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
- you made for a gay person had to be thought in terms of,
- how can they attack this?
- How can I put something in there, in this document,
- to keep that from happening, or to minimizing it happening?
- I remember for a number of years,
- if you went to a lawyer who knew what the heck
- he was talking about, your will would not
- look like your neighbor's will.
- Let me tell you something.
- You would have all kinds of protective clauses in there
- to try to protect the person.
- You don't even need that anymore now, really.
- I retired in '95, and I was still putting a lot of them
- in there, just because it made sense to do it.
- You never know what you're going to face,
- but a lot of them really still weren't necessary.
- The whole atmosphere had changed a lot.
- But employment problems were common.
- I mean very, very common.
- Someone would come in.
- Someone found out I was gay.
- Now they're mistreating me.
- People being fired, and you couldn't do anything.
- New York was an at-will state.
- You could not do anything about that.
- All you could do is try to cajole
- the supervisor, or something, into recognizing
- this person had done a good job.
- And we want to fire this person.
- And most cases, I lost.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Can you define for me what is at-will?
- TOM PETRILLO: You can fire for any reason,
- as long as it's not discriminatory.
- And at that time, that was not one of the protected classes,
- being gay.
- I mean, they couldn't fire if you were a black.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Because it was a protected class.
- TOM PETRILLO: It was a protected class.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- TOM PETRILLO: But being gay or lesbian
- was not protected class.
- And so at-will means you--
- BILL REAMY: You once referred a client to me
- who was HIV-positive, and who was traumatized because he
- needed some surgery, and the surgeon
- refused to do the surgery when he found out
- he was HIV-positive.
- TOM PETRILLO: This was right after the AIDS
- crisis had become common knowledge,
- the discussion, everything.
- And of course, the medical profession,
- you can make (unintelligible), but this
- was the medical profession, a lot of people
- became very frightened to handle clients
- if they thought there was even the possibility
- that they may have AIDS.
- And he had a very serious illness that required surgery,
- and the surgeon wouldn't operate on him.
- He finally found somebody, but--
- that the case you're talking about?
- That one there?
- BILL REAMY: Well I don't know if it was a real serious problem.
- But you kind of litigated it, and all
- he really wanted was an apology from the surgeon.
- TOM PETRILLO: Right.
- Right.
- BILL REAMY: I have the sense that probably there
- was more discrimination in other medical specialties
- than there was in psychiatry.
- I mean, I heard people telling me
- about being chewed out their primary care physicians.
- I remember hearing once about a gynecologist who was thrown out
- of the practice he was in because the word got around
- that he was gay, and women patients
- were afraid that he was going to spread AIDS to them.
- So there was a lot of discrimination around.
- I think, but I just was fortunate not to be--
- TOM PETRILLO: Your specialty wasn't as bad.
- BILL REAMY: Yeah, yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, just by the nature of your specialty,
- I mean you can't be discriminative, in theory.
- BILL REAMY: Yeah, but I still had
- to teach people that there were certain things you
- didn't say to patients.
- You didn't ask a man, "Do you have a girlfriend?"
- You say, "Do you have a romantic interest?"
- I mean just there was the assumption of hetrosexuality,
- and that, by its very nature, kept people from talking.
- I've also joked with Tom, or remarked to Tom
- that Stonewall really seems to be
- a dividing line in terms of people's concepts
- of themselves.
- Whether you grew up before Stonewall, or you
- grew up after Stonewall.
- People who grew up with Stonewall,
- and don't really remember the bad old days
- seem to have a better opinion of themselves.
- And don't have the guilt and the biting.
- TOM PETRILLO: But also they're sometimes
- very impatient with other GLBT people who,
- for one reason or another, don't really want to come out fully
- to the public.
- BILL REAMY: Right.
- Right.
- TOM PETRILLO: They can become very, very impatient
- with that, because they really don't know what that person had
- gone through growing up, in a totally different atmosphere.
- BILL REAMY: Also that there still
- is quite a bit of discrimination and hiding
- in the Hispanic and--
- TOM PETRILLO: Black communities.
- BILL REAMY: --the black communities.
- EVELYN BAILEY: The Patients Bill of Rights
- came into existence in the late eighties, early nineties?
- TOM PETRILLO: I don't remember (unintelligible)
- when it came into effect.
