Video Interview, Bob Crystal, April 11, 2012
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK, Bob, I just want
- to start briefly about your Episcopalian ministry
- aspirations there because that kind of sets up your challenges
- there of who you then are now.
- BOB CRYSTAL: Well, yeah.
- I'm a lifelong Episcopalian.
- And when I was in college, I was approached
- by several people asking me if I would consider either
- going into orders, becoming a monk,
- or going into the priesthood.
- And I was considering that.
- But I think it was my junior year,
- maybe it was my senior year, one of the ladies from the city
- came in onto campus, which they frequently did.
- I was attending at Cornell, and there was a good communication
- between the church downtown and the campus,
- even though the campus was its own--
- had its own priests and assistance.
- But she took me aside after service
- and told me that she had fixed it so
- that I couldn't be a doctor--
- which is what I was majoring in, pre-med--
- and that her son worked for the regents,
- and she had filed a complaint in advance for moral turpitude.
- And back in the 60s, New York state as liberal as we were,
- we still had things like moral turpitude.
- And I appealed to the authorities
- of the church asking to get her to back down
- and to renege on that.
- And they refused, or couldn't, or didn't
- feel that they should.
- And that really turned me off to it.
- I will always be an Episcopalian, but the church--
- and especially that one woman, but the church itself--
- I perceive them as being hurtful.
- It's strange because it was right on the cusp
- of the women's movement.
- That was 1960, 1970.
- And it was '75 that the first women were ordained.
- And at the same time, there was a movement
- starting to modernize the language of the church
- and to modernize some of the ways that we prayed,
- and so forth.
- So I was on the outside looking in even though there
- was a revolution happening.
- And of course, there were gay men who were priests.
- And many of them were very liberated in that they
- were very open to their parishes,
- but they also knew the rules.
- And the rules in the '60s were "don't ask, don't tell."
- And the people who invented "don't ask,
- don't tell" for the military got it from the '60s
- and got it, probably, from the Episcopal church.
- There were many people who were quite aware
- of which priests were gay and which priests were straight.
- And it was in the '60s that the requirement that a priest be
- married was dropped.
- It was in the '60s or the early '70s
- that the requirement that if a priest got divorced,
- he could no longer be the parish priest was dropped.
- So the Episcopal church, without me in it,
- was making some rather strong strides, long strides.
- And I watched from the outside because the strides
- that they were making were not for out, gay men.
- And that's what I was.
- I came out my freshman year of college
- and actually had been out, to myself anyway, all
- through high school.
- And so to me it felt foreign to belong to an organization that
- wanted me to hide that part of myself,
- let alone be ashamed of it.
- And so I was naturally a member of the Cornell University Gay
- Liberation Front.
- And when I graduated and moved to Rochester,
- it was natural for me to look for the GLF on campus,
- and find it, and belong to it.
- I was never a bar fly.
- I never looked to the bars for my socializing
- or for making friends.
- I made friends in the bars.
- I visited the bars.
- That was the only place to dance.
- There were dances on campus, but they
- were rather high school-ish.
- It was everybody sitting on the sidelines and a few brave women
- going out in the middle of the floor and dancing alone.
- But if you wanted to really let loose,
- the bar was the only place to do it.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I want to jump back a little bit
- upon the incident with the woman and then you getting basically,
- seemed to be, shut out from the church.
- BOB CRYSTAL: And from pre-med, and teaching,
- and hairdressing--
- those all require licensing from the state.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.
- Well, what went through your mind?
- What did you say to yourself?
- OK, now what?
- BOB CRYSTAL: That's why I say I was--
- my first reaction was a revolutionary one.
- As a good Episcopalian, I went to my priest.
- My priest went to the priest of her parish.
- The both of them went to the bishop.
- Nothing happened.
- My own reaction when nothing happened,
- when the woman was not asked to back down,
- was that of a revolutionary.
- The advisor for the Gay Liberation Front at Cornell
- was Dan Berrigan.
