMY: Yes there was one psychiatrist

who has lots and lots of gay patients.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: And a couple of women--

BILL REAMY: Including me.

EVELYN BAILEY: --who did also.

BILL REAMY: Pardon?

EVELYN BAILEY: And a couple of women,

who were not psychiatrist, but therapists,

who had a very large clientele of gay clients.

Horace Lethbridge.

BILL REAMY: Oh I knew Horace.

TOM PETRILLO: Sure I knew Horace.

EVELYN BAILEY: In the Wellesley Center.

At the time, was I think, a godsend for many people.

BILL REAMY: He was a kind person.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

Perhaps you can speak just a little about the difference

in being able to find gay resources today,

say versus when you were first here in Rochester.

What has made the difference in terms

of accessing some of the, not only medical services,

but it seems every time you turn around,

there's another group that comes into existence to meet

a need within the community.

There was the gay men's chorus.

There was sisters, an African-American group.

There were women's groups.

And people knew about those, but only

if they were able to make connections,

I think, with either people who were a part of those groups,

or people in the community whom they knew.

TOM PETRILLO: I think that applies to all resources.

I mean back then, I can't speak to the medical,

he can only speak to that.

But back then, there wasn't a Gay Alliance.

There wasn't a Gay Alliance.

There weren't too many private groups either up there.

I'm sure there weren't any gay lawyers association.

We tried, but it never worked.

I mean, but I think now you've got established organizations.

Anybody comes to Rochester, if they are gay,

probably the first thing they do is pick up a copy somewhere,

in a bar somewhere, or in a restaurant somewhere.

You know, the newspaper, The Closet.

BILL REAMY: Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

It's everywhere.

You can get--

TOM PETRILLO: That was never the case.

KEVIN INDOVINO: With a directory of all the resources.

TOM PETRILLO: Right, right.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

TOM PETRILLO: And you can even call the library now

and get a list of resources for gay people.

And there was a lot of national publications

that can even focus you into certain places

here within the city.

So I think that applied to everything, everything.

All resources that gays and lesbians needed.

(unintelligible).

BILL REAMY: I think in terms of finding medical resources it's

still word of mouth.

And hit and miss, the way it always has been.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Let me ask you this, Tom,

we're not trying to ignore you because we're going to get you.

BILL REAMY: No, I want to hear his stories.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But, when we got hit with the AIDS pandemic,

BILL REAMY: Yes.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Aside from the biological needs

of dealing with that health crisis, that

also perpetuated a greater need for psychological care.

Did it put your profession more at the forefront?

Of, OK there's medical treatment that's needed for these people,

but also, did it come to light also

that there's a lot of mental health

issues for the gay community?

TOM PETRILLO: I know that the sense

of loss among a lot of gay people was intense.

I think I saw this more with people I knew in other cities

like Philadelphia, New York rather than in Rochester.

But the loss and kind of trauma that some people had at

losing so many people who are close to them.

I don't remember seeing that as much here in Rochester.

KEVIN INDOVINO: But there was the AIDS crisis,

you know, again there was the whole medical and death

side that we really need to deal with,

but it also perpetuated things politically

for the gay community.

It perpetuated things socially for the gay community.

From again, the psychological profession,

did you see an influx of people seeking mental health

treatment?

Did it bring mental health care up

to a higher level of visibility for the gay community?

BILL REAMY: Not here, not here.

Maybe in some other cities, but I didn't really see that here.

On the other hand, I probably only

had a couple of patients who were HIV-positive

back then anyway.

Maybe if you went into the history of places

like AIDS Rochester they might be

able to tell you a different story.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.

Yes, from my earlier comment of late eighties, early nineties,

where it seemed like everybody I knew was in therapy somewhere,

how did that come about?

How did it become almost a trend in the gay community,

that if you weren't in therapy you were almost an oddball?

BILL REAMY: No kidding?

KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.

TOM PETRILLO: That's news to me.

I never saw that either.

EVELYN BAILEY: The mere fact that AIDS

was identified as the--

TOM PETRILLO: Gay disease yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: --gay plague, and that terminology again,

put on individuals who take that into themselves.

Certainly internalized homophobia,

but also self-hatred to the point of suicide.