- I never really--
- EVELYN BAILEY: But even today, in certain hospitals
- and certain clinics, you will hear
- the story of not being able to visit
- a partner because the family is in opposition to that.
- That story is less heard today.
- But during the AIDS crisis, that was a major, major problem
- for couples who were hospitalized.
- TOM PETRILLO: That brings back a recollection of a case in--
- timing is, let me think.
- It would have to have been about '84,
- '85, when there was a young fellow,
- he was probably in his thirties, was in the hospital.
- Not with AIDS, it was something very serious.
- But the fear was all there, did he really have AIDS?
- Maybe he really has AIDS.
- His parents were convinced he had AIDS.
- He did not.
- It was totally different.
- And anyway, he is a partner of a few years-- wasn't long-term,
- but a few years--
- wanted to visit him.
- And the family instructed everybody
- in the hospital this was not to happen.
- But the interesting thing was, I happened
- to know, by just a chance, that the surgeon--
- or the hospital surgeon, not private, necessarily--
- had a gay son, and was pretty much OK with that.
- So I called the surgeon, and I said,
- "I know you're not at the hospital
- to see this patient on a regular daily basis as the surgeon,
- but you do come in and check on him."
- I said, "Do you really think it's fair, what they're doing?"
- I said, "Can't you do something about it?"
- And he did.
- He somehow, I don't know what he said,
- I don't know how he did it.
- But he was able to go visit.
- He couldn't visit when the family was there,
- but that's OK.
- He didn't want to visit when the rest of the family was there,
- but he could go and visit his friend.
- I just got a lot of cases.
- Remember Tony Green?
- BILL REAMY: Um-hm.
- TOM PETRILLO: Tony and I are--
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- TOM PETRILLO: --He's an old buddy of mine.
- You know and he knew everybody and everything in town.
- EVELYN BAILEY: All married.
- TOM PETRILLO: He would call me constantly.
- My friend had a problem with something.
- The bartenders knew everything.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, he was--
- TOM PETRILLO: Great guy.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --a great guy.
- Yes.
- Did you attend his roast?
- TOM PETRILLO: Yeah, the only thing
- that was sad about his life is they--
- BILL REAMY: The funeral.
- TOM PETRILLO: --screwed him over on his funeral.
- Some people decided to turn this into a big event
- for themselves, and not for him.
- We had to cancel the (unintelligible) funeral.
- That big Episcopal service.
- Tony Green--
- BILL REAMY He wanted a simple service.
- TOM PETRILLO: He wanted a simple service.
- He said, "I don't want people who said--"
- He'd gotten very, very thin.
- He had AIDS.
- He died of AIDS.
- He got very, very thin.
- He says, "I can't sit very long on the seat,
- a lot of my friends can't sit very long.
- I don't want a long--
- I want an in and out."
- Well, they turned it into this huge elaborate--
- well, that's another issue.
- I was so angry about that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I think I met him probably
- no more than maybe four or five months before he died.
- TOM PETRILLO: The last years, he suffered.
- And you know, this is what happens, I guess,
- when you don't have family, or a very close partner.
- He had a lot of friends.
- But they were friends in the bar.
- He was a bartender.
- And he was--
- I won't say he was abandoned by a lot of his friends,
- but they certainly did not come around to visit him at all.
- And I remember Paula Sylvester.
- Do you remember her from AIDS Care?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- TOM PETRILLO: She and I spent a lot of time
- going over to visit him and feeding him.
- We were about the only two people
- that saw the need for it.
- We weren't there as much as we should have, either.
- But, you know, we saw the need for it.
- And it's one of those things people
- just never able to realize what he needed.
- EVELYN BAILEY: No, and that was a time
- when the women's community really
- bridged the gap, because I would bring meals to people.
- Claire would bring meals to people.
- We would visit people.
- And the lesbians became the caretakers of the gay men.
- TOM PETRILLO: I hadn't realized that.
- BILL REAMY: Oh yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And that that brought together those two
- factions, because separatism and feminism
- were the antithesis of befriending a gay man or a man
- at all.
- TOM PETRILLO: Certainly back then,
- there was this wall between the gay community and lesbian
- community.
- Once communities begin to develop,
- then you could define them as communities.
- There were always groups of people,
- but there was always that barrier between.
- I mean, even now, in some places,
- there is a barrier between them.
- EVELYN BAILEY: There is.
