Green Thursday, radio program, April 3, 1974, source recording

  • SPEAKER ONE: Now, the nuclear family in modern society
  • whether we like it or not with all its faults,
  • still does cater for certain needs.
  • It rallies around an unfortunate individual in emergency.
  • Not always, but nearly always.
  • And that, it's only tolerable for people in (unintelligible)
  • to live alone if they're homosexuals,
  • if they are so introverted rather than extroverted,
  • if they are very intellectual and they're healthy enough
  • to be able to move about at random.
  • But if none of those things are true, what becomes of them?
  • The fact is, nobody ever hears of them.
  • Now should not, it seems to me, a small homosexual group
  • consisting, say, of a dozen or twenty persons
  • of a cross section of the ages should not be,
  • not just an agency for sex and socialization,
  • but a support group for all the individuals in that group.
  • No group is valuable in the end unless its members
  • have duties and responsibilities towards one another,
  • as well as privileges that they may derive
  • from belonging to that group.
  • And this where very many CHE groups and I speak
  • as an old executive member of the CHE in its founding days
  • three or four years ago and where it plays.
  • The greatest criticism that is often
  • leveled at the whole of the homosexual way of life
  • is that it constitutes an escape from responsibility.
  • Haven't we heard this again and again?
  • That it undermines the family as the main support
  • system of the individual in a rapidly
  • changing urbanized society.
  • I believe that if we our way of life
  • is to have its place in the world,
  • we must, for a minority of people,
  • be able to replace the support system of that family
  • with something which I don't think repairing bonds will work
  • because they're unstable by their very nature.
  • But by a small group of a small homosexual group
  • which may indeed include both sexes.
  • And it shouldn't be just a group for social and sexual purposes,
  • but for the support of all the individuals in that group
  • in their total life situation.
  • And many CHE groups I'm ashamed to say it
  • are failing miserably, because they are not
  • sufficiently involved in one another in the deeper sense.
  • AUDIENCE: (Applause)
  • SPEAKER TWO: I have in my hand a journal
  • in which I tried to scribble things down every day.
  • And I didn't realize it until this discussion
  • that a few days ago I had scratched
  • out a poem, which I think fits.
  • I'd like to read it with you.
  • First let me say about two and a half years ago,
  • I felt that my life had come to an end with a sort of death.
  • I had been married and was now separated.
  • I had raised a family and my children had gone way.
  • And some of that feeling comes out in this poem.
  • But before I read it, I also want
  • to say that I began two and a half years ago by the way,
  • I'm fifty-six years old I began about two years ago
  • to get in touch with my homosexuality
  • and to live again.
  • And it's been great.
  • But
  • AUDIENCE: (Applause)
  • (Start of poetry reading) To know despair.
  • To be engulfed by the dark.
  • To feel that everything you've done is wrong
  • and everything you've been is false.
  • To be lost in the present, not knowing
  • whether there is any right way for you to go or turn.
  • Hold it.
  • Hold it.
  • Snap.
  • Preserve that picture of yourself.
  • It's precious.
  • Some spend a lifetime to achieve that state,
  • for they know that only then does life begin.
  • Learn to live in that awkward space,
  • that land of vulnerability and nothingness.
  • Make no plans.
  • Seek no way out.
  • Wait there.
  • If need be, a long long time.
  • Until the voices of instinct, intuition, the unconscious,
  • and the soul have a chance to gather their forces and speak.
  • And when they do, listen. (End of poetry reading)
  • AUDIENCE: (Applause)
  • SPEAKER THREE: This conference went
  • on record in its first session to oppose the concept
  • and the practice of sexism.
  • And I think this debate has brought
  • out some fundamental points about this.
  • Because what is more sexist than the attitude of the youth cult?
  • Which is a self-oppressive thing exists
  • very strongly within the gay movement and always has done.
  • Look at the cock magazines outside.
  • How many of those pictures are over twenty-five?
  • None.
  • We all here are on a train ride to death.
  • Now, take a point of the speaker before,
  • who said that he was speaking from his heart.
  • And we look upon the-- our own current physical decay, perhaps
  • that's something not pleasant.
  • But this is tied in with sexism, because the conception
  • of sexism is to regard somebody as an object.
  • Not as a true whole person.
  • And this is where the cut off comes.
  • We have the same thing.
  • It's not only gay men.
  • It's all people as a whole, isn't it?
  • How often has the phrase been used,
  • oh, he or she is just like an old woman.
  • What could be worse in straight terms
  • than a young woman, but an old woman?
  • So that age has a certain horror, I suppose,
  • for a lot of people.
  • But unless we get this clear in our mind,
  • linking this conception of sexism as body objects,
  • this is not what we're after.
  • Until we can do that, we can't turn this train
  • to death, which we're all on, from being an oppressive
  • train into a love train.
  • AUDIENCE: (Applause)
  • Thank you.
  • SPEAKER FOUR: I got here belatedly
  • in time for Thursday evening's meal.
  • I walked in.
  • I was greeted, sat with a young student--
  • the young student who had attended
  • one of my local CAT meetings.
  • And in fact lives but a hundred yards from me.
  • And virtually the first question he asked me was,
  • "Do all older men seek out to go with younger men?"
  • Well I don't want to jump into bed with every young man I see.
  • For that matter, I don't want to jump into bed with every person
  • of my own old age that I see.
  • What we, as older homosexuals, want
  • is warmth, a word which has been mentioned
  • but infrequently this conference.
  • We heard it at one stage in the older homosexuals' debate.
  • We heard it once before.
  • But what we want is warmth.
  • We want to believe that people recognize us.
  • I want, if I see a homosexual, particularly
  • a younger one, a gay person in the street,
  • I want that person to acknowledge me,
  • to show some warmth, some feeling.
  • There's a bond between us.
  • A bond which the law cannot break between us.
  • The law doesn't come in to this.
  • I just want that person to acknowledge me,
  • not to walk by on the other side.
  • I want him to acknowledge me, to show some warmth, some feeling,
  • to recognize, and for me to be allowed to recognize him.
  • I don't want him to think that because I smile at him,
  • I'm trying to seduce him into bed.
  • I'm not.
  • I simply want to establish a bond of warmth.
  • A bond of friendship.
  • And until we establish, between all gay people,
  • this acknowledgement, this bond of friendship
  • whether you come out or not, then we
  • are not going to make progress.
  • We are going to be divided.
  • There is no reason why in town, city, or country that we should
  • not acknowledge on a perfectly natural plane
  • the bond which is established between us and which we know
  • exists between us.
  • And for that reason, I and the other older people
  • who were here at the earlier debate,
  • we deplore the almost complete absence of the younger
  • delegates at this conference.
  • Thank you.
  • AUDIENCE: (Applause)