BILL REAMY: You deserved it because you were a drug user,

or because you were gay.

You weren't like one of those innocent victims

that they talked about in the newspapers.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

TOM PETRILLO: I also think that families

began to put more pressure on their gay sons and daughters.

I don't think back then, I don't know if they really accepted.

Not too many people really were that accepting.

There were some, of course, but a lot, you know,

that was just not an acceptable thing for your child

to be gay or lesbian, and you try to hide it,

and all this other thing.

But I have a recollection of having people tell me,

at least, not mental health.

People tell me that when AIDS became the thing you talked

about constantly, some parents that had family members that

had been OK with our strange brother or cousin, now

were pushing much stronger to get into therapy,

to straighten yourself out, otherwise you will die.

I see much more pressure.

I remember that.

I remember clients telling me that.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well and there also arose

communities that could cure.

Especially religious communities proclaimed that you could

you could get cleaned, and change

because you needed to pray or you

needed to go through these rituals

to exorcise the demons of gayness.

TOM PETRILLO: I think that was always there.

I think that was the first gay person ever came out

to a family member, I think there was always that.

If they tried to tap into the gay person,

or the family tried to tap into religious sources,

there was always that.

I do honestly believe, though, that when the AIDS crisis came

on, the religious groups on this side

suddenly got really revved up.

This is something, wow, we can step into this.

We can show how great we can be to cure these poor souls.

I really think that just revved them up.

And then families in turn began to take on that same--

well I guess my religious experience tells me

that I guess my son or daughter can be cured.

Now, push him hard when you do it.

I don't doubt that that was the case.

BILL REAMY: The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists

actually put out a movie, a DVD, called Abomination,

about the former gay movement.

About the attempts to convert gay people and the harm

that it's done.

EVELYN BAILEY: So the medical profession,

had certainly the overriding mandate to heal, to care for,

to help individuals actualize themselves.

But then there was this wall outside of the medical

profession, the societal pressures,

and the legal legalities that said, no you cannot do that.

The sodomy laws weren't repealed until 1975, '76.

TOM PETRILLO: Close to '80.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Close to '80.

So--

TOM PETRILLO: But in all fairness,

the last several years before the repeal,

they weren't being enforced.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

TOM PETRILLO: They could, if you got

a nasty soul who wanted to enforce them,

a cop or something, he could.

But they were usually, in those last few years,

people would get picked up in parks and things

like that, and a lot of the cases,

depending on who was in the district attorney's

office at the time.

A lot depended on that.

As to whether or not they just got, OK go your way,

don't (unintelligible), or they'd actually

take them to court.

And the courts, of course, in this-- well

I don't want to take away from your discussion

of the medical thing.

BILL REAMY: No, no.

KEVIN INDOVINO: No, this is actually--

TOM PETRILLO: Courts have been very, very slow

to accept homosexual behavior as something other

than something they ought to look at very carefully to be

sure it's not going to interfere with something

that they're doing.

There was a situation, we had a young lawyer,

this is in probably the early to mid-eighties when I was

in court one morning, and there had been a lawyer that--

the word around was he was gay.

Somehow it got to the judge, apparently,

because this is one of those--

If you know the legal system, it was in the morning,

they call the cases, you walk in,

and there's all the lawyers, all the cases for the day

are there.

So there's probably thirty, fourty lawyers in the room.

And this guy was maybe a minute late, at most.

And they called his case.

He was a minute late.

And they came in, and they said, don't want me to name him.

He said, from the bench the judge is, "Oh Mr. so-and-so,

you're late.

Out with the boys again last night?"

And everybody just broke up laughing,

and it was pretty clear.

He eventually had to leave town, and moved to a different place

in New York state.

It was that kind of thing.

I remember having a case in the, try to get my time frames,

it's a little hard but, again in the mid-eighties maybe,

in Surrogate Court, where someone

had dared to leave their partner a very

sizable part of their estate because their family had

totally excluded them.

Judge set that aside.

He said by the very nature of the relationship,

it's undue influence.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

TOM PETRILLO: There were a lot of cases like.

You didn't hear about them, because in Surrogate Court,

it's not a court that is open publicly.

But the lawyers who were there sure that that was going on.

There were cases like that.