- BILL REAMY: Oh, I made up my mind a long time ago
- that because the lesbian community was so supportive
- during the AIDS crisis, that I sure
- was going to support breast cancer research.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And HPA, Tony Green--
- TOM PETRILLO: Oh, yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --was the face of HPA.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Oh, that's where I met him.
- EVELYN BAILEY: For many, many years--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: One of his last dining for a dollar events.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --and Jim Black.
- TOM PETRILLO: I was part of the HPA.
- I was one of the officers.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- BILL REAMY: We (unintelligible) few dinners.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- TOM PETRILLO: I handled the finances for them.
- EVELYN BAILEY: That created more issues
- because every everyone's eating habits came into play.
- We had a dinner, Claire and I had a dinner once,
- where we served fresh fruit and vegetables.
- But not a few.
- Huge plates.
- And people get into, I have to clean my plate.
- I can't leave any food on the plate, and I'm thinking,
- oh god.
- TOM PETRILLO: HPA was a great thing,
- because it scooped in a lot of straight people.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Oh yeah.
- TOM PETRILLO: I mean at that time
- it was the biggest thing you could do.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It was a safe way for them to get involved.
- TOM PETRILLO: Yes it was.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- TOM PETRILLO: It was a safe way, and it coughed up
- dollars, which is good too.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- TOM PETRILLO: But I also think, I
- don't know to what extent that really happened.
- But I also sensed that when people went downtown
- that night, and partied with a lot of gay people,
- that some of their, some of the stigmatism of gay people,
- you know, being these strange people who run around
- with strange clothes.
- And looking and acting strange, I think some of that
- fell away for some people.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well it became it became
- part of the entertainment.
- Part of it was like, oh I want to go down
- and see the outrageous drag queens
- and see what they're doing.
- TOM PETRILLO: But also, in addition to that,
- I think they also--
- you're right, they did want to do that too.
- There are some who probably wanted only to do that.
- But there were other people who socialized,
- maybe for the first time, with a group of gay people.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- BILL REAMY: But don't you think it was strange
- that there was this huge gathering, the biggest
- fundraiser outside of New York City, and for a while
- it got scarcely any press.
- TOM PETRILLO: I know.
- BILL REAMY: No one knew that it was going on.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Because after a while it became old news.
- TOM PETRILLO: Well Bill's talking about the beginning.
- BILL REAMY: At the beginning.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, yeah because they
- didn't understand it.
- TOM PETRILLO: That's right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: They didn't understand what it was.
- But once it became the event that,
- if you were anybody in Rochester,
- and you were not somehow connected,
- or just planning on attending this event,
- then you felt left out.
- I mean it became one of those events,
- that if you were anybody Rochester
- you needed to be part of that event.
- TOM PETRILLO: And like all good events after a while
- it wore off.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.
- TOM PETRILLO: And that's OK.
- So that was good.
- That was OK, because that meant you were very successful.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Well the passion that began
- was the gay community's passion.
- Because there were no services, there
- was no money coming down the pipeline
- for either medical treatment, or research.
- And the gay community had people that couldn't pay for AZT,
- couldn't pay for the drugs.
- Couldn't go out and buy food to feed themselves.
- And that's where HPA, I mean that's one of the major things
- that it did.
- It took care of the needs, paid rent for people
- who couldn't work anymore.
- TOM PETRILLO: And it did one other thing
- that most people probably don't even think about,
- but I thought it was important.
- It took care of your pets.
- And to a lot of gay people, that was very, very, very important.
- They were sick and they couldn't afford to pay the dog food.
- And I remember HPA, we put a lot of money to different people
- to help that.
- And to a lot of people just laugh, and say
- that's not that important.
- But to a lot of people it was very important,
- because that's all they had.
- Relatives had left them, family had left them
- because they were gay.
- They had friends sure, but you know friends were there
- some of the time.
- But the old pet was there all the time.
- And that became a far more important part
- of people's lives than you really think.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I had a friend of mine who passed away,
- and on his death bed, his last words to us was, "Make sure
- you take care of my birds."
- BILL REAMY: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You know, he was more concerned about his two
- birds than anything else.
- TOM PETRILLO: I can understand that.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to get back to a question for you
- in the profession of psychiatry.
- I mean when you started, the DMS laws were on the books.
- So when you had a gay client, how
- were you treating that client?