- So I was-- and remember, that was
- the anti-war movement was going really strong in those days.
- So the concept of dumping blood on draft records
- was something that was in my vocabulary.
- So I started looking for something revolutionary to do.
- I didn't find it.
- I also don't like to hurt people.
- So I couldn't find a way of making my point
- without hurting people.
- So I did nothing.
- And that was frustrating.
- The idea of try to find some way of being
- political without being harmful is a struggle
- that I see going on now.
- I was active with GAA in New York City.
- I was active with some of the people who eventually formed
- ACT OUT and was uncomfortable with the idea of holding
- someone's feet to the fire to the point
- where they were injured.
- So I was a moderate revolutionary.
- Maybe I should form my own party.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: So, OK, you're up here in Rochester then.
- And you get involved with GLF.
- Talk to me about your first experiences with them.
- And what were you finding within that organization
- that was speaking to you?
- BOB CRYSTAL: As I said, I was primed
- and looking for an organization that I could belong to,
- where that need to change society would have an outlet.
- And I knew from my experiences in Cornell
- that I would find somebody here in Rochester.
- As a matter of fact, Bob Roth, who
- is the founder of the Cornell University GLF,
- was in communication with Bob Osborn.
- There are an awful lot of Bobs in the gay revolution.
- But Bob Osborn had come to one of our meetings
- and said, "Anytime you come to Rochester, come look us up."
- And he told us when they meet and where
- they meet, where they were meeting,
- and invited anybody who was visiting to come up and visit.
- So I went.
- And it was a very positive experience.
- At Cornell, we were in the little cubby-hole behind the TV
- room in the student union.
- University of Rochester had been much more gracious.
- And we were meeting in a room with a fireplace,
- and soft furniture, and rugs on the floor.
- And there were some very respectable, no,
- admirable people who were attending--
- Karen Hagberg, Patti, Bob Osborn himself, AJ.
- The list was fairly long.
- And there were a large number of people,
- for a small group like that, there
- were a large number of people who
- were coming to every meeting, who were volunteering
- to do the work of making T-shirts,
- making placards, volunteering to come to the marches.
- The one picture that Evelyn has of us marching down
- Broad Street toward City Hall, there
- was an eagerness of that group to participate,
- a willingness to be in the newspaper, that
- was something new in the air that
- was happening in the early '70s across the country.
- But the University of Rochester was the place where
- it was really happening weekly.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: And I want to just
- get a little deeper into that.
- During these meetings, what was being discussed?
- For what purpose did you guys and gals
- think you were gathered for?
- BOB CRYSTAL: What we were there for was,
- first and foremost, companionship and shelter
- and affirmation.
- And we all needed that, and we were good at doing that.
- But Bob Osborn was very much of an organizer.
- He always kept us on course.
- And the course was to find ways to change society,
- find ways to take the Mattachine Society goals, and the GAA
- goals, and the GAGV goals--
- were to become the GAGV goals--
- but all the Gay Liberation Front goals
- and to meld them and make them specifically for Rochester
- and to achieve equality, liberation.
- Some of the concrete goals that we decided just to work towards
- were City Council resolution.
- One of the far-reaching goals was
- to have gay couples recognized by the city for benefits
- for their employees and for benefits for the citizenry.
- We called it civil union back in the '80s,
- but that's what we were talking about.
- There was one meeting that we were
- at that we had discussed alternative words for marriage
- so that people could accept the concept
- of an official government-recognized union.
- So we went there and played with it.
- I can't remember some of the silly ones.
- But civil union came up, coupling, espousal.
- Just the fact that we were talking about it,
- in a group of more than two, was a revolutionary concept
- for those days.
- In the '60s, to have ten people sit around thinking of names
- to call gay marriage was, in and of itself, a revolutionary act.
- It was also very affirming and very self-esteem building.
- And we all got that out of that.
- And then we also discussed the speakers' bureau,
- where we could go, brainstorming as how we'd get invitations
- for the speakers' bureau.