And of course, you know--

KEVIN INDOVINO: So even if this guy left, in his will he left--

TOM PETRILLO: Yeah.

That's right.

So you can set aside a will in New York

if there's undue influence and judge it

by very nature of the relationship, it's

undue influence.

That's it.

It made no sense, of course, but he

was able to do that and get away with it.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Wow.

TOM PETRILLO: So I'm sure there was

a lot of pressure on lawyers who were certainly

anyone who was openly gay, that was the wrong thing

to be in the legal profession at that time.

I was not openly gay.

I didn't even come out of the closet till '78

And I wasn't openly gay with the legal profession.

I was within my law firm.

That was easy enough.

No problems there.

BILL REAMY: Poor guy, I caught you just after you came out.

You never had a chance to sow you wild oats.

TOM PETRILLO: I know.

How do you know I didn't?

But, that was a very difficult time period for anybody

who was a gay lawyer, or a client, who for some reason

you had to disclose the person was gay.

Certainly as custody cases came along.

Oh Lord, I mean it was replete with cases where people were

denied custody, or were, it wasn't so much denied custody,

I saw a few of those.

But it was mostly restricted custody.

They didn't trust them.

You might abuse your child.

You're gay, pedophile, abuse your child,

so it was only custody with somebody else present.

That sort of thing.

And I myself handled, oh I hate to say it, three

or four or five, at least, cases where a partner died,

and the family excluded that person from attending

the wake, the funeral.

I remember the first one I had was a couple that had been

together for forty-two years.

I only remember that because it was just

indelibly marked in my mind.

These people had been together forty-two years, two women.

And the one who survived was not allowed to attend the funeral.

So I got in a little bit of trouble myself

because they came to me and said, "Can we fight it?"

I said, "We can go to court and fight it,

but by time we get it into court everything,

you can be long buried."

I said, "Here's what you do.

You put a death notice in the newspaper,

hold your own service."

I told a lot of people that.

And they had to do that.

Now, of course, the laws changed, thank god.

We don't have to worry about that.

But that was a problem for a lot of people.

KEVIN INDOVINO: Do you remember about what time

over the past half century when the laws began to change?

When the courts are finally starting to recognize,

well you know what these people were together

for forty-two years, there are some rights to deal with here?

TOM PETRILLO: To a great extent it

depended on what courts you were in, and the age of the judge.

As younger people begin to take positions in the judiciary--

remember back then, when I started in '65,

you didn't even run for a judgeship

till you were sixty yourself.

Thirty and forty-year-old people did not

run for judgeships, or at least not very often.

But the older judges hung on to these old ideas

for a very long time.

As you begin to get younger judges

in there, different generations, you

began to see the relaxation.

I mean they didn't look for a reason.

If there was a reason they would use it,

but they did not look for a reason, like it was initially.

When I started in practice, I mean,

you know, it was suicide to say you were a gay lawyer.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was the very first case

that you took on that was an issue of gay rights?

TOM PETRILLO: The funeral.

EVELYN BAILEY: The funeral.

TOM PETRILLO: That was the very first case.

I hadn't been in private practice more than three,

four years.

And the person came in and was excluded.

This wasn't the couple that was together forty-two years,

because that one just stayed in my mind, because that was--

Anybody with common sense ought to say, "OK, they've

been together forty-two years, I don't care what they are,

but they ought to keep them together."

And I had a case like that in which I argued with a family.

And I remember I wasn't out.

I wasn't even thinking--

this is kind of a transition for me, as we go along,

I'm thinking of my own history here.

(unintelligible) I knew people, in the sense

that I couldn't find anything wrong with gay people

at the time.

It didn't make sense to me.

So at that time there had been a few, mostly

in New York City, a few, as you say, a few marches,

a few groups getting together.

And I remember saying to the funeral director,

I said, "You have a choice.

You can either let her in to see her partner,"

I knew I could never convince the family.

I said, "or we could have people picket your--"

I don't even know whether they could get people together

to do that back then, but I threatened that.

And so he let her at least come in, when the family had gone,

and spend some time.

And she hid in the back of the church.

Disguised herself, and was there for the service.

But I mean that was not uncommon.

And very early, I began to realize as a lawyer

that you had to develop, in legal documents,

you to think every single legal decision