- I mean what were you telling them
- in regards to what you personally or ethically were
- doing as a psychiatrist, compared to what was actually
- on the books?
- Was this actually telling you how to treat these people?
- BILL REAMY: Oh no, I ignored it.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You ignored it?
- BILL REAMY: I ignored it.
- I treated people for depression, and anxiety,
- and obsessive compulsive disorder, and things like that.
- No, I never made the diagnosis of homosexuality.
- I mean, besides the DSM has always been a guideline, not
- a recipe book.
- It's just taking on all sorts of meanings these days,
- and you need it to get insurance reimbursement.
- Lawyers wave it around, but it's never
- meant to be a recipe book, something hard and binding.
- TOM PETRILLO: But in spite of saying that,
- it sure still was important when the APA made that change.
- BILL REAMY: Oh, gosh, yes it was.
- It was a big thing.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But again if I was your gay client
- and it came to fruition that my depression is
- out of this sense of self-hatred that I
- have for my homosexuality.
- How did you deal with that?
- I mean dealing with--
- You said you dealt with depression,
- but if it's clear that the depression was connected
- with that person homosexuality, how
- did you bring those two together to get this person out
- of their depression?
- BILL REAMY: Well you'd certainly ask--
- well first of all, just treating a person's emotions and desires
- and orientation as legitimate, that's
- the beginning of healing, just the acceptance.
- And then getting in deeper and talking about,
- what a person's early experiences were.
- How old were you when you came out to yourself?
- When did you come out-- did you ever come to your family?
- How did they react to it?
- When, did you have your first relationship?
- And you get into that, and then all sorts of feelings come out.
- You know working over at AIDS care,
- I still hear horror stories about that.
- My gosh, I remember--
- yeah I remember one guy telling me
- that his father told him that back in Italy we would
- have thrown you in the river.
- I think he might have been transsexual.
- He was certainly fairly effeminate.
- I remember that.
- We would have drowned you in the river back in Italy.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Tom, can you talk a little bit about the police
- arrests or harassment, well I don't want to say harassment,
- but the police's, police concerns regarding
- the gay community.
- You already have said some things,
- but do you remember any specific instances
- of when you may have been called to represent someone
- who was arrested for loitering, or for whatever?
- TOM PETRILLO: Well certainly anybody who went to a bar
- back then, in the sixties and early seventies,
- was very cognizant of the fact that they
- could be raided at any time.
- Everybody knew they had to know where the back door was,
- and how to get out of there as fast as possible.
- What complicated things a little bit were there
- were some gay policemen.
- They would be in the bars, and they would frequently
- be the ones that give the warning.
- They had to get out of there fast too, because they
- could never be identified.
- It was clear, you couldn't be a gay policeman for really,
- for a long, long time.
- But specific cases, I can't think of any other
- than I know that our client came in once,
- and I didn't do criminal work, so they might tell me,
- and I would hook them up with a lawyer in the office that
- did criminal work.
- I remember one coming in saying he
- was beaten very badly because he refused
- to give a guy a blow job.
- A cop a blow job.
- There were a lot of that going on back then.
- I can't say the whole police force was like that--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.
- Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: No.
- TOM PETRILLO: --but there certainly
- were cases you would hear of, incidents like that.
- They'd go in, they'd raid a bar, and that's
- how you got off from being arrested.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And do you recall anything about license plate
- numbers and that sort of thing?
- Taking down plate numbers?
- TOM PETRILLO: Well, there was a progression
- of how things happened.
- For a while, they would harass by raiding the bar.
- OK.
- Then things became a little better,
- I guess they were probably told, you
- got to stop raiding the bars unless you have a good reason.
- Then they began this thing of they
- take down all license plate numbers of people that
- were parked around the bar.
- Nobody ever really knew for sure what
- they were going to do with it.
- And they may have done something with it,
- but I never heard any massive calling of people, or doing.
- But the threat was there, you see.
- The threat was there.
- My god if I park and they take my number,
- they'll let my wife know, because I'm not
- out of the closet to her, or my family, or my employer.
- And that was almost as effective as harassing people directly
- in the bar.
- And people began to park miles away.
- Not miles, but a long way away from the particular
- bars that they would have congregated.
- I'd forgotten it.
- Yes.
- I don't think it went on for a long, long time.
- I think it went on for a period of time.
