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)