- And of course when the AIDS crisis came out,
- policemen was scared stiff of arresting people,
- and they used far more force on people
- because if they subdued them, they
- didn't have to necessarily come into close contact with them.
- I know a lot of people were tasered.
- Well I wouldn't say tasered, but they were made to--
- OK they were arrested, you were afraid they might spit on you,
- or breathed on you, so face down in the street,
- hands behind your back.
- The cops felt, some of them felt safer that way, you see.
- And I think there was probably a little more force exerted
- than might have been if they hadn't been in that situation.
- Really when the AIDS crisis came,
- everybody was frightened who had any contact with a gay person.
- Doctors, you know.
- I know a particular lawyer in town
- who refused to take a client who was gay, who had AIDS.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Do you remember when Urlacher came in?
- TOM PETRILLO: Um-hm.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What were your opinions?
- TOM PETRILLO: He was a strange guy.
- He could be supportive in one breath,
- and the opposite in the other breath.
- I never figured him out.
- I always wondered if he was a closet gay, myself.
- Did that ever occur to anybody else?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well we interviewed him
- a couple of weeks ago.
- BILL REAMY: Oh, Urlacher, he was the police chief.
- TOM PETRILLO: Yeah.
- Right.
- BILL REAMY: I remember that.
- TOM PETRILLO: But he could do some pretty nasty things too
- though.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- A lot of times, well when we asked him about a few things,
- he denied anything like that really happened.
- But, you know, there's always two sides to the story.
- TOM PETRILLO: Right.
- Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But we then interviewed another person
- after that, maybe Michael Robertson, who
- was at the meeting that Urlacher came to,
- to meet with the gay community to address their concerns.
- And Michael's comment was, "I would
- have followed him anywhere."
- KEVIN INDOVINO: The interview with him was the first time
- I'd ever met him.
- And I was kind of, I can't really quite figure you out.
- I mean I don't believe everything you're telling me.
- A lot of official talk is the feel that I got.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Because we also have interviewed the head
- of the Retired Police--
- TOM PETRILLO: That's interesting.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --Association.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Joe Cimino, right?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Joe Cimino.
- TOM PETRILLO: What did he have to say?
- EVELYN BAILEY: He was very--
- TOM PETRILLO: Did he acknowledge that some of these things
- went on?
- EVELYN BAILEY: No.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: No again, it was the same kind of,
- this is the official language kind
- of speak that we got from them.
- TOM PETRILLO: Yeah they rally around each other
- to the point where-- well, they still do the that, you know,
- when it comes to excessive force.
- It's a club, and frankly, if you had to work in the conditions
- that they work in every day, you would understand
- why there's that camaraderie there,
- and they stick up for themselves.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Did you ever run into any people
- who might have been arrested by the sheriff in the parks?
- TOM PETRILLO: But that was in more recent years.
- Maybe in the late eighties early nineties.
- Oh yeah, a lot of people like that.
- And that came down to the same thing as the other cops.
- It depended who was picking you up.
- There were guys who I was convinced
- were closet gays themselves.
- They volunteered for the park things,
- so that they could get free sex.
- And they would frequently threaten people.
- I'm arresting you, but there is a way out.
- There was a lot of that.
- I don't know how extensive it was.
- I mean, I heard a lot of that, but I was only
- hearing people who'd had that experience.
- And in most cases I believe them, but not always,
- but in most cases I believe them,
- because they would be able to give you enough information
- that you know you would think that was the case.
- That came down to really a question
- of the district attorney.
- As we went from the late eighties into the nineties,
- the district attorney's office became a little bit more
- knowledgeable about people.
- They understood why some of that was going on,
- and a lot of community service was the plead guilty.
- Not really don't plead guilty, but complete
- the community service, and we dropped the charges,
- in anticipation of this.
- And that still goes on today.
- But fewer people probably, I suspect fewer people now,
- are out in the parks because it's much more open to be gay.
- What you have mostly in the parks,
- I think, is mostly married men who haven't quite come
- to deal with it themselves.
- There's a lot of that, I'm sure.
- EVELYN BAILEY: That's right.
- And I have heard that you can make the arrest go away
- if you pay a thousand dollars.
- And the number--
- TOM PETRILLO: That's the way it is now?
- It could be that way now.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --of gay men who have been arrested
- in the parks--
- TOM PETRILLO: Now when they say--
- Who does the money go to?
- That's the question.
- Is it they had to pay their lawyer a thousand dollars,
- and he got it to go away, or they paid off somebody?
- That's the real question you need to ask.
- EVELYN BAILEY: They paid a fine to the Sheriff's department.
- TOM PETRILLO: OK that's probably some validity to that.
- Some basis to that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- Can you think of anything else?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: No I've got definitely nothing else.
- EVELYN BAILEY: This was wonderful.
- TOM PETRILLO: I hope we've been helpful.
- EVELYN BAILEY: You have been.
- You have been.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Particularly from two
- different perspectives.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And also, because you have been in Rochester all
- your life, you were born here?
- TOM PETRILLO: I was born outside of Rochester.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- TOM PETRILLO: I was a farm boy.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And you are a transplant, we know.
- BILL REAMY: They say you have to be here twenty years before you
- can be a Rochesterian, so I've been here long enough
- to be a Rochesterian.
- EVELYN BAILEY: I would love to talk to you more about Mooney
- and the Chamber of Commerce incident,
- and the property tax issue with Mayor Ryan and the Gay
- Alliance.
- When the city would not--
- when we were on Atlantic Avenue, they
- continued to charge us property tax
- because we were not a properly 50C13 status organization.
- And Ryan forced the council, Lou Cash, to bring it to court.
- And I don't know what it was about Ryan.
- He seemed to say some things that
- would lead you to believe he was open and supportive
- of the community.
- On the other hand, that wasn't the case.
- TOM PETRILLO: He was like the very strong Catholics.
- I'm sure he was dealing with that, wrestling with that,
- you know?
- I don't know.
- I've worked with Tom Ryan from time to time.
- And he's a nice guy, pleasant guy.
- But I suspect, you know, I do know that he and his wife
- are very, very strong Catholics.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I suspected that, and more so politics.
- TOM PETRILLO: Yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You know, who is paying for his re-election
- campaigns?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Probably.
- And the fact that the Hispanic and African-American
- communities, even to this day, have such restrictive,
- oppressive attitudes and--
- TOM PETRILLO: I don't know whether that's
- going to change as the younger generation--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: They've got so many bigger issues right now.
- Education and poverty.
- TOM PETRILLO: Well yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You know.
- EVELYN BAILEY: The other thing that I wanted to ask you Bill,
- I haven't been on line recently to check this out,
- but there was a point at which there were groups
- of HIV-positive men advertising, belong to this group,
- become HIV-positive--
- BILL REAMY: Oh, no.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --and become a member.
- BILL REAMY: Oh, no.
- TOM PETRILLO: I knew that that existed,
- but I knew that some report of that,
- but I didn't know if it's real or not.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It was real.
- EVELYN BAILEY: It is.
- It was, at least--
- TOM PETRILLO: It was way back.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --four or five years ago.
- TOM PETRILLO: Oh just four or five years ago?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- TOM PETRILLO: No then I was never aware of that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Especially with younger people,
- now that HIV is not--
- TOM PETRILLO: Manageable.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --the death sentence, immediately,
- that it was twenty years ago.
- You can now live with the disease,
- but there are many young people that who are not--
- BILL REAMY: And live with the side effects of the drugs
- you're taking for it.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Wow.
- And go bankrupt because you can't
- afford all the medication.
- BILL REAMY: That's right if you don't have ADAP.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But there were many groups on the internet
- inviting membership.
- TOM PETRILLO: I did not know that.
- I remember back when the AIDS crisis was first came out,
- there were people who said, we're all going
- to get it anyway, so why worry?
- BILL REAMY: Kind of sounds like the anorexic support groups
- that young women have on the internet.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- TOM PETRILLO: But enticing people to belong.
- EVELYN BAILEY: To belong.
- TOM PETRILLO: To belong.
- When you belong by acquiring AIDS.
- I mean that's just--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I question about how widespread it really was.
- It may be just a little fringe group
- that just happened to get a lot of attention at some point.
- TOM PETRILLO: Well that happens, yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Could have been, but--
- TOM PETRILLO: I hope it's not.
- EVELYN BAILEY: I bring that up because we
- have seen more and more suicides and more and more
- violence against gay young people,
- and the sense of isolationism that they
- seem to have, and feel.
- So unconnected, so not able to reach out,
- not able to have someone that they can even talk to,